A Backpack?? I Carry My Textbooks in a Suitcase!

Hello and welcome to the last blog for this month! Instead of a blog about one of my songs or videos, this blog will be about one of my college memories.

Back when I was in my first year of college, I couldn't make up my mind over whether I liked carrying my textbooks in a side bag while walking through campus or using an actual backpack. On one hand, my shoulder would get sore from carrying everything on one side. On the other hand, my whole back would hurt if I carried too much in a backpack. In the Fall semester of 2019, I had more textbooks than I could stand to carry. About halfway through the semester, I just got so sick of carrying them that I decided that I would put my textbooks in a carry-on suitcase with wheels. That was the best decision I made for that school semester, and I have a lot of funny memories to look back on because of it.

For example, I would often ride the bus in town to get from school to work and vice versa. This caused people to turn to me and ask if I was going to the airport to catch a flight! One time I was caught off guard to hear a much more unique question from one of the bus drivers. “Are you going bowling? That thing is big enough to carry a bowling ball!” 

Though it had the length and width that a bowling ball could fit into, I didn’t ever put a bowling ball in it. But he had a good point. It was big enough that it was sometimes hard to keep it in certain places. For example, my workplace had lockers for us to put our valuable things in. I usually would come to work after classes and… well the lockers weren’t big enough to hold a carry-on suitcase. If anything, I could probably fit a bag or small backpack in it…😂 I can’t help it if I have too many textbooks! Thankfully, there were kind work leaders there that let me put my suitcase in their office.

Similarly, I would often need to keep it close to my legs during class so that I wouldn’t trip someone going down the aisle of chairs and desks. Eventually I decided to leave the suitcase in a safe hiding place in the music building and just bring the essential textbooks and notebooks I needed for a class until I would come back to that hiding place. By the time I graduated I had three hiding places. The music building felt safe. It was as if I was just leaving my stuff in a car. This trust probably had a lot to do with the fact that I knew most of the people who would come into the building and just the overall atmosphere of the place. Not to mention that the suitcase was black and could hide well in the dark. 

The hiding place that I used the most to hide it in was also one of my favorite places to do homework, take naps, and eat my lunch. Speaking of lunches, this suitcase was the perfect size for me to have my lunch bag on top of. I would just put the lunch bag’s straps around the extended rod of the suitcase and my lunch bag would stay on top, even when I was rolling the suitcase along.

Funny enough, after all the effort I did to help myself get around campus with a suitcase, I decided to go back to carrying a side bag or backpack during my last year of school. I didn’t have many textbooks to worry about anymore, so it wasn’t really necessary to have an entire suitcase. But I did still leave my bag in my hiding places when I didn’t need to bring all my stuff to places.

What about you? Are there life hacks that you’ve come up with that have made life a little easier? Comment and share your thoughts down below! Please also check out my YouTube videos, the sheet music to my original songs, and consider donating to my website. Any bit of money will be much appreciated!

Thank you for reading this blog all the way to the end.

September Craziness and October Miracles

Hello once again everyone to my blog!  Today's blog is about the unexpected struggles I had in September and October to get my videos put together. My struggles started in the very first week of September when I got sick with a cold. I had lost my voice! How was I supposed to record any of my songs without a good singing voice? I tried to think of ideas on what to do if I was still sick at the end of the month. In the meantime, I could at least work on my monthly blogs. I had also come up with an idea to do a cover for a couple Mary Poppins songs and spent some of my time coming up with ideas on how to put the song together.

While I was writing my blogs, I remembered that in September there was an annual concert in the park performed by the university's Symphony Orchestra. Every year they ended the concert with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and had fireworks going to replace the cannons he had written in for the piece. I figured that if I attended that and filmed their performance, it could be my September video and I wouldn't have to record myself. In my excitement and anticipation for the concert, I decided to write about the 1812 Overture for my last blog of the month. The Symphony's performance ended up being a pretty good video, and I was excited to upload it by the end of the month. However, technology decided to make my YouTube life as difficult as possible.

Even though it was a good recording, it was too big. It showed up on the photos app on my phone, but I couldn't find it when logging into the same account on my computer. Ever since I started doing YouTube videos, I had recorded videos on my phone and then downloaded them onto my laptop through my Gmail photos account. What was I going to do now?? 

Then I remembered that in the Fall semester of 2020 I had decided to find out the actual Solfege (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do) of the song "Doe a Deer" from The Sound of Music. I already had the Solfege prepared, and thankfully my voice was doing better. To save time, I decided to just drum my hands against a flat surface for accompaniment. I also realized that even though I didn't have enough room on my phone for a video, I had the option of just taking the pictures of the hand signs for Solfege. I was right that pictures would be better, and I was able to download them onto my computer! However, it took me a lot more time to edit and match the pictures with the vocals. To make matters worse, my computer suddenly shut down on me! This was the last day of September!!! I am so, so, so grateful that I have a neighbor who understands computers. She helped me get my computer started back up with enough time for me to finish editing and upload the video. Here's the link to that video. I hope you enjoy watching it more than I did editing it.

There were a few good things that came from these struggles. Not having enough room on my phone for videos gave me the desire to order a camera on Amazon with a screen that flipped around. I could still see what was being filmed, just like when I had filmed with my phone's camera. But now I didn't have to worry about my phone running out of any more space. While I was at it, I ordered a microphone as well. It gives me the option to choose how much volume or echo I want to have.

Now onto the struggles of October. As I already mentioned, I had come up with a Mary Poppins Cover while I was sick. This included two vocal parts and Cello accompaniment. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the month I found it difficult to move my right hand. I found out that I had jammed my finger. I'm pretty sure that it had something to do with the way I was drumming my hands for the September video. Once again, I had a setback at the beginning of the month. I couldn't play my Cello with only my left hand! Thankfully, I was given the advice to exercise my hand by squeezing a stress ball and it healed pretty quickly. But I was worried that if I immediately started playing Cello, my hand would be filled with pain again.

I finally got the courage to play my Cello on the last Monday of the month. Once again, everything was last second! But then something AMAZING happened. On that Monday, I got all the audio recordings I needed. On Tuesday, I recorded all of my videos. On Wednesday, I edited the video and uploaded it onto YouTube, scheduling it to come out on Saturday evening. It was a Halloween miracle! (Get it? Usually people say "Christmas miracle", but it was October!) By the way, in case you were wondering when you read last month's blog about Halloween costumes, I was Mary Poppins for Halloween this year. I figured I might as well hit two birds with one stone.

If you haven't already done so, click the links previously mentioned in this blog. I invite you to also check out my videos, sheet music, and please donate to my website. Comment down below on how you deal with technical difficulties.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Free! -Part 3 Making the Video

Hello everyone to another blog! In Monday's blog and yesterday's blog, I wrote about the backstories of how I wrote my song, "Free". Today's blog is going to be about how I put together the YouTube video for this song in August. Make sure you check out that video and please consider buying the sheet music for it.

So I've mentioned before in my blog about making the video for Sunlight Coming that I've got this thing that I call the camera itch. It means that whenever I'm around something that I think would be perfect for a certain music video I quickly grab my phone and start filming! For this song, that usually meant that I'd be filming green mountains or blue skies outside my car window while traveling with my family. I don't live near the ocean, so it was hard to truly recapture my experience in New Zealand. But there's a beautiful river that passes through my town

Sometimes my neighbors and friends meet together early in the morning to see the sun rise over the mountain. Usually I decide to sleep in and get more sleep instead of watching the sun rise. But one time last year, the summer of 2021, I decided to join them and film the sun coming over the mountain. I wanted to get footage for the line, "when day comes, the sun will shine so bright". I got some good shots and managed to not get blinded by the light. I also took a few videos of the river below us when the sun was getting a little higher.

Just after I took those videos, my friends were thinking of hiking down to the river to swing on the rope of a tree swing on the other side. I agreed to come along. This is when the camera itch came into play. Right as we got to the river, I was taken away by the beauty of everything around me. I had never been by the river that early in the morning, and the sun was hitting the river at a perfect angle. I just had to take more videos! So by the time we were on the other side of the river, I was so full of the camera itch that I took a video of every person who swung on the tree swing. Later on, after uploading my first video, I asked them for permission to use those cool videos for my YouTube video of the song, "Free". I'm so glad that they said yes! The chorus of the third verse is my favorite part of the video to watch over and over again!

Since I had decided to use those videos, I thought that this summer I might as well do recordings of myself on the tree swing. Conveniently for me, there was a bridge that was recently completed which crossed the river right next to the tree! I didn't have to worry about crossing the river by myself with my equipment. I could just cross the bridge! However, I soon found that swinging on that rope is harder than it looks. The moment in the video that I looked like I had gotten dizzy and the other shot where I was resting against the tree was not acting! It was a very dizzying experience and I kept getting scared that I would lose my grip and fall on the sand or the river! Thankfully I didn't. That experience made the videos of my friends swinging and looking awesome so much more inspiring!

Here are also a few fun details I'd like to mention from my filming experience:

1. The pretty islander skirt that I wear while playing piano and looking at my pictures was a gift to me from one of my fellow sister missionaries during my mission in New Zealand.

2. The blue plaid dress that I wear in my music video, Peanut Butter and Jam, is from that same sister missionary.

3. The pictures I look at in the third verse are legit pictures that I took while in New Zealand. I didn't realize it while editing, but in hindsight I thought it was funny that I showed the picture of the sea right as I'm singing the words, "and you'll see".

I think that uploading the video for this song at the end of August was perfect timing. The Fall semester was starting up for other people and, like I said earlier, I had just graduated. But though I've recently ended a 4 year long adventure, I'm starting new adventures now! 

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please check out my videos, sheet music, and please consider donating to my website. 

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this blog. Now go enjoy your next adventure!

Free! -Part 2 Composing the Sea!

