Professional Development? Creative Development? How about just “DEVELOPMENT”?

As in a year ago, I should be working on National Boards submissions for my School Counseling professional development goals.  However, I really don’t want to.  I really don’t.  It’s not that I don’t want to become a better school counselor, I just have a major case of the “want to have funs”.  I’m not sure this is curable.

So, similar to last year’s procrastination methods, I’ve decided to write my first blog post in months.  Many, many months.  Now, I’ve not been that musically focused in months, so it’s understandable I wouldn’t post.  What would it be about???  But, that is starting to change, thankfully.  I’d rather be musically focused in my non-work life than focused on other things (aside from spiritual growth, that is), so this is definitely a step in the right direction.

About a year and a half ago (or more), I stopped taking voice and piano/theory lessons.  Partly because my two teachers had moved out of town, and partly because I needed to focus on Boards.  Well, even though I have to resubmit for Boards, I decided that a life without growing musically is not for me.  I need it to make me feel balanced and strong and excited about life.  Listening just isn’t enough.  Guitar lessons (on hiatus right now) are not enough because although I enjoy them, they don’t drive me creatively and frankly, I’m just bad at guitar!

So, back to voice I went.  My former teacher, Kelly Ash, long ago relocated to NYC, offered to teach me via Skype and I snatched that offer up immediately.  It’s awesome working with someone I already jive with, and who has lots more to teach me due to her progress through grad school and more.  We started off with a goofy goal.  Being obsessed with The Voice, I decided I wanted to prepare a song for a mock audition.  There’s no way I’d actually audition, but I wanted to believe I had a song I prepared well enough to audition.  It’s been a good goal–watching The Voice and listening carefully to the coach feedback, etc.  We’ve worked on a few of songs with this in mind:

Isabella, by Dia Frampton (first runner up during the first season of The Voice)

Hold On, by Sarah McLachlan (really challenging, and sad, but empowering to sing, plus she’s my hero)

Time After Time, by Cyndi Lauper (are there any women who haven’t been able to relate to this at some point in their lives?)

Don’t Cry, by Ann Vriend (I just discovered this Canadian artist and am in love with this extremely difficult to sing song.  It’s given me quite the challenge!)

Kelly and I “meet” twice a month, which keeps it affordable.  And I have something to work on that excites me and requires me to analyze songs a little more than normal.  Once I feel like the Ann Vriend song has been worked through enough, we’re going back to writing.  I’m rusty and out of shape in this category, but ready for the challenge.  I wrote a song for my dad over Christmas (thanks for requiring a homemade gift, Dad!) and it felt great, despite my lack of ability to accompany myself.

Now I’m on a mission to get to Nashville and listen to a whole lot of music.  Or attend a songwriting workshop.  It’s possible I’m being influenced by the current ABC show, Nashville (it’s just so good!).  🙂  But, I’d also be happy heading to a workshop in NY.  Or LA.  Sometime next year–maybe spring.  All I know is it makes me feel good to be thinking about these things, and making non-concrete plans to improve a craft I truly enjoy but need to work hard at to get better.

Despite the best intentions to focus on professional matters, putting creative flow/practice on hiatus sort of defeats the purpose.  That matters just as much, if not more.  I must build time for it, just as I must build time for spiritual study and exercise.  In the end, everything we do to grow and progress cycles around and feeds the other areas of our lives.

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New Song! New Song!

My sister and I have a song for your downloading pleasure! But more on that later…

Lots has been happening around here and in my life, and it’s taken me away from blogging. No surprise there! But, after quite a few months away from not producing any new songs, I am happy to say that they are coming again. Now that’s a reason to blog. Woohoo!

Unfortunately, I haven’t suddenly developed instrumental skills despite my lack of practice. But I have felt more motivated to get things going again. I was missing the creative side of my life, and thanks in part to the need to write a wedding song for early April, I was pushed forward. I also give credit to time spent with Kelly Ash, my former voice teacher, at the end of December in Seattle, and also in NYC over my school’s February break. She helped open up some dams that were blocking me, and it propelled me forward to finish the wedding song. As well, she connected me with a songwriting coach who works out of NYC, and provides fantastic feedback on whatever song I’m currently working (and gives me a reason to keep creating so I have something to submit).

As I’ve mentioned before, having a community of artists is extremely helpful and beneficial to one when pursuing anything artistic. Now, I don’t really run in an artistic crowd (and I like the balance of what I have!), but I do have the privilege of knowing and/or working with a few who are doing something creative for a living. And of course I have my family, or, more specifically, my sister, Tara Kelly Kearns. She is a singer and songwriter in her own right (and a former amazing karaoke host—seriously!), and it seems we’ve found a little bit of a groove in creating together. That is, we’re very sporadic with how often we work together, but when we do we seem to complement each other fairly well. What a nice realization!

So Tara and I wrote a song called “Frayed.” I started it with lyrics and a melody, Tara came in and changed the sound from jazzy to folky/bluegrassy (sort of), and added a few more lyrics and the bridge melody. Justin Froese, one of Tara’s good friends and an amazing musician and producer, helped arrange and produce it with Tara, as well as played all the instruments on the recording. Voila! We have a song!

For those of you who know I have a lot of sad-ish songs, please note that I was not actually sad when writing this. But it’s sad. Oh, yes, it’s definitely sad.

Please go to the musican-friendly website, Bandcamp, to download at a “pay what you want” rate. You can listen to the song directly from the website, but it would be awesome if you would download it as well. It’s free! And then you’ll “get” to listen to it over and over and over and over… OK, or just download it because it’s fun for us to see how many people have downloaded our song. 🙂 It’s all very exciting!

And hopefully just the beginning.

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