My Journal

–Jack Nayak’s senior project journal–

Part one: Tabla Troubles

10/8/24:

• So this was the day I got the first big piece of inspiration for my project idea. I’ve known I wanted to do a musical project for a while now, but last night, for some reason, I just had a eureka moment. I was lying in bed just brainstorming at full power, and in an instant, I was just like: “Oh my god, I should learn tabla!” I remember it was like something just clicked in my brain, and I felt so confident about this idea.

10/13/24:

• Today, I met with my soon to be mentor(?) Richie Barshay. Richie was my main drum teacher for a year, and he's a great jazz musician who I admire a lot. He’s not a master of Tabla, but he spent a few years learning, and knows more than enough for the purposes of mentoring this project. Today, he helped me learn the basic techniques, and provided me with both a used Tabla drum and a super helpful book for learning Tabla. 

10/14/24:

• Today, I spent around two hours working with my dad in the studio, with him just showing me the basics of ProTools and how to record drums and piano parts. Production isn’t going to be the main focus of my project, but it's still something I could incorporate, for example I could record tabla and use it in a beat. We didn’t actually compose anything today, but it was helpful just to get an overview of how studio recording works. While he obviously won’t be my official mentor, my dad will still definitely have a huge role in my project.

11/10/24:

• Today I got noticeably a lot better at the two basic tabla strokes: “Na” and “Da”. I’ve been practicing a bit most days, but to be honest, my motivation has gone down a lot since having the initial idea.

12/01/24:

• December 1st update, I really have barely anything to show. To be fully honest, I’m reconsidering this whole project a lot, because Tabla is proving incredibly challenging, and I don’t think I’ll be good enough by spring to be proud about putting on a performance. I’ll still give myself until January to  make a decision, and I’m still 75% sure it's going to be music, but most likely, this project ends up being more focused around learning production or songwriting. There is also the potential to focus on a different instrument, maybe one that isn’t notorious for taking decades to master.

12/26/24:

• Winter break has been my time to reflect on what I want from this project, and I’m about 80% sure at this point that I won’t be continuing with Tabla. However, today my dad and I went and bought a used pair of Tablas from a guy in the Boston Area, and these drums are wayyy better quality than the ones Richie lent me. This likely won’t change anything, but I still felt it was worth mentioning.

12/28/24:

• Met with Richie to discuss whether or not I’m changing the project. We both came to the conclusion that the Tabla project idea is just too ambitious, and too unstructured. 

Part two: Songwriting Success

1/4/25 (new project):

• Today I officially decided on a new project, which is going to be focused primarily on learning production and songwriting. I’ll likely do this through ProTools, since it's the DAW I know the most about (still barely any). 

• To give an initial estimate of my goal, I’d say I’m gonna end up with an EP of ~5 or 6 songs. Part of my goal is to explore a wide range of genres and playing styles within these few tracks.

• The main challenge of this is going to be the songwriting. Learning to record and arrange tracks in ProTools is gonna take time, but I feel pretty confident about it. Songwriting is something I’ve never done in any capacity, and something I’ve always been scared to do.

• Probably this project will be instrumental (but who knows)

1/6/25: 

• Worked with papa in the attic for around 1.5 hours. Our goal was to record a recreation of an existing instrumental into ProTools, to ease into the recording process without the pressure of composing a song. 

• We recreated Erykah Badu’s “On and On” (just the drums, lead keys, and bass) and it turned out pretty good! This definitely helped me get more comfortable with playing drums into a mic, which was way harder and more intricate than I had expected

1/11/25: 

• Today we started out with a jam session, with me on drums and my dad on guitar. After editing it into a more conventional song, it was alright, but something I probably will never use. 

• Improvising is something I’ve always been intimidated by, especially because my musical background is almost all classical. Jam sessions like today are a great way for me to get more comfortable with just playing and seeing what happens.

• After the jam session, we recreated another Erykah instrumental, this time “Next lifetime”. I wasn’t as happy with it as I was with On and On, but it was still fun to make.

1/12/25:

• Today was extremely important, as I made my first ever “real song”. We did another jam session, but this one was different somehow. I don’t know if I was just in the zone, or my dad came up with a particularly good guitar part, but I could tell from the start that this was a good one. The drums weren’t inspired by any song in particular, but I listened to a lot of pink floyd on the way home from school, so I suspepct that was the main motivator. After recording a 4 minute long guitar/drums song, I decided to record a keyboard part over it. I went with a super spacey reverby organ-like synth, and the progression  I came up with was DEFINITELY inspired by Pink Floyd’s Wish you were herea. Overall, this is the best day I’ve had so far for writing music, and I have a feeling I will remember this day for the rest of my life, because its the first time I ever fully improvised a part and felt super happy with it.

2/3/25:

• There’s been a piano idea bugging me for almost 2 days, so i'm gonna sit down and try to come up with something

• Update: i made a cool slow progression which resolves into a fast beat

2/7/25: 

• Today I feel miserable, helpless, and trapped in a loop of indecisive suffering. I tried to write a chord progression to capture this feeling. Every time you feel like it should resolve, you’re met with dissonance. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually use this 

2/13/25:

I recorded drums along to Erykah Badu's "Orange Moon", which is a slow song in 6/8 time. I didn't put anything over these drums today, but I want to do strings

2/20/25:

Today I spent a while trying to make a trap beat, but I couldn't settle on a melody for the longest time. I eventually made a beat inspired by the song "OUTRO" by rapper LUCKI.

