Overview: Our project centers around the creation of an album, through writing original music, adapting tunes to create unique covers, and recording. This senior project will require all 4Cs of the LREI Mission Statement. Courage: Writing, recording, and releasing music that we find both personal and meaningful takes a great deal of courage. Citizenship: Practicing what it means to be a good LREI citizen by volunteering at the middle school to work with students through music history and music theory. Critical thinking: Diving deep into music theory, exploring complex rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic concepts, and most importantly, how all three can come together at once. Creativity: Both through adapting existing songs, and writing our own, creativity will be central to our project. 

Timeline: Our goals in terms of meeting deadlines and writing and playing at a healthy, yet brisk, clip are as follows: We will first hit the ground running in April by starting our writing process quite possibly as early as we are allowed (this would hopefully mean around march 29th). We have budgeted for about two weeks of pure ideation and writing time without any real recording, this would be the time when the songs get made because while there might be writing that happens while recording the goal would be to have rough sketches of the album around the two-week mark. This two-week (April 5th) date would also line up with our first of hopefully weekly meetings with nick to keep us accountable for progress and playing that actually pushes our boundaries. From this date onward, we would enter the bulk recording period. This would mean doing takes of each song, ironing out micro details, and getting final arrangements recorded and ready for mixing. By May 4th our goal is to be as done recording as possible to allow for at least ten days dedicated to listening back and making mixing and mastering decisions about the album. Of course, we do coincide that is a very perfect world where we have this much leeway with having recordings and arrangements done.  

Measure of success: Our final goal is to have a cohesive album released on streaming platforms. Our project’s success will not be determined by the “success” the album has online, but by our personal connections to the music we make. If we are able to create an album full of songs that we feel push our musical boundaries, challenge us, and make us proud as musicians, that will be a success in and of itself.