My Intensive

The third quarter of STAC seemed to be the most productive for me. The intensives were good challenges for me, and I look forward to doing more. In this quarter, with the intensives, my intension was to mainly focus on creating my own music, and expanding my knowledge of music- its origins and future.

With the intensives, I broadened my “library” of music. I did this by trying to listen to as much music as possible, ranging from The Monkeys to Rockplile. Some artists were not included in the assignment, but I listened to them anyway because I realized that they were very influential in the pop music world- such artists included Buddy Holly.  I did this because I needed to have an inspiration in order to start writing my own music. Before the intensives, I was so accustomed to the 12 bar blues, i only wrote the 12 bar blues. I didn’t feel as If I was being a true musician by just playing the same genre over and over again, so I needed a change. With my expanded library, I wrote several songs with the intentions of trying to stay away from the 12 bar blues. I enjoyed my songs so much that I have begun playing them with my band.

The intensives played a big role in changing my band’s sound for the better. Before the intensives, my band only played Rockabilly and 12 bar blues. That’s all we could play because we had not written any good songs that had alternate arrangements, only Boogie Style Rhythms. In order to make the intensives worthwhile, I took the music we received from emails and tried to make new music that was based off the morphing of genres. I would listen to several songs that were sent to us and then record any part that would interest me on my iPhone. I would hum the sounds that I liked and record my humming sounds on to my recorder. With this, I would select my favorite sound, out of all the sounds, and write a song from it. If the sounds sounded like an intro, I would use it as an intro and write a song around it. This was my most productive technique, and I could say this, because I have written a total of 6 songs by using this method which I believe are good.

I feel as if I have grown as an artist and a musician because of the intensives. I have gotten so much out of them, and I hope we could continue doing more of them, or doing something in that realm of assignment.

By,

Scott La Marca