action: music

Okay, it was a good idea at the time, but I'm having trouble keeping up with Reverb10. It's a time thing, mainly, but I'm also not feeling particularly inspired by the writing prompts. Maybe it's because I tend to be a reflective person, and the prompts are usually for thoughts I've already considered. Like this one:

December 13 – Action When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step? (Author: Scott Belsky)

I took that next step on Saturday (the 11th). My "aspiration" in this case is to DO something with my music- to send it out there for the universe to hear, to write, to perform. I've been dragging my heels with the "doing" part of it; my inner critic can be powerful at times. But on Saturday, for some reason I felt the urge to sit down with my guitar and record some songs. Recording has been intimidating to me, maybe because it makes me more conscious of the act of playing and singing, and as soon as I'm aware of what I'm doing, mistakes happen. The only way around it: get used to recording; I can always hit "erase".

I did manage to get used to it enough to record a few songs. I made myself listen to them, and for once I liked what I heard. I liked it enough, in fact, that I wanted to share it. I have shared music before by making YouTube videos and on MySpace, but both are pretty cumbersome to use for music sharing, and people can't download an mp3 from them. (or maybe you can on YouTube? I don't know) So I did some Googling, and found out there are all kinds of file sharing sites available, most of them offering a couple gigabytes of free storage space. I decided on Dropbox based on a few good reviews. It's pretty easy- just drag files to a special folder on your computer, and they appear online!

I now have the songs I did Saturday, plus an older recording of "Amazing Grace" on flute, on my sidebar. To listen, just click on the title (or right click to open in a new window). Depending on your default media player, you can download the song by right clicking in the player window, or by clicking on a pop up menu.

The songs are old favorites that I have been singing for years, except for "Pancho and Lefty", which I just started doing recently after hearing Emmylou Harris' version. More to come soon!