Thu 8th March

Wow, hasn’t time flown! I thought I’d better post here now I’ve got a little more to write about. The last few weeks have gone in a flash. I’ve just returned from an early morning shop so I can sit in and wait for our new bed to arrive. It’s incredible what buying a new piece of furniture can do to a person – the house has been completely cleared of stuff we don’t use anymore and has really created a positive atmosphere in the house!

My motivation for songwriting dipped over the past few weeks, but since a huge snowfall has been and gone and the sun is now out, I’m feeling very motivated to write some beautiful music! I’ve had a few messages from people interested in my work which is great and I have one more song to finish for the fairly big collection of bible songs I’ve been composing. Still saving for our wedding, which is now almost only 8 months away!

I found this video for a recent jingle I write lyrics for, composed and sang! I Love it, have a listen! It’s a beautiful sprinkle of magic.

I’ve been singing many children songs over the past week, along with composing more nursery rhymes with original lyrics from my buyers. It can get a bit repetitive when I make nursery rhymes with the same lyrics over and over, so when buyers put their creativity into their lyrics, or ask me to, it puts a whole new spin on the nursery rhyme world! I also had a buyer from Australia who bought a song for their youtube channel. When it’s up I’ll share it here because it’s going to be a fun one!

What else have I done… many voiceovers for radio. Someone wanted me to write them lyrics and melody for a new children’s song for their youtube channel. I’ve never done that before! They wanted their musician and child singer to sing it, so I wrote lyrics and sent over a rough acapella singing it so they got the melody. They loved it! It was quite fun to focus just on lyrics and melody. Can’t wait to see it finished. Aha and look at this!!

Fri 16th Feb

Hurrah! I kept my top rated seller status on Fiverr this month. This weeks been so quiet, which has allowed me to tidy up and continue the wedding planning.

Last night we had friends to stay! Which was really fun. Then Today I did a recreation of the “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes” nursery rhyme and made some more changes to the Bible children’s song I’ve been composing. I didn’t get dressed… but hey it’s friday! And it’s takeaway night tonight!

Mon 12th Feb

It’s 8pm and I’m feeling very relaxed today after a great weekend in London with Gareth. We visited the British Museum and saw the Rosetta Stone and Cleopatra, Winston Churchill’s War Rooms, the famous Vincent Van Gogh paintings at the Art Gallery and walked miles and miles. It’s certainly used up all of my energy!

On the coach there I got an email from BBC Introducing saying they’ve listened to my track that I uploaded on Wednesday. Seeing as it can take up to 6 months, that’s pretty good going! Just got to wait and see now if it gets a radio play. If not, I’ll keep writing more and more ’til I get one! They don’t take many uploads per month now so I’ll need to be selective! And upload only the best.

This morning I wrote a children’s song for The Bible which was ordered Friday night. I’m waiting to see what they all think of it and if they like it I’ll get a bulk order of songs to write that are surrounded by Christianity. One thumbs up so far, five more people to please! I then went and got the car washed – that felt pretty good!

I just had an order in for a Valentines song which I will write tomorrow morning. I didn’t really put much effort into advertising love songs this year as I lost my pre-made music for my love songs when my iMac broke. Gah! This guy is a return buyer and he comes back every year for love songs for his fiancee 🙂 Tomorrow, I think I should write some new music for love songs and get back on the love song map!

The work front has been pretty quiet most of this month. I’m getting a little anxious again but hopefully I’ll get a surge of orders in very soon. 3 days left ’til Fiverr do their second revision of the level system. That’s looking good for me as you need over 90% in 3 areas, I’ve got 100%, 96% and 100%. Yawn… bed is calling me.

Wed 7th Feb

Today I uploaded my new song Take Your Prize to the BBC Uploader. I’m hoping they’ll pick it to be played! It is rather radio-friendly… I will be crossing my fingers. I had 12 radio plays on BBC Introducing Wales on Radio 1 (Jen Long)/BBC Radio Wales (Adam Walton) with my Toypop EP and Album and a radio play/interview with Bethan Elfyn (2011-2013). I had a great reputation with the welsh radio, but as I’m now living in the Forest of Dean, I’m now “BBC Introducing in the West”. I had one play back in 2014 with “You Make Me Feel Alive”… I thought it was about time I uploaded something that was possibly radio-worthy as it’s already 2018!

