My days off from work are fast becoming a time for songwriting in the STS tradition. Thus far in my experience creating songs from spoken stories, I have worked with people in my community and beyond, as well as from people who are no longer living but whose stories have been captured on film in…
Category: music
The Past Is Close Behind: A Holocaust Story-to-Song
This past week, I began my first post-doc Story-to-Song. I spent a few hours on a Tuesday afternoon working with a woman (I will call her Amy) who was the sole member of her family to survive the Holocaust. Her daughter (I will call her Dana) had attended a program offered by Lowell National Historical…
Songwriting Step III: The painful part
The third step in a Story-to-Song is to sing. This is the part that is my least favorite. My inner critic tends to be at its most powerful and convincing at this early stage of the songwriting process. This is also the roughest of cuts. I gently tap the red record button on my ipod…
The ukulele is juuuuuuuuust right
It took me about 30 years to find the instrument that was the perfect fit for me. I grew up playing piano in the classical tradition, which involved a strict adherence to historic interpretation of pieces from many incredible composers. While the sound of Prokofiev continues to tug at my heart strings, I am finding…
Choose the Uke for You
Congratulations! You are about to become the proud owner of a ukulele. While I cannot claim to be a ukulele expert, I can share some knowledge that I have gained in my tenure as a ukalalien. There are different modes of thought for choosing an instrument. In general, the nicer the instrument, the better it will…
You can uke!
Seriously, you can! One of the wonderful things about the ukulele is that it is so very inviting. It is small and non-threatening and seems to be saying, “Go ahead. Pick me up! You know you want to. Check out my soft nylon strings. You won’t get callouses from these babies!” Who can say no…
What’s in a song?
What makes a song a song? If a child is sitting in the bathtub singing away, is that a song? One of my favorite Pete Seeger songs is one of this very kind. Malcolm’s idea of a song: To me, a song is something that when you start to sing you are carried by each…
Guiding Song 