Hello, I am Eli Confortola. At Freestyle Academy, I began as a Digital Media student. However, my main elective became Design for the duration of my Senior year. I enjoy creating unique products in many mediums, so having a diverse set of classes has been a fun way to exercise some of my interests. These interests include photography, doodling, writing, and making/producing music.

I decided to show my Explorations project from Junior year and my Zenith project from Senior year as a way to focus on my progress as a musician. The two projects were similar in nature, spaced out by exactly one year. For my Explorations project, I wanted to incorporate poetry into my songwriting. I ended up making one song, which I was not happy with, partly due to the minimal effort in the music. I was much happier with my Zenith project. I ditched poetry, made several instruments, and used them on an EP I produced. On the first song, the only instruments I played were made by me. I used some of the techniques that I learned from Digital Media to record and produce the EP.

After listening to my Explorations project song and my Zenith project album, I would like to know what you think. How did the quality of songs improve, and how could they be better? How would you have approached these songs if you had to record and produce them?

My life is still largely undecided. I am probably going to be an electrician, which is fine with me if I can do my fun things on the side – music and other hobbies. I will probably stay around the Bay Area no matter what happens. I am looking forward to living on my own.

If you need me, my email is eliconfortola@gmail.com

Explorations Project

This project gave me an opportunity to read awesome poetry, write bad poetry, and make a creepy little song. Although I am not thrilled with the overall quality of my work from the end of my Junior year, the memories of making it are special to me. Also, this gives me a way to show where I started with songwriting and how I have changed.

Above, I have a link to that one creepy song I was talking about.

Zenith Project

I am proud of this project. I had lots of fun going around both Goodwill and my garage looking for things I liked the sound of. I ended up with a percussion station, which was inspired by an artist named Shakey Graves. I also made a cigar box guitar, which I just followed a YouTube video to make. Both are demoed in the video below.

For my EP, I wanted to mix very different styles of music together. This resulted in a stark contrast between each song. I thought the results of this contrast were interesting. The first song has no words and a primitive sound. It then cuts to a slow and melancholy song with quiet vocals, warm bass, and expressive acoustic guitar. After this is a raw song with only vocals and guitar. I then began the last song on the EP with some fuzzy electric guitar, which led to percussion from the instruments I made. Feel free to check it out on the link below.

The EP ended up being similar to what I envisioned. There are some mistakes in it, but given that I had no help on it, I am fine with them. I took some risks in the studio. Before this project, my experience with drumming and bass-playing were minimal. I now feel slightly more capable when I am behind either one of these instruments, and I am inspired to keep learning them.