NateBriggsHawkenProjects2021

 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...

 Blog #1 - Journey to the EP     Since my freshman year, I've been waiting for the freedom of participating in Hawken Projects. Even with all my excitement, it was only until early in my Junior year that I set my heart on creating an EP. Ever since I was little, I've always had the drive to put a creative product out into the world. Whether it be a youtube video or podcast, or, what I settled on, music, I've wanted to share the way I see the world with as many people as possible. As much as this project is an extension of that childhood goal, I'm incredibly excited to use this as an opportunity to challenge myself in the realm of production and songwriting. The first, and most important part of the process, is the aforementioned songwriting. While I have spent a great sum of hours noodling around on my guitar in the early morning attempting to create a hook, I have never, before this experience, pieced together a full song. Although my lyrics will be mostly prewritten, ...