The Story to the Song
August is Here and It’s Time for School- But Not for Me!!
I can’t believe that a month has passed by and that it’s blog week once again. Last month, I left off by saying that I wasn’t going to continue uploading music videos consistently every month. I didn’t create or upload a video for July, and the timing for this decision couldn’t have been better! My everyday life got crazy and I didn’t have time to focus on my YouTubing life. Taking this break was really needed. But will there be a video for August? Maybe.. we’ll see.. What I think is interesting though is that last week I once again came across a video that I could relate to. It was about a YouTuber wanting to quit then deciding not to. A few minutes after watching it, I came across another video quite similar to the last one. I watch the channels of both of these YouTubers, so seeing their examples of not giving up was inspiring! Feel free to watch those videos yourself:
Anyways, it’s August which means that school will be starting soon. Last August I was trying to finish school and then waiting for my diploma to come in the mail. As I’ve mentioned before, it was a bittersweet moment. But this year I feel more inclined to reminisce on “the good ol’ days of college life” and be glad that I don’t actually have to go to school this year. Yay! No homework! Just a bunch of awesome memories to look back on while I continue to enjoy the summer weather.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write fun back stories of my fun memories at school. July REALLY WAS crazy busy! So this is all you’re getting from me for this month’s blog week. More like a blog day. Yup, I’m not even going to bother with a Friday blog. Maybe I’ll have more time to write these fun memories for my September blogs. Until then, make sure you check out my shop and videos! Good luck to all of you starting school this fall!
Sending a White Flag to YouTube
Hello again to my blog! Before you continue reading, please watch this YouTube video made by Channel Makers so that you can understand where I’m coming from:
I have mentioned that when I started making my first YouTube music video, I was told that I needed to be consistent in putting out my videos. Since I wanted to do music videos though, I decided to do monthly consistent videos rather than weekly or daily videos. But even then, technical difficulties came up again and again and again. Eventually, and like I mentioned in my blog about Analyzing my Star Wars T-shirt, I was starting to feel like the stuff I was uploading onto YouTube wasn’t that good. The only music “video” I’ve been able to make this year is my January video. All my actual music videos after that have been a bunch of pictures that go with the music. The reason why I have had a desire to make music videos on YouTube is because I did Theater in High School, and I wanted to SHOW everyone the story of each song, not just sing it.
Along with that, it’s taking me a lot of time to get my songs recorded. I want to re-record my previous songs and have them sound more professional, then put them on my SoundCloud account. I also want to do the same with my upcoming original songs before making their videos so I don't have to worry about re-recording those songs as well. But most of my songs include piano accompaniment, and I either need to find a piano that is perfectly in tune or an electric piano that plugs into my computer. Which hasn’t been easy for me. I’m just a poor musician trying to figure out technology.
Not to mention that I have a white board full of unfinished songs that either have unfinished lyrics or unfinished accompaniment. And I’m suddenly having this HUGE desire to WRITE A FILM SCORE!!! I don’t know what’s gotten into me, but I’m fascinated with the idea of writing a film score! These sudden desires, as well as the video at the beginning of this blog, has gotten me thinking about what my priorities really are. Last summer a group of friends asked me if I was writing any new songs, and I just said to them that I was trying to focus on my music videos. But what if I’ve had it backwards this whole time? I’ve been spending so much time in front of my computer feeling frustrated over my editing software when I could have been using that time to compose music. The more I think about this, the more I feel that it is better for me to focus on being a composer than on being a YouTuber. Just writing that sentence down got me excited! I am a composer!!
So with that in mind, I’ve written this blog just to say that I’m going to take a break from doing monthly YouTube videos. I’m not quitting altogether, I still plan on uploading videos. I’ve just decided to upload videos with consistent quality instead of consistent quantity or a consistent schedule. As I mentioned at the beginning of yesterday’s blog, I’ve been consistently uploading monthly videos for the same amount of time that I was on a full time mission. I think that’s a good reason to change things up a bit. In the meantime, continue to be on the lookout for my future blogs and items in my shop, and please donate to my website! Your donations just might help me get the right piano to record my songs more professionally!
I hope this blog and the video I’ve shared gives efficient knowledge and comfort to the YouTubers who are feeling burnt out or feel any shame for wanting to take a break. It’s okay to take a break, as long as you remember to get back up again!
Thanks for reading all the way to the end of my blog! See you next month!
Referrals!
Welcome to the first of two blogs for the month of July! Last month’s YouTube video was a video to celebrate five years since I came home from serving a mission for a year and a half. It just so happens that it’s been a year and a half since I started doing YouTube videos as well(more on that later in tomorrow’s blog). Time really does fly by fast!
I’ve mentioned before that I wrote songs on my mission. Sometimes I’d do musical projects with my sister missionary companions. Knowing that I was into music, one of my companions shared with me a parody she learned from other missionaries. It’s called “Cupstoration”, a missionary version of the cup song. I wasn’t very good at both singing and making the cup rhythm at the same time, so I put up the cup pyramid and sang while my companion did the cup rhythm and sang with me. Later on in my missionary journal I wrote,
“We had fun learning “the cup song” for the Restoration. We got it good enough that we planned to use it for the family we would visit next. They LOVED it! And so did the family we had dinner with a while later.”
Sharing this song was just the beginning for us realizing that we could use a creative approach in teaching religion. Not long after that, we decided to make our own missionary parody of the song “I’m Yours”. We chose this song because my companion knew the chords to the song on the Ukulele. She also had a Ukulele with her… I can’t remember how she was able to have it with her on her mission though… but I think a member lended it to her. Anyways, we had only figured out the first verse and chorus but still wanted to share it with a family of members after they fed us dinner. Here’s what I wrote in my journal afterwards,
“We shared part of the song we’ve been trying to write since Thursday. We then shared scriptures about the real meaning of “Referrals”, explaining that writing a song about getting referrals isn’t about us begging them to give us people to teach. It’s a fun reminder to help God’s children.”
A year and a few months later, I was home hanging out with my niece who is also musically talented. When I found out that she also knew the chords to “I’m Yours”, we made a video of the song with her accompanying me. My companion and I had been so busy while in our area, and we never finished the parody. So in this recording I did with my niece, I sang the first verse, the chorus, and then stumbled through a bunch of ‘do-do-do-do’s’ before laughing and then singing, “Referrals!” I sent the video to my companion and tried to convince her to finish the song with me! She agreed that it needed finishing, but she couldn’t think of anything to add. Not to mention the fact that we were both home from our missions and across the world from each other living our own busy lives.
Fast forward again to this summer where I had already taken guitar lessons, bought a ukulele, and wrote a ukulele solo. (I mentioned guitar lessons because after learning some guitar, the tiny ukulele felt a lot easier to play.) While I was trying to figure out what my June video was going to be, I realized that I could figure out the chords for the Referrals song and have it as a video to celebrate my five year anniversary since coming back from my mission! But the song still wasn’t complete…
Then I realized that this parody didn’t really need more verses, it just needed some finality. So I decided to replace the ‘do-do-do-do’s’ with a phrase and repeat it. I told my companion about finishing this song with this tiny detail. I also asked her for permission to include pictures of the two of us in this song’s video since she helped me with the song. She was excited to hear that I figured out an ending and was totally fine with being in the video. Just like that, I knew what my June video was going to be! Before I knew it, I had recorded the song, matched the pictures up with it, and uploaded and scheduled the video to come out on my five year mark, June 26th.
I hope you enjoyed today’s blog! Remember to check out my merchandise at my shop, donate to my website, and read tomorrow’s blog when it comes out!
When in Doubt, Just Listen to 'You Say' and Cry Your Heart Out!
A CONTINUATION OF YESTERDAY’S BLOG…
When life gets depressing, I of course turn to music. Most often I’ve ended up listening to You Say by Lauren Daigle. I first heard it just after returning home from my mission, and it made me think of a song that I wrote during my mission that has a similar theme. I haven’t gotten it officially composed and recorded, so whenever I needed a reminder of my worth I would listen to Daigle’s song. No matter what circumstance I’ve been in while listening to it, the words of the song were exactly what I needed to hear. Especially in the first lines of the chorus, You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing, You say I am strong when I think I am weak. I would start crying whenever listening to those words, yet I would listen to the song on repeat until I felt better. I would often listen to it during my time at college, mid semester while I was still on campus waiting for another class to start. I even found a cover of the song that was done in sign language, which helped me when I was frustrated with my beginning ASL class.
