Behind The Songs

So people have been asking me what my songs are about and how I started so I'll attempt to give a short synopsis of the whole background of my music without boring you.

Pretty much I knew I wanted to be a singer when I was four. I was told I'd grow out of it but since I'm currently working on my upcoming album I doubt that's actually factual. I fell in love with guitars when I was seven though I never acquired one until I was in my teens.
Learning to play it was probably one of the most challenging things I ever aspired to do especially since I was self taught. But music is the one thing that has the ability to completely frustrate yet never fail to almost instantly lure me back. The frustration generally sets in when you have writer's block or things just don't quite go the way you'd originally planned.

I've listened to...oh let's say roughly 350+ artists and counting; pretty much every genre there is. I can't say I'm terribly picky with music, which is not by any means a good thing but technically that's me. I've heard the amazingly good, the really bad, and the despicably horrible but it helped me to learn a lot when it comes to songwriting.
Most songs are about love, life, and the pursuit of happiness. So let's say mine are roughly around that while staying true to the whole "music theory.". "Music is what feelings sounds like." If you've ever heard that quote. So I wanted my music to really be a reflection of somthing different and unique. Maybe a tad unorthdox to some but with a reflection of myself and others. The difference is that I've endeavored to extricate the use of, not really that subtle anymore, euphemisms of sexual innuendos and, never subtle, vernacular of atrocious expletives while producing a deeper more philisophical side of things.
Cursing in a song bothers me the most because, not only don't I like it, but I feel as though the song was never structurally sound enough to stand on it's own without it and ultimately displays a complete lack of aptitude on the writer's part.

I love a song that has good lyrics to it. Something that's clandestine but overt enough to be interpreted into an appropriate meaning. Sadly there aren't a lot of artists that write that way anymore.
I won't delve into my music likes and so on since that could most likely be controversial depending on how judgemental you are. I personally don't care what you listen to, if that's your thing go for it.
Anyway a lot of songs nowadays are based mostly off of all the wrong things, so it really doesn't leave much room for intelligent writing construction. Or maybe it's because that's the style of today so it's fitting and never needs to be disputed.

I like to smash the status quo in some things and songwriting is definitely one of them. When I write a song I would want my listeners to be able to relate to it in some way, and provide them with some really deep thought provoking material.
A song is really just a short, poetic story if you think about it. You want it to say a lot without being monotonous, or stupid, which is another thing song artists actually seem to take pride in. Think it's not true? Example of stupid. I'd be shocked if you never listened to "What Did The Fox Say." A two year old would write better. Yeah, I know. And for all everyone hated it, it became very popular, very quickly and got a lot of thumbs up.
Monotonous. You can't write a song based off of four words for the bridge and the riff and call it a good song. I love a good beat as much as the next person but some words really help...like more than four or six....seriously.

So hopefully I gave you a rough idea of what my songs are going to be like or not have, and I'm still working on my album so I'll try to keep you updated on things as I go along.

My Book! :D

 

 

I finally got the proof of my book yesterday just as I was leaving my house. To say I was excited would be the understatement of the year! This isn’t the kind of excitement like when you get a new shirt, hoodie or kewl skateboard sneakers, (or maybe I’m the only one who has this happen to me) it was definitely a couple steps up!

 

So everyone was sure I was going to put out the fantasy novel I’d been writing and honestly so was I. But after close to four years of persuasion from my brother I figured it was about time to do this first, one of the many things I said I would never do. ^_^ However I am still a musician but this was something new and fun to work on.

I think just about everything I wrote in this book was written like three years ago so it was a case of rummaging through all my papers and finding the ones I liked the best then putting it all together.

The best part was designing the book cover with my brother. It was so much fun to work with him like we use to do when we were little and all the laughs we had just made it perfect.

I actually got the picture from my grandmother’s rose garden and it was so beautiful that when I decided to do my book I just knew they would be perfect for the cover. We were experimenting with a bunch of various colors for the border because I thought either red or pink would work so I was pretty much like leaning over his shoulder going “put it in red, put it in red….okay fine, put it in pink, put it in pink, PUT IT IN PINK!! And at the end we thought it was pretty.

So I will give more details later but for now that’s about it and I can’t wait to publish it in a few days. = )

 

 

 

 

　
　

 

You Raise Me Up Track # 11 off my upcoming album All I Want

 

 

So here is one of the songs that will be featured on my upcoming album (All That I Want)  called You Raise Me Up. (Please note this is only a demo and not the finished song) It's actually #11 the bonus track, and the only song on this album that I neither wrote the lyrics or music for. I was originally going to upload a demo of one of my own songs that I'd written but unfortunately I don't really have a lot of time and so to save on the time of copyrighting a 1:00 min clip and making sure it was exclusive until I'd done so I just decided to go ahead and post this one.

This is mostly for my brother who, when I first started playing guitar, kept constantly saying "I'd really love to hear you do just one song from Celtic Woman and put it on your album."

I didn't want to because, that in my book, is some serious competition, and I was like "Really bro, they took voice lessons for years, they have great musicians and they're actually GOOD!" But he always encourages me, and never listened to all the doubts I had/have in myself and just kept telling me I really should.

So I acquiesced. The ironic part is that after I did the guitar part with this song I gave him a choice between just the vocals and the combination of the two and he wanted this one. <_< (Spoiler alert. I'm actually gonna put it back in and then do the whole orchestra build up at the end, and that's all I'll say. ;) )

Anyway feel free to lemme know what you think, I will do a song with guitar so you guys can hear that too but for now I hope you like this selection. :]

To my brother (I know this is nowhere NEAR as good as Celtic Woman but dedication goes to you anyways. Stay Awesome. :) )

 

Just got down a track list for my upcoming music album All That I Want. Hopefully I will have the time to get the recording of it done and I am SO excited!!!! :D :D It's done solely with my electric and acoustic guitar but hopefully by the time I'm ready to do the second one I'll have some more help. Maybe. I dunno. I'm just thrilled I actually got something to work with right now. :)

Interesting thing. I found a REALLY CHEAP violin online for....no lemme make you wait for this. You'll never guess....Okay maybe you might, Alright I'm ready now... $50,000 dollars! :o I know right?!?!  For realz they come cheaper but still this is one of those rare moments I'm glad I'm a sorta guitarist. No really. I am. Now I just want to actually build my own violin. :D

So I am back. :) Truthfully I had forgotten I had this blog.
Honestly I've had a lot going on so I tend to be a bit social media apathetic. Sorry.
I just started playing Boulevard Of Broken Dreams by Green Day on my Acoustic guitar but I switched to my Electric because I'm a bit partial to it and I thought it sounded better. I'm actually really happy that I CAN play it since I just started learning guitar about two years ago. It's really weird because when I first started I had literally NO music experience and to say the utter least my playing was deplorable.
I can't tell you how many times I gave up and wished I had never even started. I was beyond disappointed and I thought for sure I could never do it. Then I took my brother's advice and asked God to help me  (I have to give Him credit because without Him I know I would've remained terrible. :/) and that was the day I wrote and tabbed my first song within the space of 30 mins. From then on songs became easier to play and I was so happy!
The best lesson I learned was that with God all things are possible and that no matter how bad things look or how impossible it may seem, don't ever give up and don't ever give in.

"You can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens you."

I'm also doing song requests so if theres's a song you'd like to hear please by all means let me know. :)