For his 10th grade personal project, Gabriel Steinberg wrote, recorded and produced an album of original music. The album, titled Into the Arms of Morpheus, includes ten instrumental tracks. You can listen to his music here: Into the Arms of Morpheus
1) What was your inspiration for this project?
I have wanted to record an album since I started really enjoying playing music, and since too often I start big projects and never finish them, I figured the personal project was a great opportunity to give me extra incentive to finish this project. I would have eventually recorded an album anyway but I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by making it my personal project.
2) What was the hardest part of the process?
The hardest part of the entire process was motivating myself to not just improvise for hours once I picked up the guitar. That was what I would normally do but I couldn’t do it anymore since I had to get an album done. It was hard to convince myself to cross the border from just messing around all the time to actually sitting down for hours on end and recording music. Sometimes it felt a little more like work than fun but I’m glad that feeling was rare for me, because I’m sure other people felt that throughout their entire project.
3) Which song was your favorite to write, record and produce? Why?
Probably the first one in the album, Ignore the Signs. There were a lot of effects involved and a lot of different parts that the song goes through. I like recording a song that has many different parts that are all very different. Also the bass was really prominent in the second part of the song and bass that is really prominent in songs is always fun to play. Also it was quite different from all my other ones, especially the second part.
4) Any advice for future sophomores about the personal project?
Either choose something that involves one of your hobbies or choose something new and make absolutely sure that you are interested in it before you start. Also choose something that is challenging but achievable. If it isn’t challenging you won’t learn anything from it, and if it isn’t achievable you’re going to get a bad grade.
Read other articles in our Personal Project series:
The BACC Rag 