A Project...

I've been writing songs for well over 25 years, mostly as a hobby. What little success I've had in this endeavor has been in musical theatre, mostly as a lyricist. That said, I've invested a great deal in learning the craft of songwriting, largely through writing stand-alone songs, many of which have remained hidden away, half-finished, or sparsely demoed. 

In recent months, I've started journaling seriously. In doing so, I've come to realize that my songwriting has also served as a kind of diary. While I'm a theater animal at heart, my original lyrics are often fictionalized stories. Even so, there's always a touch of biographical inspiration in any artistic work. It occurred to me that, while some people keep scrapbooks or diaries as a record of their time, I have, without realizing it, been collecting songs. 

They aren't famous. In fact, most of them were never pitched. I've learned that they are where I practiced a craft that has slowly morphed into theatre writing.  And they are artifacts of my experiences.  

Through the years, as a non-vocalist, I've had to hire singers, musicians, and producers to create demos of my songs. This recording process was often done remotely and without my presence. All of this is expensive and has to be done song by song. In the early days, it involved recording a piano/vocal demo to cassette tape or CD and mailing it to the producer (I also regularly wrote out sheet music). The ability to email large sound files later made this step somewhat easier and improved communication and planning.

Still, I often had little control over the finished product and was always surprised (sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not) by the resulting recording. If the producer offered to make changes, it always cost more. Needless to say, this wasn't ideal. No matter how talented the producers and artists, the process, by its nature, was often frustrating for me, as it is for many aspiring songwriters. It's also quite limiting if you are a prolific writer. 

Songs are very personal to us, and we often have strong ideas about how they should be realized in production. Over the years, I've written many dozens of songs, both alone and with co-writers. I've produced demos of many of them—some piano/vocal or guitar/vocal, others fully produced. A few came out just as I had imagined while writing them. Others, not so much. Either way, these demos have become a lasting record of the work. That has always been a concern in the back of my mind.

I've spent the last couple of weeks digging through old files from my songwriting endeavors: demo recordings I made to send to producers, old lyric sheets, emails with co-writers, and sheet music. I found a treasure trove of material that gave me insight into my life over the past two decades. It's been fascinating and somewhat revelatory on a personal level.

While reexamining these old songs, I developed a deep desire to revisit them. Many had received demo recordings, but many had not. In either case, most never had the opportunity to become the finished products I had originally imagined. Through my recent work in musical theater, I became aware of how advances in technology and AI-assisted production have made demo production far easier and less expensive for songwriters while also offering greater control over the finished recording.

I began researching these possibilities, and with the help of tools such as Audacity, Suno, Band-in-a-Box, Finale, and Audimee, I've begun the process of re-recording my catalog of songs in a way that brings them closer to my original intentions.

That's what this blog is about.

So far, it's been a fun, painstaking, and rewarding undertaking.

I plan to use this space as a journal to present the new recordings I'm putting together, discuss the production process I'm using, explore the original inspirations behind the songs, look back on the writing process, and document the evolution of the pieces through the years. 

One ground rule I've set for myself is that these new demos must remain faithful to the original compositions in music, lyrics, and style. I won't be using AI for the composition of either the music or the lyrics. I have extensive documentation of the writing process and the compositions themselves—including demos, lyric sheets, sheet music, emails, and other materials created over the years. The goal is not to rewrite the songs, but to match the production to my vision as the songwriter. 

If you compare the new demos to the original recordings, you will notice that changes to the original arrangements are quite minimal, consisting mostly of embellishments such as adding instruments to lines that were already present, occasionally allowing the vocalist to ad-lib over the original melody during a final chorus without straying far from it (much as a live demo singer might), and sometimes further fleshing out orchestrations that already existed in the original demos. 

So far, the challenge with using AI-assisted vocal generation (based on the guide vocals I provide) is that it can sometimes stray or drift from the original melody. Because of that, obtaining an accurate performance that remains faithful to the composition can be a painstaking process. In most cases, however, the results have been well worth the effort, as the resulting vocal performances are far stronger than my own by a long shot.

Whenever possible, I plan to share the new demos alongside their original recordings, as the contrast is often fascinating. In many ways, this blog will serve as a log of a non-performing, non-tech-savvy songwriter navigating the new landscape of home demo production while striving to remain true to the original source material. It's not really a project about technology (though the new tech is certainly a tool); it's a project about reflection, preservation, creative history, and curation.

Something I've learned so far from all of this is that over the course of two-plus decades, my creative work has remained remarkably consistent thematically. Throughout my life, I've been a daydreamer—a person who builds "worlds" in my imagination as a way to interpret (and sometimes escape) reality. So often, I've felt at odds with my surroundings, like an outcast, and have found escape, safety, and insight in those inner worlds. They were how I made sense of my experiences and relationships—with others and with myself.

Whether imagining stories about dreamers, outcasts, criminals, cryptids, travelers, lost souls, children, or lovers, I've always been interested in the tension between imagination, perception, and reality; between isolation and connection; between innocence and experience. I've long been fascinated by the search for light in the darkest places, by finding meaning in chaos, and by discovering hope in unexpected places.

When I first encountered Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I was enthralled. Having grown up in a religious environment, that language became part of the DNA of my writing, though not necessarily in a religious sense. More often, I use spiritual and mythic imagery as guideposts for experiences, relationships, and the search for meaning. I love symbolism and metaphor and often mix them strategically (and some might say excessively) as a form of world-building—ever the daydreamer.

I've been surprised by how accurately my creative output reflects me, even when I tried to hide behind storytelling and make-believe. Something True often shines through. I expect more surprises in this vein.

More to come...