Hymns from the Piano

Well, on my last post I said I’d hopefully have something exciting to share with you and I do! Hopefully if you click above, you'll hear a short sampling from the CD I’ve been working on for awhile now. It is a compilation of 23 hymns performed by me. All the piano arrangements are my very own creations. It is a very peaceful CD that encompasses many of the older, more traditional hymns of the church.

I am selling this as a fundraiser for the 60 mile, 3-Day for the Cure Breast Cancer walk that I’ll be doing in Boston. The selling price is $15 and all the profits will go into my walk account to help me reach the $2300 minimum requirement to participate. Any profits from sales after I reach this goal will be donated to charity, I’m just not sure which ones will benefit next.

The cover art for the CD is a copy of an original painting done by me. It is of the church that I have attended since I was in first grade. I’ve also been the organist there on and off since 1987! I owe special thanks to my pastor, Bruce Lucas for taking the photograph I based my painting on.

Putting together a CD is much harder than I thought. I did my first CD’s right before Christmas of 2009 and it was amazing what all had to be done. This time around, I was much better prepared for all the steps, but that didn’t mean that they were much easier. For this CD, since I was recording my own arrangements, I decided that I’d just sit down at the piano with the hymn in front of me and improvise. Sometimes these improvisations worked out well and the result is what you can hear on the finished CD. Other times, I’d would hit a rough note, the phone would ring, or the dogs would bark and I’d have to start the recording all over again. I cant even tell you how many hours I spent recording to get the 48 minutes of material on the CD! Beyond the music, I wanted to design the cover myself. I’ve wanted to try to paint the church for years and now that we have a new front porch the time was right for me to give it a try. The painting was actually the easiest part of the entire process for me. It just turned out really well without a lot of struggles. Trying to design the labels that go onto the actual CD was a huge struggle this time. I kept trying to get the entire church on the label but then there wasn’t any room for the playlist. I finally used just the church steeple for the label and then everything fit on and I like how it turned out.

The CD booklet was a bit of a struggle just to get things the proper dimensions for the case. The booklet opens up and has the playlist, copyright info and also some special thank you notes.

After all of that was put together and ready to go then I had to do the entire production of all the elements. The booklets needed to be copied then trimmed down to the proper size. The CD labels needed to be printed out (and I cant find CD labels that I can run through a copy machine, so all of these were printed from my printer at home!). The CD’s had to be burned which is not hard, just very time consuming when doing them one by one from my laptop. Finally, after stuffing everything into the jewel case, the project is ready to go!

Its no wonder I’ve been exhausted and had a headache this past week! I’m hopeful that my hard work will pay off and sales will be good.

Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, and Mother Henna's heART exchange

I participated in Mother Henna's heART Christmas art exchange last month. I was paired up with Bev Baird for this fun endeavor. She was so thoughtful in sending me a watercolor she has painted that will match my teaching studio perfectly. I love it and hopefullyBev and I will continue to keep in touch by visiting each other's blogs. It was fun to meet her through this swap.

I struggled with what to send her way for a little while. You see, I got distracted.

I have signed up to walk the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for a Cure in 2010. This is a huge fundraising commitment. In order to participate, I need to raise $2,300. I feel very strongly about the importance of funding the fight for a cure. I also like the 3-day events because they raise breast cancer awareness as well as funds. Some of you may know I have been involved with the 3-day events since 2004 as both a walker and a crew member. When I walk in San Diego it will be my 13th event. I'm terrified at the prospect of raising so much money in Michigan with the state of our economy, but I am committed. I have done some brainstorming for fundraisers and have constructed a list of both tried and true things, and a few things I'm hoping will work. One of my brainstorms was to compile a cd of me performing Christmas music. I have 2 degree's in music and make my living playing and teaching music so this was something I thought this would be a wonderful way to share my talents and help me toward my fundraising. I did a quick investigation on what kind of copyright laws there are and a quick look through my many stacks of Christmas music. I found out I'd need a mechanical license to be copyright legit, and one of the publisher's who I have a bunch of music from had an online form to apply for the license. I quickly filled it out, just glancing through the music and thinking, "Well, that looks like it'd be nice." To my suprise, I got a reply back within hours telling me the fee that would be involved for my very limited production run and it seemed very reasonable so I started practicing. (Silly me had picked out some songs I'd never even played through before!) I bought a USB mic and set things up in my office so I could record at home on my beloved piano. Things were going slow, but they were progressing when disastor struck. The motherboard in my laptop quit working. Done, kaput, finite. Oh Crap!

My sis came to my rescue and loaned me her laptop for the rest of the recording process. Recording really is much harder than I thought, but I'm starting to get the hang of all the levels and tricks. Since it was already late November, I was on a very tight schedule. I wanted these out in time that people would buy them for this Christmas season. My stress level was pretty high but I kept working at it. When I needed a break from actually playing/recording the music I was working on liner notes and buying the blank cd's and labels.

I sat down one morning to design the cover art for the cd. I kept tossing around ideas that involved the pink ribbon, but nothing was sparking my interest enough to get to work. Then I was thinking about Christmas in general and the idea of a simple snowflake jumped in my head. It wouldn't leave so I pulled out my paints, made a pink, mottled backgroun with watercolors and then used acrylics and gel pens to make the actual snowflake. From there I scanned it, photoshopped my title and name and this is what it looks like.

I ended up making 2 volumes of music. Vol. I is a grouping of upbeat, faster music with some jazz added into the mix. Vol. II is full of soft, flowing "pretty" music. I have sold out of my Vol. II's and only have about 4 Vol. I's left. This fundraiser has been a wonderful start and I am now over half way to my goal! Not only that, I have recorded my first 2 CD's and gotten incredible feedback from people that have purchased them! What a great experience.

So, to make the connection to the start of this post, Bev received a copy of each CD for her gift in the exchange. It wasn't a typical art exchange item, but I sure put my heart and soul into making the gift. I received a nice email saying how much she enjoys them and that makes me very happy.

If you've never heard of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure I urge you to look into it. It is a life changing event.