Contemporary Performance (Production Concentration)

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  TRAUMA

  Ajda Stina Turek
  2022

  The purpose of this project is to free myself from emotional obstacles that are holding me back from being happy and confident about myself, and to raise mental health awareness in the world. To achieve this purpose, I have written and produced songs about my own traumas. The EP Trauma consists of 4 songs: Are Red Rivers Too Extreme (ARRTE), To My Lover, The News and Artefacto and I have closely worked with students from MPTI. These songs were inspired by self-doubt, the isolation of the pandemic, feelings of helplessness, loneliness, and heartbreak. Through this experience, I have established my artistic voice, presenting an honest and relatable identity. I have learned managing and creative skills, as well as collaboration abilities.

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  How Am I Here? - EP

  Ana Vaamonde
  2022

  This Culminating Experience is made up of six recorded songs which will make up my debut EP titled, How Am I Here? Although I come from singer-songwriter and pop roots, this EP does not fit perfectly into any certain genre and combines elements of different styles to form a unique sound. This reflective paper follows the journey of taking these songs from lyrics and chords in notebooks, to arranged and studio recorded songs that are on the way to being released. Much work was needed to make this all happen. With collaborations from other CPPD musicians that played on the tunes, and MPTI producers and engineers, we were able to take my songs to a new world; a world that will soon be shared with listeners across platforms. This year was one of not only musical growth, but personal growth. In this paper I reflect on the ways in which I grew, and I speak on everything it took to make a song sound how I had always heard it in your head, from rehearsals, to numerous recording sessions. The goal was to finish recording the stems of a work that would fit into the pop world but offer a new twist on the lyrical and musical content. With hard work and help from my wonderful peers, we succeeded in doing so.

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  Isaac Wisdom & the Search for a Sound

  Isaac Wisdom
  2022

  In this CE project, I set out to find my artistic identity based on four specific genres (jazz, latin jazz, samba, and funk) that I had identified as important to me in my time before Berklee, Valencia. To accomplish this goal, I completed research in one song from each genre, completing transcriptions/score analysis, emotional timelines, and harmonic analysis on the tunes “On Green Dolphin Street” from Life in the Bubble, “Pa’mi Gente” from Pasaporte, “Triste” from Elis & Tom and “Click Bait” from the Striped Album. While conducting this research, I composed original tunes for a 5 track EP of instrumental horn music exploring this new identity. In practice, each composition on Even More (“Prickly Pears,” “La Palma,” “O Papa-léguas,” “Aún Más” and “A Tune for my Friends”) each ended up being in a different style, each one helping the search for this sound and new identity. While I did not find the sound I was searching for, I did find out things about myself and my music that I will carry with me into my future career.

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  Heading to Life

  Peiwei Xu
  2022

  My Culminating Experience is based on the methodology which is called practice-led research. So I paid more attention to learn and practice new knowledge for me, and explored my music and develop my drumming in Berklee as a beginner player. Then I divided my CE into three factors: recording, playing and producing. In recording part, I recorded others as an assistant and myself a lot as an engineer. In playing part, I learned jazz and latin, and also some rudiments. In term of producing, I did three songs as delivery. One of them is a trap music, I put all my playing skills in that, another one is a pop song which I almost did everything in producing like composing, arranging and recording, I played drums and sang the vocal by myself. Then the last one is a Indie and alternative song, I composed it by 7/8 beats, then I developed a lot when playing 7/8 beats on drums. They are totally different styles and I wish they will show you how I approach music from a different perspective and what I have learned at Berklee.

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  DES DE MI RAÍZ : The research of the artistic identity and the creation of an EP

  Carolina Alabau Fernández
  2021

  The purpose of this project is to develop and create an artistic identity through the research and analysis of other artists, my auto-ethnographic research and performances and rehearsals that I have had throughout the year. The deliverables are an EP with five songs that define a clear sonority and message, and scores and videos that demonstrate all the process and its creation. The outcomes of the project will be shown to producers, labels, and musicians, that might want to collaborate with me in the creation of my future second album. Through the creation of this artistic identity, I have found that the answers of some of the musical questions that I had (how I wanted to sound, which kind of artist I want to be, etc.) lay inside of ourselves, we just need to want to listen and decide, so they can speak up and tell us what it is more natural for us in this specific time of our lives. Some challenges arose in the recording of the songs, the composition of the lyrics and the search of the instrumentation and arrangement, but in the end I found, slowly and with no fear to make mistakes, what I wanted to do and what I was feeling more identified with. I hope that this project can help other artists in their search of their own artistic identity and can feel identified with the process that I did.

