20% time
speech
Have
you ever wondered how goldilocks felt when she was looking for something and
everything she found wasn’t just right? That’s how I felt during my 20 percent
time. For my project I created music on my computer. My original goal was to have
three songs by the end of the project but that didn’t happen. I didn’t realize
how long it actually took to make a song and I didn’t realize that I should
have spent extra time working on it to reach my goal.
I
should probably explain how to create one of the songs. First, it took me at
least a week to find what website I was going to use, I ended up using
Soundation. Then, I started messing with all of the sound clips they had, there
were all hundreds of short clips of instruments that ranged from a didgeridoo
to a violin to a heavy bass sound. Finally, I had to figure out what I wanted
my song to sound like and what clips I wanted to put together. This took a lot
longer than I thought because not every clip would sound great with another. But
all of the different layers of music helped my see that they are in all songs
and it helped me find the layers in songs on the radio.
Most
of my challenges were from creative blocks. I didn’t think that creating a song
from nothing would be that hard. Millions of people could why couldn’t I? Well,
along the way I had several times where I started a song, got about thirty
seconds of it made then deleted it because I didn’t think it would sound good.
Also, listening to hundreds of clips became very time consuming and frustrating
when I couldn’t find one that was just right.
My
major success was finally feeling that I had mastered the whole project. Half
way through this school year I finally figured out how to make an ending
portion of the song. I think when I realized that I didn’t have to reach my
goal of three songs and that one would be good enough it made me less stressed
and more creative. I started enjoying the process and learned that it shouldn’t
be about how much I got done if I liked the end result.
This
was easily my favorite thing we did in class this whole year and I think every
school should start a class where students can work on their own project and
present it at the end of the year. My 20 percent time made me understand that
not everything is about grades, achieving a goal, or things going with my plan,
but it was about enjoying the process. I guess goldilocks would have been a lot
better off if she learned that not everything had to be just right.
