College Experience Inspires Student Produced Music
Ella Harrington is against the wall with her guitar.
It's no secret that Oberlin is a very musical place. Between the Conservatory, the Arts and Sciences Orchestra, and several acapella groups, there's always plenty of live music on campus. However, there's another aspect of Oberlin's music scene that doesn't get much attention: the overall standards of music producers and engineers.
There are many talented students on campus who not only perform on stage, but also record and edit their own songs and publish them on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music. Megan Biehler, a sophomore named after the artist Lavindink, began producing in her sophomore year of high school. When the explosion happened, he began to take it more seriously, and was soon responsible for ruining an entire virtual recording of the high school choir performance.
"I was a kid in choir, we wanted to do a virtual choir and I had a lot of film experience, but I didn't have a lot of vocal experience," Biehler said. "So I was absolutely confident that I could make the video part and play it. It was my first experience combining multiple sounds, or really combining multiple sound-based pieces together."
Biehler released two albums this month, The Letter I Can't Write and College Exp, due in July 2021. He describes his music genre as "bedroom indie pop", although Algorithmic's streaming platform classifies it as alternative folk.
Beginning her semester, sophomore Ella Harrington released five singles under the name Ella Fay. He experienced a love for music and started playing the Suzuki violin at the age of three. He started writing songs at the age of twelve.
"When I was four years old, my family started singing in a five-generation folk choir," Harrington said. "So my music opened up to a lot of artists."
He wrote his first two songs when he was twelve years old. One of them honors his grandfather "Memories". He wrote the second "I Remember" with his best friend Charlotte.
"It was a song about our mutual friendship and platonic love."
Bihler and Harrington tell personal stories in their songs, which they note can be emotional, as Harrington's "I Can See the Rain" is about a girl who fell in love at 16.
"Songs about people ... aren't always painted in a good light," says Biehler. "This is how I feel at the moment" and does not reflect my current mood. So sometimes people worry that I'm exposing them or making them feel like a bad person...” It wasn't like that. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's scary. "a little bit".
Harrington doesn't like to categorize his music, drawing inspiration from a variety of genres including folk, pop and soul. Third Class Double Broke Bear shares Harington's reluctance to categorize his music.
"I think if I'm going to introduce my genre to someone, I'm going to tap into the traffic that's coming in," Burley says.
A student at Timara, Bierley's interest in robotics fueled his interest in music production from an early age. Burley has been playing drums since he was three years old; his babysitters got tired of banging pots and pans and suggested he play the drums.
"I like that the Megazords were separated and put back together, and I thought it would be cool if they were electronic or something," Burley said. "So I came up with the idea of loving techno. I don't listen to techno, but I was like, 'Yeah, my favorite genre is techno.'"
Sophomore Lawrence Wright, who composes music under the artist name "Compressible," began composing high school music using Musscore. This past year, he had the opportunity to participate in "Game Jam", which allowed him to meet with video game writers working in the field.
"It was like, 'Hey, have you heard about not using MuseScore and moving to a bigger digital workspace?'" Show me the ropes, Wright said.
Since then, Wright has produced several songs on her YouTube channel, including Nona's Song and Breaststep. He describes the music as "mysterious video game inspired, classic in a way but not because classics eat me alive and call me classic". While Wright sings and plays clarinet and piano, much of his music is produced digitally.
While Oberlin musicians may seem focused on more serious projects, they also know the importance of taking time out to have fun. Biehler has performed songs such as "Rats on Crack" and "Prewedding Handholding" on his YouTube channel.
"My roommate and I improvised the song a lot, I started playing some chords and we made a song," Behler said. "Basically, we have an improvised EP if you will."
All four artists say Oberlin is a part of their music-making process, taking Wright's theory and composition classes at the conservatory, Bierly on campus or Beehler's "I Cried in Tappan Square," or Harrington's participation on Oberlin's campus. All of this is powered by the abundant talent at Oberlin College and the Conservatory of Music.
