Musicians in Relationships

I created this piece by combining songs by musicians Maggie Rogers and Del Water Gap to tell the story of their relationship through their music. By Maggie Rogers, I used the songs Say It, Sick of Dreaming, and Love You For A Long Time. By Del Water Gap I used the song Sorry I Am. To combine all of these songs, I used a youtube to mp3 converter, and then edited the tracks in the software Soundtrap. I took specific clips out of each song and spliced them together in a way that I found interesting. I also used filters and sound effects that were provided by the editing platform to create some level of continuity between each clip, since I was using audio from so many different songs. All of these technical skills I learned in class, since I had no prior experience with music production or Soundtrap in general. I enjoyed getting to work with some of my favorite songs to create this piece, and combining them to tell a greater story than could be told through just one song. One of my favorite features of this piece was using the same audio at the beginning and end of the song, but making it distorted at the end, showing the damage done in their relationship.

Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours tells the stories of the complicated relationships that shape the band, including the tumultuous relationship of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. For this piece, I used the songs Never Going Back Again, I Don't Want to Know, Don't Stop, and Dreams. I also used clips from several different interviews from various points in the band's existence. In class, I learned about the copyright rules that allow for projects like this to be created without taking credit from the original artists. My process for creating this piece consisted of listening to the entire Rumours album and picking out specific songs and clips/lyrics that I could use to create one piece. Two of the songs I selected were because Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have explicitly stated that they wrote the songs about each other, Dreams and Go Your Own Way. After selecting the clips, I watched a ton of old interviews and found specific moments that I thought would work to help tell the story of Rumours. I put these all together to create my final piece. While creating this, I enjoyed getting to learn more about the history of Fleetwood Mac and the complicated relationships that made up the band.

My supplemental material is a little song I made earlier in the semester using a sound from my local environment, and sounds I created. In this piece, I was still experimenting with the features of Soundtrap, and I applied what I learned in class by using the microphone feature to record my own audio. For this piece, I used a found sound of my friend talking as the intro, and then used old video diary clips of myself talking, which I overlaid with clips of myself playing guitar. I ended the song with a silly audio clip of me and my best friend talking about our projects from while I was recording. This piece was less focused on technical skills and complex narratives, and more about reflecting on my life through little snippets of myself and my friends. While creating this, I enjoyed listening to older videos of myself just talking about my life, and it was fun playing easy little things on the guitar without having a specific goal in mind. I chose to put this piece alongside the others I created because although it does not specifically tell about musicians in relationships, I think it gives a small look into relationships in my life.