Hello and welcome to the second day of November's blog week! Yesterday I shared the story of how I ended up writing my song called, "Free". In that blog I mentioned that I had written it while on my mission and had sung it acapella. Well, as you know from the August YouTube video for this song, it didn't remain acapella. By the time I finished my mission, I realized that the musical opportunities I had on my mission had impacted my life, and I wanted to improve my musical talents by pursuing a music degree in college. Two of those talents I needed to obtain were reading treble clef and putting together accompaniment to my songs.

At first, when I was taking Music Fundamentals in my first semester, I could only think of simple chords on the piano to add as accompaniment for a few of my songs. One of those songs was "Free". It wasn't until I got more experienced with music a year later that I had officially completed this song.

It was the winter break from December of 2019 to January of 2020. I started playing the simple note pattern I had come up with before, but at a faster speed. As I sang along with these fast notes, I felt like I was sailing on the sea. I had been inspired to write this song based off of my adventures in New Zealand, as well as the beautiful landscape I had the privilege of viewing each day. So the fact that this song's accompaniment was sounding like the ocean excited me. I realized at that moment that the piano part was supporting the story that I was singing by painting a musical picture. This new idea helped me figure out the piano part that the left hand would play. The low notes rocking back and forth represented a boat being tossed around on the stormy sea.

This was actually the third song at that time that had its complete accompaniment. The other two were Peanut Butter and Jam and another song that I haven't released on YouTube yet. Each of these songs had a story to tell and had a piano part to paint a musical picture. By the time I had completed writing "Free", I felt a desire to do more than just write songs. I was singing a story and musically painting a story. Why not go one step further and show the story? That's right! This song is what inspired me to do YouTube videos! It's also the first song I've put onto my channel that I had written during my mission.

During the school semester after completing this piano part, I was having a bad day and decided to relieve my stress by playing a piano in one of the school's practice rooms. I wanted to play and sing the song "Free", and I asked a close friend in the building if she wanted to hear it. She said yes and I played the song for her, trying to push out the negative emotions from the day. As I sang the second verse, I realized that college life was just like my missionary experience. It has its ups and downs, but it's totally worth the adventure. And eventually it's kinda sad to see it end… for those of you who are new here and haven't read my blog called School Is Over, well… it's just as the blog title says. I just barely graduated college. But no matter! I've had a missionary adventure, a college adventure, who knows what adventure is coming up next?

Thanks for reading another blog. There will be one more blog about this song which will be about the process it took for me to make the video of this song. That will be posted tomorrow. Make sure you check out the sheet music for this song if you're looking for a new song to play. In fact, feel free to buy the sheet music for any of my songs, as well as watch the YouTube videos I've made. If you are able, please consider donating to my website. Any bit of money is appreciated! 

Do you think that instrumental music has the ability to "paint a musical picture"? Let me know your thoughts down below!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Free! -An Original Composition

Hello and welcome to another week of blogs! For those of you who are new here, every second full week of the month from Monday to Friday is when I post blogs on my site. Some blogs are about the backstories that got me writing a new song. Others are the behind the scenes of making my YouTube music videos. And then sometimes I like to write a story from when I was in college studying music. Today's blog is going to be about the backstory of my original song called, "Free". It was my August YouTube video, and I have a pdf of the sheet music on this website that you can buy right here. 

As I have mentioned previously in some of my blogs including my first blog, Let's Start at the Very Beginning, I am religious and I went on a full time Mission in New Zealand for my church. I had written songs while in High School, but it wasn't until I was a Missionary that I started truly having a passion for it. During the few moments that I had free time, I would write music to express my spiritual beliefs. Sometimes, just as my companion and I would finish a lesson with someone, one of those songs would pop into my head and I would realize that it fit perfectly with what we were teaching that day. When it was my turn to speak once again, I would ask if I could sing a song for them and they'd say yes.

Halfway through my mission (which was only 9 months), I was in an area where there were quite a few church members who knew that I was a songwriter. One of these members was in charge of an event that was to celebrate the highschool graduates in the small town I was in, and she asked me if I could sing one of my songs at this event. I agreed and asked her what the theme was so I knew what song would be good to share with them. Since I had already had the experience of written songs that were perfect to share with people months later, I expected that one of the songs that I had already written would also work for the event. But it was only a moment after finding out what the theme of the night was (the theme was "This Adventure") that my companion said, "Yeah, she could write a new one." 

I was shocked and a little annoyed that she made that statement so matter-of-factly as if it came as natural to me as snapping my fingers. Looking back, I realize that neither my companion or this member knew of all of my songs, and it's possible that I could have gotten away with just sharing one of the songs I had already written that they hadn't heard yet. But the moment that she suggested that I write a new one, I thought that I had to do it. What can I say? I have way too much integrity for my own good! 😂

Since we were busy missionaries teaching a lot of people, I didn't have much time to think of the song or about the theme. But one afternoon I had a break through during my few minutes of free time. I was sitting at my study desk and just staring at the empty page of my song notebook. What could I write that involves an adventure? I kept thinking. Then I stopped and thought of a different question- Where would I be right now if I wasn't on a mission? I turned to the window of our sliding door and saw all the big, beautiful trees and thought, I would be on vacation right now! I realized that this was my adventure! Why not express my feelings towards my own exciting adventure? I then started writing on my paper, "What if…I could be anywhere in the world right now, where would I be?" That was how I felt before my mission as I waited to find out where I would go.

I reminded myself of all the excitement I had as I got ready and started my mission. It really did feel like I was going on an adventure! Then as I reached the second verse, I was reminded of how even though I enjoyed my first few months and even though I was happy to be in this town, I had a bumpy ride and had experienced a lot of disappointments. Sometimes this awesome adventure of mine wasn't that awesome, but I now was enjoying the experience once again. Just as I had written in the song, "I will remember why I'm here", I was remembering the reason why I decided to go on a mission. I wanted to serve people and teach them what I believe. And I wanted to enjoy my time in this beautiful place surrounded by so many wonderful people!

The final verse had some mixed emotions written within it. As I mentioned earlier, I was halfway through my mission already. I knew that another 9 months wasn't that far away. Soon I would have to end this adventure and go back home. Even though it was hard sometimes, the thought made me sad. But I decided to change my focus from the sorrow for myself to the excitement for the teenagers I would be singing to. It was only a year ago that I had been in their shoes excitedly looking forward to my adventure. I wanted to pump them up with that same excitement to go find their own adventures and be FREE! 

It didn't take too long to write the melody and lyrics of this song. But since I didn't have too much free time as a missionary and at the time couldn't read treble clef, I sang my song acapella. That's what I had been doing for each of my songs already. Either way, the people who came and listened to it had enjoyed it!

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog! Please feel free to watch my YouTube videos, buy my sheet music, and/or donate to my website! Any bit of money contributed will be appreciated! Have you ever been on a grand adventure before? Comment below on what your favorite part of it was! Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

Halloween and Music

Hello everyone! It's Friday, the last day of Blog Week in October! Speaking of October, who's getting into the Halloween spirit? I'm pretty excited for the holiday this year. I'm also thinking back on the last 4 years of celebrating Halloween at college. Here are the links to previous blogs that I've mentioned about my college experiences so far: School Is Over, I Sigh to Sing, and 1812.

So as I've mentioned before, I officially ended up choosing my voice as my "instrument" in my school's music program. But before that in my first semester, Fall of 2018, I played my Cello. Because of this, I was in the Symphony Orchestra that semester and got to participate with all the other cellists in playing a Halloween joke on our conductor.

Earlier that semester during practice, a few cellists noticed that our 2nd cellist was wearing the same outfit as our conductor that day- a blue shirt and tan khaki pants. Those few cellists quietly took a picture and sent it to the group chat that included all the Cello players. We soon decided that we would all dress up in that outfit for Halloween, and one cellist was even able to contact our conductor's wife who was willing to convince him to wear that outfit again on Halloween.

Halloween came and I found myself in my private Cello lesson wearing a blue shirt and tan pants. My Cello teacher was also in his Halloween costume. He loves to dress up in a renaissance outfit each year, and the Orchestra conductor interrupted our lesson by opening the door and complimenting my teacher's outfit. Sure enough, our conductor was wearing a blue shirt and brown pants. Thankfully, he was distracted by my private teacher's fancy outfit to notice what I was wearing. By the time Orchestra practice came, however, it didn't take long for him to realize that all the Cello players were wearing the same outfit as he was wearing! It was so funny to see him silently looking at each of us with an expression on his face that said, Wait a minute…you're all wearing blue shirts and brown pants…and so am I! That was a very memorable Halloween!

The next year, Halloween of 2019, wasn't as exciting or funny. I had started working at a store that fall which sold a lot of cheap, random stuff. This attracted lots of different people who would be looking for items that would work for their Halloween costumes. I can't really explain it, but seeing people obsessively look for Halloween stuff gave me the creeps and I didn't want to dress up that year.

I got over those feelings by October of 2020. Since I could get extra credit in my Music History 1 class by dressing up, I got back into the Halloween spirit. The Cello teacher taught this class, so of course he was dressed up like a musician from the 1700s.

I came to class that day dressed up like a Monk- or Guido of Arezzo. Guido helped with the invention of Solfege, and I absolutely LOVE Solfege!(If you can't already tell from the video I put up in September) What's funny though is that I bought a brown bed sheet to wrap around myself for the costume and I got it from the EXACT same store I worked at a year before! I also went to a Halloween party and dressed up as Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service since my hair was very short at the time. Brownie points goes to whoever knows about Kiki's Delivery Service and/or other Studio Gibli films! Comment below!

Last year, October of 2021, I decided to have even more fun and dress up as a music joke! The pictures should say it all:

Still not sure what my costume is? I'm a conductor! Both a musical and train conductor. I went around of my music friends and teachers and asked them if they could guess what I was for Halloween. They couldn't figure it out, but once I turned around and took off my blue coat they chuckled at the music joke I had tapped to my back. "I'm a conductor!" I'd say to them happily.

What about you? What was your most memorable Halloween costume you've worn? What are you hoping or planning to be for Halloween this year? Let me know in the comments down below! Please also make sure you get a chance to watch my YouTube videos and consider buying the sheet music of my original songs and/or donating to my website. I hope you enjoy Halloween this year!

