Making Music

For my march madness project, I arranged and recorded a collection of original songs and cover songs. I grew up singing and going to piano school, so music has always been a huge part of my life. Growing up playing classical piano gave me an amazing foundation to start exploring other aspects of music, which is something that I started doing throughout middle school. I knew that I wanted to try writing music for my project at the very beginning of the process, but I had no idea how challenging it would be. For the first 3 months of my project, I was unable to write any songs. At that point, the prospect of writing music that others would have to listen to was absolutely terrifying, and this fear kept me from making any progress. I was too caught up in trying to make everything perfect, that I created mental blocks for myself. The key to answering my driving question (which was how can I create music with a meaningful message?) was to embrace the vulnerability which lyric writing often exposes. This proved to be another big challenge as I struggled with writing lyrics that were meaningful to myself, without being too vulnerable. I struggled with being comfortable with exposing the vulnerable parts of myself, but eventually I realized that that vulnerability is what makes music great. My two original songs, called Dreams and Losing Game were both inspired by mental health. I also chose to cover two songs called Control by Zoe Wees and Dancing With Your Ghost by Sasha Sloan. Throughout this process, I spent countless hours writing and recording music that I didn’t even end up using for one reason or another. It was difficult to scrap something after dedicating so much time to it, but I am glad that I focused on showing the work which I was most proud of. In my original project proposal, I was planning on creating pieces of artwork which reflected each individual song, but this proved to be too much, so I instead focused on creating an album cover. I did not follow the traditional song pattern for my two original songs, as I felt that the songs would be more impactful if I kept them concise and unique. Despite all the challenges I listed earlier, the hardest part of this process was being able to share my work with others. When I listen to my songs all I hear are the tiny mistakes, but slowly I am working to embrace the imperfections and be proud of what I have created. I learned so much over the course of this project: I learned to embrace the imperfects of music since I am not a professional and have no previous experience recording, I learned to go the simple route rather than creating super complex and overbearing songs and I learned how difficult creating music really is. Overall, I am proud of what I have accomplished, so please click the link below to go to my website!”