The MUSELETTER of SONGCRAFTERLIZ

When I was growing up, my house was filled with sheet music, with everything from Mozart piano sonatas to Broadway songbooks. We bought most of it from Childers Music Center, a small storefront run by Dan Childers, a.k.a. “Dandy Dan the Music Man.” In addition to running the store, he supported the County 4-H program and the Civic Forum Spelling Bee.

If you asked me a decade ago what I wrote music about, I would have given you an exhaustive (and probably exhausting) list of themes.

I receive requests with some frequency from musicians asking if they might alter the lyrics of my songs in some way. Without exception, all of these requests are thoughtful and thought-provoking, motivated by large and important questions. Because I am hopelessly addicted to large and important questions, I find myself responding to all of them.

Twenty years ago, I renovated a kitchen for about $1500. A quirky do-it-yourself job, it involved stripping 1970s wallpaper adorned with no fewer than ten varieties of fruits and vegetables, painting the cabinets Sherwin Williams Bunglehouse Blue, and commissioning my artist friend Annemarie Zwack to paint a whimsical mural illustrating my favorite life motto:

Last February I was asked to give an informal talk at the Pacific Northwest Unitarian Universalist Music Festival, where I was serving as guest composer/conductor. I surprised myself by deciding to sing part of a song I had tried to write in high school. I'd never before shared that song with anyone -- and by that, I definitely mean anyone.

You know what I’m talking about. Voice. A composer’s personal musical style, her particular and often idiosyncratic signature, that all-important talisman which sets her apart from the 17.5 million other composers in the world. (Schubert's sublime melodies, Prokofieff’s slippery modulations, Copland’s bright Americana...)

WARNING: This is a seriously geeky article which may fry the brain of an unsuspecting music lover. Alternately, it may serve as a small glimpse into the less romantic side of being a composer-publisher.

I'm not one of those composer/lyricists who can write a song in one day. If I'm really on a roll I might draft 90% of it, but it may take a steamy shower two days later to make me realize that the chorus needs one more phrase. It may take a frustrating car trip to make me realize that a song has more expressive potential than I thought. And every once in a while, it takes significantly more than that. Until I wrote Grace, I didn't know how much more.