Zenith

Introduction

With this project, the purpose was to pursue a passion we had while also advancing in our skills. As one of our 21st century skills, self-direction was key in this project because we not only needed to set a goal of what we wanted to accomplish, but also independently be able to carry it out through our own time and effort.

The purpose of the project being called Zenith was because it is the peak of our work at Freestyle, like the zenith is the time something is most powerful or successful.

Zenith

Initially, my zenith project was to take multiple photos of people from different backgrounds, ages, genders, etc. These photos would consist of their features and at the end, I was going to combine all of them into a morphed human being to represent how despite our physical differences, we are all human. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, I had to halt this project and begin a new one. My new project, which is my final zenith, was to create an electronic music album that consisted of 5 songs in the languages; Albanian, Montenegrin, Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish. I would also be creating 5 individual cover art for each of the songs then a final album art for the whole album itself. This is something I am passionate about because growing up, I always listened to Albanian, Montenegrin and house music with my father. With my mother, I listened to music from all over the world and especially in Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. Therefore, I wanted to represent the beauty of music around the world and how it is very similar yet different, similar to the purpose of the original project. Some challenges I recognized I was going to endure with this project was creating the music. Despite what I’ve learned in Digital Media, there is a lot of different factors that involved and needed to even create the beat of the song. Another challenge is I’ve never created album art especially for electronic music. Therefore, I was unaware of what I needed to incorporate in my cover art whether be color scheme, patterns, effects, etc. For this project, the production skills I will be incorporating are my knowledge with Adobe Illustrator and Reason but I also will be learning new skills, whether be techniques or effects, with both applications.

Process

Step 1 : Drafting the Lyrics

The Lyrics would be half English and half the language they were in. My reasoning behind this was because aside from the music aspect, I wanted to connect all the songs to one another with English. I also wasn’t the best at some of the languages such as Arabic, therefore I tried to make it a little easier for myself. Each song would be about some type of love whether be love for a partner, self love or love for the music.

Step 2: Creating the Songs

For this part of the process, I used the application Reason to create all my songs. It was a interesting experience creating the beat then recording the lyrics of the song through my little mic on my earphones. If the recording sounded off with the beat, then I added effects allowing it to mix better. If there were instruments for a certain language and it’s culture that are often used, I attempting to record them and incorporate them in the songs as well.

Step 3: Creating the Individual Cover Art

To create the individual cover art, I used the application Adobe Illustrator. My main goal with this step was to portray the message or a scene of the song, incorporate a color scheme that was either neon or perfect for the song itself and look at various album art for electronic music to give inspiration.

Step 4: Create the Cover Art for the Main Album

To create the cover art for the main album, I used the application Adobe Illustrator. My main goal was to create a art that reflected the whole album itself, tied all of the various individual cover art, and focused on the beauty of the songs being in languages from different parts of the world.