This year, the weekend just before Valentines Day, I was attending Church meetings. One of the speakers would say certain phrases that got my attention and stood out to me. “Labels don’t define you.” “Do I ever base my identity on what others say about me, or what my maker thinks of me?” “Heaven sees you. Don’t let any identifier take away that you are a son or daughter of God.” The more I heard phrases like these, the more I started thinking of the song You Say. The first line of the song, I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough, would come to my head when I heard the words “identity”, “define”, and “labels”. The song started playing in my head and I was once again thinking about the Hymn, Jesus, Lover Of My Soul. These two songs in my head were starting to sound so similar to each other that I started wondering if they could be sung together, like the two Marry Poppins lullabies. This was after I had written my simple Ukulele solo and thought that it was going to be my February video. But this song idea came to me while listening to the talk of a church leader! I felt like it was going to be the official video for February. I had found piano accompaniment and even had a video idea in my head!
So here was my plan:
Feb- You Say/Jesus, Lover Of My Soul
March- Sing along to Dr.Roger Hale’s warm up videos
April- Do an analysis of my Star Wars T-Shirt
May- An Orange Sunset at the Beach- A Ukulele Solo
Since the Ukulele solo was about the beach, it made more sense to have it uploaded when it would get warmer. But unfortunately, I once again had technical difficulties… Even though I got A BUNCH of video footage for my Hymn/Daigle song, the videos would freeze up in my editing software! Because of this, I had no idea if my lip syncing was lining up with my audio recording. This was yet another moment when I had to just listen to You Say and cry for a bit…
Eventually I decided to go back to my idea of doing my Ukulele Solo since my video editing software still accepted photos and I found plenty of sunset pictures to use. I felt like I might waste my time and energy if I tried recording a vocal warm up session for the March video and still be unable to line things up while editing. Thankfully, the software still accepted videos that came from my phone(it just doesn’t have as much room on it now), so I was still able to support my choir teacher with a silly video I took in 2020. The software was accepting screen recordings from my computer, so I didn’t have to worry about my April video. The footage of Jesus, Lover Of My Soul/You Say cover still wasn’t working, so I ended up just using my favorite picture of Christ. The song is all about Him anyway.
Thank you for reading this blog! Do you ever get frustrated with technology? Let me know in the comments down below! Please click the links in the blog, as well as these links to my videos, shop, and donation page!
Jesus, Lover Of My Soul- The Original Backup Plan for Feb 2023
Has anyone noticed while reading my blogs that there’s been a consistent theme to my YouTubing life? In case I’ve been at all vague in these blogs, this is how it feels like for me: “HELP ME! I’M EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES AGAIN!!!”
I absolutely love music, composing, and acting out the stories of my songs. But when it comes to editing the audio and video, technical difficulties often show up and make it hard to complete my videos in time! I am not very tech savvy. I wouldn’t even have this website if it wasn’t for a friend and for Squarespace. (This blog is brought to you by Squarespace! JK, I’M actually paying Squarespace for this blog.) I am so glad that I didn’t listen to anyone in college who told me, “You could start your YouTube channel now.” I definitely wouldn’t have been able to deal with this added stress on top of all my music homework!
Well, technically I did feel inspired to start my first video just before my last two semesters of school. But if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have recorded last year’s January video in the basement of one of the school buildings, I wouldn’t have my Senior Recital on my channel, and I probably wouldn’t have that extra push to create some Jazzy accompaniment to my original song that ended up being my June video. Come to think of it, I had more technical difficulties AFTER I graduated. September and October had some last second problems, and my plans changed for my November video too. Even my blooper video was harder to put together than I thought it would be. So as the year 2022 was coming to an end, I was brainstorming a plan to make sure I was ahead of the game in 2023. Unfortunately, that plan fell apart by the end of January…
This is the part of the blog where I finally tell you about my technology problems I mentioned but didn’t explain in my blogs about my February and March videos. My original plans for the year was to get better recordings of my previous original songs and put the “official audio” videos on YouTube every other month. But before I got the chance to record I Truly Care About You as my February video, my guitar string snapped off! So I had to accept the fact that my plans needed rearranging.
I thought back to last year’s March video where I combined two church hymns together, and decided that I would do the same thing for my February video this year. Jesus Lover of My Soul was introduced to me by my older brother when I was about to leave for my mission. He found a Cello and Piano arrangement for me to play in church. I hadn’t thought much about this Hymn after that until this moment of music craziness. This Hymn is about the love Jesus has for us, so I thought it was great for February. I decided that I would sing each vocal part of the Hymn (in my own range) at different times in the song. Yet for some reason I was having a hard time doing my vocal recordings, and I didn’t know what I should do for my video either. Then I suddenly had another music idea while I was playing my Ukulele one night…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Thanks for reading to the end of this blog! Make sure you check out my videos, shop, and donation page while you’re on my site!
Here Comes the Sun!
Welcome back to the second weekend blog of May 2023! Before beginning my story, and as usual, I’d like to remind you to check out the other parts of my website including my videos, my other blogs, my shop, and my donation page. As I said in yesterday’s blog, please comment below and tell me if there’s something you’d like me to add to my shop!
Another thing that I mentioned yesterday was that last Friday was the Commencement Ceremony for the people graduating from the University I went to. It brought back memories that I’ve had from school, such as completing a Research Paper for my Music History 3 class. For this blog, I’ll be sharing a memory of when I was trying to accomplish another one of my big projects in Music History 3. Star Lord dancing to different 20th century music!
There were so many big projects I needed to complete for this class, so I decided that in order to survive I needed to do projects relating to what I enjoy. One project required that I show how 20th century music affected other aspects in life such as the other arts or even the medical world. Well, as I said yesterday, I knew that I love film scores in movies. So I decided to brainstorm on how I could turn that into a fun project.
One day, I decided to look on YouTube for movie scenes without their music. That was when I found a video of Peter Quill/Star Lord dancing to no music. I knew at that moment that it was exactly what I needed for my project. I found recordings of songs we were listening to for the class so that I could line them up with the dancing. I used Google Slides so that I could have individual pages for each song he would dance to and a page after each song explaining how it affected the story AND his dancing. Yup, I found a way to show how 20th century music has affected TWO aspects in life, both Theater and Dancing!
Most of the songs lined up pretty well, so on my last slide I concluded that,
‘20th century music has caused our way of thinking to change. Instead of continuing on with more classical and romantic music as done before, composers tried out new ideas which lead other arts and activities outside of the arts to progress and grow. This project demonstrates that the 20th century music affected both the world of theater and dance. Star Lord/Quill had a backstory to his music. If the producers of the film had used different music, not much would change within the plotline for the story. But the atmosphere would be different because of that change of music. Along with that, these videos portray how dance in our day has been affected by the evolution of 20th century music. People in Mozart's day would never dream of dancing to music the way Star Lord and the rest of us like to dance. The fact that these songs connect so well with his dancing shows how 20th century music has affected our awesome dance moves. So let’s all keep dancing and enjoy all these great new songs!’
It was fun to watch Star Lord dance to songs such as ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, ‘The Rite of Spring’, ‘Cotton Tail’, ‘The Desert Music’, and some Rachmaninoff. But my favorite song to see him dance to was ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by the Beatles. He looked so adorable jumping into puddles, spinning his jacket around, sliding through the mud, and even as he kicked the weird space rats around. The atmosphere of the story and his dancing changed each time there was a different song playing. But the atmosphere I felt when ‘Here Comes the Sun’ was playing was so peaceful and happy. It was as if the sun really had come and there was no darkness in that cave at all!
I think that this song just happens to have that kind of atmosphere to it. Since I was doing this class in the spring, it started getting warmer later on in the semester. I would go outside, lay on the grass, and listen to this song whenever I had finished a test and needed to relax and celebrate my success.
Fast forward to today, it’s summertime again and school is out for my friends. I keep listening to this song and it makes me want to go outside and enjoy the sunshine! Here comes the sun, so let’s go out and enjoy it! (Sorry southern hemisphere friends who just started their winter. I hope that you just HAD a great summer! 🙂)
Thanks for reading till the end! Come back again for next months’ blogs!
Screen recording of part of my project: Here Comes the Sun.
