Intro and Reflection

The last project of junior year was the Explorations project, which allowed for an enormous amount of freedom. We had to pick a skill to further develop and explore which also related to the work we'd done at Freestyle so far. A lot of class time was for independent work and we got to work in whichever classroom we needed to. The only real requirement for this project was an infographic and presentation about all we'd learned about. The infographic, which we did for Design, had to relate to the project we'd picked, which had to include graphics and text with the purpose to inform our audience.

For my project, I decided to write and record a song. After everything I'd learned about music from the Documentary project, I wanted to try applying some of that information. My research angle was the science behind why certain sounds work together and how I could apply that to my music.

Process

The first thing I did was write the lyrics of my song. I had a hard time coming up with a structure at first, so I picked a song I liked and replaced the lyrics with my own in order to retain the structure. Then, I came up with a different melody through experimenting with different chords. The lyrics I wrote are about somebody who's trying to find happiness but is going about it in the wrong way, so I wanted the melody and instrumental to reflect that feeling. Eventually, I came up with something I liked. Below are the lyrics typed into the notes app on my phone:

After finishing the lyrics, I moved on to the actual instrumental. I began with the bass line and built the main melody with the electric piano around that. I also added lots of string parts to support the melody and SFX sound effects to create atmosphere and the vibe I was going for. Here's a screenshot of just the instrumental:

When I was satisfied with the instrumental, I went to the studio to record the vocals. I was unable to do it all in one take, so I did multiple takes and "Frankensteined" the pieces together. I added some effects to the audio like reverb and decay and added some sound effects to further build the atmosphere. Below is an image of the final recording:

Below is a recording of my song on Soundcloud:

Infographic

I decided to make my infographic about sound waves and how they work. After researching the physics behind it, I picked out the information that I thought was most important and relevant to exploring how different sounds work together to make a piece of music that's pleasing to the ear.

Over the past year, I have learned so much from Freestyle. It was hard to keep up at the beginning as there was so much to learn and to remember, especially with the programs (Pro Tools, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc.) but all the work I've put in has been extremely rewarding. I was also able to work on my time management skills and push my creativity. This year was an incredibly positive and valuable experience.