The Artist’s Round is a new art program where one artist is chosen by Mr. Duarte, Ms. Bradley, and Ms. Allen every month to create a piece of artwork in any style that they feel resonates with themselves and can impact the community. At the end of the school year, all the artists will come up during a Chapel and share their works. Last month’s artist Henry Buckley-Jones created a beautiful and moving mural detailing humanity’s relationship with nature through a fire dragon and a firefighter. This month’s artist, Wes Lindstrom-Chalpin, made a song based on this mural.
When thinking about someone to create a song for the mural, Wes was a no-brainer. Being a musician had always been “the biggest part of my identity at school”, and he is most well known for his work with music. When offered the opportunity to create a song based on a mural, he immediately accepted in order to test out his creativity and to learn how music pops into his mind from any form of art of emotional expression.
When asked about how Henry’s mural inspired his song, he said that when he first looked at the mural, the contrast of color instantly created a scene of an epic battle in his mind. “The blue light shining through a dragon made of fire made me think of a mythical battlefield.” The mural sparked all sorts of ideas in his mind. It looked like an intense moment captured in time and so he felt that an intense style of music would fit it best.
Wes chose a very unique genre to showcase this unique mural: Melodic Dubstep. He said that when he was growing up, he fell in love with electronic music, especially this genre called Melodic Dubstep. After thinking of this genre, it clicked. He knew this was the genre that would reflect the mural the best. It is a version of electronic music that is “based more on harmonic aspects and is more musical than simply sound design and rhythm-based”. Normal Dubstep is chaotic but Melodic Dubstep is more intense, which perfectly embodies the condensed fire around the lone fireman. He had never attempted to create a Melodic Dubstep track himself before but had always wanted to learn the style, so this presented the perfect opportunity for him to step out of his comfort zone and expand his horizons. He wanted the song he made to not only sound good, but also tell the deep story under the mural, which Melodic Dubstep is perfect for. “From intro to drop to finish, the style constantly progresses, and there is always something new and interesting building off of each other.” Of course, the more complicated the song is, the harder the process will be.
His methods of creating the song are pretty complex. He used F1 studio as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, used for recording, editing, mixing, and mastering), multiple VSTs (Virtual Studio Technology, integrates software synthesizers and effects units into DAWs), drumkits, and plugins to mix and master each sound to blend. He stayed loyal to the typical format of Melodic Dubstep while also being conscious of staying original and creative as opposed to making a copy of something else. He wanted the song to be as unique and beautiful as the mural was.
He says that his favorite aspect of creating the song was gaining skills and understanding of the tools he uses in FL studio, and finding his own style of mixing. He loved exploring how he could put all the pieces together to balance out each individual aspect of the music so that they all complement each other. The final draft of the song shows that he did indeed master this, as there are many parts that sound so different but are made in such a way that they all blend together seamlessly.
The song is an emotional experience starting with a bittersweet beautiful intro, building up into a call to action, and then finally a fight, which culminates with a beat drop. This is the climax of the story he weaves with his song. He tried to capture not just the intensity of the mural but also the complex emotion behind the intensity driving it.