3/23/23: Worked for 4 hrs, composed an entirely new beat. It started out being inspired by LUCKI - Poker Face, but it kinda became a unique thing by the end. 

4/9/23:

This entry is a little special, because I’m making a promise to myself. I’m already feeling pretty good about my progress up to this point, and I’m way less stressed that I won’t have enough material. However, I’ve fallen behind in both this journal, as well as documentation in general, which I understand is a significant part of this project. Because I feel like I could be doing more, I’m promising myself that:

From today (April 9) until the project is due (in around a month), I will not let a day go by without opening protools for at least 30 min

(OK now time for the actual entry):

Today I 

4/10/23:

4/10/23:

Today I didn’t compose any new music, but I spent an hour in the studio with my dad going over mixes and learning about EQ and effects. Even though we didn’t create anything new, I was able to make a lot of stuff sound way better simply through adding effects, compressors, and some simple mixing and mastering. It was also great to show my dad a lot of the stuff I’ve made over these past few months.

4/13/25:

This winter, besides working on writing all this music, I’ve also been hard at work on a solo piano cover of Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love. The version I’ve been learning is specifically inspired by a youtube tutorial from Sheet Music Boss. It started off being just for fun, but the more I play and refine this classic song, it feels like it has a place in my senior project, because I’ve been learning it on the same timeline as I’ve been writing and recording everything else, and I’m just also completely (hehe) in love with playing the song. Today, I finally sat down to record myself playing the song all the way through, and I’m really happy with the result. It has some noticeable mistakes, and its just a recording on my phone, but I think it still came out sounding really good. One thing I notice about the way I play piano is that if I haven’t played a piece in a few days, my first take of it almost always feels the best. It's almost like all the time I spend not playing something on piano, it somehow marinades and gets better. This was definitely the case today, because the first take was amazing and I wasn’t satisfied with any of my other attempts. I’ll definitely re-record this cover into protools, but this was a great start to something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

4/14/25:

Today wasnt much,  i just made some drums in protools. To be honest, i wasn't super happy with how today went musically; just couldnt find the inspiration i guess.

1 hour later…

I went to bed feeling super unsatisfied with my night’s work, and I decided to go give it another shot. I worked for another hour and a half, and I made a piano loop and beat inspired by LUCKI’s Count On Me. I feel so much better now, knowing that I made something I’m happy with.

4/15/25:

Two months ago, I had recorded a drum part inspired by Erykah Badu’s Orange Moon, and today was the day I finally sarted turning those drums into a full song. Its a super slow 6/8 groove, so I had a lot of space to work with. I started by recording some piano chords, and I came up with a pretty simple progression that mostly revolves around c major, but switches to b every so often. Then, I made an organ part which goes with the piano. These two parts form the skeleton of the song, so tomorrow I’ll focus on adding maybe some bass, a higher melodic part, and whatever little bells and whistles. Overall, super productive session, because I made some drums into an (almost) complete song\

4/16/25:

Today I finished the Erykah inspired song, and I worked for about 3 hours. I freestyle a bass part, another organ part, and even a flute part for the song, and I’m so happy with the result. It really feels like im getting into my stride with at least basic songwriting. A few months ago, it would’ve taken me two weeks to create what I just did in a day and a half, so its great to feel like my skill level is progressing. 

As of tomorrow, I’ll be on vacation in Puerto Rico for a week, so I won’t be able to compose or record any new music. During this time, I’m planning to focus on the writing component of this project, which I’ve decided I want to be a website. I’ll be sure to write in the journal.

4/18/25:

After an exhausting day of travfel, I’m in Puerto Rico!!!! All I did today was create the website I’ll be making my reflection on, and not much else. My plan is to write descriptions for each song I’ve made, as well as spotlighting the artists that have providedme with the most amount of inspiration

4/24/25:

• Today is my last day in Puerto Rico, and today I was able to get a lot of writing done for my reflection, so I feel way less stressed. This vacation has been so amazing, but to be honest its hard to fully relax knowing that this project is due in basically 2 weeks. Something cool is that today, I decided on a name for the project! I’m calling it “Utuado”, named after the mountain region of PR that I’m currently writing this from. Being in these beautiful mountains has been such a transformative experience, and I want my music to capture the exact vibe that I feel when I look out over this incredible view. 

• Update: Its 11pm, and I totally can’t sleep. The jungle is insanely loud at night with all the frogs and insects, so I decided to step outside and record a couple minutes of ambient jungle noise. I’m planning to use this as an intro to my project, and have some music slowly fade in over the ambience. 

4/28/25:

Today was my first day doing music work since I got back from Puerto Rico, and I made something which I’m pretty sure will end up being the intro to the EP. I decided to record drums in 7/8 time, which is pretty unconventional, but it worked out super well! Each bar is subdivided into three and a half beats, giving it a cool swingy feel. I improvised a piano part over it. 

4/30/25:

Today I recorded real drums for what will probably be the last time in this project. The drums themselves came out pretty good, but I wasn’t able to come up with a bass or keyboard part I was completely satisfied with (at least not yet). I'm calling this one "Final Jam"

5/2/25:

WHAT A DAY!!!!!!!!! 

I came home from school today feeling pretty overwhelmed with stress about the state this project is in, but what followed was easily the best and most impactful studio session I've ever had. 

• My goal was to work on Final Jam, but my gut was telling me to make something entirely new. The song "Newer Me" by lucki