Reflection: An EP About My Journey Towards Self-Love

Ever since I was young, I understood that I was a pretty shy individual, and overall, didn’t have much confidence. When we’re in our teenage years, insecurities start to get the best of you. I spent a majority of Junior High not liking the way I look, constantly comparing myself to others I knew in real life, as well as people I saw on social media. I used music as my escape, whether it was performing, making, or even just listening to it. Music helped me realize that I couldn’t keep living in that state of mind. It inspired me to finally start my journey towards self-love, and since music has been a major part of my healing process, I thought this EP would also help towards that journey. The main issue is that I am very inexperienced in the usage of DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstation) and music production. With that being said, my goal statement is ‘To learn how to properly use a DAW and further enhance my skills in music, then compose my own 5-6 song EP about my current journey towards self-love.’

Global Context

The global context that I felt fit my project best was ‘Identities & Relationships’. This is because through this EP, I intend to get to know myself better, explore my true thoughts and emotions. I want to let out all the feelings and learn from them. Like I mentioned before-hand, this is also a healing process for myself so I can truly learn how to love myself. Self-love is also a very big issue nowadays and I know I am not alone. Many people around the world have been in my exact position of a not so great mentality, and we are all slowly learning to break from it.

Product

My product is an Extended Play (EP) entitled Reflection. It consists of 6 songs that each tell different parts of my journey towards self-love. I thought Reflection was an appropriate title because throughout the process of creating the EP, I constantly had to look back at myself from the past and grow. The EP’s storyline is divided in 2. The first half of the EP (Intro: Eyes Shut, Broken Wings, and Crowd of Thousands) tell the darker parts of the story. All the struggles I faced that impacted me. The main theme of this first half is mainly self-hate and the struggle to believe that you’re enough.

The second half of the EP (Let the Rain, The Flowers are Blooming Again!, and Outro: Learning) on the other hand are fairly brighter. Let the Rain serves as the ‘realization song’. This is when I finally had my turning point and decided to learn to love myself, using the metaphor of letting the rain fall to express it. The Flowers are Blooming Again! is a ‘thank you song’. Here, I say thank you to all the people that were always there for me, and a thank you to myself for choosing to grow. Lastly, Outro: Learning, talks about how I am still learning to love myself.

The song files will be on a CD with cover art, as well as a ‘lyric and making’ booklet that consists of pictures from self-photoshoots, drawings, scans of notes, a tracklist, authors note, and lyrics. The booklet is intended to help people better understand and connect with the EP.

Reflection

This project has given me the opportunity to make my own music, something I’ve been meaning to do, but haven’t, as I was scared of failing. However, PP reminded me that failing and having flaws in your work is okay as long as I learn from them.

PP allowed me to greatly expand my knowledge in music in general as well. It was my first time making whole songs with arrangements of multiple instruments, properly using a DAW, and etc.

Other than that I was able to significantly expand my knowledge and understanding on my chosen global context: Identities and Relationships. This global context explores is an inquiry of who we are, the nature of the self, personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health, human relationships, and ‘what it means to be human’. My project allows me to do exactly that. One of the reasons I created this EP in the first place is to let out everything I have inside, to help heal old wounds, and to take care of and have a better relationship with myself. One more thing this EP allowed me to understand is that my feelings are nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, feelings are quite literally one of the most human features we have. Each person expresses these feelings in different ways, mine just so happened to be in the form of music. It's the field I feel safest to be myself in.

IB Learner Reflection

Working on my EP allowed me to develop my IB Learner skills. This was the first time I had ever made and produced a proper song, let alone a whole EP, and even though I had so much love for music, expressing that love is still very daunting to me due to my shy nature. I feared criticism from the public eye and I convinced myself that people would react negatively to my work. I became too insecure to share anything with anyone. At the end, I decided to face my fears and become a risk-taker. I learned that I cannot properly grow if I constantly shut out other people, and that I’ll never know anything if I don't try

Other than that, I was also able to develop my communicator, knowledgeable, reflective, and caring skills. I have never been great at expressing my feelings with words, but this project made me try to effectively communicate my emotions through song and ensure that the lyrics and style had relevant roles in conveying said emotions. I also had to learn many new skills, such as composing a proper song and using a DAW. Those were things I had little to no experience in, but this project enabled me to seek for more knowledge in those areas.

Caring is an IB Learner profile that is often seen as inferior to the other IB learner profiles when it’s actually just as important. My whole EP revolved around my journey towards self-love where I learned to love and care for myself. This EP served as a way for me to heal all my past wounds and see how far I've grown. Music has always been my safe space, so this project allowed me to let out all my emotions, instead of bottling them up inside of me. Other than that, I also tried to not overwork myself too much. I often forget to take care of myself in situations like this, so as I worked on this project I kept my overall health in mind .