On this page, you can find the Culminating Experience (CE) Projects for all graduate students from the Berklee College of Music master’s program Contemporary Performance (Production Concentration) (CPPD) from 2015 – present. Click on any title for more information and access to the full paper and other deliverables (if available).
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Crisis: Personal Inception
Joshua Wheatley
2017My project consists of eight audio recordings that make up my jazz album "Crisis", one audio recording for trio in the style of a possible future album, and three live music videos.
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Florecer
David Duncan Yandell
2017Florecer is a creative project that focuses on the creative fusion of two established styles of dance music: Cape Breton fiddle music and electronic dance music.
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Lose or Hope
Yusi Zhou
2017My CE is a recording project of my original works. These compositions are inspired by my latest personal stories and personal experiences dealing with the loss in my life and my reactions and thinking about that.
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In Search of Musical Identity
Polina Zizak
2017For my Culminating Experience I'm going to explore methods to maintain uniqueness and artistic, musical identity.
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The Modern Day Artist (musician or a brand?)
Chris Attwell
2016The objective of this project is to demonstrate that it is possible to leverage and utilise readily available tools in order to build a sustainable career as an artist. These tools combine to form a product that can be consumed and shared. This product must be made available to a vast audience, with an identity that attracts and appeals mass audiences. The central elements which underpin this product are bass playing, production, education and business.
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KIERTO Crowdfunding
Pablo Andres Cabezas Teran
2016A crowdfunding campaign including all the materials and content necessary for the creation of it by Pablo Andres Cabezas know by his stage name Kierto, a professional rapper, director & producer on Patreon.com. The Funds will be invested in: VIDEO GAME + MUSIC VIDEO + LIVE SHOW + PROMOTION. The main contribution of my culminating experience project to my music profession is the creation of original content and media to grow fan base and increase exposure as a Hip Hop Artist and generate sustainable income.
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New Sounds of Ecuadorian Music
Fernando Cilio
2016Therefore I’m creating new music and exposing new ideas with the purpose of creating a new tendency and probably a new genre that can emerge from Ecuadorian and contemporary music. An example to explain this concept is one of my tunes “Shawarmito” that combines the traditional elements of “Sanjuanito” (a traditional Ecuadorian rhythm) with contemporary musical elements like the improvisation of jazz. To accomplish this objective I ́ve decided to continue my musical project “SIGNOS ANDINOS”. I've been working and developing this idea for many years and now it ́s becoming a real project with its own identity and concept. “Signos Andinos” has helped me see myself as a musician willing to do something innovative with the music of my country.
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Electric Bass Educational Videos
Jay Eldridge
2016My main purpose for the Electric Bass Educational Videos is to share the knowledge I have learned. I have been studying in music intensely for the past five years and I never thought would reach this level of musicality, so I want to give back just like the many educators have for me. I want to start a series of educational videos for the electric bass giving a correct overview of proper muting techniques, finger styles, and slap. Each video would range from ten to fifteen minutes providing some history on the topics, numerous examples from world renoun bass players, play along backing tracks (with bass and without), and transcriptions. After I leave Berklee in Valnecia I want these videos to be posted on Youtube and my website to attempt to create a presence in the online teaching community. By creating these videos it will help me to reach not only people in one area, but from all around the globe.
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VESNA: Creating artistic content
Patricie Fuxova
2016VESNA is an artistic project of Czech singer songwriter Patricie combining Slavic folklore music with jazz and classical music to create artistic content including twelve compositions, lyrics, arrangement — including four recordings with string orchestra. Its main purpose is to preserve the Slavic culture in the era of globalization and to present Slavic mythical tradition to the world.
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Transcendence through Language: An analysis and interpretation of Latin American poetry through original composition
Gustavo Hernandez
2016This project will be in the form of a recording. 5 poems will be selected from the above writers and will be put to original music. One of the reason for selecting these writers is while they have done much to push the literary mind and forces of creative writing, they are of Latin American descent and are naturally guided by the mysticism and magical realism that surround their home country. Its this magic that my music will try to capture, to recreate the same emotional and mystical characteristics found in the literary pieces and transport them into a world of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, voices, and very specific forms.
