This project will look to understand the impact that environment, songwriting approach and time have on the final outcome of the recording process. We will spend project week in the mountains of NH, writing and recording in the surrounding environment. Students will work with industry professionals to write and record two original songs in one week. We will write in various locations (In our cabin, in the mountains, fireside, etc.) over the first two days, and then we will record our songs in our cabin under the leadership of Ray Aley '18. There will be various local excursions to support our learning and to have some fun to break up the intensity of the songwriting/recording process. This project will produce two professional recordings of our music, media to support the release of our songs and a video documentary of our experience.
Creating Music: Real World hit the ground running today, exploring all aspects of music production. Students formed small groups and spent all afternoon working hard to create four songs, and each team had the opportunity to explore the technical side of the recording process in a studio environment with New Hampton alumni professionals. All four songs in progress are unique and promising, and we are excited to see how they grow and change over the course of the week.
Today, Creating Music continued work on our in-progress songs in our second day of songwriting. We polished our work and began to record first-draft tracks to help the recording/tracking process ahead of us tomorrow and Thursday. Alumni professional Ray Aley helped students find interesting and unique sounds for their compositions with the help of recording software, teaching us about the process of music production in a professional setting. By the end of the day, we had at least five songs ready to begin the tracking progress, with hopes to carry at least three or four to the final stages of polishing.
Day three for Creating Music was all about laying the foundations -- recording vocal lines and instrumental parts for two of our songs. The first half of the day was spent finalizing melodies and lyrics in our groups, and then in the afternoon those songs' vocalists and instrumentalists spent several dedicated hours in the recording studio with Ray while the rest of us took a well-deserved afternoon off at Funspot. Students regrouped after dinner (with a special appearance from Mrs. Arsenault!) and spent more time fine-tuning the other songs and making sure we were prepared for the next day of foundation recording.
Creating Music spent our fourth day grinding out the foundations for our remaining songs. While the teams from yesterday's songs set took their own overdue rest time, the rest of us spent the day in the studio making sure that Ray had everything he needed to polish and master our tracks. By the time we loaded up the Suburbans for our dinner out at Lemongrass in Moultonborough, NH, we all felt confident that we had put everything we had into our music.