St. Thomas sophomore Bella Nardini said she’s always been musically inclined. She will attempt to show this in the future with a “mini album” which will feature five to six songs across different genres.

Nardini only recently started releasing music. When the Music Industry Club informed her about the 2020 St. Thomas Sampler, she decided it was time to produce and publish some of her music. Nardini, a neuroscience major, started playing piano at age six and took lessons for 12 years.

“After I was put into piano lessons, I just really fell in love with music. And so when I had the opportunity to join choir and also band, I did so in fifth grade,” Nardini said.

After taking piano lessons for so long and building up a collection of other instruments and working on her singing voice, Nardini started making songs on the FL Studio free trial, a music production application, in high school.

When Nardini heard about the sampler, she knew she needed to pursue making her own music.

“I would just start writing things on the piano (and) ended up using the voice memos on my phone to write stuff,” Nardini said.

Nardini had already started writing her song, “Where on Earth,” which found its way onto the May 2020 sampler and became her first released song.

“‘Where on Earth’ was actually the only song that I had fully written at that point,” Nardini said. “It was kind of like my favorite song I’d written so that’s why I wanted to put it out on the sampler and I thought oh, ‘this was really good especially for someone who’s doing this all by herself, people should see this.’”

Nardini said she needed to learn how to use FL Studio by herself so she could have higher quality sounding music and so she could produce everything herself.

“I learned the basic basics on YouTube videos. If I was really stuck, and I didn’t know how to do something, and I really wanted to know how to do something, I would look it up on YouTube,” Nardini said. “A lot of it was just me messing around and trying to figure out, like, ‘what does this button do? What does this button do?’ So a lot of trial and error.”

A lot of Nardini’s music centers around piano chords. She said she usually starts with piano chords and sometimes substitutes them out for other instruments.

Nardini also said her writing process between lyrics and instruments is sporadic.

“I start with piano, then I add bass, melody, just more layers. AndI just keep going on and on and on,” Nardini said. “I’ll just continue writing and it just kind of goes from there, and whatever sound comes out is what comes out.”

When it comes to lyrics, Nardini uses experiences. In her song “Here,” Nardini used her experience of working at a nursing home to write the song.

“One of my residents was really into my music. And so when I started “Here,” I started writing it for him. And then he ended up sadly passing away. So that’s kind of where the concept of it came from is him being there to support me, but now he’s gone,” Nardini said.

Nardini does all of her work by herself on her laptop, using the microphone on her Turtle Beach headset to record herself. She said that working from her bedroom has pros and cons.

“I can just take my time. I don’t need to rush through a song, which can be a good thing or a bad thing,” Nardini said. “It’s kind of nice for the comfortable feeling. But it’s also kind of not nice, because I feel like sometimes I’m not productive, because I’m like, ‘Oh, I have all the time in the world to create this one song.’”

In the future, Nardini intends on releasing a “mini album” featuring five or six songs. She intends to move into different genres with more upbeat songs as well as show some of her influences like Billie Eilish and John Bellion.

“In the past, I’ve only released singles and I think it’d be cool now that I have like three songs and possibly three to three more, just to release all at once,” Nardini said.

Right now, Nardini keeps music as a hobby but says her motto in life is that if one of her hobbies takes off, she’ll pursue it.

“(Making music is) very much a mood thing. If I’m in the mood, I’ll sit down and I’ll write for hours on end. Otherwise, I maybe only touch it for five minutes,” Nardini said.

Nardini said that she finds motivation from encouragement and will continue to grow in her music making ability.

“I just kind of do it out of fun. And, people are just like, ‘oh, you should make more.’ So it’s kind of like, my friends motivate me to make more songs,” Nardini said.

Scout Mason can be reached at maso7275@stthomas.edu.