Thanks for reading to the end of my blog.

Do It For Them- An Original

Hello and welcome again to my blog! Today I want to share with you the backstory of my song, Do It For Them. Feel free to watch the video of this song and please consider buying the sheet music for it.

As I've mentioned before in my blogs I Sigh to Sing and 1812, I originally was playing Cello at college before switching to voice as my instrument in my Music degree. Part of the reason I chose to do so was because I felt more connected and more able to express myself through my voice than by playing Cello. There was one day in my first semester that I had gone into a school practice room with my Cello. It wasn't very long after I got out my Cello and started playing it when I stopped and got frustrated with myself and my ability to play the songs I was practicing.

I tried to remind myself why I was even focusing on music as my Major. I remembered that I had been inspired to improve my musical knowledge at school. I thought of the many times that I was also inspired to write songs during my Mission. I would later on feel prompted to share one of those songs with people who we were teaching. They would look so happy so happy when I would share a song. I love music because it's how I can truly express myself, and I realized that I wanted to express my love for others through music. In fact, as I sat there in that practice room I wanted to write a new song to express the feelings I had at that moment.

Just to backtrack for a moment, there was a song that I would hear on my Mission called, "It's Not About You". I hated that song! The composer of it probably intended it to be a way for telling people to not be selfish. But I think that telling someone that it's not about them just causes them to be focusing more on themselves. Along with that, it feels like one is just pointing fingers when they tell someone that it's not about them. It's like the Hymn, "Lord, I Would Follow Thee". Who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly? I wanted to take a different approach. Instead of focusing on selfishness, we should be looking at the outward perspective. Who can benefit from the thing I'm doing? Sure, I could have just told myself in that practice room that day to stop complaining and that it wasn't about me. Instead, I had thought about all the wonderful people that had been blessed because I was willing to share with them my talents. I was doing it for them!

It took me some time through the semester to figure out how to express these feelings, but I eventually decided that I needed to express my humility towards my musical talents God has given me in the first verse. Yes, it would be nice if I could gain some money from what I'm doing here on my website and on my YouTube channel. Even now I sometimes have to remind myself that it's not about the money. I try to accept that even though I really do need money in order to survive in this mortal world! But I truly mean what I wrote at the beginning of this song. I don't need to be world famous, I just want as many people as possible to be able to hear the messages of my songs and be comforted by them. And you don't need to know my name to be touched by my songs. You can simply consider me as the owner of "The Musical Hallway".

Then as I thought about what I could write for the second verse, I thought about you! Are you jealous that I can sing and write songs? Well, don't be! You have your own personal gifts and talents that I most likely don't have. I have friends who are math pros, who know everything about computers, who know how to do construction work and how to control machines, who are skilled at financing, who can cook and bake professionally, who are patient with customers at work, who are interpreters, who are leaders, who are teachers, who are parents…the list of talents that one could have could go on and on! Even attributes such as kindness, integrity, trustworthy, humble, a good listener, or consistently putting in the effort to look at the positive things in life are all gifts and talents that a person may have or can try to obtain. I don't know you personally, but one thing I know for sure is that you are talented! Don't ever think otherwise.

And then there's the third verse. You and I can share our gifts and talents for others just as Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for us and all mankind. Because of Him we can live after death with perfect bodies. Through Him we can be clean from both our greatest sins and simplest mistakes. He went through all that suffering because He loves us. He did it for you, He did it for me, He did it for all of us.

Eventually I was able to get accompaniment for this song put together. My choir teacher who I mentioned before has his own YouTube channel told me about how I could download videos on our church website, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I used that resource and downloaded videos about the Savior's suffering, as well as videos of people serving each other. I took videos of myself writing my music. I thought that I had all the videos that I needed. Then the Monday before I was going to upload it there was a church service project I participated in that was to help the people suffering in Ukraine. I took a few quick videos before jumping in and helping. There was another member taking several quick videos while I was helping, and I asked her to send me those videos. It was all perfect timing and it gave me all the footage I needed.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post! Remember to check out my videos, the previously mentioned links, and consider buying the sheet music to my original compositions and/or donating to my website. But as I mentioned earlier, it's not about the money. It's about you! 

Have you recognized a talent that you have and found a way to use it to help others? Comment your thoughts down below! Thanks for reading my blog!

It’s a Wonderful Day! -Making the Video

Hello again to my blog! So these last two days have been blogs about my original song, "It's a Wonderful Day!" And guess what? Today's blog is also going to be about that song. I've shared the backstory of writing the song and my experience of writing polyrhythms in the piano accompaniment for it. But I still haven't gotten the chance to share with you the best part of this story- making the video! It was so much fun!

The last thing in this story that I mentioned in yesterday's blog was that I had been writing the accompaniment for this song for my composition class, and I finished it just before the last week of June. So I decided that it was going to be the song for my June video. Since I had just barely completed the piano part, I asked a friend who plays piano to accompany me as I sang the song. Another friend of mine offered to help me out by taking videos so that I didn't need to worry about moving my tripod around. On the Saturday before the last week of June we planned to meet up with my accompanist to record the performance of the song before she would leave town in a couple days. Then my friend and I would go out and do additional videos. Everything was going to work out perfectly! At least I thought it would…

The pianist had forgotten that she had a family reunion on Saturday. Now the only time she had available before she would leave was on the Monday morning before June would end. My friend who was going to take videos of me in other places had a totally opposite situation. She would be out of town all of Monday, but was still free on Saturday. So we filmed the fun, silly videos before I got the recording of the song with my pianist. If it seemed like my dancing was awkward at all, it was because I didn't have any music to dance to except for the music in my head! 🤣

It was really fun to record videos with my friend. Along with dancing to no music, I had fun laughing at my mistakes, skipping around, and improvising quite a bit. There were two lines that I thought would be a bit difficult to get a video of, but they ended up genuinely happening! The first line was, "I'll keep laughing". There was a moment that I messed up, thought that she had stopped the video, and laughed after realizing that she had started recording again. That video is definitely going in my blooper reel that I'll be uploading at the end of the year. Stay tuned for that when it comes out!

The other line was, "and even if I fall". There was another video where I had been planning on running across the grass past my friend holding the camera. Just after I had passed her, I realized that she was still filming me. So I decided to turn around and run backwards for a moment, looking back at the camera. That was a big mistake. I tripped over myself and fell on the grass! Thankfully, I didn't hurt myself and that footage was exactly what I needed for the third verse!

Right next to the field of grass and the walkway under the shade of trees was a playground. My friend suggested that I could go down one of the slides, and I agreed that it would be fun! She pointed to the slide that she thought I should go down, and I once again agreed with her. It wasn't until I went down the slide that I realized how tall and steep it was! I was startled and yelled out "WOAH!" But though it scared me for a moment, it was so fun to go down that slide!

Later on we left the park and filmed at a dead end street that led to a bunch of rocks and sand. My friend thought that this could be another good place to film, but I wasn't as confident as her this time. If I fell down this time, it would be a much more painful experience! Thankfully, I didn't trip or fall and I got a couple more videos of me skipping and dancing to no music.

On Monday it wasn't too complicated to get a performance recorded with my accompanist. We had to record it more than once though because I had forgotten to press the record button on one device. Then halfway through another recording the camera that was by my accompanist (which is an older camera) turned off! Ugh technology. Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes it's a curse.

But once I got all my recordings done, I started editing them on Shotcut. I was really surprised to find out that most of the videos my friend took of me matched up with the music even though I didn't have any music to listen to while recording them! It was also just so much fun to watch myself act so goofy! Unlike my previous videos, I couldn't help but keep watching the video over and over again and smiling at myself while editing this video. It brought me so much joy, and I hope it has done the same for you as you've watched it on YouTube! After all, the song and the video are a reminder that we can have wonderful days, even if nothing is going our way. 🙂

I hope you enjoyed yet another blog about this song and the video that goes with it. It was so much fun to put it all together. Don't worry, I'll move on to another topic tomorrow! Please remember and feel free to watch my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music to my original compositions, and/or donate to my website. Comment below on when was the last time that you saw an adult slide down a playground slide! (Not including me, of course!)

Thanks for reading my blog all the way to the end.

It’s a Wonderful Day! -That Jazzy Accompaniment! Or is it The Blues..?

Hello once again to my blog where I share stories of what lead me to write original songs, how I've made YouTube videos, and fun memories I've had in college. Yesterday I shared the story of what lead me to write my song, It's a Wonderful Day! Today I continue that story by sharing with you how I put together the video for the song. Make sure you check out yesterday's blog, the video of this song, and please consider buying the sheet music for the song if you'd like to play or sing a new catchy tune.

So at the end of yesterday's blog I mentioned that I had completed the lyrics of my song. While I wrote those lyrics, I came up with some chords to go with them. I knew that this energetic song needed more than just simple piano chords. But I couldn't think of anything to add to the accompaniment other than the chords. That is, until one day in my Music Theory 4 class of the same semester I was writing the lyrics. 

We were learning about polyrhythms where there's more than one type of rhythm going on in the song. The bass or lower instruments keep the steady beat, the higher instruments or singers play or sing the melody, and then there are instruments in-between them which play a tune with a rhythm completely contrasting the beat and melody. I thought that adding polyrhythm would be great for this song. The chords I came up with could be the steady beat in the left hand of the piano, the right hand would have abstract rhythms, and I, of course, would sing the original melody above the piano accompaniment. 

However, counting isn't my strength in music… Later that year during the summer break, I asked a friend who plays piano and likes to compose to help me out with writing this song. Unfortunately, he moved before he ever got around to helping me out. 

Fast forward a year and it's the summer semester of 2021- this year! For my last semester of college, I finally got the chance to take my school's composition class. Each week I would show my teacher how I had improved with the songs I wrote and he'd give me tips on how to make them even better. I saw this as an opportunity to get some help with writing the accompaniment for this song. I completed it a week or so before the end of June. It was perfect timing for getting my June video recorded and uploaded! I'll share the backstory of making the video tomorrow.

