After I completed and recorded my last work, Several Nocturnes, I sat down and asked myself, how can I make money with my music?
This question coincided with an extended pause from anonymousbjorn for various reasons. The biggest reason, related to posting on my blog, is that all of my creative energies were focused on recording children’s songs.
Children’s songs are great! I have countless children’s songs and my children love them. They sing along to these songs, they sing along to the radio, and more recently, they love Moana! But as a parent these songs can sometimes....drive you crazy. As you are moving your family from point A to B and listening to “Twinkle Twinkle” for the fifth time in a row that is sung by a chorus of six to nine year olds, it starts grating on your soul.
Back to my music. I have been writing music for 27 years and I have always focused on Classical music with my style mellowing out over the last decade. In-between writing my more formal, larger works, A Light in the Attic (2014), 3 Simple Minuets (2014), Halloween Suite (2014), Passacaglia (2015), Several Nocturnes (2016), and the works I have not recorded yet, Inspired by Silliness Suite (2014), A Tiny Symphony (2015), Sanguine Symphony (2015), Bernie visits Troldaugen (2016), and Sally the Sad Saguaro (2016), I would write two to three minute children’s songs as practice. I would look at Mozart, Bach, Grieg, Beethoven and like for inspiration and write songs that were simple and fun. I soon realized that I had dozens of these songs that kids and parents alike could like and do I dare say it, could make money!
Three children's albums:
My children's songs follow a pretty straight forward format; statement of melody, melody harmonized, variation on melody or variation on harmonic progression, rinse & repeat, and done! Sometimes I throw in a simple fugue in the middle with statements at the dominant or subdominant just to liven things up. From December 2016 until July 2017 I recorded them in my music studio using my small instrument collection: my Hofner Contemporar for the bass (with nylon wound strings), AnueNue Papa tenor for the oompahs (with a low G), and for the melodies and countermelodies my Gretsch CE100 (with nylon wound strings), Cordoba C9, Gretsch 5120 (with Thomastik-Infeld George Benson 12s), Dean DOA AE, and my cute little Glockenspiel.
My children's songs follow a pretty straight forward format; statement of melody, melody harmonized, variation on melody or variation on harmonic progression, rinse & repeat, and done! Sometimes I throw in a simple fugue in the middle with statements at the dominant or subdominant just to liven things up. From December 2016 until July 2017 I recorded them in my music studio using my small instrument collection: my Hofner Contemporar for the bass (with nylon wound strings), AnueNue Papa tenor for the oompahs (with a low G), and for the melodies and countermelodies my Gretsch CE100 (with nylon wound strings), Cordoba C9, Gretsch 5120 (with Thomastik-Infeld George Benson 12s), Dean DOA AE, and my cute little Glockenspiel.
After I recorded a few of these songs I tested them out on my kids and as the songs were playing in the background they would sing and enjoy them. Success! Now that I have my draft version of my three albums out I still have a lot of work to do; market research, create some cover art, re-record numerous tracks, even out the post-production, and find a distributor! In the meantime, enjoy these drafts of my children’s songs and enjoy!
Dedication:
To my wife and my sons for whom I do everything.
