It was a cold winter night in the capital city of Washington DC. Actually, for the two Texas boys who have seldomly experienced temperatures below 30 degrees, it was freezing. Ricardo struggled to roll a chair into the bathroom, trying to not wake up their Californian roommates who were sound asleep. Isaac sat on the counter of the hotel’s restroom. In a hotel bathroom, they sat for 3 hours taking a deep dive into what their music meant for them. With half of the album already done by this point, they reflected on what the several songs already made symbolized to them.
In this moment, Ricardo realized how truly passionate he was about music, and how much the album itself had bettered him as a person. “I’ve realized I’ve started to share my own story. Rather than giving advice to someone else, I’m writing as if I have been giving advice to my past self.” A focus of their project was to tell their own stories rather than someone else’s, and without thinking, he did just that.
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At the end of junior year, I thought what at the time was going to only be a 3-5 song EP would be an easy and fun way to get through my senior project. I wasn’t invested in my project, I simply wanted the grades for it. However, I began to realize how truly passionate I was about music, and how much joy creating something that sounds good brings me. The feeling of finishing a song and listening to the final product was indescribable. I would play the song over and over, reflecting on the process that brought it to where it was now, and it only made me want to create more. After reaching our goal of 3 songs by the end of the first couple weeks of Senior year, we realized that an album is what we wanted to shoot for.
In a school as small as Chinquapin, I’m glad I was able to be united with someone as truly passionate about something as I was. Isaac and I were the perfect pairing for this project. Our skill sets fit together perfectly, and we were able to teach each other skills that both of us did not have previously. Isaac brought out a work ethic in me that I didn’t know I had, and ignited by our passion for music, we both used this work ethic to balance the struggles of senior year with the dedication and time it takes to produce music.
The day before we submitted our album to Amuse, an independent music distribution company, we laid in our beds in the dorm and played our album from beginning to end for the first time. I wasn’t ready to be done with the album, but the feeling of knowing all the songs turned out exactly how I wanted them suppressed this feeling. Isaac and I laid there under the periodically changing colorful lights of our dorm room feeling accomplished. Every moment of every song brought surges of memories back. From the adventures of filming the “Running” music video, to the long nights of Isaac and I staying up well past dorm curfew to listen to his beat and write lyrics, wishing I could experience it all one more time. What seemed like such a monumental and tedious task that would require lots of work and dedication turned out to be one of the best experiences of our senior year. At this moment, I felt great joy in the fact that I pursued my passion for music. After all, it made me a better student and gained me a best friend.
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