Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU students, Jane Amstutz and Gabe Schall:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas, and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. A tradition at colleges and universities is the fight song and the alma mater. Will Anderson is a professor in CMU's School of Communications, Journalism, and Media. He secured one of the 2025 GO grants I've told you about, and he created a new CMU song. Jane Amstutz, a junior from Manistee, provided the vocals, and Gabe Schall, a junior from Saginaw, engineered and recorded it in studio in Moore Hall. They both joined me in our studio to talk about it…
Jane, we'll start with you. How did you get involved with this, coming to be a part of the project?
Jane Amstutz:
Will reached out to me, I believe, late summer of last year. He had seen my performance on Summit Sessions Live, and he thought that I might be somebody that could be a good singer for the project. So, I kind of auditioned. I made like a demo tape for him at the end of the summer. And then he got back to me. You know, I think there were a couple other people that might have made a demo, but they ended up going with mine. So that was kind of cool. And then we started working on it in person in January. But really, I just got brought on kind of by chance, him being in the right place at the right time and seeing that performance.
DN:
And Gabe, how did he tap you to be a part of this?
Gabe Schall:
Well, we got to know each other through his copywriting class. I was just his student, completely unrelated, but we both got to understand that we were interested in music making, music production in different ways. And Will came to me as offering the opportunity to actually take advantage of the summer program arts and research grant at CMU, just as a way for us to study guitar recording and creating audio dramas and stuff like that. And then after we had gotten that, he actually got the Go Grant. And so, then I became the producer for the song. So, I was in charge of recording and logging all of his takes. He also picked my brain on some lyric things. I don't know what ideas of mine ended up in the song, if any, but he was bouncing ideas off of me. I might have provided a couple things, but yeah, I was mostly there just as the producer and helping him just record everything and get his ideas down.
DN:
I'm guessing a relatively simple setup in terms of instrumentation and micing and so forth. Back in the day when I was around all of that in Moore Hall, there was a studio that was off of the main control room for WMHW. Is that still where things like this get recorded?
GS:
Yep. Yeah. 182, I think, 184, something like that. But yeah, it's the same studio right by the radio. I've been lucky enough to become pretty familiar with it now through this opportunity over the summer. But yeah, that's where all most of the music recording happens in is in Moore.
DN:
And in the end, what song only or was there a video that was put with this? Or again, that same kind of question, if this were to eventually involve perhaps the folks from theater and dance, might it blend in? Would you think with a vocal performance from you video wise?
JA:
Yeah, I think so. I think the video we have right now is just kind of what we made in the studio. So, it's just kind of to show like the process. But I think it'd be really, really neat to have a video with those added dancers or added instruments. And I mean, if I'm a part of that, would be pretty cool too, I guess.
DN:
Well, Jane Amstutz from Manistee, Junior at CMU, and Gabe Shaw, Saginaw, Junior. All the boxes checked. You're involved in a grant-funded project, working with faculty, representing CMU in a very specific CMU kind of project that now has come to a successful wrap, but there may be more to come. But for now, thanks very much for spending the time with us.
GS:
Yes, thank you.
JA:
Thank you.