When I shared the link of my video to my friends, many of them told me that this song has a "Blues" feel to it or that it sounded jazzy. But I was just trying to apply what I knew about polyrhythm! If you haven't already, listen to the song and then comment down below on what music genre you think it fits under! Is it Jazz? Blues? Or just the sound of multiple rhythms being played at the same time? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I hope you enjoyed this blog! Please feel free to watch my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music of my original compositions, and/or donate to my website! 

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

It’s a Wonderful Day! -An Original

Hello everybody and welcome once again to my blog where I share the backstories of how I wrote my original songs, how I put together my YouTube videos, and some fun music memories from college. Today’s blog is about the backstory of how I wrote my song, “It’s a Wonderful Day!” Feel free to check out the video of the song, as well as consider buying the sheet music for it.

As I’ve mentioned before in my blog about my song, “Peanut Butter and Jam”, I used to work at my neighbor’s Daycare off and on. One day while working in January of 2021, I woke up feeling grumpy. I don’t remember the day perfectly, but as I recall I woke up with these negative feelings due to the lack of enough sleep.

Nevertheless, I went to work and tried to clear my head of any negativity while I looked after a group of energized and mischievous children. When lunch was over, it was time for the younger kids to take naps and the older kids to sit quietly and watch something on T.V. It was also the best time to clean things. I was often asked to clean toys in the playroom. I would dunk most of the toys in the bathtub that was filled with water and chlorine and then shake the water off the toys, leaving them on a blanket stretched out on the floor for them to dry off. But when it came to other toys, such as those with batteries in them or those that were too big to fit in the tub, they were just sprayed.

On this day that I had woken up feeling moody, I was trying to spray a toy but I missed and hit a part of my hand that wasn’t completely covered by my cleaning glove. I have eczema in the winter and even though my hands were mostly protected, spraying myself with chlorine frustrated me! I was so close to vocally expressing this frustration, but I remembered the sleeping children in the next room and quickly forced a smile on my face. Suddenly, I found myself quietly singing, “It’s a wonderful day for nothing to go my way!” Hey! I thought to myself. That could be a new song I could write!

So once again, I found myself making up a song as I worked a shift at this daycare. I thought about the mood I was in that morning when I woke up. “It happened to start with a tear in my heart”... but that sounds like a clique phrase that any person would say… I continued thinking to myself as I sprayed more toys. Then I realized that the word “clique” rhymed with the words “day” and “way”. I could do two rhymes in one line, another two rhymes in the next line, and a final line that ended with a word that rhymed with the first two rhymes.

It’s a wonderful day for nothing to go my way.

It happened to start with a tear in my heart.

I know, it sounds so clique.

Perfect. I was off to a good start with this song. I continued to brainstorm as I worked, but unlike the song “Peanut Butter and Jam” it didn’t get finished within 20 minutes. I ended up working on it during the spring semester, which was really needed because of the stress I had for each of my classes. It didn’t take too much time to complete the first verse, but I got stumped after writing the first line of the chorus. “This day couldn’t be better, and I know it’s gonna get worse.” What rhymes with “worse”? All I could think of was “hearse”, but I didn’t want this song to be about death or hearses. I couldn’t imagine how that would even work for the song. But I didn’t want to rewrite such an awesome line, so I kept trying!

One day while walking across campus to a class, I tried once again to think of a different rhyme. Hearse…no, not hearse. Something else! Not hearse…wait…rehearse! I remembered that there are so many times that I get stressed out that the worst things could happen. I’m basically using up my energy for something that might not even happen! There’s no fear I need to rehearse, I thought to myself. I’m not perfect at avoiding this “pre-stress”, but I try to do better now at not getting worked up over what could happen.

So I finally found a rhyme for “worse”. Now what? I was busy with school and didn’t have all the time in the world to add on to the chorus, but I had a vague idea of a tune that would follow the two lines previously written. One day when carpooling back home from college with a friend, I mentioned the song and he wanted to hear what I had written so far. So I sang the first verse, the two lines of the chorus, and hummed the tune I had so far after that. After I stopped singing, he told me that it reminded him of the pick-me-up songs his mom would listen to when she was feeling down. It was only a little while later that I realized that I could use that as part of my song. After all, it was exactly what I was trying to do: “Put my complaints into a pick-me-up song” and try to look on the bright side of things. This bit of inspiration helped me finish the chorus!

Later on in the semester and while I was surrounded by stressful things, I found myself in my advisor’s office talking things out with him. His go-to advice about stress is usually the same. He tells me to take time to accept what I’m feeling. He’s a firm believer that it’s not about hiding the feelings you have, it’s about accepting them, taking the time to process them, and then moving on. Bottling them up and pretending that they don’t exist will make things worse! I’ve tried to express this way of thinking in the second verse of this song. “I’m accepting the things I’m feeling, and then I’ll keep moving on”. It is then when “I can change up my mood”. It’s okay for us to feel down and express our emotions before we focus on the bright side of things again.

Finally, the third verse and chorus is about the hindsight of the day as a whole when it ends. A lot of hard things happen to us each day. But most often when we look back on our day as it comes to a close, we might come to find that it wasn’t as bad as we thought. I wanted to emphasize this by changing up words in the chorus. “It could have gone worse”, “no fear I had to rehearse”, “it was such a great day”, “what a wonderful day!”

I hope you enjoyed reading the backstory of this song! Please feel free to check out all of my videos, buy the sheet music for any or all of my original songs on my website, donate to the website, and/or click the other links in this blog previously mentioned. Have you ever had a bad day that when looking back you realized that it wasn’t that bad? Please feel free to comment down below!

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Tchaikovsky’s 1812- The Best Part of the Concert In the Park!

Hello again! It's Friday! The last day of September's blog week. September is the month when the Symphony Orchestra of the college I just graduated from performs their annual free Concert In the Park. I'm so excited! It will be the 5th time that I've attended and the 4th time that I've attended as an audience member. As I mentioned in the Tuesday blog of this week, I performed and played my Cello with the Symphony in the fall of 2018 performance. It was an interesting experience to perform outside at night. We had lamps with clips that attached to our music stands. When it got dark, we turned on the lamps so that we could see our sheet music. However, this attracted unwanted bugs that I tried to squash with my bow.

The other three years, 2019-2021, that I went to it were great as well! Each time I got to spend time with friends. In 2019 I got to share snacks with friends during the performance. We also got to listen to some jazzy film scores. That was the one time that I attended a Symphony Orchestra Concert that included a saxophone! All the other years, from what I recall, mostly had classical songs. At last year's performance, I noticed two little girls jumping and dancing to the classical song being performed. It's not every day that would happen in a Concert Hall.

Like I mentioned before in Tuesday's blog, the concert always starts with patriotic songs no matter what the theme is for that year's performance. This annual concert always ends with the same song every year as well: The 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky! This song was written in memory of when Napoleon attacked Russia. Even though it's not exactly patriotic for Americans, the climax of the song is so powerful that we can't help but perform and listen to it! Tchaikovsky even included church bells and cannons in the sheet music! Instead of cannons, this annual performance (and most likely many other performances) replace the cannon shots with fireworks! When I performed it in 2018, I was required to put an earplug in the ear closest to the fireworks so that I wouldn't get ear damage. It made it difficult to play the beginning though because of how quiet we needed to play in the string section. And since I was Cello 8, all the way to the back of my section, it was hard to see my conductor leading the music in the dark.

Anyways, since I performed this song already, each time I've attended as an audience member I knew exactly when the fireworks were about to shoot into the air. I'd get excited as I heard the long, low note played by the Cellos and Bass. The other instruments would play the theme of the French National Anthem over and over. I'd lean over to my friends and whisper excitedly, "Here come the fireworks!" Suddenly there's a big BOOM! The crowd gasps loudly as the sky is filled with bright lights! This moment of anticipation in the song has excited me each year, even when I was performing it and couldn't watch the fireworks. Every time I came to Orchestra practice, I wanted to play the song over and over again. I couldn't wait for the official concert and the fireworks!

Once again, and for the 5th time, I'm excitedly anticipating the free Concert in the Park! This time is the first time I'll be watching it as a post college student! Since I have a bit more time on my hands, I've decided to do a little "Research Paper" on this Overture. For some reason it's actually FUN to research information when I'm doing it out of sincere curiosity and I'm not going to be graded on it! I'd like to share with you a summarized history that inspired the song, how Tchaikovsky used a Symphony Orchestra to tell the story of that history, and how it affected people.

Research Time!

History of the 1812 War

I remember hearing from a teacher at one point in either middle school or high school that Napoleon Bonaparte had tried to take over Russia but had failed to do so because of an extremely cold winter. We didn't go into detail about this moment in history though. Up until now, I had no idea that this choice he made had inspired an amazing Overture! In fact, it was also because of the choices that Tzar Alexander I, the ruler of Russia at that time, had made. Russia had already been "browbeaten into becoming allies" with France, but after Napoleon had decided to create an embargo called the Continental System, Alexander got a bit rebellious by demanding a heavy tax on French expensive products. Tzar Alexander I even rejected Napoleon's proposal to marry one of his sisters. 

These actions created tension between Russia and France. By June 24th of 1812 Napoleon gathered a large army and headed straight to Russia. The French would attack and the Russians would retreat, setting their crops and stores on fire in the process to deny the French any sustenance. By October 19th, Napoleon realized that his troops could not survive in the winter of Russia and retreated. It took until December for them to reach back to their homes. This defeat both saved the Russians and gave other countries the courage to fight against him!

The Musical Narrative

Fast forward to 1880, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was almost complete. It was commissioned to celebrate the Russian's victory, and Tchaikovsky ended up being the one chosen to compose a Symphony for that celebration. Tchaikovsky accepted…and he wrote it in 6 weeks! How does one compose a 15 minute masterpiece that tells the story of a war within only 6 weeks?? Well as I researched information for this song, I found out that he took melodies from other songs to tell this story.

