# Room to Room Write, record, and upload a song to the Jukebox, songs.schoolofsong.org, based on this prompt before Saturday’s song-share. The most important part of the assignment is to finish a song by Saturday — if any instruction gets in the way of finishing, ignore it. The focus of this week’s assignment is building a song in “rooms” rather than as a narrative.  If you prefer high-level instructions, just do the following: build 2 or 3 distinct sonic rooms. Stick those rooms together in a sequence that feels interesting to you. Rooms can include repetition, development, and even entire ‘perspective shifts’. Take the listener on a tour from room to room. If you’d like more detailed instructions, read on. ## Part 1 — Jam then curate Last week, we talked about the notion of sounding outwards—starting with a specific sound and developing a song from there. We’ll start this week’s homework in the same place, but here we’ll start with a particular source for a central sound: a jam or improvisation. Jam Set up whatever music-making tools you have to record a long-form jam—at least five minutes of just playing and generating sound. You should have enough degrees of freedom to generate variety, but not so many that you get distracted by endless possibilities. For example: if you have a synth, limit yourself to one patch, and only change one or two parameters. If you’re playing guitar, dial in a sound you’re happy with, or even just commit to a specific playing technique (pick vs. fingerpicking) and find a few chords to cycle between. As you jam, don’t worry at all about the form (whether it builds, goes anywhere, or stays in the same place). Just explore and try to generate interesting moments. You can repeat the same thing over and over, or make slight tweaks to a repeated riff. Feel free to use sequencers, arpeggiators, or anything that lets you go hands-free so you can focus on manipulating the sound itself. Record the entire jam from start to finish. Curate Take some time away from the jam. Ideally, wait until at least the next day—but at the very least, make yourself take a break and walk away from the material for 30 min. Then, return and listen through the entire thing, and mark moments that feel interesting to you. You can do this by making locators in your DAW, chopping up the audio, or—if you’re working from a voice memo—listening and taking handwritten notes with timestamps. ## Part 2 — Design Two Rooms Using the sounds you collected in part 1, design two distinct ‘rooms’. Combine your sound elements in various ways. Don’t be afraid to use elements that clash as well as match. Lead with curiosity and embrace ‘the fool’ archetype.  Now do it again (in the same DAW session)! Create a whole new room. Ask yourself all of the questions listed above. Remember that this room doesn’t have to relate to room 1 at all.  Here are a few useful tips: - Consider all the different angles an object in a room can be perceived. Similarly, an audio track or musical theme can be presented in many different ways (through effects and processing). You are under no obligation to commit to one angle! - Ask yourself what the centerpiece of your room is, or if it even has one. Choosing your central element can help provide something to play off of when designing the rest of your room.  ## Part 3 — Room to Room Create a piece of music that moves between these two rooms/sections. Our goal here isn’t to make it from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. Instead, we want to move between the rooms at our own pace.  Here are a few useful tips: - Consider how you can both adhere to and deviate from commonly expected structures (intentionally shorter sections). - Think about conventional pop forms (i.e. something changes every 8 measures). - Consider what thematic ideas you can carry from one room to the next, if any at all! ## Additional Recording Resources [Koala Sampler](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.koalasampler.com/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1770601003900425&usg=AOvVaw1pu6B82enjUP2wI9i0fgfw) - A cheap and intuitive sampler for your phone [Audacity](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.audacityteam.org/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1770601003900632&usg=AOvVaw31bHZrpkqhZ5IL4680wp7o) - Free audio editor for Mac and PC [Garageband](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1770601003900792&usg=AOvVaw2VLmPPzx1X8RnhPGQUdv69) - Free audio software for Mac ## Lyrical Prompt (Optional)  Set a timer for 3min and freewrite the entire time, capturing everything that comes up for you while looking at Vincent van Gogh’s piece The Bedroom. Repeat this process while looking at Henri Matisse’s piece The Red Studio.  ##   Vincent van Gogh’s The Bedroom (1888)