This semester I took Songwriting II, Musicianship II, Practicum in Music Industry, private guitar lessons, and Concert Attendance. I had a lot more on my plate this time around, but I only had to commute to school two days a week.
Songwriting II was my favorite class. We learned mixing techniques, made demos, and got lots of feedback. Class was split pretty equally between the classroom and the studio; the main way we learned was from our own projects. A student would bring something in and we would learn to edit, track, or mix whatever it was. I found it helpful because a lot of what I learned was stuff I didn’t know I was doing wrong. For instance, when recording bass, you want the initial sound to be kind of thin and not have a lot of low-end. The reason is that it’s easy to add bass frequencies later, but more difficult to take them out, and once you start taking frequencies out it messes with the tone you had going in. These are things you wouldn’t know unless someone told you.
Musicianship II was an ear training and sight singing class. We learned to sight sing solfege in major, minor, melodic minor, and harmonic minor. If you don’t know what solfege is, it’s a system of syllables relating to scale degrees. You’ve probably heard this song from the Sound of Music that explains it. Class was okay, but our time wasn’t utilized all that well. It felt like we didn’t have a lot to go through, so about half the class was the teacher joking around. I’m not criticizing him necessarily, we were well prepared for finals and all that, it’s just that the curriculum wasn’t demanding so we had time to kill. The most useful part for me was getting a better understanding of modes and how to use them.
Practicum in Music Industry was like a weekly TED talk. My professor was always enthusiastic; he talked about current trends, music news, and volunteer opportunities. He is a firecracker of optimism, and has the stories to back it. He’s worked with Prince and has taught countless successful students, so his fervor is earned. This class wasn’t hard, but it was uplifting and I looked forward to it. The only assignments we had was to usher two times, and volunteer for 16 hours. The volunteering could be done with more ushering or with other music events.
My private lessons were all right. Not very challenging, but still useful. Concert Attendance was kind of a hassle to get done, but that’s mainly because I live out of town. All in all, a pretty good semester. Here’s my final EP for Songwriting II.
I’m having a bit of an identity crisis with my music, so I decided to write two electronic songs and two singer-songwriter tracks. I’m happy with how these turned out, but since this was finished around the same time as Chasing Ghosts, I haven’t been promoting it. These songs are more about exploring sounds and finding out what I want to be musically, whereas Chasing Ghosts was a defined statement. That being said, I like these songs, and I’m happy to share my journey through them. I titled it Mankato Tapes, Vol. 1, and I plan on making successive volumes.