My senior project experience has come to end. Although, technically I am still working on my project. In my mind, senior project isn’t over until the night of the presentation. 

This experience, although didn’t go as planned due to quarantine, really taught me so much about working completely on my own and my true appreciation of working with music. For a long time I honestly couldn’t tell whether music was my calling or my hobby. Of course, there were times where I felt I needed to be able to work with it everyday but I never could officially tell until now. I’ve noticed that I become so invested with my work and I spend so much time with it that it doesn’t come across as a simple little pleasure. It is work and stressful and I only stop when that stress gets too much. I never lose interest and that tells me that music must be a part of my future career. 

 

Quarantine has really made this whole process a very independent experience for me. I had to figure out the entire recording process all by myself. I ran into many challenges but pushed through them.

 

My essential question was “how does music represent an emotion?” and I honestly did not expect each section to sound like an actual song. I feel very accomplished and proud of my project and how I attempted to answer my essential question with my final product. I did research on what instruments sound sad or angry or hopeful or happy. I measured each tempo so that each section was similar in rhythm yet accelerating and different. I made all the lyrics represent what goes through your head during the feeling of each emotion. I tried to make each section as dramatic as possible. The goal of this was not to create a beautiful 4 sectioned song that happened to represent emotions. My goal was so that each section would connect with each person based on how they felt while listening to it. I want them to feel the emotion that each section is representing. Whether they like the song or not, in my opinion, is irrelevant. 

 

The experience was very educational and challenging. My original plan was that I would have been able to take advantage of the incredibly talented musicians we have at lrei. I have never been very good when it comes to playing an instrument. I wanted to record a professional sounding guitar, bass, piano, drums, and maybe even a cello or violin. I truly have my brother to thank for making my piece sound like a real song. Without his incredible talent for playing guitar and his amazing contribution to each section, the piece would not be complete. I never thought that it would turn out as good as it did. Especially considering our current circumstances. He is a great guitarist and an amazing musician. I wouldn’t have been able to pull this off without him. 

 

Although, it didn’t go exactly as I hoped, this was truly a once in a lifetime experience that taught me so much. It taught me things I never really expected to learn like to rely on myself and use the very few resources I had. I wish things could have been different but it wouldn’t have made this experience any more rewarding.