Well, here it is! The final blog for my midterm musical growth goal! This was such a fun adventure. From starting off with just wanting to play piano and sing at the same time, to experimenting with harmonies and GarageBand, this project has taught me so much and truly pushed my musical abilities.

Initially, I thought that singing and playing piano would be a challenge; however, I ended up finding this rather easy. Since I found this easier than expected, and the idea behind the project was to push your musical abilities and grow, I switched my goal to learning how to harmonize. This was a super fun task! I really enjoy singing so learning to harmonize was a great addition to my musical repertoire. I began working with harmonies mainly by playing a note on the piano, finding a third, fifth, or seventh, and imitating this sound. From here, I would try playing a note and finding the harmony without the piano. For me personally, I struggled with lower harmonies more than I did with higher harmonies. For some reason, I found it much harder to keep the harmony going, without hitting the wrong pitch, in the lower range of my voice. Because of this, I decided to work on high harmonies first. I practiced harmonizing with any song that came on until I got somewhat comfortable with it. After this, I began working on the songs that I chose for my midterm display. These songs include “Perfect” and “Afterglow” by Ed Sheeran. These songs are really great songs to work with when working on higher harmonies. My favourite place to practice these harmonies was while driving in my car. The privacy really allowed me to open up and not be afraid to mess up or hit a wrong note. After getting to a point where I was comfortable harmonizing with these songs, I decided to challenge myself further by working on a song that incorporated some low harmonies. For this song I chose to work with “Anyways” by Noah Kahan. This song has a mixture of high and low harmonies which really challenged me. After getting to a point where I was comfortable with these songs, I recorded them using GarageBand. This was a whole other challenge!

This project was the first time I experimented with using GarageBand. Luckily, I had my sister and dads help figuring it out, but it was still challenging. My first challenge was figuring out how to get an audio recording of the actual song onto GarageBand so I could record over it. I ended up having to create an mp3 audio file and upload it as an audio track. Once I finally got this set up, I struggled getting the microphone and headphones setup. First there was the struggle of finding the right chords and adapters I needed for my MacBook. Once my dad helped me find all the right tools, I had to get help figuring out how to set up the input and output options on GarageBand and make it so that each track has the right preferences. Once all of this was solved, I was finally able to record. Although I would have loved to experiment with cutting and rerecording sections, I did all the recordings in one take as I did not have time to work this feature of GarageBand within the deadline. The next interesting part about working with GarageBand is that is strictly an audio tool. Because of this, I had to experiment with how to attach video file to the GarageBand audio file. In order to do this, I recorded a regular video of me singing on my iPhone, muted this file, and synced it with the audio file. The only problem with this was getting the files to sync up accurately. In order to solve this, I went to my dad for help. He showed me a technique that he uses to fix this issue. In order to make sure the files line up perfectly, you need to clap at the beginning of both your video recording and audio recording on GarageBand. If you do this before you start the actual recording, you can line up the claps and then you won’t cut out any of the song.

My new goal had lots of struggles that came along with it, but it was extremely worth it. I now feel way more comfortable with both harmonizing and GarageBand. This project pushed me cognitively in areas including translating notes and rhythms, recognizing pitch, sensory integration and more. Emotionally, it allowed me to relieve stress, encouraged exploration and creativity, and more. So, without further ado, here are the videos (of me harmonizing) that pushed my musical development so much! I hope you enjoy!!

[SEE BRIGHTSPACE FOR VIDEOS. FILE SIZE IS TOO LARGE]

Photo Credits: Header photo by Israel Palacio