Hello there! In December, our ongoing homeschool project, Saturn Music & Entertainment, had its first anniversary. 2017 was very successful as a homeschool project. We published three books, interviewed five amazingly talented personalities, explored the world of blockchain/crypto-currencies (a continuing journey), and composed over ten new music compositions – to be released this year.
As we have been learning how to compose music, write books and all the other tasks that comes with running a kids entertainment project, we have been perpetually traveling the world. In 2017, we visited five countries, and took a road trip across the states. The most exciting aspect about our homeschool project is that what we accomplished in 2017 is just the beginning. We have big plans and dreams for Saturn Music & Entertainment. For today’s post, we are going to share with you three big lessons we learned in 2017 on our education journey.
How to put our creativity into form
One of the most valuable lessons that we have learned is how to put our creative ideas into form, and how to best deliver our ideas to our audience. We often ask ourselves: How can we best deliver what we are trying to communicate? Is it relatable in some way? We also think back to when we were younger kids (which wasn’t too long ago) and imagine what we would enjoy. This is how we have brought forth three books, music, and interactive activities.
Another aspect of this lesson is learning how to put our ideas into digital form. While we could have hired a team to put our books together, we decided to take the time to learn how to put our ideas into digital form through the Adobe suite. A year ago, we began taking tutoring lessons from our awesome tutor, Joe Capraro, and he has helped us tremendously. With his help, we have been able to put together our books (and other various projects) in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. In just one year, we were able to use what we’ve learned in Adobe and apply it to FoodCoin’s Style Contest. We are very grateful that we found such a fantastic tutor and mentor.
How to deal with learning curves
Throughout our first year of our education journey, we’ve faced many learning curves. We’ve learned how to work several different programs, how to compose various genres of music, and so much more. One of our biggest learning curves was learning how to self-publish through Createspace. Our first book, Tootsie & Wilson, took the longest to make. Writing the story only took us a couple of days, but all of the elements, such as formatting, took about six months to finalize. After we got experience publishing Tootsie & Wilson, publishing our two other books took less time. Our second book, The Magical Adventures of Wonsook, took a couple of months to put together; and our third book, Little Wonder, only took a couple of weeks to put together once we received the artwork. We were even able to use what we have learned to help our Grandma publish her first children’s book.
Our books are not the only thing that involved a learning curve. A large part of our homeschool project is music. Over the summer, we studied music theory, forms of music, and how to structure our music compositions. We spent many hours at Starbucks working with our stellar music composition tutor, Willow Goodine, to produce better music. We even started learning about mixing and mastering music.
One thing we regret is not being able to release our album, Ludwig the Platypus (based on our future comic book series), over the summer like we had originally planned. We were disappointed at first, but by this project being delayed, it has allowed us more time to evaluate our songs, and see how we can make them even better. With 4-5 months of extra music theory knowledge in our back pocket, we should be able to further improve our music compositions.
How to be flexible (especially when dealing with natural disasters)
The most important lesson that we learned in 2017 is how to be flexible. In fact, this is a lesson that we are still learning. 😉
Many situations came up that presented us with this lesson – such as Hurricane Irma. As we were in the stages of having our music mixed and mastered, our amazingly talented sound engineer, Beau Vallis, had to evacuate his home due to Hurricane Irma. After the hurricane, we began our road trip across the states. We decided that it was best to put the album on hold until we could give it our full attention. This year, one of our goals is to release our music, and distribute our work through blockchain music platforms, such as Bittunes and/or LBRY.
We also learned that a quality product takes time to create. Our mission with Saturn Music & Entertainment is to deliver wholesome, quality entertainment for kids. By focusing our attention and creativity on a couple products at a time, it allows us to complete this mission.
What’s next?
2017 was a fantastic first year for our project. We learned a lot, and look forward to learning even more this year. Our first year of Saturn Music & Entertainment was dedicated to creating content. This year, our goal is to apply business principles – like business plans, marketing, etc. – to Saturn Music & Entertainment, while continuing to create fun content. Applying these new principles will help us advance further in our learning, as well as benefit the project.
This year, we are adding new elements to Saturn Music & Entertainment that we think you’ll enjoy. To keep up to date on our new releases, be sure to follow us on Steemit, and here through our website.
2017 Photo Highlights
2017 was a very educational and adventurous year. We made many memories that will last a lifetime. Here, we’ve created a collage of some of our favorite highlights of the year.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We would like to thank everyone that has been a part of the creation and development of our homeschool project, Saturn Music & Entertainment:
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Kata Upama – Illustrator for Tootsie & Wilson, The Magical Adventures of Wonsook, and Little Wonder
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Joe Capraro – Adobe suite tutor
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Willow Goodine – Music composition instructor
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Beau Vallis – Sound Engineer
And thanks to all of our Creative Minds United interviewees:
We would like to thank our friends, family, and the cryptocurrency/blockchain community. We appreciate your support through our learning journey, and are grateful to know so many awesome people that support us. We are excited to begin a new stage of Saturn Music & Entertainment, and look forward to sharing our latest works with you.
Finally, we would like to give huge thanks to our fantastic parents. We are incredibly grateful for their patience, kindness, and support through our education journey.
As always, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more awesome content.
Cheers!
For those who are interested in supporting our homeschool education, consider buying one of our music pieces, here, or one of our children’s books, here.