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  MIQUEL ALVAREZ GROUP - Looking for fusion, not confusion: The search for an artistic identity and the creation of a L.P.

  Miquel Àlvarez
  2021

  The objective of this project is to expose the work carried out in forging an artistic identity based on the influences of jazz and flamenco music, and the field work that has been carried out up to the creative and compositional process. This study has an ethnographic immersive character, since the bibliographic process has been through field work. In addition to the creative process of these three songs, this Culminating Experience (CE) offers an artistic retrospective investigation of a musician with a jazz training, through an intensive learning process for two years, consisting of participation in sessions and rehearsals, in listening to critical issues and following the masterful indications of Perico Sambeat and Enric Alberich. This CE aims to offer help to other musicians in learning these three styles through a brief analysis that guides their study and understanding.

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  A Path to Multi-Instrumentalist Self Production

  Brandon Atwell
  2021

  The objective of this project is to develop an artistic identity as a multi-instrumentalist composer, performer, and producer through the analysis of musical influences and the composition and recording of new music. This project represents an attempt at the synthesis of an artist’s (the author’s) musical background in various instruments and genre into a clearer identity as an artist. Over the course of the project, musical influences were identified and then analyzed using a self-determined system, whose purpose it was to facilitate the tracking of influences to the original compositions of the author. New musical compositions were conceptualized and realized, resulting in three audio recordings. These objectives were accomplished with the use of auto-ethnographic and action-research methodologies. The project demonstrated the difficulty of self producing, performing and recording original music, namely the difficulty of making all of the decisions with confidence; yet, the project simultaneously demonstrated the possibility and promise of working in this way.

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  From Traditional To Contemporary

  Cosme Chalen Gonzalez
  2021

  I love traditional genres. The purpose of this CE is to try to connect younger generations with their tradition by the hand of music. In these Ce you will understand the traditional genres of: Watlz, Chacarera and Buleria by the analysis of scores and by the research of fundamental concepts such as rhythmic cells, and lyrics: themes that are most uses in these genres. After this, I will apply my musicality in a creative way for composing. Mix them with nontraditional genres and trying to create a more contemporary sound without making the genre lose their essence. The result are 3 songs of the mentioned genres with a nontraditional sound but with traditional musical resources. The main conclusion is that understanding this project, the approach can get focus into other different traditional genres, where different musicians can apply their musicality and their perspective.

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  The Essence of World Percussion: Exploring Membranophones

  Chaitanya Chintamani Natu
  2021

  The purpose of my project is to incorporate the sound and technique of membranophones into Indian rhythm. By analyzing all cultures of rhythm music, it helps me not only to improve my music skills as a tabla player, but also to find new compositional, rhythmic and percussive techniques that I can use in my music. Firstly, I analyzed playing methods, videos, and albums. Through the process, I broadened my knowledge of the history and technique of all the instruments and discovered several great examples of traditional music and improvised playing of membranophones. I further discovered how membranophones can be used in both traditional and contemporary music. In the second stage, I interviewed 5 artists from over the world which gave me a perspective and information about culture and instruments. I composed and recorded four tracks using Ableton push (i.e., different time signature, meter, groove, instrumentation), which were selected from availability and requirement in the groove. Also, two more tracks were recorded which include use of inspired electronic sound and Western/Indian music fusion. I hope this will help future musicians to understand the playing of membranophones in a more contemporary approach but without harming the authentic playing of instruments.

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  Working on My Profession as a Performing Songwriter: “Paso a Paso”

  Mateo Falgás Silvestre
  2021

  Composing songs is my way of breathing, my way of living, and my way of connecting daily with life. Making a living out of music has been a struggle for me as I find it difficult to treat music as a profession and not as a spiritual practice. In this project, I intended to self-produce an EP after selecting a set of songs out of my compositions. During the process, I realized self-producing was too ambitious and I decided to set recording and producing aside and concentrate on what I do best, performing; I then changed the direction of my project and performed my songs in a live show that happened on the 12th of June, forming a band with six other Berklee students for the occasion. Being able to record two music videos with this band and releasing these on the 4th July, my project ended in an unexpected yet surprising and fulfilling way. Now, I’m looking forward to getting back in the studio and recording those songs I couldn’t finish, putting into practice all I have learned in this reflective experience. I hope you find my learning process helpful.