The very beginning- the part that I couldn't hear with an ear plug in my right ear- is a Russian Orthodox Hymn called, "O Lord, Save Thy People". It's also known as, "Troparion of the Holy Cross". Tchaikovsky used this Hymn to represent "when the Russian Holy Synod first received word of Napoleon's army marching towards Moscow" and "put out a nation wide call to prayer." This doesn't stop the French and the quiet Hymn is interrupted by loud brass and the French National Anthem, "La Marseillaise". The "battle noise" dies down for a moment and is replaced by a lyrical section and a Russian folk-dance tune called, "At the Gate". These melodies represent the Russian townspeople in Russia. One description of the musical narrative states that:

As Napoleon gets closer to Moscow, the Russians realize their Imperial Army is just a fraction of the French Grande Armée. 

As such, Russia's Tsar appeals to his people to join the army and defend their nation.

These melodies go back and forth until… that magical moment moment I mentioned before when the French melody is repeated until the cannon blasts! This moment in the song is followed by descending 16th notes and ritardando in the strings. This represents the French winning the Battle of Borodino and taking over Moscow before retreating because of the sudden intense winter.

This retreat in the strings is followed by Church bells and a repeat of the Orthodox Hymn. This time, in celebration of the victory and answer to prayers, it is played by the whole symphony. I love this contrast between the quiet vibrato in the strings at the beginning and the loud accented notes at the end! I also love the way the note Ab is accented so strongly as it is repeated for 13 times!

One source I found states that the ending includes the Russian National Anthem, "God Save the Tzar" being played over the French National Anthem which plays faster symbolizing a retreat. While the Russian National Anthem is definitely playing as cannon shots are heard, I disagree that there is any hint of the French National Anthem. It's easy to confuse this anthem with the celebratory tune at the end, but I recognized the difference between the two by writing the Solfege and notes of the two tunes.

French National Anthem:

So So Do Re Re So Mi Do, Do Mi Do La Fa Re Ti Do

(Bb Bb Eb F F Bb G Eb, Eb G Eb C Ab F D Eb) 

Celebratory tune: 

So Do Re Mi Re Do Re Mi Do Do

(Bb Eb F G F Eb F G Eb Eb)

This tune is heard only one other time when the battle drums come in, so it can be easily assumed to be a part of the French Anthem. I never heard this tune while listening to the French National Anthem, and it was introduced before the Anthem. As far as I know, Tchaikovsky either made it up or used a battle song to introduce the battle and to celebrate its ending.

The Impact

Speaking of Tchaikovsky, he hated this piece! He says that it was "very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit, obviously written without warmth or love." He had the option to choose between three topics, and he chose this war. He wrote it in 6 weeks, and since the performance got delayed 2 years he could have changed things if he didn't like it! He was the one who chose to use cannons and "originally wanted all the church bells in Moscow to ring during the performance" and had to be content with just the bells of the Uspensky Cathedral. This guy makes no sense!! 

I was thinking that he was old and didn't have the stamina to listen, but he was born in 1840. He was only 40 and was complaining about his own music being too loud! Then again, the ability to have coordinated cannon shots weren't as likely to be accomplished back then. It's really convenient that one of the music teachers would tell the person who would light the fireworks EXACTLY when they needed to shoot them in the air!

But even though the composer didn't like his own song, The 1812 Overture has made an overall positive impact on the world. It sure has made a good impact on me! I like it even more now that I've done some research on it and even more excited to watch this year's performance of it!

Thanks for reading my post guys! Make sure you check out my YouTube videos, buy the sheet music of my original songs, and/or donate to my website! Do you think that the final tune of the song is part of the French National Anthem? Do you have strong positive or negative feelings towards this Overture? Let me know in the comments down below!

Here are the links to the resources I found that you can check out for yourself:

1812 History: https://www.history.com/news/napoleons-disastrous-invasion-of-russia

Information on the music: https://blog.oup.com/2013/08/1812-overture-tchaikovsky-romantic-music/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WBPW1SQAI_U

Facts about Tchaikovsky: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1e93pdB5jA

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/tchaikovsky/guides/1812-hated-hit/

https://rewirethewest.com/1812-overture-ultimate-guide/

O Lord, Save Thy People: https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=troparion+of+the+holy+cross+russian

French National Anthem, La Marseillaise: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iS1GpuLXCdI

At the Gate: https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=at+the+gate+russian+folk+song

Russian National Anthem, God Save the Tzar: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_alMLNjaE

Sunlight Coming- Making the Video

Hello and welcome once again to my blog where I share the backstories of how I wrote my songs, put together the YouTube videos for those songs, and even fun memories I have from the music classes I took in college. Yesterday's blog was about the backstory of how my song, Sunlight Coming, came to be. Today's blog will be about how the video for the song became a reality. To read yesterday's blog, watch the video of the song, or buy the sheet music for it, click the links in this paragraph.

So most of the videos I had done before my May video mostly involved recording the audio and then the video. But for this song, I had been getting videos for it long before I ever recorded the audio of it! You see, I have this thing that I've self-diagnosed myself with that I like to call a Camera Itch. Anytime I am in an environment that I think would fit perfectly for a song's video, I grab my phone itching to take a video. For this song, it was anytime that I saw dark clouds, rain falling, wind blowing, and even sunlight shining out of clouds. It didn't matter if I was riding in a car or recording at my house; the moment that I saw rain, I would grab my phone!

Speaking of taking videos at house, there was one rainy evening that I got overly excited with my Camera Itch and decided to run out into the rain and record myself singing the song. This was last year, the summer of 2021, and it was long before I recorded the song. That's what makes it so amazing that there were moments in the video that matched up with the audio I later recorded!

When I came back inside, my sister was very upset and scolded me for being reckless. I don't blame her. Because of the rain falling on my eyes, it took me about a whole minute of looking up to the sky before I could sing the first line, Here it is again, a dark cloud o'er the sun. The lightning strike I had in the second verse was real and it really did scare me! That was when I decided to run back inside all sopping wet. But besides that, it was really fun to be 🎶 singing in the rain! 🎶

After getting all these videos and recording the song, I was thinking of uploading it in April because of the phrase, April showers bring May flowers. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned in my blog about my March video, things didn't go as planned. Just like in March, I was busy with school in April. But this time I was SWAMPED and OVERWHELMED with the things I needed to accomplish! After all, I was nearing the end of my second to last semester of school! Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to record my Senior Capstone Project and put it on my personal YouTube channel.

Still, I wondered when I could upload my Sunlight Coming video now. I definitely didn't want to wait until NEXT spring! But then a thought came to me. April showers bring May flowers… But what if it still rains in May? It was perfect! It fit the message of the song's first line, Here it is again, a dark cloud o'er the sun. When I had written that line, I was emphasizing the fact that sad days are bound to come back just like rainy days are. Similar to that line is the line near the end of the song, You can tell your sadness to go away. It's okay to cry, but not to stay that way. I was emphasizing that even though we can't control the weather, we can control our emotions. And it's okay to express ourselves when we're hurt. We just need to recognize when it's time to press forward into sunlight and enjoy the journey of life once again. It's like this phrase I came up with while on my Mission, "Happiness is a choice, not a consequence."

Anyway, I decided to upload it in May when the stress of my spring semester was over. It was pretty easy to put it together since I had already gotten the audio and videos recorded.

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Comment below about a time when you felt down and how you were able to overcome it OR share something that you can't help do that's similar to my Camera Itch. Please consider buying the sheet music to my songs or donating to my website. Every bit of money helps! Please also remember to check out the other links in this blog if you haven't done so already. Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

Sunlight Coming- An Original

Hello again to my blog where I share the backstories of how I wrote my songs, put together my videos, and survived-but very much enjoyed- college. Today's blog post is about how I started to write my song, Sunlight Coming.

This story started on a bad day in my second semester of college. I had just finished my Music Theory 1 class and had talked to a few friends before walking to my one on one Chinese lesson. Check out my blog about my experience in learning Mandarin Chinese here. I can't remember why, since it's been awhile that I experienced this, but as I walked to my Chinese lesson I remember feeling upset. Maybe it was the conversation I had with my fellow musicians. Maybe I was annoyed that I had to walk half way across campus to practice speaking easy Chinese phrases yet writing complicated characters. Or maybe it was just the dark clouds looming above my head that was affecting my mood.

In my personal lesson of Chinese, we would speak to each other in Chinese while going through words in my textbook. Suddenly, my teacher stopped teaching me and started talking to me in English. This woman is from China, and it caught me off guard that she decided to speak to me in my native language. She must have noticed that I wasn't happy because she told me about her daughter who was having a hard time in college and about students who get so overwhelmed that they try to commit suicide. Hearing her talk about these things surprised me and made me feel uncomfortable as well. I was moody, but definitely not suicidal! Yet, as I listened to her, I was comforted knowing that she cared enough about me that she would interrupt our private lesson just to make sure that I was alright.

At the end of the lesson, I left the building and pondered on what my teacher had told me as I walked over to my Work Study Job. Thankfully, it wasn't as long of a walk because it had started to sprinkle. While the rain softly fell to the ground, a little tune got into my head and I had the idea of writing a song that could relate to both this weather and my mood. When I entered the building where I would start my shift of my Work Study Job, I took out my phone and recorded myself quietly humming the tune that came to me a moment ago.

For those of you who have read some of my previous blogs, you know by now that I'm Christian, have served a Mission for my church, and have other friends who have done the same. One day later on in the same semester that this new tune got into my head, I received an email from one of my fellow Missionaries serving in New Zealand. At the end of the email were pictures that he took during the week. One of these pictures was filled with sunshine and showed a silhouette of him on his bike. The moment that I saw this picture, the tune of the chorus to my new song popped into my head. Only this time I imagined the tune being played by a guitar. The light in the picture and the guitar playing in my head gave me feelings of hope and comfort!

