Capstone Project Proposal Draft

Name of student: Arham Ahmed

Date: 28/2/22
Teacher: Ms. Lacroix
Capstone strand I have chosen Project
is:
Proposed title for my project: Exploring the process of Music Composition

What is your inquiry question that interests you for further research? It should be a question
that connects with a purpose, passion or personalized area of interest for you. This is a
question that you cannot just google an answer for. Please see examples from your
Capstone booklet.
My inquiry question is:

How do I compose and record a song?

Rationale/context: Detail your reasons for choosing this inquiry question. Explain WHY you
are choosing to investigate this topic as a major area of focus. How does this area of inquiry
connect to your passion(s), purpose? Why is it of personal interest to you?

I have a deep personal connection to music and music making. I’ve been playing guitar for
about 5 years now, and I am very interested in musical composition, or in other words,
making songs of my own as opposed to strictly learning and playing other people’s music.
However, I am not very experienced when it comes to making my own songs, and I would
like to learn.

Background: What background knowledge/connections/prior learning do you have in this

area of inquiry?

Knowing of sources to learn about music theory would help, as having easy access to
learning resources makes the learning process much easier and goes far smoother than
the alternative of searching for resources that are different or not what I’m looking for.
Such resources might be found on the internet or in various textbooks, where referencing
material becomes easy and the knowledge becomes incredibly easy to gain access to.

Contacting someone who may know a lot about music composition would help for me to
learn because coming to understand new and potentially obtuse concepts becomes
significantly easier if you have someone who does already understand what they’re talking
about explaining it to you in a tailor-made fashion specific to the way you learn.

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Career connections: What is your intended career area at this point in time? What
connections does this inquiry question have to your life, academic and/ or career goals?

While I plan on going in other directions for my career, I am sure I won’t let my passion for
music go, and in the future I do plan on broadening my reach for my music farther past
where it is now, though discretely from my main career. While I don’t plan on making a
career out of music, I do plan on spreading my music and “getting it out there” if I can.

Interdisciplinary and core competencies connections: What subject areas and core
competencies will be connected with your project? Outline and explain the connections.

Personal Awareness and Responsibility

- An inherent part of being an artist with a strong sense of passion for your art form
is that you might lose track of yourself and end up harming your overall health for
the sake of satiating your single-minded drive to complete, refine, perfect, refine
again, and polish your work as much as possible. From working on this
assignment, I can learn to set up and lean on some tactics and methods from self-
destructing over an art project.
- Building off of that previous point, sometimes one of the sticking points for being a
creator is that you run out of motivation. Being an artist of any kind is something of
a double edged sword, where you are either madly working on your project with
every fiber of your body, or you can’t even muster the strength to lift your pen
because you’re do burnt out of motivation. Working on this project I can also stand
to learn how to keep motivation and morale up throughout a particularly long
project, with the capstone project being 40 hours, one could see why such self-
restraint may be crucial. It’s all about hitting that middle ground, with enough
motivation to carry you through the project, but not too much that you run yourself
ragged.

Social Responsibility
- Being an artist, it can sometimes be difficult to remain cognisant of the way you
affect people with your art, and maintaining that sense of responsibility to make
sure your art doesn’t hurt anyone accidently. Authors or musicians may make art
that is inherently “dark” or otherwise “heavy” in subject matter, but not everyone
comes to realize that lots of people will be affected in a negative way by the
subject matter discussed in the art, such as musicians and authors writing stories
or lyrics relating to sensitive topics like mental health or even suicide, without fully
thinking through the consequences of discussing the subject matter in a way that
may not be adequately careful. For instance, there is an entire phenomenon that
references such a thing: “The Werther Effect” in literature was created when a
book was released, and because of the suicide of a character in the book, multiple
people committed suicide in real life. As such, the art that I will be making must be
cognisant of the potential implications and certain complexities that may be

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 unsuitable for all audiences.

Critical Thinking
- For this project, I will have to design, compose, and play the songs I will be
presenting. For this, I will have to actively and critically think about each individual
choice I make for every song. I would have to play an active role in developing the
product, because I would be the one writing the songs. Since I am writing the
songs I will have to scrutinize the details and analyze the compositions, the
recordings, the music theory choices, the meaning, the interpretations, and
anything else I can find to shape the products into whatever comes out closest to
the platonic ideals for the songs I want to write.

Creative Thinking
- When it comes to music composition and production, it comes with the territory that
you have to get used to wantonly throwing away parts of your work if it means
making a better product. However, throwing away ideas also requires you to make
new ideas to fill the vacuum, so for parts of the process you need to be something
of a random idea generator. These ideas can be sourced from any number of
areas, from life experiences to other people’s music, and wherever else you can
think of.
- The product I will be making will add novelty and value to whoever would like to
listen to it, which I’m planning to be anybody with internet access, as I am planning
to publish the songs on places like Spotify and Apple Music using an online
distribution service. Music has inherent novel value in and of itself, which makes it
perfect for demonstrating how what I make can bring new perspectives and
influences on whoever would like to listen.

Communication
- Music can be a collaborative medium, quickly becoming impossible to do on your
own as your ideas scale with your ambitions. This can be seen easily with the very
presence of any band on Earth that you can think of, where instead of one person
making music it’s several. Whether it be to generate more ideas or to play
instruments one can’t play themselves, or even just because it’s more fun, people
make music together. With this project, I can access the ideas and expertises of
people to help me create the product I wish to make. Communication would be
incredibly important as it is difficult to communicate a complex musical idea to
someone without the correct skills, whether it be generating ideas in a group or
directing band players to play a section the way you want it to sound. There’s more
to music than the sheet notation, after all.