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PERFORMING/TOURING ARTIST PORTFOLIO
Raul Hernandez
2016The Culminating Experience I propose generating is an artist portfolio geared for the professional performer and touring musician. This CE will fabricate tools necessary to starting a career as a performer and touring artist. Included will be an end of the year concert to showcase works generated as a result of my CE. The final product will include deliverables such as; an artist website, five EP’s of original compositions in the form of a CD, a touring performance set, touring stage writers and a portfolio of templates documenting how to recreate the CE process.
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The Fruit of the Spirit
Sarah Hodges
2016Taking a look at my background, I discovered what I want to say and how I want to say it. Because I’m deeply rooted in my faith, I want to promote its values. I want my music to be based on Biblical truths. This message is one I can easily connect to and would love to share with others. Although my music will be based on Biblical truths, I want it to be encouraging to anyone who listens to it. Stylistically, I love R&B and neo soul and worship music, so I would like to represent a combination of the three.
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Wildfire: Creating Inescapably Visual Music
Kelvin Killmon Milliner
2016I believe one of the greatest impediments to independent artists is their inability to create captivating new-media content to support and promote their music. The primary focus of my project will be a series of three innovative music videos of various styles to support my own original songs, which focus on artist visibility and building a unique brand identity. Each of the three songs used in this project will be written and recorded during the academic year, and will feature instrumentation consistent with the styles of Alternative Rock, Pop and Contemporary Soul.
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SOUNDS OF SARDINIA
Veronica Largiu
2016‘Sounds of Sardinia’ is a project of four songs that integrates my blues/rock compositions with some elements taken from the traditional music of Sardinia. The project has been developed taking in consideration the rhythmical, harmonic and melodic elements of the traditional Sardinian music and they have been used as orchestration/compositional tools to enrich my original compositions and to push myself as a composer and arranger.
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The Phenomenology of Performance
Jackson Albert Mann
2016My original aim for this paper was to try to find a more objective and technically rigorous way for talking about exactly how one interacts with the event of a musical performance. In a certain way I have accomplished this goal. I have found an objective way of understanding my own personal way of understanding what I am going through when I perform. However, as I collected more and more data from my peers through journals, interviews, and everyday conversation I realized that this was in vain. Trying to find anything objective in an experience as complicated as performing was a lost cause. Therefore, my initial goal changed drastically. However, the new goal of the paper was a far more fulfilling endeavor. Instead of trying to divide, categorize, and codify my peers experience into a single technical framework, I decided to use the language that I adopted for speaking about my own experience as a prompt for getting others to open up and talk about the way they experienced performing.
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DVD recording of Flamenco/Jazz Group in collaboration with ASPANION
David Minguillón
2016My project involves composing new music in Flamenco/Jazz style and presented in a full concert and recorded in HD with the idea of making a DVD.
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Seven Steps to Heaven: Exploration and Determination of the Elements of an Artistic Career in All Its Dimensions
Manuel Montañez
2016My objective for this project was to develop songwriting skills by engaging with the pure craft of composing songs. Being able to write anything that is asked of me, and by writing different kinds of music, thereby creating my own artistic identity. This is important to me because I want to be a professional songwriter, the kind that can write for other people. If somebody asks me for a song and they send me a reference track, I can break the song down and see what ‘bricks’ I can use from that song to make it feel the same. That’s why, for this project, I’ve chosen 5 songs that have made who I am today as a writer and musician, and analyzed those 5 songs. I wanted to see what made them so attractive to me, why they have this power to get me every time I hear them. What makes these songs great?