P. S. Sorry that I accidentally called him Jason Quill rather than Peter Quill. I don’t know how that happened, but for some reason I thought his name was Jason at the time! 😆😅
John Williams and the Teacher Who Should Have Been Famous
Hello and welcome again to my monthly weekend blog! Before I get started, I just want to thank all of my AWESOME friends who have been supporting me in this crazy freelancing project. Honestly, it’s sometimes hard to be alone in my room with just my computer as I try to figure out how to best edit my videos. When the technology isn’t working the way I want it to, I easily get upset with myself and wish that I was more tech savvy. I’ve been feeling that way with my past couple of videos, and I was uploading my videos with doubt that any of them were good. I definitely felt that way with the video that just came out last month. Yet, people were texting me back and even telling me in person that they enjoyed it! Some even mentioned that they like this website I’ve created!
Hearing this feedback was so comforting to me, and it made me happy to know that the work I’ve been putting into my videos, blogs, and my shop is being noticed. However, when I looked at my website after getting these supportive comments, I saw that hardly any activity has happened in my shop. Please, if there isn’t anything in my shop that you are interested in buying, at least donate to my cause and make my work efforts mean something! You can even comment down below and tell me what you’d be interested in buying! But for now, let’s talk about Star Wars!
Last Thursday, May 4th, was Star Wars Day! Then on Friday, May 5th, was the Commencement Ceremony of the University I graduated from last year. Seeing some of my friends get their degrees has reminded me of some school memories, including one that involves the Film Score music of Star Wars.
In the Spring of 2021, I was taking Music History 3 where we studied music from the 20th and 21st century. There were lots of projects that I needed to complete for this class, and I decided that I needed to find things that I enjoy about this kind of music. For my Research Paper, I decided to go to the school library to look for books either about Jazz music or film scores. However, I ended up spending A LOT of time trying to find enough resources for these topics.
Eventually, I found some textbooks specifically focused on John Williams. I then narrowed it down to the Star Wars film score since each textbook included information about it. My teacher thought I was just doing it because I was a fan of John Williams, but I’m actually a fan of film scores overall. I even took an Orchestration class the semester before that. It wasn’t until this Research Paper that I started learning about how big an impact John Williams has made by composing film scores. It was also a great excuse for me to stay up late binge watching all the Star Wars movies, pausing every once and a while to take notes on the music!
Along with learning more about John Williams, doing this Research Paper taught me something new about one of my music teachers. One day at the end of choir practice, I was telling my Choir teacher, Dr. Roger Hale, about my Research Paper idea. He told me that Dr. Bryant Smith, the Band teacher at our university, was once involved in a music group called Moosebutter and had helped write a music parody about Star Wars. It’s on YouTube now, so Dr. Hale shared it with me. I realized as I listened to it that I’d heard of this parody before! It’s “Star Wars (John Williams Is the Man)”!! I couldn’t believe that one of my own college teachers helped put this song together! The next time that I saw Dr. Smith in the hallway, I ran up to him with excitement like any fan would do.
“Can I get your autograph?” I said, interrupting the casual conversation he was having with another teacher.
“Why?” he asked me with a confused look on his face.
I replied back with the first thing that came into my head, “Kiss a Wookie.”
He laughed and gave me his own quick response, “Only if you kick a droid!”
I later asked him for more information about his involvement in Moosebutter, and he was happy to inform me.
“I can tell you that it was written by Tim Y Jones, Joshua Slagowski, and myself. We were original members of Moosebutter, a comedy acapella group. We needed a new song for an upcoming show. One day we were at Josh and my apartment and we started creating this song. Josh was at the computer writing music, I was sitting in the doorway, and Tim was in a chair in the room. The song we created ended up being the Star Wars Medley, a collection of songs written by John Williams with words connected to the Star Wars Films. It was pretty cool, well received, and recorded on our first album. Years later, after I had left the group, it became a Youtube sensation, was rerecorded, and was a nominee for a people's choice award. It's been performed all over the world. I'm glad I could be a part of it.”
There you have it, the Band teacher at my university is a super star! I wish that he got a bit more recognition for this YouTube sensation since he and his friends were the ones that actually came up with the idea!!! But at least I got the privilege of seeing a could-have-been-famous guy almost every day at school. Every time that I’ve seen him since then, I’d smile and wave saying, “Hey Super Star!” It’s at the same level of awesome as meeting Nathan Pacheco- twice! So for all of you musicians still in the music building I left last year, say hello to Dr. Smith for me and remind him that he’s an awesome super star!
Happy Birthday! Even if it’s not today…
Welcome to the second blog for this month! Before I begin today’s story, remember to click the links to my shop and YouTube videos, including the video that this blog is about. It’s a great video to share with your friends when you want to wish them Happy Birthday in a fun way!
The man on screen playing on the Accordion is Dr. Roger Hale, the Choir Teacher I had in college. I’ve mentioned him in these blogs a couple times before, like how he has his own YouTube channel and helped me as I started my channel. There are also some things that I haven’t mentioned yet. He plays the Kazoo, plays the Nose Flute, taught me that the minor major seventh chord is Perry the Platypus’ theme song, and, you guessed it, he plays the Accordion. He likes to keep his Accordion in his office so that whenever it’s someone’s birthday, he can play Happy Birthday to them.
One day in 2020(if you can’t tell by the mask he’s wearing in the video), he brought out his Accordion again and played to one of the Tennors. It turns out that he has the same birthday as my mom. So after class had ended, I asked Dr. Hale if he could get his Accordion out again so I could record the song and text it to my mom. Thankfully, he agreed to do so.
Fast forward to now, I was having technical difficulties with recording music and editing videos. It’s similar to the backstory I mentioned but didn’t talk about in yesterday’s blog, and I presently see no need to bore you with the specifics of this struggle as well. I’m just glad that I found this video in my phone and was able to edit it with ease. Once I got permission from Dr. Hale, I uploaded it and scheduled it to come out at the end of March. Three months down, nine to go!
I hope that you find this simple video to be entertaining. At least once a year on your birthday! Remember to click on the links previously mentioned, especially Dr. Hale’s channel! Have a great day and see you next month.
Thanks for reading this all the way to the end.
P.S. Seriously though, whenever I watch Phineas and Ferb these days and hear the chords at the end of Perry’s theme song(A-gent P!), I think about that moment in the Fall of 2020 when I finally understood what a minor major chord is and how to hear it. I just think of Perry. Thank you Perry the Platypus! Thank you Dr. Hale!
AGENT P!
An Orange Sunset At the Beach- An Original Ukulele Solo
Hello once again to another monthly weekend blog! Before I begin today’s blog, let me remind you to click these links to check out the other parts of my website such as my shop and my YouTube videos, as well as the video that this blog is about, An Orange Sunset At the Beach.
First of all, I’m actually pretty new to the Ukulele. Just this last December I was shopping at a store that sells cheap, random, donated stuff. You never know what you’re going to find there when you visit or what will be gone when you come back. One of my favorite places in the store to shop is where they have antiques or collectables locked behind glass boxes. Every so often there are donated instruments in them that catch my eye.
On this particular day in December, I noticed that there were three instruments available to buy- two Violins and one Ukulele. When an employee was available to unlock the glass container holding them, I first looked at the Violins. One had all of its strings, but it looked beat up and had no bow or case. The other Violin was in a case that carried a bow in it, but the Violin had no strings. It was painted pink though, so it was rather pretty. Despite the flaws they had, they each cost $20, making it $40 if I really wanted the bow, case, and a violin that already has strings.
On the other hand, the Ukulele had nylon strings that were easy for me to tune(my dog has fleas) and it even looked close to brand new! Compared to the caseless Violin, that is. This Ukulele didn’t have a case either. But it’s not as delicate as a Violin, and I was willing to figure that out when I got home because it only cost $10! So I bought it and rested it against a pillow when I returned home.
Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I hadn’t been focusing too much on my Ukulele since I had all these YouTube videos to prepare. I did, however, learn the chords for the song of the Pixar short, “Lava”. That song was fun to play every now and then.
In the middle of February, my original video I had planned for the month fell through. That’s a different backstory altogether. But I now had to come up with something new before the month ended. One night, I was in my room and decided to improvise chords on my Ukulele. Yep, I wasn’t looking at a chart and I didn’t bother trying to figure out what chords I was playing until later on. The chords I played brought peace and relaxation to me. I started to imagine that I was on a beach either in California or back in New Zealand where I served a mission for my church.
