Our Carpe family has been up to quite a bit lately! Recently, Sawyer Norman, a friend of some of our Carpe students, released a Christmas compilation featuring Ben Beauchene and Abbi Knell. Ben and Abbi each tell us about their individual experiences with Carpe Artista, the creation of this project, and how Carpe prepared them to be able to create projects like this.
Q: How long have you been writing/making music?
Abbi: “I started writing music my freshman year of high school, but really got into it and started taking it seriously when I was 17.”
Ben: “I’ve probably been writing music for four years and producing music for two.”
Q: What kind of music do you play?
A: “I play mostly alternative singer-songwriter stuff, the kind where you can sing along or cry to. I’m also in an ambient emo band called Versor with Ben.”
B: “For Short Term, I guess you could say that we play progressive rock. That’s the genre it falls into. For Versor, it’s ambient emo. I also have a side project called Ponds, and it’s ambient music, too.”
Q: What particular skills that you acquired with Carpe have you used with creating this compilation?
A: “ Being with Carpe has taught me how to work with other musicians, which has helped in recording, collaborating and reimagining the Christmas covers on Sawyer’s album. They have also taught me to be musically creative which has definitely helped in putting our own spin on these Christmas songs.”
B: “Music-wise, Carpe taught me how to use an instrument, so of course I used those instrument skills. Carpe helped me learn how to tastefully and purposefully play that instrument. I applied the concepts of playing tastefully and kind of when to do what from Carpe. From a production standpoint, I used those skills a lot to figure out a way to create the best end product.”
Q: What is this project about?
A: “This project was created so we could have fun making Christmas music and to raise money for the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization based out of Alabama. It provides effective legal representation for prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted or did not receive a fair trial. It’s posted on BandCamp so that listeners can donate by purchasing the album digitally!”
B: “The album is somewhat of a celebration of everybody’s different musical talents. It gave people an outlet to be creative without having to have a lot of stake attached to it. More so, I’m saying that the album gives a place for a bunch of different artists to create whatever they want without being scrutinized; they can kind of run with whatever they want to do. Also, it’s really fun, covering Christmas songs is fun, and people got to take a step outside of what they normally do. For example, Versor created a lo-fi song, which is not our typical genre. It gave a place for people to explore but was also a welcoming place. Sometimes the world of publishing music and creating music can be really savage and you can often be cast aside pretty quickly if it doesn’t meet the standards of mainstream contemporary music, so it was a project to let everybody do their thing and appreciate each other.”
Q: And finally, What was your role in creating this project?
A: “I covered “Merry Christmas Darling” by the Carpenters and “Away In a Manger” for our Versor cover. I was mostly involved musically, but also in the recording process to some extent.”
B: “I played instruments on this album and recorded four of the songs. I produced my own song, helped Abbi, Versor, and Short Term creatively produce their songs, and mixed and mastered 80% of the songs. I think there are only about three or four that I didn’t mix.
The project, called “Sawyer and Friends Christmas!!!” can be found here on Bandcamp, and is available for purchase. 50% of the proceeds from purchases will go to the Equal Justice Initiative. Merry Christmas!
Written by Macklin Zehr