• How has your essential question changed throughout the 6 weeks?

Throughout the past month and a half, I have been working hard to successfully complete my job of initially making a 4 song EP. After a couple meetings with my cohort group, a question was asked to me of whether or not 4 songs was pushing it. At first, I believed 4 songs was easy enough to accomplish in this time. Although I do believe this question was a good frame for my senior project, It took me a little longer to understand the importance of quality over quantity. My essential question has changed to how I can create 3 song EP and mix it. Although I do believe creating 4 song ep was possible, and still is, I want to spend more time on making 3 of my songs as good as they can be, versus 4 mediocre sounding songs.

• What did you expect to learn and how does that compare to what you did learn?

I feel like throughout this experience, I did not have to adjust my expectations. Growing up in a musician based family, I’ve always had an understanding of what was needed. For me, I expected to learn about not only the skills and techniques you need to master before officially mixing vocals to a song, but to learn about the paths real musicians took to create their music. I was astonished when reading and listening to different musicians explaining their process of making a song. Apart from this, I didn’t expect myself to become as comfortable with Pro Tools as I am now. Being in the studio so much helped me work through a confusing DAW (Digital audio workspace) like Pro Tools. It taught me that sometimes it’s better to go the long way and teach yourself rather than seeking help right away.

• How do you anticipate this experience changing you or affecting you going forward?

This experience not only strengthened my interest in music, but made me more knowledgeable about different genres of music. In addition, this prepared me to help others who need assistance with their DAWS or need help mixing their vocals to a song. Even though pursuing music in the future might be something I don’t consider, it will always be part of my life and something I enjoy doing.

• What risks did you take, especially for those who created a product? How did those risks pay off?

For me, this whole project was a risk. I am not a singer and nor have I ever sung for people. I am excited for people to hear my music and I do believe that my risk taking in singing and writing have paid off. I believe throughout these weeks of work, I have constructed 3 different sounding songs all consisting of cool melodies.

Working with Protools connected to a small computer can get really annoying when there is already so much work taking up room on the computer. Throughout the first weeks of senior project, my Pro Tools kept crashing unexpectedly. Not only was I losing my work, but wasting time. This is something I am sure many producers go through when working with musicians or by themselves. This experienced honestly helped me a lot. It pushed me to save my work every 5-10 minutes. Instead of having 1 session for 1 song where all my work was, I would constantly save new updated versions of my song. One so I could avoid losing anything important if my Pro Tools crashed and two because saving ten different session files allows me to go back to the first one or the 7th and see if there is a vocal worth using.

• How might you demonstrate your learning?

I want to demonstrate my learning and my experience within the last 6 weeks in my songs. I want my music to represent me and represent what this project was for me. I will definitely demonstrate my learning through talking as well about my experience, but mainly through people listening to my music.