As I listened to the chords I was creating, I felt like I could hear the waves of the ocean and see a beautiful sunset stretch across the water. It felt like the perfect song for this month. February may be a cold time for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, but sitting at the beach watching the sun set next to your significant other is so romantic! But I also wanted the peacefulness of the song to relate to everyone no matter what relationship status that they have. That’s why I had group pictures, romantic pictures, and pictures of individuals scattered throughout the video. I personally enjoyed finding and downloading the pictures of horseback riders on a beach. The horse is my favorite animal and I kept finding photo after photo of horseback riders at the beach! So if you noticed that there were so many pictures of horses in this video, well that was my personal preference.
Make sure you remember to click the link up above to watch that video! I can’t believe that this was my first original song on the Ukulele and it was totally improvised! It was also the first official recording that I’ve been able to put onto my SoundCloud account! I hope you enjoyed reading the story behind this beautifully simple song!
Thanks for reading all the way to the end.
Greetings From a Cellist!
Welcome to the second blog of March! Or should I say: CELLO! I’ll get to the backstory of that silly greeting in a moment. First, I’d like to remind you to read yesterday’s blog, watch my YouTube videos, consider buying something from my shop, and/or make a donation of your choice to my website and musical efforts. Now, back to my silly greeting of “Cello”.
I’ve mentioned before that I first started my music degree with Cello as my instrument and then switched to a music degree in voice. In that first semester while I still had an emphasis as Cello being my instrument, I found myself having a conversation with a friend outside of the music department. When I told her that I play Cello she said, “Wouldn’t it be funny that whenever you picked up the phone you’d say, ‘Cello?’” Yes, I definitely thought that was a funny notion and the idea of it stayed with me for quite a while. (Though I hardly ever had conversations on the phone.)
The next semester later when I had switched degrees, I at times felt like a “traitor” for leaving my other cellists. I didn’t want it to be weird whenever I would see them in the halls of the music building. So I decided to use the silly greeting that my friend came up with and would say “Cello!” to any of the cello players, including those who were new and had a Cello with them. It seemed, to me, that this greeting was funny to some and tiresome to others, but it ended up becoming a tradition for me to greet every cellist this way until the end of my time at school. In fact, I sometimes run into some of these cello players even after being graduated and I still find myself greeting them this way.
I hope you enjoyed reading today’s blog. It’s a bit shorter than other blogs, but I love this memory and wanted to write it down. Have you ever had a silly way of greeting a friend or multiple people? Let me know in the comments down below! As always, thanks for reading till the end and don’t forget to keep on dreaming!
A Cello, a Bari Sax, and a Front Bumper
Hello again to another weekend of blogs. Before I begin today's story, I'd like to remind you to check out my shop, donation page, and my YouTube videos, including the one I just uploaded last month. The audio of that song is also on my SoundCloud account. Today's blog is going to be a story about an experience I had at college. In my first semester, I had focused my music degree on playing Cello and then switched to voice as my instrument in the next semester. But I still decided to continue playing in the orchestra in my second semester. That meant that during those two semesters, I needed to make sure that whoever I carpooled with to or from school had enough room in their car for my Cello. (Thankfully this was before I ever decided to bring a suitcase to school as my backpack.)
During that second semester of transporting my Cello between school and home, I would often get rides from a fellow music friend who plays Saxophone. He eventually started learning how to play the Bari Saxophone, which is a bigger saxophone than most. Despite the size though, we could still fit both of our instruments in his car.
One day when we were leaving campus, we were putting our instruments in his car the same way that we always do. My Cello would lay on top of the back seats, and his Bari Sax would fit in the space between the front and back seats. We then sat in the front seats of the car and he started backing up. The car hadn't even moved a few inches before we heard a THUD that came from the front of the car. My friend stopped the car and got out to investigate what had happened. For a while he stood in front of the car looking down at the ground. Once he got out his phone and started calling someone, I started to get curious and got out of the car myself. I looked down where he had been looking and saw that the entire front bumper of his car had fallen off of the car!
After he had a conversation with his dad who unfortunately was still at work, we decided to find a way to put the front bumper inside the car so that he could at least transport it to his home. He decided to put his Bari Sax in the trunk and we slightly readjusted my Cello so we could have the front bumper balanced on top of it. Once we got on the road, we were driving in a car with its front bumper visible in the back seat windows!
My friend was humored by the fact that his car’s front bumper could be seen from the back of the car. He told me that there were probably other drivers who saw the front of his car and would think to themselves, What a loser that guy is. He lost his front bumper. But then they would do a double take as they would see the back of the car. What the…the car’s front bumper is in the back seat! I didn’t notice any drivers on the road doing double takes, but I thought that his scenario was pretty funny.
I actually saw this friend last month and brought up a few memories from school, including this one. He told me that to this day he still has no clue what could have caused his entire front bumper to collapse like that. Maybe it was the cement that he was parked in front of. Or maybe the car was getting old and the bumper couldn’t hold onto the car anymore. I’m just glad that it happened while we were basically still parked. Otherwise, it could have led to a disastrous accident on the road rather than a silly moment in our school’s parking lot.
I hope you enjoyed this little story! What has been the strangest thing that you’ve put in your car? Let me know in the comments down below! Thanks for reading till the end and don’t forget to keep on dreaming!
The Circle of Fifths- Making the Video
It's the second blog of February and it's time to complete the story of how my first music parody, The Circle of Fifths, became a fun YouTube video. Make sure you check out that video and consider shopping on my website and/or donating to the website.
In yesterday's blog, I left off by saying that my choir teacher gave me some advice on making it a video. One thing he mentioned was that there are arrangements of songs people put on YouTube. I could find and use an arrangement that someone made of The Circle of Life. It wasn't until a year later that another friend of mine reminded me of that same thing. That was in November of last year. Since I had just finished my November video and my December video was going to be a bunch of bloopers, I had a bit of time on my hands to prepare for my January video. I felt that starting a new year with a funny video would be perfect, so I started looking for an arrangement of The Circle of Life from The Lion King. Eventually I found one that had a decent range for my voice and modulated(changed keys) at the end just like in the original song.
Due to the holiday season and the fact that I was sick during the first week of December, recording the audio was scattered throughout the month. By the beginning of January, I was considering having a harmonic echo in the song. For example, the main part would sing, "It's the circle of fifths!" and then a second voice would sing, "oh the circle of fifths". But after I recorded and listened to it, I realized that even though it sounded pretty to me, it might be too much for a person listening to the parody for the first time. Especially if they don't know anything about music theory. So I deleted the harmony I had recorded and moved on to making the video for the song.
As I said in yesterday's blog, I was working on this video so much, critiquing myself with any mistakes I had made, and trying to understand what was wrong when I faced a technical difficulty that I was surprised by how well the video did. I'm getting better at editing though and I'm learning new things each time I put in the effort to edit without criticizing myself. In the video for my song, Peanut Butter and Jam, I had learned how to match individual pictures with the music. That knowledge played a vital part for my January video as I made sure each picture of the circle of fifths lined up with the music. In the video for my song, Free, I had learned about how to use filters like making sure the video had the right hue and lighting that I wanted. I used this knowledge in my January video to touch up and brighten the video. It may not be a perfectly edited video, but I've been getting better at editing and there are people who like this silly parody! If there is something that you are trying to accomplish but all you can see is the imperfections of it, take a moment to step back and breathe. You may be doing better than you think you are.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. Remember to watch this parody if you haven't already and click the other links as well! And whenever life gets you down, remember what you want to do with your life and keep on dreaming!
The Circle of Fifths- Backstory
Hello and welcome once again to my blog. Today's blog is about how I ended up putting together my music parody, The Circle of Fifths. That parody was the song for last month's video, and you can watch it here if you haven't seen it already. Feel free to also check out all of my other YouTube videos, donate to the website, and go to my website shop which includes original merchandise as well as the sheet music to my original songs.
To be honest, I've been working on this parody for quite awhile. Amidst the busyness of school, it took about a year to officially finish the lyrics. Then as I was finishing up school it took another year of learning how YouTube works before I eventually got around to making a video for this song. That being said, I was surprised that I had such positive feedback from the video.
Two days after getting it uploaded, I saw that there were already 222 views, 15 likes, and even comments from people who I've never met before saying that they thought it was funny! I was hoping that people would be both entertained and educated. But I had been focusing so much on perfecting the video that I had stopped seeing the humor of it. Getting this positive feedback from others saying that it was funny and creative helped remind me of the funny backstory of when I first got the idea for this parody.
