Nathan Oldakowski MU2300 Final

From vjmedia

For my final project, I wanted to make a short album with 4 or 5 songs that were all connected somehow, and I really wanted to have one song with lyrics. It wasn't until after I started the project that I realized that I was not going to be able to somehow come up with 4 or 5 songs and that writing lyrics is really hard. I took out two books from the library about writing them- it turns out that a lot of it is inspiration (and I don't have a ton of that- I'm not someone who dates or does anything special like that, so I'm lacking some of the experience that I think is necessary...)

Then I remembered that I used to write music in middle school. After trying to remember my password to multiple accounts, I had access to all of the songs that I had written 5 or 6 years ago on noteflight.

Whenever I was feeling bored or excessively emotional, I could pour my heart out into music. I was always looking for new ways to make the music sound more real, and it wasn't until we learned Ableton Live that I realized that I could 'remaster' the tracks and make them into something new. And that's just what I did!

I still really wanted to have some song with words- and then I listened to Beyonce's Lemonade. In the visual album, she spends a lot of time just talking- I realized that I could do that too! I just so happened to have found a journal that I wrote in 8th grade- and I put the words of one of my entries into some text-to-speech software online and put it into my last song.

I think that these songs are missing something, but I can't really tell what it is. I guess I'm pretty happy that they sound somewhat real now!

Track 1: Media:Song_1.wav

Track 2: Media:noldakowski_Song_2.wav

Track 3: Media:noldakowski_Song_3.wav

Track 4: Media:noldakowski_Song_4.wav