Last week I mentioned that I was going to tell you all about the projects and exciting things I’ve been involved in, so here it goes! Side Note: We’re back with weekly music exploring. This week’s band is ‘The Arcadian Wild’. Check them out in the inspirations section!
One of the most exciting projects has been the Sheet Music book projects. Last summer I was asked whether I would like to be involved in a new project with music here from Föhr. Great right?! It started with writing out songs for other musicians who were struggling to write out the music from just their recordings. Since I had some experience through uni this was a great way of applying all those skills. I really enjoyed doing all the work and was so happy that I could be of help for other musicians.
Then after a while I even got asked whether I would like to try out some composing for already existing poems/lyrics. What an exciting process! I did some composing in uni as well but I think composing is a step further up the ladder than writing out music from recordings. But I took the challenge and started some composing. Since I’m not the best lyrics writer this came in very handy, although writing lyrics is one skill I really want to develop and experiment with in the future. After just a little while I came up with some chords on the piano I liked and hummed a few melodies on top. Not too long after I had found a melody I was happy with and had composed a song! The song is called ‘Krompen wäält’ which means shrunken world. It’s quite a sad song to be honest, but the words are lovely. It’s about a lady who misses her husband a lot since he left for America, but she still lays the table as if he eats with her, hears him coming in the door, but it’s all just a hallucination. She lives in her ‘shrunken world’ where she waits for her husband to come back, but unfortunately he has died a long time ago.
After so much sadness, let’s get back to some happiness. The pandemic allowed some gigs in August and I was lucky enough to sing the song at a gig. Happy days! Seeing myself sitting at my piano trying to come up with a melody and then seeing myself performing the song with an arrangement in front of a full venue is such a joy. I love music!
Back to the Sheet Music Project: I thought I was done. I had done some more notations for others plus my own composition and was fairly happy with everything. I had a break in the autumn of last year but it turned out the most work was about to start! In January I’ve spent A LOT of time revisiting the other 25 notations and correct mistakes and so much more. You don’t know how much work making a book is! You really don’t until you do it yourself. Layout is another important features which many forget about and let me tell you: it’s time-consuming. Once everything is done it’s off to the printing press and then it’s all about waiting for the first copy!
The last thing is advertising which you shouldn’t underestimate because ultimately people will only buy your products if they know about them. Photos, newspapers, radio interviews and so on. By the way: Buy the book! It’s great! Obviously I’m doing some advertising since I was a part of the process but honestly, it’s a great book and you should definitely check it out. Available everywhere online, just search ‘Wederlaiden book’! And if you do buy it please let me know if you like it, I would love to hear some feedback.
What a great experience! I’m forever grateful for this opportunity and can’t wait for more projects. I have written some more songs in the meantime and might share them at some point but for now it’s just the book!
Next week will be all about things I learned and realized during lockdown. It’s been eye opening to say the least!
All the best,
Emilia x