Back in the Fall semester of 2020, I was taking Music Theory 3 at 9am in the morning. In my last Theory class I had to be there by 8am, but I was still pretty tired at the beginning of this semester. It was probably because I had to adjust to waking up at a decent time again after a long summer vacation(especially since Covid hit just before Spring break earlier that year). We started this new semester of Music Theory by learning about the circle of fifths.
Despite the fact that it says in the song, "and when the homework stacks up, and you're just feeling stumped", I actually understood the circle of fifths. That was because of my original song called Free and a few other songs that I had started writing the accompaniment for. They mostly used simple chords and that helped me understand where the secondary dominant was heading to. The D Major chord would be the dominant of G Major, the G Major chord would be the dominant of C Major. Sorry, that information probably went right over your head if you haven't already learned Music Theory yourself. But my point is that it wasn't until later in the semester that "the homework [stacked] up". I actually really enjoyed learning about the circle of fifths. It would have been even more fun if I hadn't been tired…
We learned about the circle of fifths for an entire week, and every time our teacher said, "the circle of fifths", my mind instantly went to The Lion King's The Circle of Life. The circle of fifths! I would think in my head. By the end of the week, we had a quiz on what we had learned. But first we had the option to study a little longer and work on the homework assignment that would be due later that day. There was one guy in the back of the classroom who was talking to another student about the assignment and I heard him saying, "..the circle of fifths-"
"The circle of fifths!" I suddenly burst out singing. I was mortified! I apparently was so tired that I couldn't restrain myself from singing the phrase out loud. My teacher looked at me with a wry smile on his face. Then, as if sensing my embarrassment, he started singing too. "With the circle, the circle of fifths!"
He then told me that I should make an actual parody of the song. I was so tempted to say that I would do it for extra credit, but I didn't. Maybe I should have since later that semester I had Covid and doing homework was so much more annoying while I was sick. But either way, amidst all the homework and classes I had, I worked on this parody off and on for the next year. I even listened to the original song and realized that it was changing keys at the ending! That gave me a perfect teaching opportunity to use that key change in the song as an example of what a modulation is. "Till we change the key-yes we just modulated!"
Eventually I finished the lyrics of this parody and shared it with my Music Theory teacher. I also sang it to my choir teacher, Dr. Roger Hale, who has a YouTube channel of his own and is about to reach 100,000 subscribers! Check out his channel here to learn about music in a fun way! When he listened to me sing my parody, he couldn't stop laughing. After I finished singing, he encouraged me to make it a YouTube video and gave me some advice on how to do that. As I said before, it took me a while to get around to making the video. But I think that this was a great song to start another year of YouTube videos!
As always, thank you for reading to the end of my blog. Tomorrow's blog will be about how the video for this song eventually came together. In the meantime, don't forget to click the links previously mentioned above and to keep on dreaming!
The Power of Singing to a Lysol Tube
Hello and welcome to the second and last blog for January. If you haven't done so already, read yesterday's blog. Please also watch some of my music videos and consider buying the sheet music of my original songs and/or donate to my website!
Before you begin reading the story of today's blog, consider reading my blog called I Sigh to Sing which tells the story of how I started to take voice lessons in college. Just after getting into the vocal program, I met with my private teacher to choose the songs I would sing for that semester. One of those songs was a lullaby and it was the first of many lullabies I would learn at school. You may have also noticed that a few of my YouTube videos have lullaby songs in them. Why am I so interested in lullabies? It all began long ago when I was about 15 years old.
As I have mentioned before, I am a Christian. One time as a teenager, I walked home from church with one of my youth leaders and had a conversation with her. The young women in my church can choose to do projects to help them spiritually grow. I was asking this leader, who I admired very much, for some project ideas. I can't remember the full conversation we had, but when we got to her house and I said goodbye to her I reflected back on the lesson she had just taught me and my peers. Near the end of the lesson, she told us that a relative of hers had written one of our church songs and she then shared it with us. At this time in my adolescence, I had already started writing songs.
As I continued to walk home, I thought about how much I love music. I thought about some of the values I could do projects for, and the value called Divine Nature came to my mind. I consider Divine Nature to mean that as a woman it is in my nature and divinely given to me by God to be a mother. Whether by caring for my own children or taking care of another person's child for a moment, it is something that I am capable of doing.
As I pondered those thoughts, I started thinking of scenes from movies, such as The Lion King, when a child wakes up their parents and the couple argues on who has to wake up. Then I started to visualize myself in that scenario:
It's many years in the future when I have gotten married and we have a baby sleeping in the same room as us. Suddenly the baby wakes us up crying and, rather than arguing with my husband, I imagine myself quickly sitting up in bed and stubbornly pushing my husband back down if he gets up. Then I would rush to our baby's crib and start singing a lullaby to it.
It was in this moment as I walked home and thought of this scenario that I decided what I wanted to do for my Divine Nature project. I was going to write a lullaby.
Now let's fast forward to that first semester of voice lessons I was previously talking about. One day during my lesson my teacher was helping me with American Lullaby by Gladys Rich , which was the lullaby I had chosen that semester. At first it was just another typical lesson where she was playing the piano part and listening to my voice and I was trying to follow her instructions and change the way I sang whenever she stopped playing the piano. But on one of those moments that she stopped playing, she said something that really surprised me. "You need a baby!"
She then got up from the piano and grabbed a Lysol Wipes Tube that she had in her room. After a few minutes, she found some fabric to wrap around it and gave it to me. She instructed me to hold it like a baby and sing to it. Then she began playing the piano introduction of the song. I started to sing the first phrase of the song, "Hush-a-bye you sweet little baby.."
But in that moment as I held this fake baby and sang those words, it felt like I was suddenly transported into that scenario I made up when I was 15. Even though this baby wasn't real, singing to it felt real and I realized that I wanted this scenario to become a reality. I wanted it so badly, and in this moment it felt like it was so close to becoming a reality that I choked on my words and started to cry!
My teacher stopped playing the piano and came over to me. She explained that sometimes in the past she would sing in performances such as Operas. During some practices, she would try to see how far she could go emotionally into the character before being unable to sing. Then she knew how far into the character was too far as a singer. She then explained to me that I now knew that I shouldn't go emotionally as far as whatever caused me to get emotional. Still, experiencing that moment was really special to me and ever since then I would look for songs to add to my lullaby repertoire for when I would finally be in that moment and sing to my baby.
Later in the summer, I was taking voice lessons with a different teacher who taught during the summer time. I told her that I love lullabies and wanted to learn Wiegenlied by Bach for my first German song. When she heard this, she told me that my previous teacher told her about the experience we had with that Lysol Tub. My teacher told her that when I had started singing with that fake baby, something magical happened. I certainly don't remember singing well enough to earn my teacher's approval, but I agree that it was definitely a magical experience. In the Fall of that same year I found several Christmas lullabies and it wasn't long before she learned that I love lullabies so much!
It seems very fitting that the first song I put on YouTube is a Christmas Hymn which I consider to be a lullaby. There's even lullabies I sang in my Senior Recital for my April video and my October video is an arrangement of the two lullabies from the two Mary Poppins movies. Please click the links to listen to those songs. Please also consider subscribing to my channel so that you can be notified of future videos that just might include a lullaby or two. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. Do you have a favorite lullaby? Comment your thoughts down below and don't forget to keep on dreaming!
Concert Hall Comfort
Hello everyone and welcome to a new month and a NEW YEAR! As I've mentioned in the last blog of last year, instead of doing an entire blog week I'll be doing a blog weekend. That way I can focus more on putting together my music videos and the sheet music for my original songs. Click the links to watch those videos and buy the sheet music, and please consider donating to this website as well. Last month's blogs were all stories about my Christmases during each year at college. Though I did talk about my Christmas experiences in 2021, there's another special experience I had during that semester that I didn't mention in that blog.
I've mentioned many times before that the Music building on campus basically became my home while I was at school, but it wasn't until Fall of 2021 that I started to have a connection with the Concert Hall. During that semester I didn't have any classes until my 11am choir class, but I still got to campus one or two hours before that. I soon found out that on some mornings the door to the empty Concert Hall was unlocked, and I wanted to take advantage of that. My private teacher had mentioned before that it can be hard to adjust to the Concert Hall and perform well if all one does is use a small practice room. The space in a practice room and the Concert Hall is very different and a performer needs to be prepared to carry their voice in larger spaces. So with that in mind, I practiced the solo pieces I had for that semester in the Concert Hall whenever it was available to me. Eventually, I would even ask teachers if they could unlock it for me on the days it was locked. I'm really lucky that I was surrounded by such awesome music teachers. They were always willing to let me in, unless something else was about to happen in there.