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Meditative Music of 432 Hz
Jae Hyung Nho
2016Project 432Hz is to produce the self-portrait album of nhoj (Jae Hyung Nho), a guitarist and composer from Seoul, South Korea. After the experience of the meditation with 432Hz, I experienced and captured a story and it is about life that I saw. Four different parts represents each stage of life as the inspiration of the story, the reaction to the meditating trip of frequency 432Hz itself. Artist’s thoughts, philosophy, dream, and the breath are recorded in musical form. It is meditative music in my own style. Not like other meditative music, one piece of the project contains lyrics. It controls the flow and dynamics for the listener. As Swami Rama said, “meditation is a technique for resting the mind and attaining a state of consciousness to be apart that is totally different from the normal waking state”, and I will add lyrics in one song so the listener can be in meditation and be awake for a bit and meditate again till the end of the project. The project paints his perception of life of conscience and the inspiration will be encoded into music and to be recorded with the sound. Sound of 432Hz represents the breath of life, and it is the core of the project. The project will reflect the gnawing and anguish of the artist’s view towards life of conscience and his philosophy. All of the sound are composed, played and recorded by nhoj (Jae Hyung Nho) for his first album.
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Finding the Words
Janet Orsi
2016My project embraces the collaborative and innovative spirit of jazz - bringing something new to existing music. The pieces I have chosen as the focal point of my culminating experience project are all instrumental jazz songs. The sheer fact that they have, up to this point, been solely instrumental makes this project a contribution to the furthering of this music, by opening the door for more musicians, namely vocalists, to perform and record these songs. Most of them were written by prominent figures in jazz and have varying degrees of notoriety in the jazz world. However, none of these songs is by any means a “standard” that is recognized by a general audience. By contributing my own lyrics and arrangements to these songs, I hope to make them accessible to more people. Rather than focusing on the academic value of this music, I am striving to make it relevant for the modern generation. Most importantly, I am looking at it through the eyes of someone who was emotionally affected by this music and has a desire to share that experience with others.
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Cumulative Experience Project
Alex Ortberg
2016A 3-5 song EP of original music written by me and another collaborative partner. All songs recorded, produced, and performed (as completely as possible) by me. Incorporate visual art into the productions, such as digital media, paintings, drawings, sketches, and lyrics. Create a sort of "art book" to accompany a physical copy of the EP.
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Exploring Contemporary Styles Through the Electric Bass
Eleftherios Papadakis
2016This project focuses on presenting the development of my musicianship as a bass player through performance recordings in different styles of music and varied ensemble setting. One of the key takeaways from my experience at Berklee was the accumulation of musical interactions with people of a wide ethno-geographic diversity and its affect on me as a musician. This presentation would aim to reflect this journey tracing my trajectory as a bass player, composer and musician.
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Kenopsia
Dylan Peck
2016My culminating experience is a musical collaborative project with Music Production major, Jain Harshit. Together, we have formed an electronic duo under the moniker, LaVaaz. We aimed to create an evocative sound through electro-pop infused story telling, I like to call it “emotional headbangers.” My job in our project was to be the storyteller. I focused on songwriting— lyrical and melodic content, as well as assisting in editing, and tuning vocals.
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Sollozo por Pedro Jara: a poem dictating music
Paola Proaño
2016Sollozo por Pedro Jara (1978) is an elegy written by Efraín Jara Idrovo (Cuenca, Ecuador, 1927) after his son's suicide. The poem is structured in five chapters and each one subdivided in three parts. My project will be composing music for the fourth chapter of this elegy: finding creative approaches to translate its emotional content, its avant-garde structure and its absence of meter into a musical composition arranged for electric guitar. Deliverables will be a score, a written analysis of the used compositional techniques, a recording of the three pieces, an artwork and an audiovisual interpretation including the recitation of this chapter. The composition is meant to accompany this video, as a track or as a live performance.
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Ilayaraaja: A Study of Approaches to Efficient Composition
Bharath Ranganathan
2016This thesis aims to study a few aspects of composition in the south Indian film music realm. This will be realized primarily through a case study of one of the earliest and most prolific modern film music composers – Ilaiyaraaja. A section of the study would be to trace the musical journey of Raja and his evolution as a music composer. The focus of the study would be to run a qualitative analysis on selected works from different periods of the composer’s career that highlight commonalities in the approach to composition. This would particularly delve into the boundaries that Raja imposed on himself in order to fundamentally be an efficient composer, which supersedes the subjective evaluation of his creativity. Most salient parameters to observe would be the use of form as a restriction to composition, the introduction of Indian melodies in a Western harmonic context and the stylistic variations in phrasing and rhythm.
