The form of my capstone has significantly varied, but all versions have been centralized around combining music and engineering. I love making any form. Synthesizing an idea into a tangible product is one of the most joyful interactions imaginable, and music is where I most often find this joy. Because of that, the fundamental goal of my capstone is to “spread music.” At first, I believed the best way to accomplish that was through a digital program that would allow anyone to start writing original music quickly. However, when I tried to put this idea into practice, I swiftly realized its infeasibility as it would take no less than 10,000 lines of code to begin to make a semi-final product, and I could barely write 10. After seeing the impossibility of completing my audio program, I switched my capstone to something I have more experience with and is more intuitive to me, building a bass guitar. Making a bass was attractive to me not just because I would get a new bass out of it but also because it allowed me to understand an aspect of music that I previously had no insight into. My first step in this process was designing the bass using fusion 360 to create a profile. Once the design was finalized, I cut the wood, glued it together, messed it up, and had to cut it back apart, then glued it once more. I am continuing to make my bass and should be done soon.

Website with pictures: website

Annotated bibliography: bibliography

After creating Into The Basement, a short documentary about the Philly underground music scene in digital video class (with Leo Cohen, Nick Werner, Ellis Measley, and El Newburger), Nick and I were inspired to continue the project. The original plan was to basically make a longer documentary, interview more artists, and go more in depth about the scene and everything surrounding it; the good, the bad, and the ugly. That plan did not work out. So, now working alone, I resolved to take the documentary idea, and instead turn it into a magazine. With the help of a lot of people, including Nick, I was able to interview many more individuals involved in the underground music scene, not limited to artists/musicians, archivists, and sound engineers. After the hair-pulling process of fundraising, transcribing interview after interview, coming up with article topics, writing the articles, pulling quotes, doing more research, gathering photos, designing a layout, and making graphics, the magazine was finally here. Covering what the underground and the concept of ‘DIY’ actually means, the analysis of punk rock as a genre, the differences between the past and the current state of the scene, and more, as well as full interviews with artists who are able to give two different perspectives, I sincerely hope I’ve represented everything accurately and fairly(and also remained just the right amount of self-insertive). This is the digital version, and I’m in the process of getting the final product printed professionally. If you are curious, and would like to know more, I invite you all into the basement.

Here is a small excerpt from my interview with Cheshire Agusta of Stinking Lizaveta:

And here are some pages of my final magazine:

Here is the link to the full magazine

Here is the link to my annotated bibliography

For my capstone, my goal for my final product was to create a 3D printed model of one of my characters. I briefly worked with people to create a character. I did this by interviewing and collecting data about characters people want to see. I learned styles of art to draw this character. I learned manga style art because that’s where my style developed from and was my inspiration for this capstone. I communicated with people in order to create some backstory for the character. Over the course of a year, I spent time learning tools and techniques used for fusion360( a 3D modeling platform I created my 3D model on) and modeled my character using the techniques I’d learned. I also learned how to use two types of 3D printers in order to make my final product.

These are my models from fusion 360

This is my model being uploaded to the 3D printer i used

These are the final products

annotated bibliography:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ivkqXwU8-vNo64Kt99EUjnuYueprdYqj7MDDwUQ81Pc/edit