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  Silent Travellers

  Abhisek Ghosh
  2021

  In this project, I tried to create, learn and grow as an artist. Through years of music explorations as a singer, teacher, performer, and radio artist, music has been my life. In this culminating experience, I composed five songs, arranged and recorded them, produced and performed them, all in collaborations with students of different departments of my college. I was able to create an original script along with these five songs and created a body of work close to a musical film or story. I used a unique and contemporary approach to rehearse and shape my work with the musicians to describe my artistic view going beyond lead sheets and going deeper into experiencing the mood of the songs. Emotions were growing and glowing with my collaborators during this creative process and I felt a learning experience mixed with professionalism at the same time. Yes, Silent Travellers is a science fiction musical film/story and has different genres of music including pop, rock, Indian classical, jazz influences, flamenco inspirations, also has collaborative research and self-ethnography blended with creative research based on action research, but one of the best ingredients was a deep bond of love.

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  True Self In Music: To Identify And Create

  Yixuan Gu
  2021

  This project is to forge my original style of music, combine my cultural and musical influences with other students’ talents on the Berklee Valencia campus. I included four original songs in this project. All of them are written in Mandarin lyrics, however, influenced by different genres. It was inspired by Chinese traditional music, jazz, contemporary pop, and R&B music. I learned a lot about music technology production and got to explore more possibilities for my original music. I also had a great collaboration with students here in Berklee Valencia and in China. This project was presented in recordings. I hope this project will be released when I go back to China and can inspire people.

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  The Intentions of Kindness, Honesty and Perseverance: A Musical Thank You Letter

  Tetyana Haraschuk
  2021

  One topic psychologists continue to debate is how genetics and environment affect people. How much is determined by our DNA and how much by our wonderful parents and the community we were raised in? Instead of conducting psychological research, I acknowledged those who have instilled in me the values of kindness, honesty and perseverance in the form of a musical thank you letter. Informed and inspired by auto-ethnography and resource review research methodologies, I composed, arranged and produced a 35-minute-long suite in modern chamber jazz style. In the process I gained a better understanding of my creative workflow, an appreciation for people, as well as a deeper understanding of art and what expression through art is. I realized how much I can learn by putting myself in unknown situations, how motivating and helpful deadlines are, the importance of budgeting extra time, following instincts, trusting others, narrowing my focus and documenting the process. I look forward to sharing the musical results of this project in the very near future.

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  Application of Symphonic Elements to Melodic Death Metal

  Laura Hernández
  2021

  The purpose of my project is to combine classical music with melodic death metal effectively. As a composer, I will improve my arranging and orchestration skills by analysing different orchestral arrangements and classical works, and writing full orchestra arrangements for three melodic death metal songs. As a drummer, I will improve my technique to play music of this genre. Analysing orchestral works (arrangements and compositions) has provided me the knowledge to write my own orchestral music and combine it with metal music, considering that both are important in the music and one cannot be over the other. And the constant practice of my instrument, has given me the tools to improve my playing when recording and playing live, especially in metal. Combining these two genres, opposite but with several similarities, allows others to explore other styles and mixing them, finding their characteristics in common and effectively create music.

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  Korean Folklore and Musical Narrative

  Robert A. Lee
  2021

  The purpose of the project is to create a body of work that represents my artistic identity. I transformed traditional Korean folktales into original compositions while incorporating various genres and styles learnt during my time at Berklee Valencia. Firstly, I studied various genres of music, ranging from Flamenco to traditional Korean drumming. As well, I analyzed the works of notable film composers such as Joe Hisaishi to incorporate the same narrative storytelling that their music derives from. I then selected a number of stories and then composed, recorded, and released several pieces of music inspired by these folktales. I completed 7 pieces of music and explained in each piece how I incorporated elements of my objectives into each original composition. I hope this project furthers my own artistic identity while demonstrating how storytelling and music can evoke an emotional response.

