Jackson Tower's CWP Portfolio
This portfolio compiles some of the best work I completed over the course of my time attending Berklee College of Music. I wanted to explore different genres and types of compositions that I'd done very little of in the past, so in this portfolio you'll find an orchestral piece, a big band jazz arrangement, an electronic piece, two advertisements I scored, and an upcoming song to be released by my band, Tower Brothers.
Personal Project
This song was written and recorded by my band, Tower Brothers, and it is one of our upcoming singles. My brother, Owen Tower, sings lead vocals and plays rhythm guitar, Thomas Prescott plays lead guitar and does some backing vocals, Joe Lostumbo plays bass, and I play the piano, keyboards, extra guitars, the rest of the backing vocals, and I programmed the drums. This song was produced by me as well. This track is unique for us because of the several key changes and the brief time signature changes throughout the song. The writing process was very collaborative and we even worked with a friend of the band for some feedback, which was new for us as well, since we usually write songs alone and bring them to the band to work on. This track explores some new mixing techniques I’ve been learning about in my classes, like using multipressors on the mastering chain for example, and I feel that my work especially learning about vocal production has helped the vocals on this track stand out and sound fresh. As a band, we are very proud of this song and we are so excited to release it very soon!
Orchestral Piece
When given a choice for my Berklee major, I knew I had to pick Contemporary Writing and Production (CWP) simply because one of the last classes in the major was Writing for Orchestra. When I finally made it through the major and arrived at this class, I took this opportunity to be as ambitious as possible. This piece was written as a musical story, where the trumpet and violin are the main characters who meet, fall in love, and breakup after a disagreement. The piece begins introducing the trumpet’s melody, written in the key of E major, and following that is the violin’s melody, written in the key of B major. These two keys are almost identical in their key signatures, so they play off one another nicely. The two melodies converge and have a conversation with each other, however it is only a matter of time until they reach a disagreement. The one note different between the two keys is the A note in E major and the A# note in B major. This discrepancy reaches a head when the trumpet and the violin land on their respective A notes at the same time. The music stops and the two characters argue over which note is right. After an angry fight, the two melodies separate and fade away as the music reaches its end. This represents the end of the relationship and the end of the story. I would say that the countless hours I spent writing this piece were worth it as I am so incredibly proud of how it came out. I was so fortunate to get the opportunity to record a real live orchestra playing my piece and I am so thankful for all of the players and for the studio for allowing me this opportunity, and I am so so thankful to my professor, Ady Cohen, for helping me with feedback and for providing me with a third take to record my piece. The video of the live recording session is on my YouTube.
Ensemble Piece
In my sixth semester at Berklee, I took a class called Writing for Big Band, and though for the final project I wasn’t able to pick the song I wanted to arrange, I found the challenge of writing an arrangement of a jazz standard for a big band to be invigorating and fun. The standard I was assigned was “I Wish I Knew” by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, and I found this piece to be perfect to work with. It had a simple enough melody that was easy to embellish, and the harmony was complicated enough for 13 horns to all have something different to play. Since starting Berklee, I’ve listened to a lot more jazz, and writing an arrangement of this tune gave me the opportunity to explore all of my favorite sounds and textures within the genre. This chart features a guitar solo which was performed by one of my best friends, Thomas Prescott, who is also the lead guitarist in our band, Tower Brothers. I am very proud of the horn arrangements I made with this project and I am so thankful I had the opportunity to record a live big band. This was definitely one of the coolest things I got to do at Berklee!
Contemporary Electronic Track
This piece was one I produced for my Electronic Writing and Production class. The assignment was to make a dubstep track using FM synthesis and wave table synths. I based the aesthetics of this track off of the electronic music I listened to as a pre-teen, which I’d describe as mostly chiptune-adjacent melodic dubstep with an emphasis on structure and contrast. For this project, the element I wanted to focus on the most was contrast, so throughout this track I experimented with alternating feels, like 4/4 vs 12/8, as well as contrasting different bass synths in the drops to create a call and response effect. The original version of this track used a large portion of the dialogue from one of my favorite YouTube videos, but due to copyright concerns and wanting to keep my piece as original as possible I removed it and replaced it with my own voice samples. This genre of music is one I have very little experience producing, so it was very fun for me to work on something new and create a track that 13 year old me always dreamed of making.
Advertising Music
In my second semester at Berklee I took a class called Sequencing and Production. One of the assignments in this class was to write music for a commercial, and I found this project to be such a unique challenge for me. Writing music to fit a visual medium was so interesting and fun that I just had to register for Scoring for Advertising in my final semester, especially since it was taught by Ady Cohen (who was my Writing for Orchestra professor). In this class I learned two important things about writing advertisement music: a good score is one the audience doesn’t notice and a good score must always tell a story. These two lessons are what I put into the following two commercials that I scored for this class.
The first of the two is a commercial for Mastercard which features a young boy excited to meet his favorite football player. I wrote a simple theme using only major chords and I built on this theme with more layers and more instruments as the boy and his dad travel to the football stadium. I wanted this increase in momentum to coincide with them driving in the car and getting closer to their destination. When they reach the stadium I bring in the horns, as to emulate a stadium marching band, and when he finally meets his favorite player, I slow the pace of the music down and hold on a single chord to musically represent how the boy is starstruck and freezes in place. I think the techniques I employed in this advertisement work well to compliment the story in the video part of the ad, but I also think that by building and shaping the music around the visuals, the music blends into the background and doesn’t stick out.
The second of the two commercials is one for Air Canada and Cirque du Soleil. Once again I used the two lessons I learned to guide my composition. The commercial shows a young girl on a plane who daydreams about going to see Cirque du Soleil. She walks through a hangar where she encounters many of the talented circus performers and she is filled with wonder and amazement. I wanted the music to sound wondrous and mysterious too, so I used almost entirely major chords (with a few diminished and a couple dominant chords) which gave the harmony a very uplifting yet otherworldly sound. I used synth pads and reverb to create an ethereal atmosphere, which I felt fit with the slow motion footage of the ad. With this score, I focused on timing the music and musical sounds with the actions in the commercial, such as adding a cymbal swell when the unicyclist rides into frame. Like with the last commercial I kept the melodic idea very simple and I built upon it with layers and instruments with different timbres to tell the story of the visuals.
Overall, I am very proud of the work I did with these two commercials and I have discovered that scoring for advertising could be a field of music I’d enjoy working in!