The Junior Explorations project is a relatively short, self developed and driven project modeled after the Senior Innovator Project. For the Explorations Project, Juniors were given the opportunity to explore a passions that relates to one or more of the eight 21st century skills Freestyle is designed to instill in students. Those skills are Visual Literacy, Technological Literacy, Creativity, Self Direction, High Productivity, Teaming and Collaborating, Social and Civic Responsibility, and Risk Taking. We were given 4 weeks to produce a product, make an infographic explaining a related researchable topic, and build a website to display the work. Students were given the options to work individually or with a small group but each individual must have their own infographic and, for Web/Audio students, their own website. This is my website.

 

 

For my Explorations Project I chose to explore a passion I developed at Freestyle, music production. This entailed more than pressing record and allowing the musician to play, I also mixed the live recorded audio, built digital drums, created and automated about half of the effects on the lead and rhythm guitar as well as the bass, and constructed the song from 4 bar, or 16 beat, recorded audio. My research was was song structure and recorded audio mixing, however, my infographic combines the process I went through and basic song structure.

The process of creating the song was difficult and incredibly time consuming. Because we did not have an experienced band, creating an initial riff tooks hours of trial and error. Nathan, my project mate and person who could play guitar, would play for half a minute and I would play him back what I had recorded and adding my advice in the form of humming and tapping. Near the end of one session Nathan played the main riff of the song and needed to leave to do homework. I then spend another hour or two working with the 4 bar riff and building drums to match. The next session Nathan played a simplified version of the riff on bass and from there I put in 4 or 5 hours of work, combined with a spark of inspiration, to build 15 seconds of sound into a four minute song outline. This outline allowed Nathan to easily fill in the missing verses and the bridge and we were done.

Below is the first song I ever created using Reason. This was less than an hour of work and I mixed a simple instrument with a manually recorded drum beat.