Student Spotlight: Sam Cordasco

Jorge Chabo

6 years ago

Sam Cordasco, a music education major in the Frost School of Music, has had a love for music, as she describes, since she could make noise.

“My parents had these children’s tapes that they would play in the car and I wouldn’t shut up, I wouldn’t stop singing the children’s songs,” Cordasco said. “So my parents were like she needs other things to sing, I was driving them insane.”

They signed her up for the church community choir and her love for singing took flight, which led to her choosing voice as her principal instrument for her major.

Cordasco also plays the piano, but has learned the basics of nearly every instrument.

“[The School of Music] makes sure we at least hold all the instruments, so I’ve had a class on brass techniques, woodwind techniques, strings, percussion, folk and modern [music],” she said.

The senior does many performances for both the School of Music and the music sorority, Sigma Alpha Iota. Cordasco also does live performances when she goes home to New Jersey.

“My dad has a coffee shop attached to his bicycle store, but the guy who runs the coffee store, he’s also really into music, so he has a café jam on Saturday mornings,” she said.

Though she covers songs, she also writes her own music.

“A lot of the earlier songs I’ve written I start with just piano accompaniment because that’s what was most accessible to me, so all of my songs started sounding really slow and ballad-like,” Cordasco said.

She recently discovered a feature on Garageband called Apple Loops, and uses it in the song she is currently working on to change her sound.

“I was able to add percussion and guitar and it influenced how the melody will sound and it allows me to write more,” she said. “I don’t only like to listen to music that has piano, so I can actually more accurately show influences from other artists that I like.”

Cordasco incorporates clips of congas and bongos in her work in progress, an influence from Emily King.