Wow, y’all are writing walls of text. This shouldn’t be like that. I’m making an album. Other people have done that before. It’s not a great thesis idea because it’s single-faceted, and it’s not as impressive as a 3D animated short film even though it’s infinitely easier to consume. I could rant but instead I’ll show you where I’m at right now by using a chart I’ve been using to keep track of my thesis so far.
THE DAMP SOCKS ENSEMBLE, AND THE PEOPLE INVOLVED
ACTIVE: John Carone, Abby Rosu, Dan Spizuco
I posted on my music Instagram that my senior thesis would be about writing songs with other people I knew, and if anyone would be interested. John and Abby were among the responders. I’m trying to not have too much on my plate at once, so they were the second and third people I reached back out to, to confirm they were still interested. After I post this, I’m going to try and arrange Zoom calls or something. John is an accomplished synthesizer and bass player who I’ve seen perform with Ornamental and Format War. I introduced myself to John on Instagram when my then-roommate, Braden Kirk, told me he’d worn a Stereolab shirt to a party. For context, I had just seen them live. We met proper at the free Duster show in the student center October 2019 and we immediately hit it off. We’ve been really chill ever since. He seemed like a natural pick to write a tune with. Abby, I’ve known for a bit longer. They were aware of my existence months before we met in a basement at a Cheyenne Dan show in March 2019 and stayed good friends. The music they make is more on the “noise” side as opposed to “music” but I’ll take that as a challenge if that’s what we end up making. The list gets interesting here. Dan is my twin (they/them). They make rock music strongly influenced by 70s prog, my least favorite music genre. Somehow, we still started a band called D.B. Mini Cooper, which makes the worst music. We’ve been formulating how to make a song for my thesis that doesn’t follow the “make something up really quickly” approach of our band. My thought has been for Dan to record a drum track without any pretense of a song coming out of it, leaving me to add guitars, bass, and vocals in an attempt to make something presentable out of it, but it’s not set in stone.
WAITING: June Gill, Joon Daniele Kim, Don DeWitt
June is a former TCNJ student I met through AMPD back in fall 2018. They’re the newest member of Hello Whirled, joining last week after our bassist dipped (hopefully I’ll get to talk about them later). They mentioned having a hard time finishing songs, and I offered to help them finish one. Joon is actually one of Dan’s friends, but we’ve been talking more lately. I’ve been helping him mix some songs for his next album. The music we make isn’t super far off from each other, so I figure this won’t be a massive challenge. He puts out music under the name Jodaki. Don is also one of Dan’s friends, but he seemed intrigued by my proposal. I know he makes music as Falter Figure and Sanity Falls but I’ve never listened to it. While I mentioned when you (Warren) suggested I work with Donna that I’m specifically trying to work with people I know well enough to imagine they’ll put up with my bullshit, I don’t know Don terribly well. The prospect excites me nonetheless, and at the very least I’m the one other person under the age of 40 who likes Suburban Lawns.
MAYBE: Niko Berardo, Jack Brubaker
These are unconfirmed people who have expresed interest. Niko seems interested but he hasn’t said “Yes I’d like to do this”. He is the biggest Stephen Malkmus fan I will ever know. He’s in Molly Ringworm and Lay Low but I haven’t listened to either. We listen to a lot of the same bands so if he agrees to try to write a song I imagine we’ll have a good time doing it. Jack, IMM ’22, is in the same boat as June where he wants help finishing a song. His catch is he hasn’t started one either. He’s part of that “boot gang” group, and I know he’s not the only musician in there. I’m happy to help him but I should probably ask again if he’s still on board.
DONE: Mistee Branchek
I convinced Mistee to do IMMovation 2 with me because she’d been sending me bass/drum instrumentals and I wanted to do something with them. I guess the song we made, “Means A Lot”, clicked with her because now we’re going to try and make an album with her instrumentals and my vocals. I’m not anticipating other new bands popping up out of this but that it happened once excites me.
ETC: Adina Weiss
We talked once or twice about it but my understanding is that, since a theme song isn’t the most important part of making a children’s show, we’ll probably just wait a while to talk about this again. There are other musicians I want to work with but haven’t asked yet, but those are mostly people who aren’t students at all, ranging from one of the only bands I’ve listened to for over 6 years, to the author of my “best book of 2018”, to the guy I do a podcast with.
Other matters, like how these songs are getting recorded, is a person-by-person thing. Mistee sent me wav’s that I threw into Reaper and worked with from there. She’s sending me chord sheets too I think.
Should I say something else?
wow omg so much work already done and looks like you’ve got a clear road ahead of you (even though every artist brings their own challenges)
just some questions: will there be album art? commissioned or collaborated? How will all this music be presented during AIMM after dark & / or the final showcase? Will there be any “live” performances?
Also, since you said: “I’m specifically trying to work with people I know…” I think to make this project seem less “single-faceted” you could specifically seek out people you don’t really know, or people who don’t identify as musicians, or people whose musical tastes are radically different than you own, etc. In the process, maybe make some kind of handbook? It could answer questions like: what constitutes a “collaboration” in music– is it an even 50-50 split? What’s a 50-50 split in music, someone does the vocals and someone does the acoustic guitar? How do you set up zoom meetings, what do you talk about, what platforms and programs are you using to collaborate? How long does it normally take? What do you use to inspire the collaborative pieces? & so much more! That resource could be awesome to publish and would be great for the education sector to give to teachers for all educational levels to practice cooperation, communication, and to work on projects that are out of the norm. Maybe even send to music professors here at TCNJ . . . ? Idk I’m kinda biased towards english & education, but just a thought. Could be framed as like a Buzzfeed quiz or something lol (“take this quiz with ur musical collaborator and find how YOU can write a SONG in ONE DAY” etc.)
p.s. D.B. Mini Cooper is a sweet band name
I’m gonna try to answer every question you posed.
1. There is album art. I made it a while back as just a general image but I’ve ended up using it a lot in conjunction with this.
2. I don’t entirely know how I’ll be presenting this at After Dark. I’m certainly not against doing live performances of some of the songs but that would be up to the collaborator, and also dependent on the nature of the song.
3. I understand your comment about maybe working with people I don’t know as well. The reason I’m trying to work with people I know, or who at least are familiar with how Hello Whirled operates, is so that there’s a frame of reference for how I do things. Also it’s a matter of comfort to a degree. I know a lot of musicians. I want to at least try to work with people I know first before I get adventurous.
4. Also yes, one of my initial ideas for this was to work with a few non-musicians. How that would materialize, I don’t know.
5. No one at TCNJ listens to all the same bands as me. Taste difference isn’t an issue.
6. What constitutes as a collaboration is that I worked on the song and so did someone else. With Mistee, our song was effectively a 50/50 split because she played most of the instruments and had the structure all laid out. My part was adding guitars to fill out the sound, and lyrics and vocals to finish the song. I don’t expect every project here to work like that, because while it is my preferred method of collaboration, some people will want something more hands-on and since this whole thesis is specifically to challenge myself and do things I don’t normally do, I have to embrace that.
7. I have thought quite a bit about how to frame this. What helps is that I’m taking (mostly mental) notes about how my collaborators (all 1 of them) have approached this idea. There’s a good chance that will become a separate presentation, potentially with each collaborator grouped up based on how they operated.
8. Like hell I’m framing this like a Buzzfeed quiz.