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  Building an Artistic Project: Miel “Adding Sweetness to the Sour in Life”

  Melanie Letra-Frade
  2021

  This project aims to develop an artistic vision that is clear in both auditory and visual components. It focuses on developing a brand that through composition, audio production, video production and marketing, shows an individualistic take on the indie-pop genre. It tackles dark lyrical content with a sarcastic tone and dreamy sound design. The project was conducted through auto- ethnographic research where I studied myself and my own artistic and personal characteristics in order to build the musical project. A lot of hands-on trials occurred with the production of the music, allowing me to learn through experimentation and experience. This project delivers three musical singles, a music video and photographic lookbook. The process of working on this cumulative experience project proved to be a trial of individual strength as well as the strength of being in a team. I learned a lot about being an entrepreneur, producer and team leader. This project will contribute an individualistic style of storytelling to the indie-pop genre. The listener can be a part of the story as much as the music is a part of their own story. Through the future dissemination of this project, I can acquire a much larger audience for my concept; where I can explore personal trauma without the gravity of the emotional consequences.

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  Integration of Music and Visual Art: The Experimental Way of Making a Nu-Jazz EP Through Blending Music, Photography and Modern Dance Video

  Qianyun Ashley Luo
  2021

  The purpose of my project is exploring to establish my artistic identity and generate professional materials to assist me accomplish my musical career goals through composing and self-producing a collection of music compositions in styles of Nu-Jazz and Modern Jazz; meanwhile, integrating visual arts including photography and modern dance in video format with my collaborators. Firstly, I analyzed music, instrumentation, sound, techniques and modalities from my musical influences. Then, I cultivated and improved my techniques and approaches on drums by listening, dissecting and imitating music recordings from many modern jazz drummers through practicing. Meanwhile, I searched and further analyzed music videos and graphics from artists who share similar visions with me of blending visuals to their music for inspiration. Through such a rewarding process, I was able to generate my game plan, execute and create my own compositions and visual contents. The outcomes include an EP consisting of four professionally mastered tracks, four collections of photographs to visualize each composition, respectively, and two recorded music videos featuring modern dance. With the outcome of the project, I envision to inspire musicians and artists to explore and create arts beyond the boundary.

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  A Brief Glimpse

  Will Mallard
  2021

  A Brief Glimpse is a concept by Will Mallard in which he experiments with sounds of different musical worlds colliding through his trumpet and electronic instruments. The deliverable is 3 volumes/albums of A Brief Glimpse, a journey through many different permutations of the musical augmented reality in Will’s brain. Each Volume explores a new prototype of distorted electronic jazz through a wide array of soundscapes. At the end of the project, the spectator will have experienced a new direction modern music is headed in. For certain creatives, it may serve as inspiration for more new art. The music combines elements of video game soundtracks, modern jazz, and mainstream music production to give the listener an invaluable experience through space and time.

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  "Musical Octopus"...three hearts. three albums...

  Adem Mehmedovic
  2021

  This project is about composing, producing, and performing music from three completely different genres and going deep into each of them: Classical, Balkan Traditional and Electronic music. To achieve that, I have created three different albums that represent each one of the three genres. This is my musical octopus. The octopus has three hearts as I do have three strong musical influences and, for this project, I have written music that represents what I am today. I deeply explored each genre in order to learn the uniqueness of the style and I hope that in the future I will be able to combine all three of them into one unique language that represents me. The same way many artists that I admire have transformed me and inspired me, I would like to communicate all these emotions to others through my music. I want to transmit a sense of sublimity and convey all the experiences I have had in my life, because music is the most powerful means of expressing the human soul.

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  Falling Out Of The Nest: A Journey Of Self-Discovery

  Vasilisa Moroz
  2021

  The purpose of my project was to create a body of work that will help to establish myself as an independent singer-songwriter, composer, and producer with authentic sound and strong creative ideas. With this culminating experience, it was extremely important for me to challenge myself in learning sound production concepts and developing my artistic vision. Also, it was an opportunity to find a healthier relationship within myself. The outcome of this project is a five-song EP album: all songs written, arranged, produced, and partially mixed by me. My methodologies were self-ethnography and action research. After finishing this project, I gained an incredible amount of knowledge about audio production and improved my song and lyric writing. I learned how to be kinder to myself and to become friends with my inner critic through the creative process, I found courage and confidence and obtained trust and belief in my music. This project helped me start an inner dialogue and hopefully might help other artists like me who struggle with insecurities and self-doubt.

