CR1 – What I Know vs. What I Don’t Know

There’s plenty I know about my senior project’s area of study. However, like everything I’m passionate about I can’t know everything and I certainly don’t claim to, so it’s a worthwhile exercise to identify the aspects of my project that I’m new to and strive to better myself in those areas of my field of study.

We can start with what I know about my essential question (How can I tell a compelling narrative/tell a story through music in a time of quarantine): I’ve got experience in writing and recording music, prosody (the connections between lyrical content and instrumentation), and a more extensive background in producing music. So as far as how that all relates to what I know about my question, I know how to answer it with the instrumental side of music: I’m fairly confident in using various recording, playing, and mixing techniques to convey a range of emotions in my music. However, I could always improve in areas of music-making that I’m already versed in, and in my case that area is vocal work.

I know how to tell an emotional story with pure music, but I’m more of a novice when it comes to the lyrical and vocal side of songwriting. I understand that it’s an essential part of most songwriting I enjoy, so it’s something I strive to better myself at. Also, it more directly answers my essential question. Quite literally, lyrics can be used to tell a story for the listener. When a story is told with instruments it’s highly metaphorical, but vocals can be used to translate those emotions and metaphors into words that can be more immediately understood by a listener. The lyrics can end up giving a narrative to the music, tying a whole piece together and making it stronger as a whole. That’s something that, over the course of the next month, I hope to improve in.