NateBriggsHawkenProjects2021

 Blog #7 - Crunch Time      Well, here it is. This is the last minor blog of the project and I have to say I don't think I ever expected to get to this point of my personal songwriting process. I have 2 nearly completed songs and will have 3 tomorrow. I definitely got a little bit scared yesterday as I thought I had come down with a head cold right as I started to record vocals, but in the end, I ended up fine and getting some great takes. I've been working ridiculously hard on the final song of the EP which I'll call Pieces of Me for now. This is a filler title, but it may not change as I finalize the project. For the last 2 days, I've been recording vocals and mixing tirelessly, which is wearing on me a bit, but I think it's improving my production abilities a ton. I've been working with compression a lot recently to transform my vocal and guitar sounds, which is something I've wanted to do for a really long time. Because I'm kind of in the middle of ...

 Blog #6 - Coming Together      Hence the title, in these last 3 days, everything has started to slowly come together. The first sign of this was when I went over to my friend Charlie's house to record another friend, John, on drums. I got there early, around 10:30 am, and started to get everything set up for recording. Charlie has an entire basement dedicated to recording and a full mic setup for drums, which got me really excited to hear what it was going to sound like. I spent about 30-40 minutes going over the part with John and then we got started recording. It only took one take to get the perfect drum track, and I headed home around 2:30 to start recording the rest of the song. I got the instrumental done by the end of the day and felt satisfied with the direction of the week. The next day (Thursday) I finished mixing it in the morning and started back on the final vocals for Lilies later in the day. On Friday, I spent pretty much the entire day mixing Lilies ...

 Blog #5 - Questions Before I get started on a couple of the prompt questions that I've been thinking about for the last couple of days, I wanted to give a status update of where I'm at. For the last two days, I've continued working on the new piece. I've added acoustic guitar, strings/flute/synth (?), and will be recording vocals tomorrow (Wednesday). I was over at a friend's house over the weekend, who has a cat and I am horribly allergic. As a result, I have been having some pretty bad sinus issues and haven't been able to record vocals, so my itinerary is getting pushed back by a day or two. Otherwise, I've been really enjoying recording this instrumental. Here's where it is at as of today:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86HjXajeZg Now for the questions:  Based on your experience so far, what advice would you give to next year’s Hawken Project students?  Be prepared to face challenges. As easy as it may seem to do a project around something you lo...

 Blog #4 - Mid-Process      The last 3 days (Wednesday - Friday) have been absolutely packed. On Wednesday I came back to the second song I was working on with fresh ears and decided to scrap it (at least for now). I don't think it felt the direction the project was going in and after much consultation with my parents about what was the best approach, I listened to my muse and went in another direction. This is next song is a bit closer to Lilies, but a little more based in the electric side of instrumentation. It is a song about how I still carry my younger self with me, and even if I'm nowhere near the same person, it's still important to look after that small piece of who I am. I started on Wednesday with writing lyrics and the guitar part (as I was starting from scratch) and after finalizing, I recorded the electric guitar part that is the center of the song. I knew at some point in the EP I wanted to use the brass-harp upright piano that is sitting in our front ...

 Blog #3 - Difficulties     Both today and yesterday (Monday and Tuesday) have been the roughest part of the project for me so far. I played a show for School of Rock on Saturday and worked all day with Angus Williams on his soon-to-be-released project on Sunday. So to say the least, I am musically drained for the moment. On top of that, I had my AP Statistics exam on Tuesday, which made me even more tired. Moving past the complaints, it has sure been an interesting couple of days for the creative process. While working with Angus over the weekend, I showed him the idea I had been working on for this segment of the project. It still remains untitled, but as a filler name, I will call it the closer because that's where it will be placed on the album. Instead of working around an acoustic guitar, I decided to focus on a synth as the base of the track, and Angus really liked the sound so I decided to keep it. The sound is a major triad formed around whatever key I am playing...

Blog #2 - The Start      The last 3 days have been a blur, to say the least. I'm incredibly excited to have finally started on this project. In my original plan, I said that I was going to start with the intro track to the EP as my first burst of work, but on Monday I woke up and felt inspired to get directly started on the first official song, Lilies. As I continue my status updates for each portion of the workflow, I want to reflect on the writing process for the song and the main inspirations for each piece as I deconstruct my project time. Lilies is an acoustic guitar-centered track that I wrote about our old family dog, who passed away when I was young. It's heavily inspired by mid to late-nineties indie artists, particularly Elliot Smith (Here is an example of one of his songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FmYzACF-kg). I started the first day recording first the acoustic as the blanket layer of the song, which turned out to be a much more arduous process th...