Today’s been a little boring, no orders in. This is when I start to worry about my orders. They’ve slowed down incredibly and it just leaves me thinking I need to be so careful with money. But in a few days, this could change so I’ll just relax and keep myself occupied with music writing for myself. It took a long time to learn to do that! It’s been 5 years since I became self-employed, and I’d say it took about 3 years not to worry because the orders always come in – in the end!

I can’t stop listening to The Greatest Showman soundtrack! It’s had such mixed reviews from customers coming to see it in the cinema I work at and it’s amazing what different things people pick up on. When I heard a little girl come out of the film saying ” That was the best film ever!” and skipping out I knew she was a believer in “you can be whatever you want to be!” which is just how it should be. I’m lucky to be 27 and to still believe. Have succeeded a comfortable freelance job in singing and songwriting all by myself, I know it’s true!

 

Tue 6th Feb

Hey everyone! Feeling good today especially as I’m up to date on all my projects. Last Friday I got all my projects done and managed to write another track called “Take Your Prize”. I’m so excited to share it with you all, so here it is!

After I finished the track, I had another order in for a television toy commercial jingle! It was great timing because nothing was going to pull me out of my musical zone on this new track when I was half way through. Aha! Today I had to re-write the jingle which was ordered on Friday, I think I was too tired by the time they ordered to give it my serious “all”! But today they’re happy with the final delivery. I also had to work on the toy commercial jingle which was ordered the Friday previous. They had the clients feedback, and it resulted in another re-write! But it was okay, it doesn’t happy too often so I took it in my stride and did it again! I finished by 1pm. I’ve spent the afternoon tidying the house and doing washing.

Fri 2nd Feb

Something amazing is happening. Finally I found the spark in me to write music for myself! Since writing music as my day job I’ve found it difficult to get inspiration to write for myself. I always get a fantastic feeling writing for other people but it’s different to writing music for yourself. When anything bad used to happen growing up, I’d write a song about it and then be proud of the song I wrote and then that bad thing transformed into a good thing. But now, nothing bad happens! But when the iMac broke and I lost my files, I lost my new upcoming album! The inspiration to do it all over again just isn’t there, so I decided to write a new sound focusing more on the beats and vocal melody.

The only problem now is that I really want to write another track to go with this one but I’ve got work to do! They call it procrastination. However, I don’t watch TV and surf the internet to avoid my work, I write other music! For me. How very selfish! I do want to do my other work too though because I enjoy that, this is a different fantastic feeling I don’t want to leave it… Yesterday I did one Radio Voiceover and a Youtube Introduction. Still working on the YouTube Intro, and now I have a new kids song to compose and write lyrics for and a game-style introduction for a presentation. When I get these two tasks done I can get back to writing another song in my new style! Exciting!!!

Wed 30th Jan

Last week feels like a lifetime ago. It’s so easy to take an “easy life” for-granted. I described last Thursday as the most boring day ever but looking back it was just peaceful. Some may even say perfect. Everything was going right. It just took my iMac to break and be fixed again to realise life just isn’t that bad. I spent the weekend writing up my wedding spending/saving chart and my self-employed chart, which was all recoverable with a bit of time searching! All of my photos had disappeared into the unknown world, but thankfully in June I uploaded about 500 favourite photos to snapfish. They had 40% off prints when I checked so… that was lucky! 😇

I just finished the 15 songs I was commissioned to write for someone’s YouTube channel. It must be my current record. 5 songs a day on Mon, Tue and Wed with a Cinema shift on Tuesday evening. I also had a voiceover and  composed music for an advert in Singapore.

So, there we go. Finally, I’m up to date with all my work! Everything is peaceful again and the sun is shining very brightly today.