Personal & Cultural Identity

- I have to know my strengths and weaknesses if I want to be able to effectively
utilize my skills and outsource to cover my flaws to achieve the best product
possible. I have to be aware that I may not be able to play bass as well as I need
to, and that I can’t play the drums for my songs because I simply don’t have a set,
nor the knowledge. With that knowledge, I know that I will have to ask a friend or

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 pay someone online, like on a service such as Fiverr, to do the things that I am
unable to do.

Capstone Presentation medium: select one or more project mediums you wish to use to
present your project. Outline and give details about how you will present your project once
completed. You may use a combination of mediums.
o Electronic portfolio: Prezi or PPT
o Physical portfolio
o Website
o imovie presentation
o YouTube channel

- Mp3 files of completed projects and idea snippets

- Notes and sheet music

Description of my Capstone project. Specific Project Details of the Capstone Project:

what will you research, create, study, produce, solve, investigate? What product will be
produced at the end of this project for evaluation. Write a one-page description outlining
your proposal.

Broadly what I will be doing is that I will compose and record a song while researching
certain aspects I find obtuse, and eventually uploading my song online.

I will use digital softwares like MuseScore and Linux Music Making Software to compose
music, and then using a software like Pro Tools to record and mix a final product. I will use
the internet to research things that will help me with the composition of my song.

I can access music knowledge from a wide variety of informative sources, like various
articles or YouTube videos made by established musicians discussing various aspects of
music theory, whether the ideas are fundamental and simple in order to build more
complex or more in depth understanding of complicated concepts that can be used to
analyze existing music or can be used to create more interesting music.

Using the concepts that I will learn, I will compose one song and write sheet music and
make a demo track that will be exemplary of the concepts that I learned. Along with the
sheet music, I will be providing various notes that show my process composition.

After the songs are completed, I will use an online distribution service like DistroKid to
make my songs available to be listened to on services like Spotify. This last portion
doesn’t necessarily have to do with the main focus of the project, but I would like to do this
anyway as a way to cement my product and make it more professional by making it
available on the same platforms as the artists I admire put their songs on.

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Resources/ Technology/Skills: Make an assessment of the resources, technology and
skills you will need to be able to complete this project. What is your plan to be able to
access/learn all of the resources necessary to achieve completion of this project? Detail
your plans.

Making sheet music would be easier for me through the use of a digital composition
program such as MuseScore, which can allow me to create sheet music easily instead of
printing off tons of pages of staffed paper and writing the music out by hand. Using
technology would make my process of composing the music much easier, because I also
don’t have to keep all the ideas for the composition on my mind. With the composition
software I have somewhere to keep the ideas I have and not risk forgetting them. I don’t
have a great understanding of the software yet, but the developers of MuseScore have

Recording the playing of the instruments I’ll be using requires some in-depth
understanding of the technology I’m using. I would need to know how to use the
technology that is needed to record instruments like professional musicians would. There
are lots of forums online and guides from various articles relating to music technology.

Mentors/Community Connections: What types of mentor(s)/community connections will

you need to help you complete your capstone project? How will your mentor(s) help you?
What is your plan to access the mentorship/community connections necessary for this
project?

There are a few options that I can choose from, but my main ideas for a mentor is to email
or call a local band in Langley and ask some of the artists to mentor me for my project.
The Wikipedia page for Canadian bands can be a good place to start.

Aside from local bands, I could also look to ask a band teacher at RE Mountain to be my
mentor, which may be a more surefire choice, but might not be perfect because I would
like a perspective more aligned with my style of music.

Project limitations: What are some project limitations and potential obstacles that you
foresee that might affect progress with your Capstone Project?

I know that for my project, I will be unable to play the drum parts for myself. In order to
complete my project, I need either for someone to play the drum parts for me, or I need to
make the drum parts digitally using a virtual instrument in a digital audio workstation.

Other considerations: List and detail any other related information/ considerations about
your project that you feel should be included in your project proposal.

N/A

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References:

Attach a REFERENCE LIST. Your list should be written using correct APA formatting.
An example is provided on page 21 of your Capstone booklet.

References

Crick, B. (2012, June 2). A quick introduction to music composition. YouTube. Retrieved April 3,
2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8L-EELwuhg 

Green, G. (2021, May 6). Creating tension and release in music. YouTube. Retrieved April 5,
2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXeX031w-6Q 

Hughley, D., & DiNicola, J. (2020, May 5). Getting started: Recording electric guitar //
Focusrite live. YouTube. Retrieved April 2, 2022, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er8PeFI_b98 

Neely, A. (2019, April 2). Japanese music notation (shakuhachi music). YouTube. Retrieved
May 3, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpJPnCaIy80

Neely, A. (2021, September 24). The psychology of extreme rhythms. YouTube. Retrieved May
3, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRLTjESyuQk 

Neely, A. (2019, October 23). Reharmonizing Hello. YouTube. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuqsEl_0nSg 

Williams, R. (2014, April 3). How to play guitar like TK from 凛として時雨 [alternative rock
lesson]. YouTube. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=6cCxPCIeV7Y

Williams, R. (2014, June 9). How To Play : 凛として時雨 - illusion is mine (Guitar Lesson)｜
Ron Williams. YouTube. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=a5Tqwt34_60 

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