Talking about Beautiful Waterloo Day, about university life. Taking a road trip to California, in pursuit of engineering jobs. Tristan has some recorded music, not yet available to the public. Experimental stuff, synthesizers and software. Liz hasn’t recorded anything yet, she’s only been playing guitar for about a year. Tristan has been designing and building modular synthesizers, and even sold some! Liz paints, plays music, and writes. Just music, not poetry or books. Liz puts down the music first, chords first, then melody, then words. Liz has only been writing music for a year, too. Talking about the chords in Beautiful Waterloo Day. It took about six hours for the first draft, maybe fifteen hours total. But Liz is not a perfectionist. Liz introduces the next song, with lyrics by David Andreasen, Tristan did the guitar work, Liz wrote the melody.
This is a recent song, written in the last month. Talking about influences in song writing: life, love, and personal experience. Liz’s mom, singer Jacquie Drew, had a motorcycle accident this summer, so Liz designed an obstacle detection system for motorcycles, and went to Death Valley to test it. The beauty of Death Valley inspired the next song.
Liz tells us more about mechatronics, part of robotics, including mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. Liz uses the artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT a lot. It’s OK for engineering where answers are clear, maybe not so much for politics or social studies. Professors are (mostly) not going to be replaced, ChatGPT doesn’t have the human touch. ChatGPT is not so good at writing music. And there’s the ethics: Is ChatGPT stealing content? And what about autonomous vehicles?
Liz has written four songs in the first year of playing guitar; where does she get her talent? Her mom, Jacquie Drew, has offered support and ideas for songs. Tristan gets his musical influence from his dad. Liz has played at several Open Mic nights in Toronto and Waterloo. Liz and Tristan have just created Midnight Maple, the name under which they perform. They’ve got a recording setup, and will be sending some new songs to Radio Waterloo! Now that exams are over they’ll be concentrating on music. Then they’re road-tripping to California, destination Silicon Valley. Tristan will be designing hardware for robotic vacuum cleaners guided by sensors and AI, so it doesn’t bump into walls. Liz is taking it easy at first, but will also be working in engineering. They’ll be coming back in June for convocation, we’ll catch up with them then.
53m29s
Bob gives the end credits while Liz and Tristan play us out.
CKMS Community Connections Hour One airs on CKMS-FM 102.7 on Monday from 11:00am to Noon, and Hour Two airs alternate Fridays from 3:00pm to 4:00pm.
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