Harry Porter’s Unique Approach to Making Music

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Tyler Bazemore

Harry Porter ‘21 creates his music using FL Studio on a personal laptop. Many of the sounds in Porter’s music come from sources on the internet. “I usually just come across a sample when I find something that I think would sound good in a song and be appropriate to use in a song.”

Tyler Bazemore, Staff Writer

With the number of kids participating in band and choir class at HB, you almost certainly know someone with musical talent. With the rise of electronic music, you might even know some electronic music producers at the school. But do you know of anyone at HB with a less conventional approach to making music? If you happen to know Harry Porter ‘21, then you do. Porter has made a wide range of music, from minimal, hip-hop-inspired instrumentals on albums such as Liquid Consciousness, to dream-esque vaporwave on Sleep and bizarre noisescapes on Atomic Robot 2030.

 

One stand-out feature of Porter’s music is his unique sound design. Many of Porter’s sounds come from videos and audio clips he has found on the internet, such as sounds from his song It’s A Sinking Ship. “There’s this one thing I found, it was oscilloscope music … it sounded really dark and ambient, and I thought it would be cool to put into a beat. So I did, I kind of remixed it a little bit, put it into a beat, and made that into a song,” said Porter.

 

Not only does Porter’s music have a wide variety of sounds, but a wide variety of emotions as well. Many of these ideas for music and soundscapes come from the sensations Porter gets while listening to music.

“Usually, when I listen to music, I feel emotions, whether it be relaxed, pumped up, or just really really soft or something. I usually try and make music to replicate different things, whether it be emotions or ideas. Or just to clear my mind.”

— Harry Porter

 said Porter.

 

There are many other musical artists at HBHS. One of these artists is Lia Eisenberg ’21, a guitarist and vocalist. She listened to a few of Porter’s songs, and immediately found inspiration from them. “I wouldn’t say I’ve always stuck with one style of music, but I do love Motown, pop, rap… but I’m definitely going to try to get into other genres in music and experiment more. And he’s definitely experimenting, which sounds super cool, so it definitely will inspire me to step out of my comfort zone, too,” said Eisenberg.

 

Porter has already found some appeal at the school, having a few fans, such as Izaac Rutherford ’21. “It’s very different. One of his tracks, he takes synthwave-type elements and turns it into something more dark and brooding that… definitely, I wouldn’t expect,” said Rutherford, describing a unique element of Porter’s music that he enjoys.

 

A more extreme example of Porter’s sampling of sounds and videos he finds online are his vaporwave albums, Sleep and Fantasy (Dreamscape). In these albums, he takes pre-existing songs and applies effects to them to create entirely new songs with different moods. As an example, his song Fog of the Heart samples Rock Shop from the Robocop soundtrack.

Porter has said that he has new content in the works, with projects planned as far out as 2021. You can check out Porter’s music on his Bandcamp page.