Regular readers of my blog know that I love to sing and that I have been visiting a wonderful vocal coach, Christine, for a number of reasons. The main reason is that singing brings me stress relief; life as a full time carer to two elderly parents is not easy, it’s harder work than I ever thought it was going to be so stress relief of the singing kind works for me.

I have so enjoyed learning about the voice, to hear my own voice develop, to hear the clarity of the notes I can produce and to know that I am blessed with a good vocal range an a natural vibrato (apparently some singers would kill for a vibrato)!!

I am coming on well now with my Guitar lessons.  Since Christmas I can actually get the sound of a few chords from the Guitar and I bought myself a new Guitar book “American Country Hits” so that I can practice the chords and learn the songs at the same time.  It has taken time and I have more or less cracked “Jambalaya”, very little plink and thunk on that one now. I am learning, practising four more songs and I want to download the guitar chords for some of the Irish traditional songs and country songs that I love to sing.

At the start of the year I mentioned to my Guitar tutor that it would be a dream come true for me to record some songs.  I don’t care if anyone bought them or not, but to have recorded and released some songs would be just awesome.  He informed me that he can help me with that as he can bring a mobile recording studio to me here at home and we can record away. I’ve to choose four or five tracks so that we can utilise the recording time and keep cost to a minimum. He can then do the mixing at his professional studio.

My vocal coach is almost as excited as I am about this.  Every time I think about it I get a headache with excitement.  Of course this has now thrown me into a world I know nothing about, the music business…something new to learn.

Choosing four or five songs may sound easy but it is proving to be a little difficult. There is only one I am absolutely sure of and I keep changing my mind about the other four. I have backing tracks but I need to shop around for the best sounding tracks and then I need to check on the licensing.  Most that I purchase online are licensed for private use or public performance but not recording.  I require permission to use the track and there may be an additional cost.

I also need to research public broadcast licensing and how royalties work. I’ve been told to start getting things ready; website (although there won’t be much content at first), photo shoot (who me?), video’s for the songs (really, me in a music video?) and to get to grips with self promotion.

These are things I really want to do, this is very much dream come true time and if I can get these things done before I set foot on a stage to sing it will boost my confidence enormously. It really is a case of “Feel the fear and do it anyway” for me. However, I’m a full time carer to both of my parents along with running the home and everything that goes with that.  I have very limited free time.  I’m not sure how I’m going to do it but you can bet your bottom dollar that any free time I have will be spent on the music dream.

I have put together another video.  One of my favourite songs is “Making Memories of Us” which is sang by Keith Urban and also a couple of my favourite Irish singers; Mike Denver and Derek Ryan.  I managed to locate a good backing track but the key may be not quite right.  I can just about hit the bass notes but if I take the key higher, the higher notes may be off.

I used photographs of places I have been on holiday with my lovely boyfriend over the years for the video.  Places where we now have memories of being there together from taking him home to Ireland to visit Galway where my Mom is from to our summer holidays in Spain, Portugal and England.

Please give it a listen and let me know what you think.  Thank you for supporting me on this journey to my dream.