Introduction

The Freestyle Academy Senior Music Recording Project encourages students to take charge of recording, editing, and producing music. During this project, Freestyle Seniors collaborated with musicians (and optionally with each other) in learning how to act like producers and take charge of Freestyle’s music recording studio. We learned how to communicate and work effectively with people outside of freestyle, something we hadn’t previously gotten a lot of experience with. In addition, we learned more about mixing and mastering in an application called Pro Tools, learning to edit a variety of audio types, including choirs, guitar, female and male vocalists, and more. The final products of this project took a variety of forms, including an edited audio, album cover, and collaborative artist statement.

Collaborative Artist Statement

The Freestyle Academy Senior Music Recording Project encourages students to take charge of recording, editing, and producing music. During this project, Freestyle Seniors Kaylee Jampayai and Ashley Dillon collaborated in learning how to act like producers and take charge of Freestyle’s music recording studio. We needed to begin our project by finding someone to record. Eventually, we managed to arrange a plan to record Hannah Grayeski, an MVHS Senior that plays viola for the school’s chamber orchestra. After Hannah agreed to play for us, we needed to set up times for 2 separate sessions within Freestyle’s Recording studio. This studio is one of the many invaluable facilities students have access to on campus, complete with items like a high quality sound system, separate control and recording rooms, and a variety of musical instruments. The first session we needed to book only required that Kaylee and Ashley be there. It was a learning session, designed so that Mr. Florendo could teach them to properly use the recording equipment in the studio and to set up a session in the application we would use to record, Pro Tools. After completing the learning session, we were able to book our actual recording session, during which Mr. Florendo, Kaylee, Ashley, and Hannah and her viola would all be present.

The session began with Hannah tuning her viola in accordance to the sound dynamics of the recording room, while Kaylee and Ashley readied the system to record her. Hannah warmed up a bit, we recorded 4 takes of the song Hannah had chosen, a Waltz. When we finished with our takes, all 3 of us moved to the control room and listened to the takes, adding reverb and normalizing the audio tracks to enhance the way they sounded. Since Hannah had the most trained ear in terms of music, she was able to rate the takes for us from best to worst, and help decide how much reverb should be added to the tracks. With that, we successfully ended the recording session.

Later, Kaylee and Ashley had the responsibility of mixing and mastering the best take in Pro tools, doing things like adding compression and adjusting volume levels for the song. Finally, they exported the final audio from Pro tools as both an mp3 and wav file. Then, it was time to create the collaborative album art and artist statement using input from each team member. The album art was based around the idea of how the viola piece Hannah played would look if it were a visual, as well as how it makes listeners feel. The warm amber tones looping through abstract shapes are intended to mirror the way violas can create rich, soaring notes with ease. Meanwhile, the black background represents how the absence of noise in the recording studio allowed Hannah’s viola to stand out so stridently.

Overall, the intent of this project was mostly to learn how to record music in a studio with high-end and complicated equipment. However, the final audio we produced with this project has really beautiful and unique elements stemming from a viola’s ability to generate rich and beautiful drawn out sounds. Each person gained a lot from the new experience, and will be better equipped to create similar projects going forward.

Meet the Musician: Hannah Grayeski

Musician Bio: Hannah Grayeski is a 17 year old Senior at Mountain View High School. She currently plays viola in the school’s chamber ensemble and a member the Theatre program’s Tech Crew. Hannah enjoys reading, spending time with her friends and dog, and is an avid baker.

Below is a gallery of the photos and videos I took during our recording session. In them you can see the setup of the Freestyle recording studio, including the control and recording rooms described in the collaborative artist statement.

Below is the Album Cover I designed to match the song Hannah played on her viola. Overall, designing the cover was probably one of my favorite parts of the process, and to me it really represents the way the sound of Hannah’s viola made me feel.

By clicking the play button below, you can listen to the edited audio of the Waltz song Hannah play on her viola and I later edited in Pro Tools.

Below is a Screenshot of the Pro Tools Session I edited the song Hannah played in. The windows you see displayed are the method by which I normalized the audio and adjusted things like pitch and volume.

Personal Reflection

Honestly, I struggled at points with this project, but I am proud of the final result. During the process, some scheduling conflicts and the difficulties of learning new technology within Pro Tools managed to raise my stress levels a bit. However, by working with my teammate Kaylee and musician Hannah, we were able to finish the process successfully. One thing I am really proud of is the album cover. I spent a lot of time on it and I like the way it captures how the sound of Hannah’s viola made me feel. Overall, I learned a lot about working with other people during this project, and about how I can best handle challenges. In the future, I hope to take what I have learned here with me into college as I engage in creative work and improve my collaborative skills by completing similar projects.