Music Projects

A while ago, I started taking on some musical projects as a way to make money for charity. 

I pick and choose which projects I work on and give myself ample time to complete them, so as not to add any additional stress. This has offered me some really cool opportunities. 

One gentleman asked me to put his song into music. He sent me a vocal track of him singing the melody line. No chords, just a melody line and lyrics. So I sat down, learned the melody, and added an arrangement for his song. You can see that song here. 

Another gentleman had me take his upbeat produced track and cover it in my style. Click here for my cover and here for his original song. 

I've had a few other projects - singing covers of religious songs for someone else's Youtube channel, providing raw vocal tracks for produced songs, and a few other small projects. 

The latest one, that I completed today, was turning one of my covers into notated sheet music. 

The cover is of Come Back by Pearl Jam. Click here for my original cover, which was done 9 years ago. 

It has been FOREVER since I created any notated music - so I was rusty. The

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 8     time got to me - so I had to break it down into several steps. 

First I wrote out the lyrics and re-transposed the song into its original key: 

I broke down the basic melody: 

Then I broke down the rhythm with the lyrics:

Then I added all of those components together and figured out how to write it efficiently: 

Then came the toughest part - the arrangement. 

This was tough for me because I normally JUST use the lyrics with the chords written above, and improvise the actual piano arrangement. Not only that, but music theory isn't something I regularly practice - I was really rusty. Plus, I will rarely play a song in the same way each time. So I sat at my piano and played chunks of the song and wrote out my improvisations. Trying to notate how I play live was a challenge - but an incredibly fun challenge. Below is the sheet music I came up with. 

It is very rudimentary - the rhythms are nowhere near as complicated as the true song, and there can always be movement added to both right and left hands, but I think it's a great starting point. 

The melody line is written an octave above the true key for ease of notation. 

This particular project took about 8 hours to complete in its entirety. 

I have been loving all of these interesting projects - with no stressful deadlines and on my terms. 

This last project raised money for Fighting Blindness Canada. The others mentioned also included donations to Crohn's Colitis Canada. 

I love My Musical Life!