Month: July 2020

Every now and then I just do a double check on “images” google or other search engines will find if/when I search my name.  With a somewhat unique name I didn’t have to change it for my songwriting and recording efforts.  Yet I share the name with a well liked young professional chef who now resides in New Zealand and doesn’t write songs that I’m aware of so life is generally good.  I doubt sharing the same name troubles either of us and I hope he is thriving.

It is interesting to me to note how some of the images are older, and some are associated with relatively recent things.  And yet, some of my more popular songs and/or their cover art didn’t make the top 20, while a different one did.  There is not any perfect rhyme or reason to it that I can decipher, but I’m sure a good nerd to explain it to me, and I’m glad not to have one waste his or my time doing so.  It does entertain me just a tiny bit though, and I have to take care not to do the search too often.   Compared to some photographs out there of me doing civic things and/or that my few friends might have snapped of me in my natural habitat, I’m actually grateful that these 6 don’t offend.  phew.

Below are the 6 out of top 20 images that are me.

About a year ago I invested in an anonymous review of this song, Say Goodbye, which is a simple piano ballad with a VERY somber and hopefully beautiful aspect to it.  You can click here to listen to it for free in a new window if you like.

Now of course it isn’t fair to compare apples and oranges like that.  Some of my favorite songs of old were studio recorded with great attention to arrangement and/or much more complex than just a simple ballad; and they had excellent musicians in collaboration on them.   Still even those I most like didn’t score as high as this plaintively soft song.  In fact this one was recorded and produced by myself in isolation from others; I did the PAD strings, and the sound engineering myself.  True, my wife did make a request of me as I was writing portions of it which likely challenged me to improve it.  But still it hits me as kind of interesting that the highest rated song of mine is one I did entirely on my own.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loved my recording studio time with several producers in the past (most all of them), and I’m not comparing myself as a producer with anybody.  But I’m wondering about how this song is truer, perhaps, to my genuine musical inspirations.  When left alone to play and write a song, I most often create something soft, sweet, and yes a bit sad.  And it is really difficult for me to write a song that is based on joy versus angst.  Perhaps the reason this one turned out more pleasing than some to anonymous listeners across the internet is due to authenticity and lack of dilution from writer through producer and collaborators and on to digital +s/-s on a computer.  Or then again, perhaps it is just how this time my review request fell on a red moon shading across a cactus plant in Arizona, who knows?  Meanwhile, I need to play piano more these days.

If you read this far, please know you can download for free  one of those songs I spoke of that I enjoy and that this song beat out anyway… you can download it with just a  click here.