Nico Sardi, a senior at NWA, is part of an after school program at NWA focused on creating new music through digital media.
“I am learning how to mix and use software and put a whole song together,” Sardi said.
Throughout the course of the class, Sardi has created three original songs. The first song came from his love of video games and their sounds.
“At first I was experimenting with drum beats but it wasn’t really going anywhere,” said Sardi. “I decided to ask my sister for help. We ended up making a song from video game sounds.”
Sardi was inspired to take the class by his sister, who is a sound engineering student at Belmont University in Nashville. Sardi wanted to take the opportunity to learn more about what she was so passionate about.
“I saw the audio technology class last year,” said Sardi, “and my sister told me that that is pretty much what she is doing, so I decided to do it.”
In the class, Sardi often felt out of place as he did not play any instruments, so he decided to teach himself the bass.
“I was seeing people jamming, and I thought about how I used to play drums,” said Sardi, “and right when I got on the drum set I realized I had lost it. So, I took that opportunity to learn another instrument, and I decided to learn how to play the bass.”
The first song that Sardi learned on the bass was one of his own. He played the sample on his third song that he made for the class.
“In my third song, I was in a learning phase [with the bass], so I recorded a bass sample and added some drums to it and synced it up,” said Sardi. “It actually turned out to be a really good beat. It was actually the first song that I ever learned to play on the bass.”
Sardi doesn’t plan to do audio engineering as a career but appreciates the lessons it taught him in trying new things.
“I don’t think I am going to be pursuing music [as a potential career] but I have taken many opportunities throughout high school to learn different skills and I think that will be super helpful later on,” said Sardi.