Once I was able to get in, I would go to the back of the Hall, take out my phone, open my recording app, and start recording myself to listen to afterwards. I wanted to make sure that my voice could carry itself to the very last row in the auditorium. But since I started the recording while I was in the back of the Concert Hall and needed to sing on the stage, there was a long stretch of silence at the beginning of my recordings. The only sound heard would be my pounding feet across the floor. I tried not to run too fast, but I would still find myself catching my breath for a few moments on the stage before I would sing. It didn't affect my singing ability though, and I would go through my songs as many times as possible.
Each time I went through a song, I would work on a different technique I was learning from my private teacher. These were things like having a warm up version of the song and putting my Hands in different places around my face so I could mentally visualize what I needed to do to sing well. I would put both of my hands in front of my face as if I was singing in a corner and slowly drop my hands as I sang through the song. I would put my hands over my ears because for some reason I sang better when I wasn't so focused on listening to myself. I would put my hands near my cheeks and point upwards to have a brighter sound, put my finger under my chin to keep it from moving too much, and sing with Staccato to practice having steady breathing. Finally, after all the technique I did, I would focus on my character and the purpose I had in singing the song. Ermuntre Dich, Mein Schwacher Geist was my favorite one to practice that semester. It was a Christmas song about the newborn baby Jesus. So like I said before, this was yet another Christmas experience I had that year as I sang that song for my final.
Speaking of finals, there was one generals class I took that semester that was hard at times. The final was the hardest part of the semester in this class. We were supposed to work with another person in class throughout the semester and give a presentation together as our final. Unfortunately for me, my partner was a pregnant gal who felt unwell on finals day and I was left to do the presentation by myself. I felt so scared! My next final after this class was my vocal final and I was more anxious about sharing my presentation to a classroom of about 20 people than I was about singing in the Concert Hall. In fact, I kept looking at the clock, begging it to go faster so that I could leave the classroom and go sing. That's how comfortable I got with singing in the Concert Hall. It's my home. Just like the green room of the Concert Hall, the hallway outside the Concert Hall, the hallway next to the practice rooms, and every part of that building. I'm homesick for the music building and everyone in it. Don't take for granted the wonderful things in your life that give you a sense of home.
I hope you enjoyed reading this first blog of the year! Don't forget to click the links previously mentioned in this blog. Thanks for reading till the end and keep on dreaming!
Thanksgivin’ Dancin’
Hey everybody! Welcome back to another blog. It's the last blog of the month AND the last blog of the year! Make sure you read the previous blogs of this month, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Also, before I begin this last blog of the year I'd like to let you know that there's going to be a change in my blog schedule after the new year. Instead of having a blog a day Monday through Friday of the second full length week of the month, I will just have a blog Thursday and Friday of the second full length week of the month. It will be as I originally started my blogs in July where I just had a blog for the 14th and for the 15th. This change in my blog schedule will give me more time to focus on the videos of each month and on writing the sheet music for my original songs. I'm looking forward to making this change, but I'm also really happy that I did 5 blogs a month because I've been able to write the backstories and the makings of each of my videos that I've uploaded to YouTube so far. Today will be about how I put together last month's video, and this month's video is just going to be the bloopers of my first year of YouTubing. So I'm officially caught up!
Anyways, originally November's video was going to be a Christmas cover since the last weekend of November is right after Thanksgiving. I was also planning on collaborating with a person I know who has a YouTube channel as well and doing a duet. Unfortunately, we never had enough time to get together and record. Eventually I ended up trying to record the duet by myself, but it was so much work and I was running out of time. Instead of wasting more time getting frustrated, I decided to look up Thanksgiving songs and see if there was one simple and short enough to do a cover for. I was surprised to find several songs on the topic. None of them were simple enough for me to make a cover in time, but they were pretty similar to each other. If I arranged small parts of each song together, they could tell a story. Talking about the food on Thanksgiving, making reference to Black Friday, and the reminder to just be thankful for everything. (I actually didn't find out till later that the Black Friday song was referencing a different Black Friday, but the song still sounds similar to the shopping craziness the day after Thanksgiving)
While listening to these songs, it was hard to not dance to them. It was then that I decided to put together an arrangement of them and do a dance video! Once I started doing this new project, it was so much easier to edit the audio. However, it took a lot of energy to do the dance videos! It was worth it though. It was so much fun!
Of course, Thanksgiving was just around the corner and I took a break to spend time with my family. Then when my family wasn't around I continued on with editing. I ended up learning a few tricks on Shotcut that made editing a lot faster, thanks to a YouTube video that gave me that information. Before I knew it, my last second video idea was edited, uploaded onto YouTube, and scheduled to be available to the public by the last Saturday of November.
I hope you enjoyed this blog and the blogs posted throughout this year. I hope you are enjoying your holidays as well! If you have the money and time, please consider donating to my website and check out the links previously mentioned in this blog. Thank you! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎄🦌🎅⛄ 🎉🎊🎆🎇
Reliving Memories in 2021
Hello again to another December blog! If you have already read the blogs for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, you know by now that I am reminiscing about the past four years of Christmas while I was in college. This blog is going to be about my memories from last year, 2021. I suggest you read Monday’s blog and Wednesday’s blog before reading this blog if you don’t want spoilers because I’ll be referencing them a couple times. In fact, I had some experiences last year that were quite similar to the Christmas seasons before it.
First of all, I was once again singing in The Messiah! In 2018 I had sung How Beautiful Are the Feet for the second time. In 2019 I was too busy with school to go to the practices, even though they were only on Sundays. And as I mentioned before yesterday, in 2020 I got Covid and couldn’t sing. Of course, it was so crazy in 2020 that our community choir wasn’t going to perform The Messiah anyway. So by the fall of 2021, it had been 3 years since I last sang these songs with this choir. When I sang a solo in 2018, it was a month before I was going to switch to a vocal music major. So when I decided to try out for a solo last year, it was the first time that I had done so after taking voice lessons. I was honestly surprised that this additional factor changed this experience that I had done many times before.
I really like How Beautiful Are the Feet, and I wanted to audition for it a third time. While I was singing it, a woman with a strong Soprano voice and who was staying after our practice time to listen to the auditions suggested that I should sing Come Unto Him. So the pianist and I turned the pages in our books to that solo and I focused on what I had learned in my Sight Reading and Ear Training classes as I sang and read this song for the first time. As I did my best to look ahead while singing, I heard my voice ring loudly through the chapel. I was so used to hearing myself in the school Concert Hall, but this was the first time I heard myself sing this way in a chapel. I ended up singing this song at the official performance. I had to find the right balance of singing this Aria into the mic that was provided, but overall it was a wonderful experience to sing it. After hearing me sing a few phrases, one of my relatives in the audience started filming me and later sent me the video of my solo.
Speaking of videos, after I had sung in The Messiah and just a week and a half before Christmas, I officially decided to start making YouTube videos. By December 20th I had uploaded my first video, “Away In a Manger, A Chinese Christmas Cover”. I’ve already written and posted blogs about how I originally decided to do this video and how I was able to create and upload the video. So you can click the links for more details on that story.
And then, yet another amazing thing happened two days after I had uploaded my first YouTube video. I was hanging out with a friend at Walmart doing some last minute Christmas shopping when her mother called her and said that she had two extra tickets to a concert that night. Guess who was performing in that concert? NATHAN PACHECO!!!!
I couldn’t believe it. Three years after I had performed with and talked to Nathan Pacheco, he was back again- and performing in the exact same building on the college campus!! Lucky for me, this friend of mine is awesome and let me take the second extra ticket. Seriously though… if I hadn’t asked her if she wanted to go to Walmart and if some of her family members hadn’t canceled just before the concert, I wouldn’t have had a second experience of seeing Nathan Pacheco perform.
