Thursday, July 18, 2013

Preserving some things I created

When we started attending a church in our little town, somebody remembered that I used to sing at various functions.  With some persuasion, they finally got me to sing at church, after more than twenty years of silence.  I was nervous the first couple of times, but then I got over it.  It helps that it's a small group of people there, and things are very informal.  
This led to my digging out songs I wrote that I hadn't thought about in years.  In some cases, I had to work at remembering the tunes.  I don't write down music notes when I write a song.  I used to put new songs on a cassette recorder so that if I forgot the tune, I could listen to it, but the recorder and the cassettes have gone the way of the dinosaur.  Anyhow, some of the songs I wrote in the 90's weren't so bad, and some were downright good.  I am finding that if I polish up the not-so-bad ones and update some of the words, they are fairly decent.  Somewhere in this process of rediscovering my old songs from back when I used to be a songwriter, I realized these songs are all going to die with me.
The songs are like children to me, my creations.  I can't let them die.
I have put three of them on Youtube and another three on Vimeo.  There are a lot of people who don't want to be owned by Google, the owner of Youtube, and don't want to have to make a Google account to watch videos.  That's why I switched to Vimeo.  I believe all the Youtube ones have been made private, so nobody can hunt them down and make fun of me.  The Vimeo ones are all private but one, which I left accessible because a local friend wanted it.  
It occurred to me yesterday that if I put the best of my songs on Vimeo and made them private, only allowing a few people to access them (people that think I'm a lot more talented than I really am, or my daughter, since one of the songs is about her), the songs might live on for a while after I'm gone.    

The trouble is that I HATE recording myself.  I'm too lazy to re-record until I get it right, so the recordings are always flawed.  I am ashamed of how bad I am at playing the guitar, which is one of the reasons I'm self-conscious singing in front of an audience.  So every one of the songs I record for posterity is going to be imperfect, to say the least.  That's why I keep putting it off.
Someone on Facebook mentioned chrysanthemums yesterday and it reminded me of one of my songs entitled "I'm A Chrysanthemum".  Back when I sang publicly sometimes, it was my most requested song.  I guess that's the next one I will record next.  If I wrote a song comparing myself to a flower these days, it would be something about the last rose of summer.  Trust me on that.  

Yeah, I have to get those songs recorded, whether I feel like it or not.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:08 AM

    If you'd ever like to do a serious recording and make the trip into KC, you're welcome to come to my husband's recording studio.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10:08 AM

    If you'd ever like to do a serious recording and make the trip into KC, you're welcome to come to my husband's recording studio.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's wonderful that you can write and sing songs. I'm not much good at singing and never wrote anything. What a gift you have. Glad you are recording some.

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  4. When my late husband and I move to Mexico to retire (be Missionaries), we right away found a Tuesday Bible Study. Our teacher was a 94 year old daughter of an itinerant preacher. Seeing that I had brought my computer with me, her son contacted me to write down her poems so the would all have them. I did and self-published the little book. Our teacher popped those books out where ever she was to benefit the ministry they had. Writing down & recording your songs is a wonderful legacy for your family. Blessings, Penny PS - I'll buy the cd

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