I was busy with school for quite awhile and even though I was writing other songs such as Peanut Butter and Jam, I had forgotten about this song for awhile. That is, until COVID hit in 2020… One day in the summer of 2020, I came across the lyrics to this song in my music notebook and decided to continue writing it, along with giving it piano accompaniment. I made the piano part sound like a rainstorm and the lyrics describe both a physical storm and a symbolic, emotional storm. When the song was completed, I thought about all the people dealing with so many different hardships because of the pandemic and thought to myself, Other people need to hear this song. I wish I was able to get it onto YouTube sooner when many more people probably needed it, but I'm glad that I have been able to eventually add this song to my YouTube channel. Tomorrow, I will share with you the process I had while putting together that video.

If you haven't already, feel free to watch the video and/or buy the sheet music to the song. If you don't want to buy sheet music, please consider donating to my website. Every bit of money will support me as I make videos, blogs, and sheet music. Remember to check out the other links previously mentioned in this blog and comment below on what you think about this song. Thanks for reading 'till the end!

I Sigh to Sing! My First Semester of Voice Lessons!

Hello everyone and welcome back once again to my blog. For those of you who are new here, I am a songwriter, YouTuber, and I also enjoy blogging. I blog so that I can share with you all the backstories of my songs, how I ended up putting together my videos, and even my memories as a musician in college.

So far, I have been sharing the backstories of my YouTube videos in the order that I uploaded them. Yesterday's blog was about the video I uploaded in March, which means that the next video to talk about is my April video. But that video just so happens to be my Senior Capstone where I sang over 10 songs and in several different languages. Rather than going through every detail about why I chose to sing each individual song, I'm writing this blog post to share with you the story of how I ended up taking voice lessons in the first place.

When I was trying to get into the music program before my first semester started, my advisor told me that I was required to play an instrument. So I told him that I played Cello, signed up for private Cello lessons, and took Symphony Orchestra. For our first concert, our Symphony would perform an annual concert in the park that was always free to the public. It also would always begin with the Symphony playing and the audience singing the song, The Star Spangled Banner. A few other patriotic songs, such as O Danny Boy and God Bless America, would follow after it. However, instead of the audience singing along, we had a soloist singing these songs.

One day in Symphony practice, the soloist for these songs joined us during the time that we went over them. She was a tall, slender woman with long brown hair. She stood just behind our conductor as she sang, and I'm guessing that by doing so he was able to hear her. I, on the other hand, was the eighth Cello player and could hardly hear her over the trombones right behind me and the other instruments playing the melody of the songs. I had no idea what her voice sounded like until the night of our performance when our school technicians had set up a microphone and speakers for her voice to be heard over our strong Symphony Orchestra.

When we played God Bless America, I had the privilege of listening to her sing while I played along without much distraction since I mainly played whole notes for my Cello part. She had a very pretty voice. Yet as we neared the end of the song, she started getting higher in her vocal range. I was amazed as I heard her sing the last phrase, "My home, sweet home", with so much power at such a high octave. Wow, I thought to myself as we ended. That was amazing! I had rarely ever heard such a powerful voice like that.

Fast forward to later in my first semester, I ran into a Senior near the practice rooms who told me that she had majored in voice. Up until she told me that, it never occurred to me that my voice would count as "an instrument". She told me about the teacher who was in charge of voice lessons and pointed down the hallway away from the practice rooms to where this teacher's office was.

One day, I decided to knock on the door of the office that this Senior had directed me to. When the door had opened, I was surprised to see that the person looking back at me was the strong Soprano singer that sang the solos at the Concert in the Park! I suddenly felt very intimidated. I told her that I was thinking of pursuing voice, but I wasn't completely sure about it. Especially since I knew my voice wasn't nearly as powerful as hers was! So I told her that I would think about it first.

Eventually, by the end of my first semester, I decided that I was going to pursue voice. I realized that I had a much greater desire to sing at a performance than to play my Cello. But before I was officially going to be let into the vocal program, I needed to do an audition. I was so nervous! First, I auditioned in front of the teacher for voice lessons. She seemed satisfied and told me to go to the Concert Hall where the choir conductor was. He was a friendly guy, but I still wasn't sure if I was going to get into the program and still felt nervous.

He asked me to do some vocal warmups while he played the notes on the piano. With one of these warmups, he asked me to sing the words, "I sigh to sing". As I did so, I looked at the back wall of the empty Concert Hall and tried to relax. While the notes I sang got higher, I started visualizing God and Christ in the back of the Hall. Yes, for those of you who are new, I am a Christian. The words, "I sigh to sing", now felt like a plea I was expressing to them. I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to improve my voice and sing! But since I didn't know if I could be a part of the program yet, I was expressing my heart out to God asking Him to help me every time I sang, "I sigh to sing"!

Suddenly, the choir teacher stopped playing. I don't even know how high I had sung. I was just so focused on the back of the room. He stood up from the piano bench and asked me if I had applied for a music scholarship yet. I said no and he showed me where to go on the school website to apply for one. This was such a great blessing! I was going to be a part of the vocal program AND I was being offered a scholarship! Because of this experience, "I sigh to sing" is my favorite vocal warmup. Every time I sing it, I'm reminded of how great my love and desire to sing is. It definitely helped me press forward with this desire even when COVID hit!

I may have felt nervous when I did these auditions, but after spending so much time with my vocal teacher, this woman who I felt intimidated by became one of my older sister role models. The choir conductor always brightened my day whenever I came to Choir Practice. In fact, all the music teachers and faculty are like a second family to me. That's one of the reasons that the music building feels like home.

I hope you enjoyed reading today's blog! If you've enjoyed this blog, leave a comment down below and please consider donating to my website! Every bit of money is welcome! Feel free to also watch my YouTube videos and buy the sheet music of my original songs. Please remember to also check out the link previously mentioned in this blog. Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

That Easter Morn’- An Easter Cover

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! For those of you who are new here, on every full second week of the month I publish a blog each day from Monday to Friday. For more information on that, listen to or read my first blog from last month called, School Is Over. I've been writing blogs and adding audio for these blogs which tell the backstory on how I wrote my original songs, how I eventually got my YouTube videos put together, and some memories in my music classes at college.

Today, I'll be sharing with you the story of how I ended up making and uploading an Easter Cover in March of this year. Ever since I started making monthly YouTube videos, it seems like every monthly plan I had would change. I originally planned on having Free as my January video. That song actually ended up being uploaded a couple weeks ago for my August video. So instead, my January video was I Truly Care About You. And guess what? I was originally planning on having that as my February video! Instead, Peanut Butter and Jam was the video for February. So by the time March came around, I wasn't sure if I had the right song for the month.

I've mentioned a couple times that I'm religious. I often think about a question that I want answered when I go to church meetings and activities. So one Sunday at the beginning of March I went to church pondering on what song my March video was going to have. At a moment when it was quiet in the building, I had a thought come to me, You should do another cover of a Hymn. It was just like the thought I had when I decided to start my first YouTube video, Away In a Manger!

But after acknowledging that thought, I realized that there were so many hymns to pick from. What hymn should I choose??" I thought to myself. It was only a small while later that day that I remembered that Easter is in April, and since I upload my videos at the end of the month it seemed fitting to have an Easter video at the end of March.

So I went looking through my Hymn book(the English one this time 😉) to find out that there are only 3 songs that are about Easter. Two of them are very familiar to me, but I had never heard the third one in a church meeting before.

That Easter Morn, the unfamiliar hymn I found, had such a beautiful melody and a wonderful message about the resurrected Christ. I soon felt determined to use this hymn as my Easter Cover! But another thought came to me, and I remembered that sometimes you can take the text of one song and sing it to the melody of another song. So I decided to look for another song that has a similar message and text that could be sung to the tune of That Easter Morn. I ended up finding the hymn called, Behold the Great Redeemer Die, which shares the message of Christ's death. Two songs about His death and resurrection felt perfect for an Easter Cover!

With the help of a friend who has a mic and the help of the audio editing program on my laptop, I was able to get the music recorded fairly quickly. I was originally planning to record my Cello for the accomplishment, but later I felt like acapella accompaniment sounded better. Since midterms were coming up, I didn't have much time to make a video. Thankfully, there were free domain pictures of Christ's death and resurrection on the internet that I could download and use for my video instead.

And that's how I ended up putting together an Easter Cover this March. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog. If you haven't done so already, please feel free to check out the links mentioned earlier. I would also greatly appreciate it that you would look into buying the sheet music of my original songs or at least donating to my website. The money I receive will help and support me as I make more videos and content on this website.

Thank you for reading to the end!

Peanut Butter and Jam- An Original

Hey everyone! Happy Friday! It’s the weekend and today’s blog is perfect for starting the weekend. Today I’ll be sharing the backstory of my silly little song, Peanut Butter and Jam!

I have a neighbor who used to hold a Daycare business at her house. I worked there off and on when I was able to. I worked there for a few months before my Mission, the summer break of 2019, and the winter break from December of 2020 to January of 2021. It was a day during the summer of 2019 at this Daycare that inspired my song about peanut butter and jam.

It was a quiet afternoon and I only had a few kids to look after. Just as I was taking them to the back door so that they could get some sunshine, the teenage son of my boss came down the stairs and into the kitchen. He grabbed the jar of peanut butter, the jar of jam, and had started opening a bag of bread as I neared the other side of the kitchen counter from him.

I don’t know what came over me, but as I looked over at him I suddenly found myself singing a little jingle, “Peanut Butter and Jam!”

He stopped what he was doing to give me a dumbfounded look. “Oh, so that’s what it’s called,” he said in reply.

I had no idea how to respond to him except to shruge and change up my silly jingle, “Peanut Butter and Jelly!”

“Oh I guess that’s another name for it too,” he said with a look of surprise still etched on his face.

