Making a fusion jazz album

In coming up with ideas for possible Personal Projects, I had several ideas in mind. I immediately thought of hobbies that I enjoy. I considered hobbies like drawing or photography at first. Ultimately I decided to go with a hobby and interest that has meant a lot to me and it would be music. I grew up with several family members that are musically inclined. I started learning to play the drums when I was 8. My father happens to be a professional musician as well. For the last 3 years I have developed a great interest in music and really focused on improving my playing. One day I discovered a Japanese fusion band’s album and thought I might give it a listen. From that point on I grew a large interest in the genre of fusion jazz and jazz in general. I then started listening to more music than I used to. I have recently also started studying bits of music theory. Since then I have always wanted to make songs of my own. This led to my decision for my learning goal.

My learning goal is to learn in depth how to compose music specifically in the genre of fusion jazz and learn how to use a software to compose the music in. I chose the genre of fusion jazz as it is the one I am most interested in. I also decided I should at least have an understanding of how to operate a digital audio workstation or software, even a simple one like GarageBand.

Product Goal

As my learning goal is to learn in depth how to compose music specifically in the genre of fusion jazz and learn how to use the software to compose the music in, I decided to then use what I will learn to create my product which will be a fusion jazz album. I already knew I wanted to make music and wanted to make songs. Lately during the pandemic I happen to also have gone through many feelings and many things happening that I have to deal with. I wanted to express my feelings and thoughts in some way and saw Personal Project as an opportunity to do so.

I thought about what genre and decided to go with the one I am most familiar with which is jazz, specifically fusion jazz. I thought about how many songs I could possibly make and decided that around 5 to 6 songs is good. Considering the time I am given to work on this album as well as the cost of everything, I came to the conclusion that 5 songs should be substantial. That number is also substantial for it to be considered an album hence I decided to create a fusion jazz album with at least 5 songs.

Reflection

After completing this long journey of creating my album, the process that I have gone through has given me and my learning several lasting impacts. In terms of learning, I had a lot to take from this experience. I learned a lot about the history of jazz and how it came to be but most importantly, I learned a whole lot about composing music and the process behind it. I learned more about the style of fusion jazz and how it sounds. I found that my project really did not focus or involve much of conventional research. While I did do some research and interviews to get the background of the music style that I am making, I learned a lot more by simply making the songs and experiencing first hand how music is made and recorded. I would suggest anyone who is interested in doing a music related project to focus heavily on learning by doing since you may really learn a lot from the experience. Without even realizing, I definitely used and applied the ATL skills throughout the process of making my product. I still managed to do research and have the research skill contribute to my learning process. As for the product making process, the ATL skills of creative thinking and communication definitely helped in the product making process.

Other than my learning, this experience definitely had several impacts on my own self as well. I learned that the music one listens to definitely gives an influence on the music they make. I found out that my music tends to have a pop fusion feel and has a similar feel to the music made by the bands I listen to. Along the process I definitely encountered several ups and downs. I realize making an album really requires creativity. With the time I had, I was not allowed to take too long to come up with melodies. I had moments where I was quite proud of the ideas I had come up with yet I had other moments where I did not feel satisfied. I had moments where I felt it was really rushed. I also felt pretty disappointed when putting my ideas into GarageBand because the limitations of the software did not fully bring out the ideas I had in my head. The melodies that came out of GarageBand were really far from the melodies I heard in my head and were very mediocre. I later on realized after the recording process that having real players play real instruments for the song drastically changed the feel. This definitely calmed me down hearing that the songs now sounded way better after the recording compared to GarageBand.

My turn to do my drum take then came along and I had practiced for days prior to the take. After my take, I realized that I really could have practiced way more. I thought that in comparison to all the players that are playing in the album who most happen to be professional, my playing was merely substantial and the technical gap was far. This gave me quite a drop in my self confidence. Once the album was finally completed, as the composer I had many thoughts that may have seemed very nitpicky. Overall the final product was pretty good but I just couldn’t help but think I could have done many different things albeit significant or not, differently. I later on had discussions regarding this and learned that in terms of the product, it was actually quite fine. I learned that music is a form of art and art could be whatever you want and is imperfect. I learned that a lot of composers too feel unsatisfied with some things they create but no album is perfect and not all songs you have to like to be good. In terms of my playing I realized that the other players were professionals that have been playing for decades and I did the best I could at the moment. I realize that not many have released albums at my age and that the product I have right now is quite fine. I finally came to accept and be happy with my work. I am at the very least somewhat proud that I did the best that I could do at the time and at least tried. Of course I am not one hundred percent satisfied with my work, but I use this as a motivation to one day be able to make something like this once more and even better. If I were to redo this, a way I could improve would be to practice even more prior to recording.

Product Evaluation

Overall, I believe that my final product meets the expectations, success criteria and I am fairly satisfied with it. It manages to meet all of the success criteria that I had previously set. Outside the project, I also had it released digitally and it was accepted by 27 different digital platforms that filter the content that gets uploaded onto these platforms meaning my album is worthy enough to be accepted by these platforms. Considering that my product falls under music which is an art form and it is in the genre of fusion jazz, a lot of the elements to it are really free and up to the composer to create. In terms of the product, I would say it is pretty successful and manages to meet all of the criteria. On a level of 1-8, I would give my product goal about a 7. The product meets all of the criteria, the quality good as it is professionally recorded, it has the minimum quantity of songs and generally meets the requirements. As of the learning goal, I would give it at least a 4. I did not focus too much on the research of the project and mainly focused on actually making the product. The making of the product is a pretty straightforward process hence not an excessive amount of research was necessary.