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Mazmu Islam

Mr. Speice

Independent Study & Mentorship

26 January 2018

Original Work Assessment

The original work for this year was formulated as the stepping stone in allowing to

practice and gain the necessary skills to later fully write and produce an album. In order to reach

this ambitious goal, the journey of bettering the current level of musicianship and gaining

amateur experience in the music recording and producing process is a necessary step to build

those foundational skills, so they can be later utilized and further improved in time for the final

product creation. In this original work, I apply the base song called “Dangerous Woman,” by

Ariana Grande and use this piece as a way to challenge my aural and music creation skills.

Objective:

The objective was to use the framework of the song “Dangerous Woman” and utilize my

own musicianship to interpret the chord progression and electric guitar rift by ear and build a

cover that employs my own stylistic choices.

Materials:

A functioning computer with the Audacity program was used to record the guitar and

voice sounds necessary for the song’s layers. The microphone is not of the best quality. For this
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acoustic cover, an acoustic guitar is needed as well as a voice. Both performances with the guitar

and vocals are contributed by myself.

Description of Process:

The process began with the selection of the song. As a light-lyrical soprano, the timbre of

my voice is warm accompanied by a full and supported sound to at least an A4. I wanted to

choose a song that fit the same vocal quality of mine, but also posed a challenge to my vocal

weakness in creating a mixed sound when belting high notes. One song that reflected these

requirements was the song “Dangerous Woman,” sung by the artist Ariana Grande. With an

intermediate guitar pattern and riff and a vocal range that is comfortable for me, but still

containing challenges, the song was a perfect fit to create a cover of.

A goal that was set this year was to improve my aural skills in music, so that I can later

create and transcribe music more intuitively. Therefore, much of the chord progressions and

guitar riffs were synthesized by ear. With the 7 years of experience with the guitar and the piano

at hand, I was able to come up with a simple Em, C, and G chord progression. The next

challenge was the electric guitar riff. It is difficult to know the notes on the fretboard as of now,

so I found the exact letter notes on the piano and then transferred it to the fretboard, positioning

the finger placements for the most convenient transitions from one note to the other. Now, the

background music has been set. A simple down, space, down, up, down, up strumming pattern

will play while the guitar riff loops. The riff was written onto guitar tabs.
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Finally, it was time to record the song. The first layer to be recorded was the guitar

strumming. Singing the tune in my head, I played and recorded the simple strumming pattern.

Then, the guitar riff was recorded. Audacity has a function in which you can listen to already

recorded music while you record new layers, and this helped me place the timings and tempo of

the riff. Then, the 1st layer of voices were recorded. The first voice part kept the main verses and

the chorus. The 2nd voice part was then recorded as contained the pre-chorus and background

vocals that layer over the main vocals. The final layer as the high notes that are sung at the

bridge. I recorded these separately in order to control volume.

Utilization of Higher-Level Thinking Skills:

Higher-level of thinking was used when utilizing spatial hearing in order to match notes

to the original song. This process of transcribing allowed to synthesize skills built previously,

like solfege, and music theory research done in the first semester of ISM into transcribing music

that can be universally understood by other musicians if they choose to play this rendition of

“Dangerous Woman.” Many problem solving skills were also used in order to mix the sounds

and layers using Audacity.

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Results:

The original work resulted in a 3 minutes and 17 seconds recording of my cover of

“Dangerous Woman.” The vocals were very rough due to suffering from a sore throat at the time

of recording.

Application/Meaning:

With the experience gained from covering “Dangerous Woman,” the process to create

original pieces and produce quality tracks from those songs can be done with more refinery.

Although the recording of “Dangerous Woman” will not be included into the final product, it

could later serve as the demo for when the song is recorded again with better recording

equipment. Throughout this original work, I feel that I have become a better musician who is

able to create original ideas into something tangible intuitively. Although songwriting will be a

much more difficult process than transcribing from something already released, this original

work has allowed me to practice the foundation skills of a musician, so that I could continue to

improve upon these skills into the future.