Singer song writer or public historian?
- tnorthwo
- Dec 15, 2024
- 2 min read
It really is true what they say about never working a day in your life if you love what you do!
This semester I produced an album of music, began the coolest cognate project (more on that later), visited Canada's oldest oil spring, learned how to be an archivist, worked for Museum London, and potentially designated a 159 year old house! What a whirlwind. My most favourite project to date is my Voices from Time album.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved to sing. I don't just love it, I'm actually quite good at it insert humble brag. As the digital public history class was discussing our ideas for our end of term project, an idea popped into my head. The only rules for this project was that it needed to use a digital medium and it had to include historical content. Other than that, we had complete freedom. I was looking around the table at my colleagues (turned friends) and realized that I had a perfect project sitting in front of me.
The plan: I decided to use AI to write and create melodies, about historical events that each of my colleagues loved. Each of us had that one historical moment, or that one book, war, or person, that brought us to history. I harnessed those interests and built songs around them, dedicating each one to us. Unfortunately, I did not finish all eight. Three songs, mine included, just didn't sound right. Something about my walk in closet, DIY music studio was not producing the quality of music I was trying to squeeze out of it. Alas, I was able to create five beautiful, unique tunes and publish them on Soundcloud for the world to hear 😬
I also journaled throughout the entire process so as to capture the challenges and triumphs. Want to know more about this process? Check them out below. Want to listen to the whole album? Click the "let's jam" button below! If you're searching for a specific one, you can find each song listed at the bottom of this page. Leave a comment if you're so inclined!
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