Making an EP by expressing the emotional meaning of colors through songs

When I was told that there is going to be a personal project, I was sure that I am going to do something that is related to art.

However, I am debating between two things: visual arts and music. I enjoy both drawing and music and I would say I am

good at both, but in the end, I decided to go with music. I wanted to show my music capability and I want to express my

feelings through music. I have been playing the piano since I was 3 years old and it is still ongoing. I participated in a lot of

piano competitions and concerts and those are really good experiences. I also took violin lessons for 3 years because it

would be nice to learn a minor instrument, since piano is my major instrument. When I was little, my mom would play the

radio and sing karaoke with me and my grandma and that also influenced me to love music. In 2019 I started to develop my

interests on other instruments so I tried to learn the ukulele on my own, then not long after that I learned the acoustic guitar

on my own as well. Since then, I started to write my own songs. The songs that I am going to make for this project are

not only related to my feelings but also related to colors. Other than music I am also interested in psychology and so I thought

why not relate my song with colors. When I was in 8th grade one of my seniors did an investigation about how “The color

of rooms affect our mood”. That topic has been stuck in my head for a long time and I think it is cool, the fact that it is

something that I never heard before and it is interesting to learn about. This is what inspired me to include the topic about

colors to my songs. Therefore, my learning goal is to know more about composing music, learn how to use music making

software, and explore the meaning of colors.

Product Goal

I have experience in songwriting and I also developed an interest in colors. Now that I get to make my first EP for this project, I hope that my learning goal will get me deeper in song composing, get more familiar with other instruments, and get to know more about the psychology of colors. Achieving my learning goal can help me achieve the product goal, which is to make an EP of 4 songs expressing the emotional meaning of colors.

Reflection

I used my research skills to do research about the meaning of the color yellow, blue, and pink to make my songs and so that I can relate it with the lyrics and mood of the songs. I am glad that I did the research and successfully relate what I know into the songs, especially the mood. I also used my communication skills through the interview I had with the producer. For the music making itself I use my self-management skills because it is where I really get to freely express myself and get creative with the songs. Self-composing made me learn a lot of things, starting from familiarizing ourselves with instruments, deciding song tempo, track editing, final details, and many more. After the process, I look back to all the things I have done to make this mini-EP and I found things that I am satisfied and not satisfied with, things I am glad doing and I regret doing. Things that I might have done differently if I started again is I would ask and understand the working system of the producer, so I would make another planning and I can estimate the target dates. I would have made the song draft first, just roughly, rather than directly making it into the final one. I would not listen to the song on repeat and work on it all day, because it would always cause lack of satisfaction and I would just want to add more and more tracks to the song until it became beyond the planning of the song. Lastly, I would make four songs instead of three because that was the main goal. These things really linked up to how well the project is planned and now I learned that backup plans are really important to make and have to always be ready for sudden changes of plans. Making sure I am on track is important and the fact that this personal project is 100% made by me and that makes me realize and understand the importance of being principled and balanced, because I have to organize things on my own and balance out schools and personal project work. This experience improved both of the IB learner profiles and I enjoy doing this personal project, and I am absolutely going to make more music in the future.

Product Evaluation

This project was a good experience and I learned a lot of things from it. Since my project is making songs I learned how to compose and produce a song properly and I got the chance to explore more on the music software I use that is ‘GarageBand’. As the days go by during the project, I now know that making one song could take around 4-7 days, and it was not what I estimated before the process started which makes a few parts of the due dates. In the song making process I got help from a music producer. He helped with 30% of each song, the help he gave me is example searching sounds that I don’t have in my software, adding final details, and fixing the sound quality. He cooperated well with me but the problem is there are times where he doesn’t have time to have a meeting and what sometimes made me frustrated is the chords don't match with my song. From that, I learned how communication is really important and collaborating through online is not easy. There are a few suggestions and advice from me for those who might want to do a project similar to mine, this is based on my experience during the process and it is also part of my learning process from this project.

• Always know what to do first, in a song making process you can start with the lyrics, the chords, or melody. For me I usually start with the melody so it will be easier to write the lyrics and lastly the chords, every person has different steps and preferences of which part comes first.

• When recording the instruments don’t listen to it on repeat all day and just put in all main instruments and tracks you want, because listening to it all day will make you want to add more and more tracks, lack satisfaction, and the song will end up not going as planned.

• Song making collaboration is not easy, especially online. So, my suggestion is to really communicate well with each other, have at least one meeting where you discuss the planning for further process, and keep updated on each progress.

• Lastly, if in the middle of the process a due date did not go as planned, quickly make an alternative plan and do not panic.

Even though I only succeeded in making 3 songs when it was supposed to be 4 songs, I am proud that I completed 3 beautiful songs and the outcome was better than what I visualized before the project started. At first I kind of doubted my vocals but in the end I succeeded in making beautiful harmonies in my songs and it helped the vibe of the song as well. I am proud that I did the vocal recording quite well. During the recording I had some difficulties because my room is near the road and it gets really crowded most of the time, so I had to re-record every time a vehicle passed by.