Brahmas tug on heartstrings
Singing their hearts out, Diamond Bar High School’s Commercial Music program released an album of love song covers in honor of Valentine’s Day.
On Feb. 14, the program started selling physical copies of CDs of their album, “Live, Laugh, Love Me Back!” in person in room 912 for $1 each. The digital release of the album, containing fifteen songs, are available on the DBHS webstore, YouTube and SoundCloud. Some songs featured in their album were popular hits “Sofia” by Clairo, “Valentine” by Laufey and “Cloud 9” by Beach Bunny.
In order to raise funds for new equipment and give students the studio recording experience, Commercial Music decided to record this album and also have fun while doing it. Various bands from the three class periods collaborated on this project, with advertisements of this project done by students themselves.
“We created multiple videos and behind the scenes videos, posters we hung around the school [for promoting the album],” Commercial Music adviser John Jarvis said. “We also had two lunch performances, one on the 13th and one on the 14th, playing songs specifically not on the record.”
Recording an album in a month was a challenging goal, but the student musicians overcame the various obstacles and managed to produce the work by their deadline. Having only one month to prepare the songs and record it in one rehearsal was a rewarding experience.
“In order to give our students the opportunity to record a full-length record, they also [have to] learn the songs very quickly,” Jarvis said. “There was a class objective in order to raise the stakes of learning a song in a short amount of time and a minimal amount of rehearsals.”
The album had been planned since the end of last semester in December, and Commercial Music considered how each song would match the tone of the album. Making sure every song on their album had the word “love” in the lyrics, they stuck to a consistent theme.
“Each student had to work on the song independently or they had to figure out times to meet with their group,” Jarvis said. “While they were doing that, I created tracks that had a click set [metronome] for the song as well as some background songs in order to help the process of the recording. I edit the takes in order to put together the best performance possible.”
Going through multiple shots, Jarvis mixed and mastered the songs to create the record. Together, the band got sound levels for a specific song and recorded from there. Filming bloopers and recording solos for the guitar and vocals, the band had fun experiencing the recording process of an actual recording studio.
“We wanted to do this album because we really thought it’d be fun to spread the Valentine’s love and just play songs together,” sophomore singer Ethan Trinidad said. “And I am very excited for this album. I can’t wait for people to hear and love our music and the kind of story we made for this album.”
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