Technically, I was also once again performing with him. There were moments that he asked the audience to sing along with him and that brought back the memories of when I softly sang along with him while playing my Cello. I also got excited when he started talking to us about the talk by Elder Holland, the same one I heard him share 3 years before! But this time the story of his own life relating to this talk was a little different. He talked about how he fell in love with a woman. Though he was living his dream and singing all over the place, he would look forward to his evening calls with her. He told us that he eventually realized that he had another dream, the dream of having a family. I loved hearing that. He helped me see that not only are dreams possible, but they can change and grow as time goes by. It was the perfect thing for me to hear. Three years before, I was just starting school and only had a vague idea of what I could do with my talents. Hearing Nathan Pacheco tell me to keep on dreaming was encouraging, but I had no idea that three years later I would upload my first YouTube video and then attend yet another concert with Pacheco performing in it two days later. In a way, it felt like this was an opportunity to be held accountable for what I had done during those years. In another way, it was encouragement to have the faith to let my dreams change. Who knows what I'll be doing three or four years from now? Even last year I didn't realize that I would start this website this summer.
At the end of the concert I asked my friend if we could stay longer so that I might get a chance to talk to him again. The foyer wasn't crowded with people desiring to get autographs this time, but I kind of liked that. It gave me the chance to have a longer, one on one conversation with him like I had at the end of that dress rehearsal. When I walked over to him to have a conversation I said, "Hi, you probably don't remember me-"
"I recognize you," he said kindly. "I just don't know where we've met."
No. Way. He recognized me! Trying not to get too excited, I reminded him of our conversations three years ago and proudly told him that I had just gotten my first YouTube video out. "You told me to keep dreaming, and I've been doing a lot of dreaming since then!"
It was so awesome to see him a second time and tell him about the progress I've made. This time, I made sure to get a picture with him!
This year in November, I went to a concert in this same auditorium at the university I’ve just graduated from. It was a symphony band concert with the choir singing along. I thought of last year when I was in this auditorium watching Pacheco’s performance. I was reminded of my first YouTube video I uploaded last year as I heard the choir sing “Away In a Manger”. As the choir sang “O Magnum”, I was reminded yet again of when I sang another version of that song last year while I was still a part of the school choir. I love all these memories that I’ve made over the years, and I especially love the ones I’ve made during this special season. At the end of the concert, I was able to give hugs to my friends who had performed and who I hadn’t seen since April. As I did so, another bucket load of memories came back to me.
I hope you enjoyed reading these memories in this blog, as well as the previous three blogs. Comment below on one of your favorite holiday memories or traditions! Please also remember to watch my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music for my original songs, and/or donate to this website. Tomorrow, my blog will be about how I put together my November video. This month, my video is actually going to be a behind the scenes/blooper reel for this past year of doing YouTube videos. Can you believe it? By next Tuesday it will be a full year since I started doing this! My, has the time flown by!
I hope you enjoy your Christmas celebrations. Keep on dreaming.
Handel’s Messiah Got Me Through Covid
Hey everybody! Welcome to the third day of December's blog week. If you haven't already read the blogs for Monday and Tuesday, I recommend that you read them. And if you have, then you already know that this month's blogs have the theme of Christmas in them! On Monday I shared a Christmas story that happened in my first semester of college, 2018. On Tuesday I posted a blog on a Christmas experience in 2019(mostly). Today's blog is going to be a Christmas experience I had in 2020.
I was taking Music History 1 that Fall semester, and I was required to write an essay on a musical event that took place during the eras that we were studying. I decided to write about the Oratorio that Handle wrote called, The Messiah.
I chose to focus on this piece because it's been a part of my life ever since I was a little child. I went from watching my dad and brothers leave home late in the evening to perform in it, to being old enough to watch and listen to the performance myself without falling asleep. I went from listening to the performance and hearing my dad’s Tenor voice stand out, to choosing to be in the choir myself. I soon started auditioning for solo parts. I had the opportunity to sing the Recitative for Soprano, And Suddenly There was with the Angel and the Air for Soprano, How Beautiful are the Feet of Them. So in 2020, I was so excited that I had the opportunity to write a research paper on this beautiful Oratorio.
At the beginning of November that year, I had gotten Covid and was confined to my room for a whole month. My mom would leave me food at my door and there was a bathroom next to my room, but the only opportunities to see people was in my online classes. It was just me, myself, and I, stuck alone in a room.
It was really depressing at first. It didn't help that I was coughing hard and had a headache, I had to be quarantined from everyone including my family. But whenever I sat down to work on my essay about The Messiah, I felt so much comfort and peace. I would listen to the songs as I wrote the essay and make notes on the songs.
Word painting had a huge part in the beauty of this oratorio. In solos such as Every Valley Shall Be Exalted and Thus Saith The Lord, the notes that move up and down depict the movement of the earth being moved. The Bass singer would sing higher on the word "exalted" in Every Valley, and in the song Thus Saith the Lord the singer goes back and forth between notes when singing the word "shake". In But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming, the voice moves up and down when singing about the refiner's fire, as if depicting an actual fire. As the choir sings, Are We Like Sheep, the eighth notes bounce up and down as if each singer was a sheep going off by itself to explore the mountains. There's so many songs, both powerful and peaceful, that the choir sings as if they are angels from heaven praising and testifying of Christ, The Messiah.
As I listened to these beautiful songs, I researched the background of the Oratorio and found out about how Handel ended up writing it. Handel, of course, was the composer of the music. The lyrics were words of the Prophets from The Bible. These are the things that are the most obvious to people that know the words and the author of this great piece. However, the reason that writing The Messiah even happened was because of Charles Jennens, a good friend of Handel who wrote operas with him. Jennens would put together lyrics, usually words found in the Bible, and Handel wrote the music to go with them. Jennens believed that Christianity was the only true religion, and that through Christ resurrection was possible. He also believed in the power of music and that, with the help of Handel, he could share his religious beliefs through that power.
Reminiscing my own experiences of singing the songs in this oratorio, listening to the songs on YouTube, and learning about the backstory of how it ended up being written was really therapeutic for me as I sat in my room coughing. It was almost Christmas and it was wonderful to have some Christmas music to listen to since I couldn't sing myself. But what about you? Have you ever listened to The Messiah, and if so what do you think about it? Let me know your thoughts down below! Also make sure you check out my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music of my original songs, and/or donate to my website! I hope you're enjoying the holidays.
Thanks for reading to the end.
Amaul- Performing a Christmas Opera
Hello and welcome to the second blog for December's blog week! As mentioned in yesterday's blog, my December blogs are about my Christmas memories for each year of college! Today's blog is about the Christmas season of 2019! Mostly… I'll get to that later.
As you know through previous blogs such as I Sigh to Sing, I went into a vocal major in the Spring semester of 2019. In the fall, one of the vocal classes I took was the Opera Scenes class. This class was actually going to continue into the Spring semester. In December we would have a simple performance of a short opera by sitting in a half circle towards the audience. Any time that a person was supposed to sing, they would stand up and then sit down after they were done. It wasn't until the spring semester of 2020 that we would have an actual performance of the opera. The reason I'm mentioning this opera is because it's a Christmas Opera.
It's called Amaul and it's about a crippled boy named Amaul. He and his mother are going through a cold winter and one night a knock on their door wakes them up. Three men are seeking shelter for the night. Worried that she doesn't have enough food for them, the mother leaves to ask the neighboring shepherds to bring food for her guests. That's when I came into the story, I was a shepherdess! The three men happen to be the three wise men following the Christmas star to give the baby Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I won't share anymore spoilers, but the ending includes a Christmas miracle!
My favorite line to sing has always been, "Brr! How cold is the night! Brr! How icy the wind. Hold me very, very, very tight. Oh, how warm is your cloak!" Well…almost always. When we were going through the music at the beginning of the Fall semester, our teacher told us that when we sang, "Brr", we needed to roll the r's. When I heard this, I gave out a small moan and my teacher looked at me and laughed. She knew as well as I did that rolling r's was and still is at times hard for me to do. But despite that, this is a fun line. When I get cold nowadays, I often respond by shivering and then I start to sing the line. It's even more fun when there's someone around who has no idea what I'm singing about. 😂
As I said before, the performance we did in 2019 was very simple and we didn't get to actually act out the story. The only other memorable moments I had during the actual Christmas season of 2019 was while working at the same place I mentioned in my Halloween blog. I listened to A LOT of Christmas music that year! I also really enjoyed seeing all the Christmas themed items that people could buy like nativity scenes, wrapping paper, and decorations. My favorite decoration that I saw was what I considered to be a great joke. They were small candles in containers that each had a letter on it. They were supposed to spell out the word "Noel", but… the candle that should of had the "L" written on it wasn't there. The word "Noel" seemed weird to me as a kid, so I thought it was fitting and so funny that the "L" was missing. Do you think it's funny or do you understand the words' meaning? Comment on your thoughts down below! Anyways, I thought it was so funny that I took a picture of it and went around to my coworkers saying, "Look! It's 'Noel' with no 'L'!"
