My instrument skills are predominantly based on the piano/keyboard.
Vocally, and based on this test, my comfortable range is G2 to about G4/A5, which could see my straddle any one of baritone, tenor, soprano and mezzo soprano; the last two supported by more of a head voice/sound. I would mainly consider myself a tenor. I think I have a fairly good ear and pitch; this works in multiple ways in that I can easily transpose whatever I play or sing, and also generally play something I hear a few times.
With this talent and interest, I have served in my church worship ministry. I first played piano for my weekly house church group, followed by joining the backup singers as part of Sunday service worship teams.
Songwriting is a natural progression and combination of the above skills. Over the period of August 2004 to June 2006, I wrote a total of 12 songs which I compiled into an “album” of sorts titled God’s Experiment.
For me, writing and developing a song starts with the lyrics. As I form sentence structures, I read them out to feel the syncopation and rhyme behind the words. In part, this method is based on the way I learnt piano theory, way back in my days of secondary schooling. Through the process of reading out aloud and hearing the words, potential ditties and tunes come to mind. In this way, there is no one correct way that my songs start with. In one sense, the initial first stage/milestone for a song is that it reads like a poem, flowing with rhyme and rhyming sentence patterns.
The next phase of song writing becomes the development of the tune, and focusing on locking down a workable combination of lyrics with music/chords. As I reflect now on the long history I have had with music and technology, I am reminded of one particular software package, Encore, which provided a PC graphical user interface of a music score sheet. The software could not only record MIDI input and translate it into an accompanying score sheet, but also it could play the score sheet and you could listen and follow the tune. It is use of this kind of software, particularly the method of playing and jamming on the piano/keys and then recording it to score sheets that would help record definitively my song-writing effort.
Since 2006, work priorities and other interests have prevented me from returning to this arena of creative music although it is constantly there as a latent skill. Often, when I’m in the bathroom, I can create new songs on the fly – lyrics and melody just flow as one – all as part of my personal and private worship time with God. Further, now that I operate in an Apple/Mac environment, I have more than enough tools at my disposal to return to the draw board, continue and indeed complete these unfinished works.