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  HOME RECIPE: A VISUAL AND MUSICAL EXPERIMENT IN COMPOSITION USING BRAZILIAN RHYTHMS AS AN ELEMENT OF CREATION

  Nina Nicolaiewsky
  2021

  This paper reports the development and origination of a visual and musical experiment in composition using Brazilian rhythms as an element of creation. The methodology is based on an artistic research where I developed a creative routine relating music with photography. I hope this methodology will help future musicians to understand themselves as artists in different ways. The objective of my project is to forge my artistic identity, explore my creative process and research about some Brazilian musicality. The deliverable of this work is an EP with original songs that embrace rhythms from brazil with a contemporary approach and the register of a creative routine that connects music with image.

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  MarcO Poingt Trio

  Marc Olivier Poingt
  2021

  This project is a collaboration with two musicians that I met during my Masters at Berklee College of music on the Valencia campus: Sam Ruff (MPTI student) and Baptiste Watiez (CPPD). It is also a part of their Culminating experience. We split the roles like this: Sam has the double hat of drummer and sound engineer for the trio, he takes care of mixing and producing my music. Baptiste is the bassist of the project and takes care of the video part. As for me, I am the pianist and composer of the project. There are two main parts to my work on this project: Creation and composition as well as a second part focused on the leading band, management and trio development.

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  En Camino: A Dedicated Percussion Artists Path to Versatility: My Year Long Intensive of Latin Percussion

  Immanuel Pennington
  2021

  With backgrounds in orchestral percussion and modern American drum set playing, but a calling to further enrich my artistry through world styles of percussion, I ventured to Berklee Valencia and declared my life’s mission to be able to fill any musical role asked of me, establishing an artist identity as a continually versatile supporting musician. With this project, I began by dedicating myself to learning and implementing rhythms of all Cuban Dance styles into my playing. I developed a practice based methodology to learn these new instruments and styles, and composed music for the first time in order to display my new learnings and further establish my artistic identity through my interpretations of the rhythms. I recorded and self-produced this music, created a sample pack of the numerous Cuban rhythmic patterns I learned this year, and made an official artist EPK. Through this year long intensive, the first of many, I have learned an invaluable lesson: be dedicated to percussion in all styles and forms rather than determined to conquer them. With this project, I intend to break barriers in the restrictive career paths that us young percussionists are most often faced with.

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  The Artist as a Producer and Entrepreneur

  Marco Pisani
  2021

  This project dives deep into the processes of music production and distribution, and it aims to explore how the state of the art tools and technologies can support an independent artist like me to successfully manage both of them. As musicians, our responsibility often ends when the music gets created, but what happens if we want to take the lead as producers of ourselves and utilize all our technological resources to obtain the desired sounds? If we want to be entrepreneurial and upload our music on digital stores, how can we be sure that our music is protected, or be aware of all the royalties that it is generating once released and of how to collect them as independent artists? These, among other questions, are the treated themes of this project, that was practically executed through the production of five songs; to fulfil the purpose of the project, one of the songs was entirely produced by me using all the knowledge and experience acquired during my year at Berklee Valencia, and another one was registered with a performing rights organization, released, marketed and promoted by me, with the knowledge acquired through research, and through the attendance of webinars and workshops. I truly believe that the achievements of this project can support my future artistic career, and that they might be of interest to other artists that want to gain more responsibility in the production process of their work or in managing their own music business.

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  Global Music Concepts and Application: A Methodology in Assorted Music

  Kris Sebastian Ramakrishna
  2021

  Coming from a diverse background, and having the incredible opportunity to have studied many different kinds of music through various teaching styles, I developed the passion to find a way to teach music using oral/aural concepts from diverse cultures. Through my culminating experience project as part of the Contemporary Performance (Production Concentration) program at Berklee Valencia, I decided to develop my own teaching methodology through the designing of a course entitled “Global Music Concepts and Application” for higher western music education. Through interviews with educators and students of various traditions, analysis of my education, background, course development, and teaching in different settings, I have put together a unique form of oral/aural musical education, that not only reflects my cultural upbringing, but my music, and attitude as a human being as well. With my course and methodology completed, I plan to promote them to different higher education institutions, as well as create online and different age/ level versions of it. My dream is to teach at Berklee Valencia, and be a part of teaching students to respect, explore, accept, and collaborate with as many different cultures that present themselves, without demonstrating cultural appropriation or discrimination while doing so.