Once the Christmas season ended and school started again, we continued working on the opera. So the Christmas season actually didn't end for me! It was fun to work on a Christmas opera in the springtime with my music friends. One memory I have from it is a day when a couple opera scene friends and I were updating a guy who missed class that day. He was playing one of the wise men.
"You're going to wear a dress in Amaul!" One of them said.
"What??" He said with a look of confusion on his face.
"Yeah! Basically it's a robe, but you can call it a dress." Another said.
"What?" He said again. "Why would I wear a dress in a mall?"
"Because you're one of the wise men!" Another friend explained.
"Oh! Okay I understand. I thought you guys were saying that I had to go to the mall in a dress!"
Clearly, he was not aware that we were trying to help him catch up on what he missed in our Opera Scenes class.
I have one more thing about this opera that I want to share. Amaul was scheduled to be performed on the second weekend of March 2020. After that weekend everything got shut down because of Covid. This opera is all about miracles, and it was a miracle that we were still able to perform and have a weekend together before all the Covid craziness hit!
I hope you enjoyed this blog! Please watch my YouTube videos, consider buying my sheet music, and donate to my website! Thanks for reading all the way to the end!
And the Celebrity I met in 2018 was…
Hello everybody to the last blog week of 2022! It's Christmas time and I'm in a cheerful mood, even if it is really cold. If you hadn't noticed from last month's blogs, I mentioned a lot of things that I was grateful for. That was because I was feeling the spirit of Thanksgiving and I realized that I have so much to be grateful for! Now it's December and I feel like sharing Christmas memories, one for each year in college. Today I'll start with an impactful memory I had in December of 2018, just before my first semester ended.
Before I begin, consider refreshing yourself on my previously written blogs, I Sigh to Sing and Tchaikovsky’s 1812- The Best Part of the Concert In the Park. As I have mentioned in those blogs, I originally was playing Cello when I became a part of the music program. So in November and the beginning of December of my first semester, I was practicing Christmas songs on my Cello for the final orchestra concert. We were going to perform with some celebrity I didn't know and didn't bother learning about. I was going through the motions. I had talked to my advisor and had officially decided that I was going to switch my major to voice. I just wanted to get this concert and all my finals over with so I could enjoy the holidays.
On the day before the concert, we were having a dress rehearsal practice, and our guest star was supposed to join us as well. Before this celebrity arrived, we tuned our instruments and practiced some of the songs. Then our conductor stopped us and formally announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Nathan Pacheco to the stage."
Everyone gave a round of applause to him, and I joined in half heartedly. For those of you who are huge fans of Nathan Pacheco, I don't blame you if you're insulted by the way I was acting. But as I was clapping something unexpected happened. As a cellist, I am always sitting on on the right side of the conductor. Since Pacheco came in on the left side of our conductor, I was in a perfect position to be able to see him and the big smile on his face. As he got closer there was a thought that came into my head saying, This is the kind of guy you need to ask about fulfilling your dreams. This thought caught me off guard and I kept thinking about it throughout the rehearsal.
In fact, the more we rehearsed the more I felt interested in doing so. He was so genuine and respectful to us. He also showed how much dedication he had on being a part of this performance. He had shown up even though his son had gotten sick and passed along the cold to him. Remember, this was winter of 2018. It was a while before Covid would hit, so at the time it was very admirable of him to show up and practice with us. He just made sure to mark his voice so that he had enough strength for the performance.
By the end of the rehearsal, I was so excited but also nervous to go up and talk to him. I decided that I would put my Cello away and come back to my seat to get my sheet music folder and other items I left. This time, I decided to "casually" get to my Cello case by walking in the direction of Pacheco. As I did so, a technician asked him to practice playing his guitar underneath the microphone. He agreed to do so and walked farther away from me to where the mic was, leaving a bigger gap between me and him. I wanted to catch up to him so badly, but I didn't want to look like an obsessed fan. So I kept my casual pace hoping that I'd somehow catch up to him before he started playing.
He must have heard footsteps behind him or some other way of knowing that there was someone behind him because just before he reached the mic he turned around and looked at me. "Hello, what's your name?" He asked me with a smile.
He asked me where I was from and we then started having a conversation that made me feel like we were equals. But just as quickly as the conversation had started, he gave me a signal that it was time for him to play his guitar, calling me by name and saying, "Well it was nice to meet you."
I panicked and realized that I had gotten caught up by his curiosity in who I was that hadn't asked him my question! "Wait, I want to ask you a question." He turned his focus back on me. "What did you do to get this far as a musician?"
He was obliged to answer my question and told me that after he finished college he had an opportunity to audition for something. That was followed by another opportunity followed by another. He also mentioned a talk by Elder Jeffrey R Holland that had inspired him. When he finished answering my question, he asked me why I wanted to know. I told him that even though I play Cello I also have a love for singing and composing music. I wanted to use my talents to make an impact on the world, and I wanted to know how I could do so. He responded to my answer by saying, "That's beautiful."
He wished me luck and invited me to look for the talk he mentioned. We said farewell to each other and I went home. The next day, we had a morning dress rehearsal to practice one more time before we would perform that night. Nathan Pacheco was still sick, but he still participated and would simply rest his voice sometimes. At the end of the rehearsal, a bunch of the orchestra members lined up to get an autograph or picture with him. He granted each student's wish. I'm lucky that I was able to have a personal conversation with him the day beforehand!
After our afternoon break, we were required to come back to the auditorium an hour before it was time to perform. I was rosining my bow and wiping the dust off my Cello backstage and happened to look up as Pacheco was walking by. He saw me as well and wished me good luck, calling me by name once again. I couldn't believe it. He still remembered my name!
The performance had begun. Every seat was taken and everyone was enjoying the opportunity to accompany or listen to Nathan Pacheco. Even when he coughed. The people in the audience actually cheered louder when he did so. I was enjoying the experience myself and sometimes quietly sang the Christmas songs while playing whole notes on my Cello. Before I knew it, we only had a few songs left to perform. At the end of one song, Pacheco addressed the audience and said, "Who's heard of Jeffrey R Holland?"
The audience laughed for a moment. He then started to tell them a story of when he was at Brigham Young University. He had just gotten home from a tour in Italy and was contemplating on the possibility of pursuing his dreams as a musician. He went to a devotional that Elder Holland was giving a talk at the BYU auditorium. As he spoke I knew that Pacheco was talking about the same talk he told me about during our conversation we had the day before. He told the audience that he was sitting in the back of the auditorium and something that Elder Holland said touched him though he sat so far away. "God is willing to answer our prayers and fulfill our dreams, but He can't do that if we don't pray and we don't dream. In short, He can't do that if you don't believe."
After sharing that quote, Pacheco said to the audience, "You are all a part of my dream."
Tears started streaming down my cheeks. His dream was to share beautiful music with people. That's how I felt about music. I wanted to share my songs with others and I wanted them to have a connection with my music. I wiped away my tears hoping that no one was noticing. I was so touched by this. It felt like God was speaking to me personally and that Nathan Pacheco was setting the example of who I wanted to become.
As the last song ended, we received a standing ovation and so many people crowded the hallway outside the auditorium to get autographs from Pacheco. I waited in the line to get an autograph as well, but I mostly wanted to get one more chance to talk to him so that I could thank him for sharing his story and helping me realize that I can live my dreams. When I got to the table where he was signing things, I did just that and he listened with a sincere look on his face. Then he said something that I hope I'll never forget and always remember when I have a hard time with my music projects. Saying my name one last time he told me, "Keep on dreaming."
I left the building happy and excited to make my dreams a reality. Little did I know that I would have the dream to start a YouTube channel and then later on sell the sheet music of my original songs on my own personal website. Even though I didn't have those dreams at that time, they have now become a reality! And even though I'm not performing to people in Concert Halls and auditoriums all around the world like Nathan Pacheco, I'm still fulfilling the hopes I had in 2018. With YouTube, I can share my songs with others and help them have a connection with my music.
You are a part of my dream.
Speaking of my YouTube music, you can check them out right here. You can also buy the sheet music to my original songs and donate to my website! Comment below on a celebrity that you have met or wish to meet. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Keep on dreaming everyone.