released December 16, 2020

1 Suzy Farber: Burnt Spaghetti
Burnt Spaghetti is more or less the culmination of everything I've learned this semester, having little to no experience with music production before taking this class. This piece melds the sultry sounds of flute and mystical synths, topped with samples from a 1953 Chef Boyardee commercial. Critics say the music will transport you. Working on this project was a much-welcomed escape from reality, and that's what it eventually came to represent to me. Spending many hours hyper focused on creating music helped take my mind off the fact that we're living through a pandemic, and for that I'm grateful.

2 Nicholas Sossi Romano: State of Flux
linktr.ee/slmbrmusic
State of Flux is a song about the feeling of wanting to not be stuck where you are. The overabundance of stress and guilt in the world sometimes just requires a full release of energy, just to dance and dream and to experience what you can before you can't anymore. This song tries to capture that aesthetic.

3 Gamal & Maria: Blame
This song was made on a wine induced writing session where we spoke about problems with her family and herself and how we often blame others for problems we don’t want to see in ourselves. This song is a call to everyone to take ownership of everything that is you and learn and grow.

4 Israel Ponte: The Seventh Day
In my track The Seventh Day I really wanted to experiment with using synthesizers along with a lot of other sounds. As of recently I have been listening to a lot of electronic music and I wanted to get out of my comfort zone since I usually make hip hop music. I named the track The Seventh Day because I feel like in history there are turning points when the world will never be the same and after 2020 we will be living in a completely different world that no one saw coming.

5 Grim Guapo: Euphoria
www.instagram.com/grimguapo/
soundcloud.com/grimguapo
linktr.ee/GrimGuapo
I deal with manic depression, bipolar disorder so sometimes you can feel euphoric, or maybe something you think is euphoria is really just bad eyesight, fluorescent lights. The main sound is a sample of an Fx from a synth based on a pendulum. the songs mainly about wondering what does it mean to exist, to be, and specifically what does it mean to exist as someone with a psychological disorder that makes life harder but also gives me the ability to make stuff like this and a sort of music. euphoria is fun until it crashes and gets all disjointed. You come down and feel robotic. So on my voice there is a sort of robotic effect to represent that disjointedness or dissociation.

6 max coker: sunny slide
I have been exploring sound as environment this semester in Electroacoustics 1. My process involves mixing found sound, improvised loops from room mic setups, and guitar and vocals as leads. I have been considering the body of work a combination of stomp collages. I've included 'Sunny Slide' for this release. This example progresses from light to dark in a hazy environment. I used a synth, a vocal loop, a couple guitar loops and live vocals and guitar for the piece.

7 Suzan Ciftcikal: Kolay Gelsin
This piece is named after a common expression used in the Turkish language. The expression is often used to encourage someone to keep up their hard work when beginning a new endeavor and it’s meant to express a genuine hope and wish of success to its recipient. I chose this name because at the beginning of this semester I had never once recorded one of my songs, but it was something I’d been wanting to do for many years. This class gave me the knowledge to record a guitar riff I’ve had in the works for months now and getting past the early stages of learning these recording techniques has given me the encouragement to continue recording my music. This song is dedicated to any people trying to get past the difficult early stages of learning a new skill...Kolay Gelsin.

8 Gawayne Campbell: Santa on the Beat
soundcloud.com/user-165655381
This is my first complete instrumental and it’s definitely not what I expected. I started by creating a few chords in the key of G major. I usually start with the chords to establish the overall vibe of the song. I then swapped out different instruments to see which works well with the chords. The “Digital Magical Bells” gave me the simple, gentle sound that I usually go for when I create the chords. I used a third-party plugin in Ableton to create the drum loops, melody, and chord progressions. Although the plugin comes with many presets, I usually chose to start from scratch and only utilize the interface. I find that it’s a lot more user friendly than the default MIDI drawing tool in most DAWs. Also, creating a drum loop manually really helps to set the swing of the song. After I added the drum loop and the bass line, I still had no idea where this song was going. The entire creative process was starting to feel like work because I felt so stuck. At first, the song was going in an island-sounding direction, but then the Magical Bells reminded me of Christmas. I decided to just let go and remove all limitations. I went to freesounds.com and downloaded some bells and a few Santa voices and started to chop and screw them until I was having more fun than work. My original chill island song turned into a Hip-Hop Christmas beat featuring Santa Claus.

9 Junaid Shah: Ed Nusrat
soundcloud.com/junaid-811338705
The song is a combination of Ed Sheeran song Shape of You and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Dam Mast Qalandhar. Sheeran vocals are predominant, and his music serves as the instrumental in the piece. Khan vocals are used as he performs solfege per Indian classical music. The tempo and notes of both pieces are similar which makes for an interesting union.

10 Queen AndreYAH M Black & W.A.Y.: Stop Wasting Your Life
www.andreyahblack.com
This upbeat and empowering composition inspires people who are engaged in domestic violent relationships and criminal activity to stop hurting others and to seek healing, love and respect for humankind. Also, the song inspires all people to find their divine purpose so they may shine and charge in their divine gifts to contribute on planet earth.

11 Ruba Amare: End of Our Days
This song is deeply inspired by the George Floyd protests of this year. Throughout the protests, so many were using chants and acoustic music as tools in unifying and galvanizing the people. The intention of the artist was to invoke a feeling of rugged and raw protest music. The medium chosen for this idea was the genre of early hip-hop--specifically boom bap. Sonically and lyrically, the song is meant to make people feel represented, seen, and heard. But more importantly, to make people believe that there is a better world waiting for them in the future, if they are willing to fight for it.

12 Fast Money Music: Axaxaxas Mlo
atwoodtapes.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/majordanby1
This tape loop piece was heavily inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges short story "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Part of a tenuous plan to release a longer musical interpretation of the work, this song represents the process of Tlon's language slowly spreading and replacing all objective vocabulary. The in-time melody, bass, and counterpoint (the normal and expected parts of any song) slowly give way to the more free form, beat-less, direction-less, experimental sections, whose sum parts phase in and out of sync with itself. In the end, the original chord progression is re-stated, albeit reversed and modified, showing the new status quo for language and the arts that Tlon brings on.