I'm blessed to say that my piece, "Nowhere But Up", has been selected to appear on Berklee College of Music's Electronic Production and Design CD 2016. The CD will be released around the end of April.

 

This piece was made for my senior EP-491 class with Steve Maclean. Every sound you hear was made from samples of sounds I recorded for school and for fun. The most prominent instrument you will hear is one of my classmates playing a note on the bagpipes.

Examples of the sounds recorded in this:

- Bagpipes (most prominent and only melodic sampled instrument used)
- Breath through a walkie talkie
- Hitting 2 parts of metal bed frames
- Coins in a pocket
- Blowing through a wattle bottle
- Boiling water
- Camera taking a picture
- Febreeze spray
- Keys dropped on wooden floor

Thematically, the piece goes along with "Sonar", also on my Soundcloud. While "Sonar" has a setting of being underwater, this has a setting of being in Space. I love the idea of reaching out beyond your limits while being calm and focused in your roots and your identity. "Nowhere But Up" is the upward ascent side of this theme. Imagine a ship taking off and reaching an alien planet unlike anything the human imagination has dreamed of... Very sci-fi and perhaps cliche, but fun to think of nonetheless!

A majority of the sounds were recorded with my handy Zoom H4n recorder. Never leave home without this bad boy. 

I look back and know that so much more could have been put into the work I did in my classes, which I struggled heavily to focus on due to not prioritizing my schedule. I realized that I will never 100% accomplish everything I would love to achieve in my life. But I can at least go through life enjoying the journey, making as much contributions to life as I can and feel happy just knowing that I am moving forward and experiencing everything around me as much as possible.

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