Background
Inspiration
As someone who is planning on majoring in commercial music (or a related area of study) next year, I thought that Capstone would be the perfect opportunity to learn more about that area. I was introduced to incredible female singer songwriters such as Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris at a young age, and for as long as I can remember I've been enthralled by the power of storytelling that they wield and the way that they can impute such intense emotion to their audience.
I've been experimenting with writing songs since my freshman year. I love the way that music enhances poetry. Even simple lyrics can feel so much more powerful when you match them with the right instrumentation. Songwriting has been an incredibly therapeutic hobby for me; I love how it lets me turn what I'm feeling, even if it's something that's generally perceived as negative, into something beautiful. These songs were written across three years, workshopped over the past six months, and recorded this past semester. I'm very proud to finally be able to share this with people, and I hope that you enjoy!
Recording the EP
I recorded this project on GarageBand using my computer. Learning how to use the application was an interesting process, and I would say it went fairly well. The tedious part was making sure that I had the correct number of beats per minute (or BPM) set before I actually recorded the song, and then staying on beat with that. If I got off of the beat, it made editing my measures and layering instrumental voices particularly difficult because the application wanted to count in the measure set for it. The instruments used in these recordings are piano and voice. The vocals are done in one take for all the songs, but the piano was trickier to play through without mistakes and ended up being in several pieces cut together. As musical copyright is rather expensive, I regret to say that my EP only exists in CD format at this time and is not available digitally. If you would like to contact me to request a CD, please do so through the email address listed below!