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I started this project in order to really explore music and myself more deeply. I've been interested in music for a while now, and I took a music theory class this year with Mr. Johnston, but I really wanted to dig deeper into composition. I don't play the piano often, and I'd definitely never done such a project like this before. I wanted to use the project as a way to go and do some deep personal exploring. I wanted to get a better understanding of my own musical strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the project I felt like I'd gotten to understand myself and the art of music much better. I got to work on different types of music and really explore. I enjoyed working on the project in general, and I hope you enjoy reading about it and listening to the music I came up with. It was an amazing musical and personal journey for me. Enjoy!

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For my first piece I ended up having a fairly early deadline. I wanted to see if I could submit it through Contemporary Improvisation Ensemble (CIE) to be played at the Arts & Letters Concert. This goal helped me stay on track and really put me into overdrive, in fact. I found myself working up to 6 hours a day on the piece because I really wanted it to be perfect. I even asked for some help from family members by getting their feedback about the song. I asked them how they thought the piece sounded and I adjusted it accordingly. Eventually, I got something together that I felt was good enough to be presented to the world.  Although ultimately it wasn't used at the Arts & Letters Concert, I was still really happy to have such an early deadline since it took a lot of the stress off my shoulders for the rest of my project. I knew that at the very least, I had achieved a lot by creating this piece and getting it to the point where I thought others might really enjoy it.

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This piece wasn't actually going to happen at all. At first, I was going to make a completely different melody and tune, but one day after working on that piece I just started humming and things changed for me. I discovered that I actually  liked the random melody that came into my head. I decided to record this random melody on my phone in order to really get it to work. That approach also made getting the whole song onto MuseScore a lot easier as well. Time passed and I started to actually give the song more shaping and add more instrumentals. This song had a completely different feel to it when compared to the previous piece. I enjoyed the freshness of this new musical creation as it ended up differently than my other piece. This song was just meant to flow in a very satisfying way. As I look back, I am pretty proud of the work I'd done!

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I did the project on a program called MuseScore. MuseScore allows me to both write down the notes I want in the song on sheet music, and play the song back so I can hear it. To add onto that its a completely free program. Honestly, I owe a lot of time to MuseScore since without it, I'd have likely been fishing around for an accurate song tempo on my piano for much longer than I actually did. I also had the help of my faculty advisor, Mrs. Valentine, when it came to setting the tempo just right on MuseScore so that it sounded closer to what I wanted. When recording the pieces, I made sure to extract audio files from the program as well, which enabled me to edit the volume of the instrumentals separately from the vocals. I also used the MuseScore files as the background for my videos. In the end, MuseScore was the key to getting this project done in a timely manner.

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Oddly enough, the project ended up producing a sense of nostalgia. The most vivid bit of nostalgia came when I was recording things on my phone for the second piece. I found that while I did that I ended up looking through older singing practice recordings from a summer camp I've been going to for the past three summers. It really made me feel happy to know that in the time between those recordings and now so much has changed in my life. I have grown so much.

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One of the main things I found out about myself by doing this project is that I actually work well with a deadline. I felt alert and ready to tackle the first song knowing when I needed to finish it. That situation helped me a lot, not to mention the acknowledgement that once the first piece was finished, I'd have already finished the base of my goal for this project. Ultimately I enjoyed working under a deadline, although I'd probably want that deadline to be a bit longer if I had the option next time.

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By the end of the project I wanted to and did achieve these goals:

Create 1 to 2 pieces of original music

Each piece should span at least 2 to 3 minutes in length

Demonstrate my knowledge and love of music

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According to research done by Daily Health Post, music has many benefits. This research helped me learn something new about music, and outlined to me the importance of my project. The graph below shows what they found:

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As the project came to a close I felt relieved. I learned a lot through the time I spent about how tedious composing could be, and how many different directions a song could go. Knowing that I finished two pieces within the time I was given, and acknowledging all the other paths I could have taken towards completing them gave me a much deeper appreciation for composers. Knowing how long it took me to write these amateur pieces and knowing that there are people who sit down like I did every day to crank out better songs, and in the end, they sometimes don't even get to see firsthand how their music is enjoyed by others. Between those melodies that are meant to go on forever or those that seem so complex, it really makes me think about the time put into each phrase. Most importantly, however, I got to explore a bit of who I am to a degree. I got to see what parts of composing I was good at, and which parts I could be better at. I got to learn something about myself I couldn't have otherwise. That, to me, is the best lesson I could have received from this project.