Music Recording

Intro

For this fun assignment, Freestyle students were tasked to learn how to use the equipment in the Recording Studio, and guide our musicians as well. Then, we used ProTools software to edit and produce our final tracks.

Saumya Anand

Saumya Anad is a singer and actress who has performed in various shows and has been singing her whole life. She was born in 2008 and has played a leading role in all of her High School musical productions. She plans to pursue her interest in musical theatre in college and throughout her career. She currently has two of her own songs released, and also has an interest in becoming a singer.

Collaborative Artist Statement

For this project, we used the recording studio to help our artist, Saumya Anand, record a cover of the song “Under Our Spell” from the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks Movie.
All three of us, including Saumya, have been fans of My Little Pony since we were children. The franchise, as well as this movie in particular, is near and dear to our hearts. Rainbow Rocks is a movie that inspired a love for music in each of us, and for this project, we wanted to recreate that magic as best we could.
This song was originally sung by the Dazzlings, a group of evil sirens in the movie, and involves a decent amount of harmony as well as multiple voices singing in unison. Using ProTools, as well as the recording studio here at Freestyle, we were able to record Saumya singing each of the parts of this song, along with the harmonies, as well as some new harmonies of her own.
We then used those recordings as well as a backing track from the original song, and we cut and spliced different versions of the clips together. We used panning and reverb to add more dimension to the song and make it more interesting. We used Melodyne to do a few pitch corrections, and an EQ-band to make the voices sound more like a pop song, and as if they were coming through microphones. We then added a couple of sound effects to connect the song to the world of the original story.
Overall, we are really happy with the end product. The song sounds different from the original, but in a unique and equally interesting way. There are some things we added that the original didn’t have, which we think make the song even better. There were a few harmonies that we missed, so next time we would want to find a way to include them, but otherwise, we are very proud of what we have made.

Personal Reflection

I had a super fun time working on this project with Athena and Saumya. The song is so nostalgic for all of us, and it brings me so much joy that we can combine all of our talents to create something so memorable and special to all three of us. Athena and I definitely spent more time than we needed to on this project, but we are perfectionists, and wanted this to be as good as we could make it. Overall, though, I had so much fun! 🙂