Breakfast with Amber

December 2020: Dr. Kwessi, We Can't See the Board

It's December, and you know what that means. That's right. It's finals season. Nothing says college-related stress quite like trying to juggle five projects due within the span of a week, all of which will have a massive effect on the grade in your class. This is what I had on my plate this semester:

-Art history: a take-home final exam due December 4 and a review of an online exhibition by Donald Judd due December 14

-Brit lit: final exam on December 8 during class

-Electronic music: final project due December 17

-Japanese: final oral exams held November 30 to December 4 as well as presentations on December 2, 7, and 8

-Stat methods: final exam on December 16 from 3:30 to 6:30 pm

So maybe it was the span of two weeks, but it was still finals season, and I still had a lot to do. The ones I remember the most are electronic music and Japanese, so I'll start with those. Our project for electronic music was actually a collab with the video game development class. They made the games, we made the music. It was a group project. There were five games to choose from, and we'd get into groups of two or three and make music for those games. The one I chose–let's see if I remember the description–was a roguelike dungeon crawler about a wizard trying to escape an enchanted tower. When I told my parents about the game I had chosen, they weren't surprised. They know my tastes.

I remember one of my partners was named Jax. I don't remember the name of the other guy, though, or how we divided up the work. I have the finished files for the project still saved to my computer, a 59-second song that was supposed to loop and three sound effects labeled, "Ice blast," "lightning zap," and "sword." I think what happened was that one person was in charge of sound effects, and the other two would collaborate on the music. I was on music duty, and my partner gave the duty of coming up with a demo of the theme to me. So what should I do? It was a fantasy game about escaping an enchanted tower. I had to come up with something fantastical but also tense as the player makes their way out of the tower they're trapped in.

But I had also been listening a lot to Twice's album "Eyes Wide Open," and I had "Hell In Heaven" stuck in my head, so let's go with that.

I took the part of the pre-chorus where Chaeyoung says "sijakdoeneun" and made a MIDI of it...without the third note. That's right. It went B, F-sharp, and then all the way down to a low B. It sounded jarring, but I thought that maybe jarring was what this game needed, so I left it, and I started to elaborate on it. I'd tell you the specifics, but that would require opening up the file, and I've regretted making this piece since I turned it in. I know I tried to create authentic-sounding classical instrument sounds, but the synthesizer can only make sounds that sat next to a musical instrument on a bus once. At least the software had piano samples on it as a default. I used it to create a melody that sounded like I was spamming the high B key. I also didn't think to make the end sound like the beginning even though the song was supposed to loop.

Then I sent it back to my partner, who touched it up and sent it back to me, and I uploaded everyone's files to T-Learn. Or maybe I turned my version in. I don't want to open the file up and find out. I have also never seen gameplay of the game I was composing for. There was a viewing party for everyone's game, but for some reason, I couldn't make it.

Next, Japanese. I don't remember much of the oral exam, and I don't have any files on my computer or Google Drive related to it. For the one I had in spring, we were given a prompt days in advance, and we were supposed to write an answer to that prompt and read it to Dr. Wu during the oral exam. Then she'd ask follow-up questions, which always threw me for a loop. In the spring, I decided to write my script about Animal Crossing, and then Dr. Wu started grilling me about who my favorite villager is in Japanese. I can't even answer that question in English! I'm assuming the fall oral exam went the same way.