Beside Still Waters - the CD

I recently mailed some of you a copy of my CD. Thanks for your interest and for letting me know you received it! Now, after all that, I have found a way to put some of my music on the Web. If you would like to hear some samples from my CD, "Beside Still Waters", please visit my New Page and listen. You can click on whatever song you would like to hear. Below, I will give a little background about those six songs....

1. Reflections -- Reflections is one of my few compositions that was written with practically no effort. I was playing around with different sounds on my synthesizer and I just started playing this. I thought it sounded really pretty, so I decided to write it out. It is one of my favorites.

2. Sunset Over the Bay -- In Sunset Over the Bay, I was trying out a method of writing this style of music that I read about on the internet. At the time, a friend was planning her wedding and I had the intention of giving her this music to be played during the wedding prelude. I asked my friend to tell me where one of her favorite places was and she said she loved the pier at Fairhope, Alabama overlooking the Mobile Bay. So, I titled this, Sunset Over the Bay.

3. Twilight Winds -- I love the sound of a saxophone, so again I was playing around with the sounds on my synthesizer and came up with Twilight Winds (because the saxophone is a “wind” instrument) to use the great sax sound.

4. An Evening on the Bodensee -- An Evening on the Bodensee is a result of my trip to Germany in 2005. It represents a boat ride we took one night on this beautiful lake which is a natural border between Germany and Switzerland.

5. Dreams Come True -- Dreams Come True was the first one I wrote in 2005 when I became interested in composing music for relaxation. It actually started out as a simple piece of music to try out a computer program where I could put different instrumental sounds together. It turned out sounding really nice with the flute and violin sounds, so I named it Dreams Come True because I had a dream of creating a CD using different instrumental sounds. And the day I wrote this one just happened to be a holiday from work – the holiday was Martin Luther King’s birthday.

6. Solitude -- Solitude is another one that came to me easily as I sat down at the piano and just started playing.

My CD is Ready

Christmas holidays are coming to a close. I haven't been off work for the full two weeks, but my employer was very generous in giving us two and a half days (paid) off the week of Christmas and two days (paid) off this week of New Years. I am very thankful to have a job with such wonderful benefits as this. The week of Christmas was the best! We had both of our kids home and our son's girlfriend also. We enjoyed our time with them as well as time we spent with our extended families.

While Aaron was at home, he was able to do the finishing touches on my CD that I recorded early in 2008. I had mentioned it in a couple of posts back in April. Here is a part of the first post describing the type music on the CD:
I am having a great time arranging all the music because I'm playing all of it on my synthesizer. It has all kinds of sounds so sometimes I am using nature sounds in the background of the music. This music is all slow, soothing, relaxing music which would be great to play when you are trying to go to sleep. All I need is a title. Here are some of the titles of the songs on the CD -- Dreams Come True; Magical Sleep; Reflections; Lullaby; Solitude. There's more, but what I need is your help in coming up with a title. I would like for the title to give some idea of the purpose of the CD which is relaxation.

I ended up deciding on the title Beside Still Waters. I would love to give a copy to anyone who wants it. Have a happy new year, 2009!