We learned how to use GarageBand first. The first song I made was a mashup of the song home (Beauty and The Beast) and Somewhere over the rainbow (The Wizard of Oz). I enjoyed this program because it did not involve music notation, I have very little music theory knowledge so I found it appealing making something by ear.

Then we learned reason. Reason was lot more complicated, It took some of the ideas in GarageBand and made them more developed.The 3rd song I made was a cover of the song No One Knows Who We Are. At this point, I still was not able to create counter melodies and bass lines. I was still using songs written by other artists, however was becoming much more original with the composition of my music. This specific song helped me with my abilities in adding different components from the original songs, this furthered me in helping me in the ability to start coming up with my own original music.

Artist Statment

As a junior, we had a project called the documentary. My location that I choose to use for my documentary was the LAHS Winterguard. That year the show was to a song called “No One Knows Who We Are”. As a member, we heard that song every rehearsal. While working on this project I was inspired to arrange this song. I kept the same melody and added some electronic elements to the song.

For my narrative I created my own original song. The song was for a commercial, and I wanted to make it like a movie soundtrack, I took inspiration from a line that I played, but no longer was a covering other songs. For my innovator project, I created my own original music. The purpose of this was to create music for a musical, this meant that the song was going to be completely original.

This piece was made for my “musical”. The story followed “The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Anderson. It is written as a ballad-duet between mother and daughter. In this “scene” the daughter enters a dream sequence in which she sees her dead mother. At the beginning, I use a very cold sounding instrument with a reverb. This allows for a transition to a dream of her mother. The song transitions to the first verse, in which the girl is calling out to her mother. The mother then responds to that call. The song begins to climax, resides, repeats this again, but then comes to its climax. This then leads to the mother and daughter singing together in harmony and accepting the little girl's death. The finale ends with the same ice-cold sounding melody as the beginning, this symbolizes the girl freezing to death.

Reflecting back on my experiences at Freestyle, It taught me a new skill and talent. I have loved playing music for many years. Freestyle taught me something new, that I probably otherwise would have never learned. Making music has become and outlet, it's something that I can continue doing for many years to come. Learning and making music has helped me become a better musician. Learning the process of making music has helped me perform other artist works in the various performing groups that I am a part of. I feel that as a performer, it is important to also know the process of how music is made. In the future, I would like to develop writing lyrics for the songs I make, that is my next goal.

A work in progress