I knew that he was just being silly, so I ignored him and continued to escort the kids outside. But as I watched them play around in the backyard, I kept thinking of that silly little tune I had made up. Peanut Butter and Jam, Peanut Butter and Jelly… I thought. Hmm…Belly? The Crunch and the Cream… go into my mouth… and start to digest in my belly! I smiled as I realized that I had just started to write a new song all because of that silly little moment.

As I watched the kids play, I mentally continued to write the song. I decided that it would be a song for little kids- no chorus and only one consistent rhyme. By doing that, I ended up writing an entire song in around 15 to 20 minutes! All while watching a few kids play around! It’s my shortest song I’ve written and the fastest that I’ve written. Well, it wasn’t until later in the summer that I had officially completed it. I had written the bouncy accompaniment that mimicked the sound of a toaster popping up bread!

For so long I had imagined acting out the story of this cute song, and this February seemed like a good time to do it. I was still in school and life was busy! So it seemed like a good idea to have a short song to work on during the semester. Plus, for some reason I had always imagined being in my blue plaid dress and having short, shoulder length hair for the video. So I thought, Well, better get it done before my hair gets any longer!

There's nothing really more to say. I ate a sandwich and had fun recording myself while doing it. I hope you enjoyed reading the silly backstory to this silly song. Make sure you check out the video as well as the sheet music to the song!

Thanks for reading to the end! Please remember to leave a comment and have a great weekend! See you next month on Blog Week!

I Truly Care About You- Making the Video

Welcome back to my blog everyone! Yesterday I wrote a blog about the backstory of how I ended up writing I Truly Care About You. Today, I’ll be sharing with you about how I eventually put together the video for this song, making it my second YouTube video uploaded and my first original song available to the public. It’s interesting that I’ve been writing songs for so many years and the first song I share with the world is the one I most recently wrote. But at the time that I wrote it, last summer, it wasn’t EXACTLY complete.

As I mentioned yesterday, my fingers were not used to the guitar’s fret board and its six, sharp strings. But because this song is so meaningful to me, I felt inspired to rearrange my school schedule for the fall and take a beginning guitar class. Because of that class, I learned to be more(but not perfectly) comfortable with a guitar and I learned about different plucking patterns for chords.

Learning about these patterns helped me realize that I could give my song more texture rather than just strumming open chords. Little did I know that this basic knowledge of playing guitar would help me with the very first video I would put on my channel.

Along with learning how to play guitar, my fall semester of 2021 helped me find a location for my video. I don’t think I should share too many details of my school.. Let’s just say that thanks to a friend, I found a tunnel in the basement of one of the school buildings that led to a door outside. I thought it was perfect for my video! It felt like I was pulling someone out of their dark tunnel and inviting them into the sunlight as I opened the door at the end of the video.

If you’ve read my Tuesday blog, you might recall that I mentioned not having anything to connect my phone to a tripod. You may be asking, “But how did you get your footage? Did you bring your art project and Cello to school? Or did you carry a school music stand all the way down to that basement?”

Well just after uploading my Christmas video and while I had a week or so left of my winter break, I bought myself a tripod with a device on top that could secure my phone in place. Buying that tripod has made it so much easier to record things since then! It really helped with getting different angles for the shots of when I was on the couch in the second verse.

Speaking of those shots on the couch, I was originally hoping to ask the friend of mine “with the bright shining face” who inspired this song to help me with the video for the second verse. My plan was to be outside and ask him to “make me laugh with [his] silliness”. But before I even got around to asking him, there was a beautiful sunny afternoon that I didn’t want to miss filming. 

This was January in the northern hemisphere, so I needed to take advantage of any chance of sunlight I could get! So I quickly set up my tripod at a good angle by that couch and started improvising a scene. For the sake of time, I had decided to skip my idea of having someone to help out and make me laugh. Yup, there was no one there. I was laughing at myself talking to a bunch of couch cushions! Comment down below on whether or not you thought it was genuine!

Lastly, I’d like to share with you the miracle of this experience of putting this video together. I had actually gotten sick at the beginning of January, and I didn’t have much of a singing voice. But I had promised myself to do a video each month, and I couldn’t wait for myself to get better before doing a lip syncing video recording. So I recorded myself while I was sick so I could make the videos without having to wait to get better.

As the end of the month got closer, I tried to re-sing the song, hoping that I would sound better and that it would still line up with my lip syncing. But the only thing I could think of was to listen to my original recording and sing along. Unfortunately, that caused my voice to still fall flat! I didn’t know what to do and the month of January was about to end!

So in frustration and a bit of humility and faith, I prayed next to my computer asking God for help. I then decided to mute the vocal part I had been listening to and sang while only listening to the guitar accompaniment. After I was done, I listened to it while watching the video I had already put together. I was surprised that every time my face came on the screen lip syncing, it matched up with the audio! Thanks to this awesome miracle, I was able to upload my video at the end of January. The new vocal recording wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t as sick as I was before and it sounded much better.

Make sure you check out the video and sheet music to this song if you haven’t already! Please remember to look at the links previously mentioned and leave a comment down bellow! Thanks for reading all the way to the end!

I Truly Care About You- An Original

Hey everyone and welcome back to my blog! On Friday, July 15th, I shared the backstory of how I ended up making my first YouTube video, Away in a Manger- A Chinese Christmas Cover. If you haven’t read that blog yet, click here. More importantly, if you haven’t read my first blog, Let’s Start At the Very Beginning, or my first blog of this week, School Is Over, please check those out as well! They give the overall summary of why I’m doing what I’m doing and what my blog schedule is like.

In this blog, I will be sharing with you the backstory of the second video I uploaded onto YouTube. This story was a little tough to write about. I Truly Care About You is an original song that I wrote last summer, 2021. I have mentioned before that I am religious and that I served a Mission for my church. I also have many friends who have done the same.

One bright, sunny Sunday I was at home when my parents walked in the front door and told me to go to our neighbor’s house up the street from us. These neighbors are like a second family to us.

“They have a special guest there that you might want to see,” my dad said.

“Am I…supposed to know who it is?” I asked.

“You’ll just have to go and find out for yourself…” my mom said with a wry smile.

Realizing that they weren’t going to give anything away, my curiosity and love for surprises convinced me to walk out the door. As I walked past my neighbors’ houses to get to my destination, I started trying to guess who this mysterious guest could be.

When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a guy in his Sunday outfit with his back to me, sitting at my neighbor’s piano playing a few notes. But very quickly he turned around as he heard me open the door, and I immediately recognized him. It was my neighbor’s son who I thought was in California serving his full time Mission! I was stunned as he said hello and gave me a big hug. Why is he back from his Mission so soon?? I thought to myself. He hadn’t even served a full year, and the men serve for two years in my church.

I wondered if it had anything to do with Covid. His brother was on his Mission when Covid hit and was sent back home for a while before being reassigned to an area in the States. But when I asked him and his mom why he was back so soon, I found out that it was nowhere near his brother’s situation. This friend of mine had depression.

“I’ve never seen you as someone who could have depression,” I said to him.

“The happiest people have it,” his mom replied back.

Indeed, he is such an outgoing guy. He climbs just about anything, goofs off all the time, and I had hardly even seen him without a smile on his face. I didn’t understand it! At least, up until I had a personal conversation one day with his mom where she told me, “He says, ‘I live a lie’.”

It was so heartbreaking to hear her say that and so sad to know that he wasn’t really always happy. And yet, there was an even sadder experience waiting just around the corner. It was on a summer day last year that I had decided to drop by their house where I found the mom cleaning the house and vacuuming. When she said that her son was in the hospital, I was shocked!

“What?? What hap-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She interrupted me with a firm voice and continued vacuuming.

I sat by her piano in silence. I had originally wanted to play it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just sat there and I started to cry. Soon she saw my upset face and came back over to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a comforting voice. “I just don’t usually cry when I’m upset. I put my emotions into cleaning and doing stuff.”

“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I said.

“It’s because you don’t see him as much as our family so it came as a surprise to you.”

That and the fact that I had just watched one of the last episodes of a show called Dwight in Shining Armor which had already made me cry and think about how it might feel like if all the wonderful people in my life just vanished. (That’s the closest thing you get to spoilers. Watch the show for yourself on BYUTV if you haven’t seen it!)

Unfortunately for me, I had a summer evening job at a Bistro. I had to get ready and leave for work really soon, so my moment of weeping was short lived. As I got ready back at home, I tried to shift the thoughts in my brain and focus on the work I was about to do. But I still kept thinking of my friend in the hospital. So I did the one thing I know can calm my brain from something sad or dramatic. I started writing a song.

I decided that I wanted to write it in a way that other people can connect with it as well. So in that small amount of time before I had to leave, I wrote a few lines describing the personality that he has.

When I got to work, I knew that I needed to focus on cleaning tables, taking dishes to the kitchen, and simpler things such as folding napkins. But I couldn’t help thinking over and over again, He’s in the hospital…he’s in the hospital…he’s in the hospital… Along with that, I was trying to keep the tune I had thought of for the song in my memory. When I write a song, both the lyrics and the melody come to me at the same time. But I didn’t want to forget it as the music in the Bistro was playing.

For the next several weeks, I worked on this song while he was in the hospital. I even felt inspired to have guitar chords as my accompaniment. I was able to find chords that fit the key through online sources and I started to practice them, trying to get my fingers used to this instrument I could hardly play. If you can recall from yesterday’s blog, I had mentioned that I had taken a beginning guitar class. But this was the summer before this class happened and the guitar was unfamiliar to me.

Finally and thankfully, my friend was back home from the hospital! At the very end of the day that I had seen him again, there wasn’t anything happening at their house so I quickly ran down to my house to get my guitar and rushed back before I’d chicken out. I’ve written and shared so many songs before, but I had never felt so nervous to share a song as I had with this one. Depression is a subject that I don’t truly understand, and I was worried that I’d offend him rather than comfort him.

