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My Best Recorded Songs from FAWM 2022

As I mentioned in my blog post about some of my favorite songs written by other participants in February Album Writing Month, I’ve really be working on stretching myself in my music, and a big thing is that I’m baby-stepping my way into audio production. Up until the point of coming out with my first recording, all I ever did was turn on a recording device and played music into it.

I’ve said many times that while other people’s pandemic hobbies has been making sourdough bread, mine has been songwriting and audio production. I have a number of songs that I wrote and really like, and those are ones will be going to develop more and will plan on putting on my next recording. In a different vain, here are some songs that I tried to do more of an audio production on, and I did them mostly as trials and experiments, and they will be retiring in their current form. I figured I would show them off here, just so I can look back at them later and see how much I’ve improved.

They Would Sing Together

One of the challenges that I started in FAWM 2022 was the Harmony Singers Challenge. I have been so enamored by what people on TikTok have done, I wanted to do the same at FAWM. I was lucky to have Elizabeth Petty write some very fun lyrics, and got Leah McCoy, Rob Dunsford, and Liz Frencham joined in and we were able to a really nice four-part harmonies.

They Would Sing Together

My Home My Ireland

The second Harmony Singers Challenge is one where I took lyrics by Cindy Gail Prince and came up with a melody, which I then handed off to Mary Dunsford, Neil Williamson, Alex Klages, Karl Harrison, and Darci Strutt to do their magic.

My Home My Ireland

Sov min käraste/Sleep My Dearest

I decided that I wanted to write a song in Swedish, and I thought a lullaby would be easiest to do. I got out the hammered dulcimer and did a few arrangements on it. The words and translation are:

Sov min käraste/Sleep My Dearest

Sov min käraste, säg inget ljud
Ligg och sov, huvud mot huvud
Din hand i min och ande til ande
Jag ser din själ i ditt leende

English Translation:
Sleep my dearest, make no sound
Lie down and sleep, head to head
Your hand in mine and spirit to spirit
I see your soul in your smile

Everything

I posted this in my last blog post, but I really should have put it here. This was really my first attempt to put someone else’s recordings with my own. Not bad for a first attempt. Thanks to Wayne Fishell for collaborating with me on this.

Everything

Dust of a Broken Dream

David G. Harrington had asked me to put a vocal on top of some of his songs, and at the time he asked, I was too overwhelmed to be able to figure out how to do it. Fast forward about 6-12 months, and I had more courage to do it. Listen to David’s great instrumentation of Geoff Matthews’ lyrics, and my attempt to sound like a dust bowl era singer.

Dust of a Broken Dream

Dump The Trash

And finally, the most surprising thing I produced this February. Most people know me as a lyric tenor, and the “beautiful voice”. Well, I was doing a skirmish (a challenge to take a prompt, and write a song in an hour) and came up with some really angry lyrics, and I ended up doing my first try at singing like a screaming metalhead. I don’t know that it was my best shot, but it certainly was a stretch for me!

Be warned if you hit the play button here!

Dump The Trash

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