Senior Kwon produces quarantine-inspired album from home

Self-made: Costa senior Jack Kwon has the equipment, guitar and piano that he used to make his album, “Quarantine Album,” laid out. Kwon started making his album during quarantine and released the album on Aug. 8. Photo Courtesy of Jack Kwon

By Taylor Phillips

Copy Editor

Senior Jack Kwon laid down a beat as he wrote and produced his new album, “Quarantine Album,” which he released on August 8.

Kwon has been classically trained to play the piano for 13 years. He also learned how to play the violin when he was in third grade and after playing the violin for five years, he transitioned into playing the viola in eighth grade. Kwon taught himself how to play the guitar throughout middle school as well.

“I have always enjoyed playing and listening to music, and it’s something that I do [a lot] during my free time,” Kwon said.

Along with playing multiple different instruments, Kwon is interested in writing his own music. He never really had the time to dedicate himself to writing new songs, due to school and other extracurriculars, according to Kwon. When quarantine started last spring, Kwon took some time to learn how to write and produce music on his own.

“I really didn’t start thinking about writing a full album until I had written a few songs,” Kwon said. “After those songs, I thought that it would be cool if I made my own album.”

Kwon had a few songs written in March and April but started the process of creating his album in May. The first thing that he did was write the chord progressions and lyrics for each of his songs. According to Kwon, he would create the chord progressions first, and then write the lyrics to the songs so that the lyrics would be able to mesh with the sounds of the song.

“Because I am much more inclined on instruments, chord progressions came very easily to me,” Kwon said. “However, because I never really was a singer and was never that clever with poetry and creative writing, the lyrics came harder to me. The time spent on each song really depends because sometimes a song will come to me in minutes. There is one song on the album that I wrote in under 20 minutes. However, there are other songs that take a lot of work and trial and error to really make it great.”

After writing the lyrics and the chord progressions, Kwon turned to the production and recording of the album. According to Kwon, before making his album, he did not have that much experience with music production. Throughout the process of making his album, Kwon experimented with different digital programs, such as Garageband and Cubase, different digital audio workstations and different equipment, such as microphones and audio interfaces, to help him create his album.

“Because I didn’t know anything in the beginning, it was very difficult to get the sounds that I wanted, and it frustrated me a little bit. I was using Garageband to start off with, but I switched to a program called Cubase about halfway through,” Kwon said. “Cubase had a plethora of sounds and effects that I could use to somewhat make my music sound a little bit cleaner. Eventually, by the time I started recording, I had a very basic understanding of production, and I had all the equipment that I needed to record my music.”

Kwon named the album “Quarantine Album,” as the majority of the songs on the album were inspired by the experiences and thoughts of Kwon during quarantine. According to Kwon, his favorite song that he wrote on the album was “Quarantine With Me,” and his favorite song based on the final product of his album was “Drive On.”

“A song that a lot of people seemed to like is called ‘Girls are Biology.’ It was kind of random and I wrote it very late, but essentially, I was just ranting about how I didn’t understand anything about girls and just related it to Biology. I only picked biology because I was taking AP Biology last year and struggled a lot in the class. [AP Biology teacher Yoon] Hearn is great, though.”

There are 11 songs total on the album, with 10 original songs and a cover of “Somebody to Love” by Queen. The album can be found on Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music.

“For my entire life, people always knew that I was a decent musician but I never had something to show for it,” Kwon said. “I wrote this album because I wanted to show people my skill, but I also wanted people to relate to my experiences.”