Introduction
I am Alexandra McElhoe, and I am a junior at Arlington High School. This is my third year being part of the Music Tech Program, and although I've learned a lot, I am still continuing to learn new things about
music everyday. I have been playing the piano and singing for over a decade, and music plays a very valuable role in my life. Learning the different aspects of music is challenging and intriguing to me, and I
would like music to remain an important part of my life everyday even after I graduate.

Musical Influences
There isn't one particular style of music I write or listen to. If you scrolled through my iPod, you would find a tremendous variety of songs ranging from Bach's Toccata and Fugue to Shakira's Suerte to Lil' Wayne's 6 Foot 7 Foot. I grew up in an American household, but as a little girl I was always surrounded by Spanish - speaking relatives so for the first four to five years of my life, the music I mostly listened to was Shakira's American and Latina dance songs such as Objection (Tango) which I loved for it's combination of dance and tango music. I also was in love with Elvis's most popular songs like You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock because I loved to sing along to the catchy melodies. By the time I was five years old, I began learning piano and then classical music was becoming a huge style of music in my life. My amazing teacher, Allison Vannah, educated me on all the classical eras and she taught me the most famous composers in the history of mankind. While learning to sightread and learning to play several different classical songs from different eras, Ms. Vannah herself also became a musical influence tome - she taught me how to approach songs from different angles, how to look at comprehend things musically and she taught me discipline. Even though she moved after I was 12 years old, I still use her techniques everyday.
As I was growing into my middle school years, I became obsessed with new stars at the time like Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne. At the time, they wrote very famous pop - rock style songs that I always wanted to sing and dance too. I soon also became a huge fan of more punk-rock bands like Evanescence because I liked the alternative and minor music that they produced. I especially loved their song Bring Me To Life. A little farther into middle school, I also became obsessed with guitar hero and I began listening and learning all the classic rock songs from the game such as Slow Ride and Cliffs of Dover and these were all songs I thoroughly appreciated for their originality. At the end of my middle school lifespan, I started to self-teach myself the piano so I became very influenced by pop piano ballads that were pretty, popular, and easy to learn like Listen to Your Heart (Roxette), Jar of Hearts (Christina Perri) and Someone Like You (Adele). Going into high school, my self-teaching of the piano developed me into a fantastic chord reader, so I would listen to ballads, pop, and rock songs on the radio and then I would look up the chords and emulate the songs. To this day, I have been listening to pop singers like Christina Aguilera, who has a way of incorporating blues and jazz into her voice and songs. Blues and jazz are the most recent genres that I am still exploring today.
My musical influences and how I write songs grow from lots of different places on my musical map. I grew up going through different genre phases in my life, but I am incredibly grateful for that because now when I write music I have lots of different techniques I can use. Even if the songs I write sometimes only pertain to a specific genre, I try to incorporate tricks and licks from other styles of music to make the music I write more unique and original.
Musical Projects
The Rejoice - I wrote this song making my own back track for drums, strings, and keyboard. It starts slow and quiet, and then develops into a whole new sound. Ideally, someone could sing or rap over it but as of now it sounds great just as an instrumental!
Space Invaders - I wrote this song for the computer - programming class in the fall. The class was in the middle of making their own Space Invaders game, and when asking for 30 seconds songs they could use as backtracks, I made this!
Classical B minor - I wrote this song to potentially play as a back song to any dramatic part in a movie or play. The mp3 available is made with the basic reaper software piano and strings instruments, and the quality is pretty rough. However, I have almost written complete sheet music for the piano and for strings so that one day this piece could be played live.
Slave for You - This was my concert piece. It's called Slave for You, and I played it with voice and piano. This mp3 has a different piano playing the melody instead of me singing it, but when I performed it I sang it live. This has definitely been one of my proudest songs regarding the overall outcome of the song- the lyrics, the music, and the voice really go well together and I am in the process of getting a professional recording for it for this website.
ET Cover - This is a cover I made of Extra - Terrestrial by Katy Perry. I recorded it professionally with my voice and the piano and I added some backing vocal tracks. I changed the mood and tone of the song from poppy to more acoustic.
Comments (1)
Eva Gianelli said
at 11:22 am on Mar 12, 2014
Its really cool have you have such a wide range of interests. It really shows throughout the songs you compose. Also I think its awesome that you are starting to get really into blues and jazz because I also really like blues. :DD
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