See, Write, Sing.

I have been a writer for longer than I can remember. 

I kept journals as a small child, writing about the depth of emotions only the young can feel that passionately. How much I hated school, my brother, bedtimes. How cute a boy was, or how unfair my parents were.

Normal childhood angst.

Around middle or high school, my writings changed from insolent musings and critiques of the world around me and all those damn emotions, to poetry and lyrics. I still keep a journal, but it's more of an intermittent update of my life and a collection of lyrics and poems now.

I have been a singer for as long as I've written. 

My family is musical. My mom plays piano and sings, my brother plays drums and piano, and I did 7 years of violin, followed by another 7 or 8 of singing. Unfortunately for me, I can't play piano, which kind of sucks.

Boyfriend is a great guitar player, and while he did give me one of his old guitars, and I bought a bunch of books, so far I haven't done much with it. I will though. I'd love to be able to compose music, along with writing lyrics and melodies.

I don't know how it works for other songwriters, but I typically think of a lyric and a melody simultaneously, as if they were meant to be together. Very rarely do I have a poem all written out and later go back and add a melody.

My not-so-secret dream when I first moved to NYC was to find a way to record some of the songs I'd written, and maybe attempt to sell them. I met with a couple of very nice music producers, who took the time to sit down with me, see my lyrics, and give me some advice.

The strongest piece of advice was that no one was just a lyricist anymore. People wanted to buy completed full songs, not just lyrics or melodies. 

I lucked out and met Al Cohen, a producer up here that I could afford to work with a couple hours a week. He listened to my lyrics and melodies, then we worked together to make an accompaniment, and he plays every instrument you can imagine. 

Then we recorded. I'm lucky that I'm a decent singer! I didn't have to pay for someone to come in and sing on my demo songs, since I could do it myself.

Here are 2 of the songs I recorded. 

"It's All Me" is a more rock-y song, about a girl who tells a guy "It's not you, it's me" when breaking up, and accepting that he's mad about it. It was very fun to sing and write, and own. My favorite lyric is near the end:

"Not calling you.

I won’t apologize.

I never check my baggage at the door."

"Charming" is a cynical more pop-y song about the transition to carefree childhood to adult. My favorite part of this song is the bridge, which goes:

[BRIDGE]

"And we don’t know what happened to forever.
And we stopped learning how to give our trust.

And someday, we’ll look back on all those summers.

And start to see exactly what we’ve lost."

So, check them out. I'm not promising that you'll suddenly be able to fly after hearing them, but for me, recording songs I wrote was a pretty life-changing experience. 

I haven't done anything about selling them, and maybe I never will. But I'm a dreamer, and who knows what will happen next?