Nevertheless, I came over and played my song for him and his mom since everyone else was asleep or not home. My left fingers struggled a little as I looked for chords while singing. I would look at him every now and then to see what his reactions were, but all I would get was a small smile whenever we locked eyes with each other. I kept wondering what he thought of the lyrics, “Hey, yes you with the bright shining face…” “Your smile is just concealing your true feelings down deep.” And then there was the line in the third verse, “Hey, yes you putting up a facade.” a reference to what his mom told me about him living a lie…

When I ended the song, I looked up. He thanked me for the song and that he appreciated it, but I didn’t see much emotion on his face. His mom, on the other hand, was crying!

“I’m so glad we’re friends with you!” she said through her tears.

There you have it, the backstory to this emotional song. Sorry to have yet another emotional blog so soon, but I actually didn’t cry a bunch while writing this like I did with my blog about school ending. School Is Over is a reminder that so many good experiences aren’t going to continue happening. But I don’t have as much worry and sadness about this as I did when I wrote this song because my friend is doing a lot better now.

There’s more to the story for when I put together my YouTube video of this song which I’ll post tomorrow. Make sure you check out that video and share it with others who you think might need it! I also have the sheet music for this song available if you are a guitarist or you’re trying to learn guitar. Please remember to look at the links previously mentioned and leave a comment down bellow!

Thanks for reading until the end!

A Chinese Christmas Cover- Making the Video

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Yesterday’s blog… was really emotional. At least, it was for me while writing it. Check it out here at your own risk! But though it’s emotional, it mentions a few things about the schedule and content of my blogs.

In last month’s blog, Away In a Manger- A Chinese Christmas Cover, I asked for comments on whether or not you guys want to hear about how I ended up getting the video put together. I would love to get comments and know of your thoughts, but I also want to share this story! So here it is!

At the end of that previous blog, I mentioned that I had just started the audio recording of the Christmas song, Away In a Manger, in Chinese. It was a little difficult at first to get a good vocal balance since I’ve gotten used to singing in a Concert Hall. Sometimes I was too loud even when I had my phone, which has a recording app on it, farther away from me. Since it was winter, the noise from the heater outside my bedroom made things difficult as well!

But eventually, there was a quiet moment and I found that the right balance I needed was to just sit on my bed, hold my phone about a handwidth away from my mouth, and sing softly rather than loudly. When trying to think about what I could use for accompaniment, I decided that the soft plucking of a guitar would fit this Christmas lullaby perfectly. Thankfully, I had just finished a beginning guitar class and had learned a few plucking patterns.

After getting my audio recorded, I needed to figure out what to do for my video. I knew that my parents were going to the Visitor’s Center of the nearest Temple of our Church to sing Christmas Carols. So I tagged along thinking that a group of people singing carols would look nice in the video. I gave my phone to a Sister Missionary in the building and asked her to film it while I sang with them. But when I looked at the videos afterwards, I was disappointed with what I saw. This Sister Missionary did a decent job of taking videos, but the whole atmosphere and color of the room felt off to me.

As I walked in other parts of the building, however, I realized that there were so many Christmas decorations of The Nativity Scene set up. Of Course! I thought to myself. Away In a Manger takes place in that exact scene! So I grabbed my phone once again and took videos of every Nativity Scene I saw.

By the time I finished my last recording of the Nativity Scene, I went to my dad who was talking to a brother of one of my friends. We were having a casual conversation until my dad mentioned to him that I’m majoring in music and I have this dream to do YouTube videos. I hadn’t really mentioned that I was officially starting to make my first YouTube video, so I was surprised that my dad’s comment completely changed the focus of the conversation.

Once my friend’s brother, whose name is Kyle Adams, heard my dad say that, his face lit up and he told us that he does YouTube videos too. He excitedly gave me tips on what I can do to get views and followers. He mentioned that I needed to be consistent, and that comment made me realize that this Christmas video idea really could be a reality. But once that happened, once I uploaded my first video, I needed to keep going! I needed to keep a steady pace! I later decided that since I need to both record audio and videos, and as you now know, I would have my consistency be a video each month. But wow, this conversation that night woke me up to the reality that this was REALLY happening!

Later back at home in my room, I listened to the audio as I watched my videos to figure out where things could go in the video. Then I started filling in the gaps by doing video recordings at home. It was tricky to film myself because I didn’t have a piece of equipment that could hold my phone on top of a tripod. So I got creative and used other objects that my phone could rest on. In the scenes where I’m in front of the red curtains, my phone was safely secured on an abstract art project and on top of my Cello case. In the scene with the tiny Nativity Scene and cow that I play with, my phone was on a music stand.

Speaking of that Nativity Scene, cow, and even the picture I show right afterwards, having those objects available for me to use for the video gave me an even stronger reassurance that I needed to make this Christmas video! It was only the Christmas beforehand that I had received the picture and Nativity Scene from an unknown doorbell ditcher giving me 12 gifts for the 12 days of Christmas.

As for the cow… that’s a funny story that goes way back to when I was on my Mission in New Zealand. I was in a Church parking lot and was next to a Missionary car that was about to drive away. The Missionary who was sitting on the side of the car where I was standing had his window rolled down. Just barely before the car started to move, he reached out to me and put something in my hands saying, “Here you go!”

Surprised, I looked down at my hands to see a brown, plastic cow. I was so confused. It felt like such a random gift, and this was the first time I had even seen this Missionary before! But not long after that, I found out that as an islander he enjoys giving out gifts. I kept that cow ever since as a reminder of that fun memory. I never would have guessed that keeping that cow would come in handy when I’d use it in a YouTube video years later!

Back to the making of the video, the final struggle came to me as I started working on editing the video. Long story short, I’m really glad that I started doing YouTube videos during winter break because it took so much of my effort to figure out the technology! But once I did, I was able to focus on school work while YouTubing when the Spring Semester started.

Once I got it uploaded onto YouTube, I sent the link to everyone I knew and said, “I just uploaded my first YouTube video!!!” It was such an exciting moment. Make sure you get around to watching that video, even if it isn’t until this coming Christmas. It sure was fun to write about a Christmas song in the middle of summer though! Please remember to look at the links previously mentioned and leave a comment down bellow.

Thanks for reading to the end!

School Is Over

Hello readers of my blog. Warning: make sure you have a tissue box near you before you start reading this. It might make you cry. At least, I sure did while writing it.

Last Thursday I had a 15 minute lesson with my piano teacher for my last class of college, Non-Major Piano Lessons. And then just like that, after those 15 minutes ended, I was done with college. Last Monday I had done the last of my homework and I was so anxious for this last class time to be done. Couldn't it be sooner in the week?? I would think to myself. I've already done everything else! Just this one little thing between me and my degree!

On Wednesday night I reminded myself that the next day I would have a 15 minute lesson and be done with school!! I was so excited! But only a little while later I was in my room trying to figure out my post college life like I've been trying to do all summer. I was looking at my hand held calendar and once again saw my note about my short lesson for the next day. I got excited again! Then suddenly a huge wave of sadness came over me and I started crying as a thought came to me, I'm not going to school in the fall…

On the one hand, I've been excited all this time to get done with school and no longer have to deal with the homework that teachers give me. There's also the fact that it's been weird responding to people who ask me, "What are your plans now that you're graduated?"

What they didn't know was the fact that I still had 6 credits to complete for the summer. I had the option to be a part of the Commencement Ceremony since it was just those extra 6 credits, but I hadn't officially graduated yet! So as the end of the summer semester approached, I was really looking forward to actually being a graduate.

On the other hand, however, there are so many wonderful things I'll be missing out on by not going back to college for this coming fall semester. Sure, it's been hard. There have been many experiences of stress as I've tried to get homework done on time, get to classes on time, and many other personal things that have made college life a burden and frustration. 

But I have also made so many friends through both my peers and my teachers. I'm going to miss sitting on chairs or even on the floors of the hallways of the music building and saying hello to all the wonderful people who walk by. I'm going to miss all the friends I've made, including those whom I've only just made in the past few semesters. I'm sad that I didn't get to spend more time with them. I’m going to miss the music building itself, my second home. That’s why I feel so at home and comfortable with sitting on the floors!

I don't live far from the university that I've been going to, and I'm definitely going to go back many times for school concerts so that I can continue to see my music buddies. I’ve even gotten the contact information from all of these friends. But now that I don't have school, I don't have much of a reason to go out of my town. And you know…those darn gas prices… 😑 I know that I have new adventures waiting for me up ahead, but it just feels like graduating means that I’m not going back at all and so I feel a little empty.

Last Monday wasn't the first time that I got excited about graduating, and Wednesday night wasn't the first time that I felt sad about that very same thing. I know that Wednesday's experience won't be the last time I'll get sad over thinking about my graduation. Tears have flooded my eyes even as I wrote these words! These emotions of completing my degree has helped me realize that I have so many memories that I don't want to forget.

I originally planned on just using this blog for backstories on how I ended up writing my songs and maybe even some behind the scenes of putting together my videos. But now I feel that I should add the stories and fond memories of my time as a musician at college, along with stuff that I learned. I'm not a music teacher and I didn't go into Music Education, but as a songwriter I am such a Music Theory nerd!!! I am totally willing to share my theory thoughts even if I'm not a perfect teacher. Overall, there are just so many experiences that I've had over the past four years that I don't want to forget! Maybe you'll read my blogs, maybe I'll have no readers. All that matters to me right now is that I have these memories set in stone so that I can look back on them.

Speaking of my blogs and on a less emotional topic, I have decided on a time for posting my blogs. I have decided to put up one blog a day for the second full week of the Month from Monday to Friday. For example, today is the second Monday of August and I will post four more blogs until this Friday. It may seem like a weird time to be putting up blogs. But since I am also writing sheet music for my songs and making YouTube videos, I am choosing to focus on only doing one week of blogging per month. I have already been consistently uploading YouTube videos on the last weekend of each month, and I need a small break from the fight with technology(I may be doing all this online stuff, but I'm a musician not a computer genius). So I'll be taking a break from uploading stuff on the first week of each month and then focus on my blogs on the second week.

Thanks for reading until the end and I hope that as you read this blog you didn't get as teary eyed as I did while writing it.