What’s What

I promised some Q and A. I don’t want to bore you to tears, but here are some questions I get all the time.

Q. Can I have the sheet music to your songs?

A. Not right now. I’m sorry, but I didn’t have time to write them all down. I need to be careful how I talk about this one, because I definitely don’t see eye-to-eye with y’all on it. Some people think that if I put out sheet music, I would get super rich from all the people buying the sheet music. I am afraid there is not a lot of money in sheet music. For one person that buys it, all her friends will then copy it. Secondly, it has never been my dream for everyone in the world to be able to play my music. It has been my dream to hear my music performed by people that I love to listen to. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, or that you don’t sound great. Someone asked me last night, “Isn’t there just a program where you play it in, and it just prints out sheet music?” The simple answer is yes, but the real answer is no… it is not that easy, and it takes me about ten hours to transcribe a song in a way that I think looks good. I am exploring avenues to get some of the music transcribed, but it is just not my top priority at this time.

Q. Is that you singing on the CD?

A. Haha! Did it sound like me? Okay… there are no stupid questions. A lot of people have even asked me if there is any singing on the CD. The best way to know for yourself, is... listen to the CD. If you read down through the posts here, I feature all the people who performed for me. I am not sure why the confusion, but the CD is made up of thirteen tracks. Ten of the songs are original songs that I have written. One of those is just piano. The other nine are songs with vocals. I asked some of my favorite singers to sing the songs. I played all the instrumental parts, with the exception of Shelley Johnson’s lovely cello. I sang with the background singers on two of the songs, but I am quite positive you will not be able to pick out my voice. In fact, I made really really really sure of that.

Q. Did you actually write Did You Know? or did you just arrange it? Because I already have it on another CD I purchased. (Strangely, I get this question about several of the songs that I wrote on the CD).

A. I am glad the song sounds familiar to you, but I am afraid you must be mistaken. I did indeed write the words and the music. “Did You Know?” did not start out as a Christmas song. I wrote verses two and three for one of my boys to sing for my son Dillon’s baptism when he was eight years old. The first verse I added a couple of years later so that a children’s choir could sing the song for a Christmas concert. All of the songs on the CD, with the exception of “Silent Night,” “O Holy Night,” and “In the Bleak Midwinter” are written entirely by me. For those three traditional carols, I wrote the arrangements that you hear on the CD.

If you have questions you would like to ask about the music or the CD, please feel free to ask in the comments section. I have a little sarcasm problem, for which I am seeking help, but I promise to control it and respond with a nice friendly answer.

Done, and Done.

Or maybe done... and done in. This has been a hard, no-fun week for me, and lonely, in an odd sort of way. There are always a jillion people around, but not to help me do this job. And certainly not in the middle of the night. Lonely is the right word, I think.

I made a breakthrough today when I “mastered” the CD for duplication. I have been worried about this, because I have burned CDs of things I have recorded before, and the quality has always been disappointing to me. I wondered if the problem was with Logic Studio, but for heaven’s sake, it is a professional program, and it is supposed to turn out a top-quality product. But when I would play back CDs, I would get sort of a thin, tinny piano sound, and the strings and voices would sound a little shrill to me. Certainly not the rich sound that comes from my speakers or headphones. But I felt inspired to research the mastering process a little before I made the CD... I don’t even know why, because I knew I just had to burn the CD.

The first thing I found is that Logic Studio has a setting for making mp3 format files that uses a higher resolution than standard. Then I found out that the default disc-burning speed is 24x... and apparently the faster you burn a CD, the lower the quality! Who even knew that??? Not even DK, and he knows all kinds of useless facts. Apparently for the good quality CDs, the maximum burn speed should be 4x! And best would be 1x. So I burned one at the slower speed, and then took a spin in the car for a good listen... I like to drive over by the elementary school for this purpose. Don’t even know why. It only took about two minutes before I was ready to do a happy dance... it worked. The quality is awesome.

And DK helped me work on the album art today. I love it. I am looking forward to a less difficult, less lonely week. I may not post any more full-length songs here, because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of the CD, but I am going to eventually get all the words, and stories behind songs up here on the blog... there is not room in the CD insert for all the lyrics, so I will put them up here instead. Have a great weekend...