I’ve been here at the SDMB long enough to know that the most important rule about sharing our own works is that we can’t get all butt-hurt if other posters want to say that it sucks (perhaps equally important is not to get all butt-hurt if the Thread sinks like a stone).
I’m good with those rules.
So, here’s what I did on my summer vacation . . .
(YouTube links at the bottom for the TLDR crowd.)
For a long time I’ve been writing Comedy Songs and have been performing them myself following the standard singer-songwriter model in terms of promoting myself as an artist. A few years ago, I started feeling a need to stretch out artistically.
I wanted to try to write songs in a Tin Pan Alley era style. I’ve long been a fan of those songwriters- George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and (my favorite) Cole Porter.
I wrote a handful of songs and talked a talented friend into producing some rough demos. He replaced my clunky guitar playing and we brought in a wonderful singer who I had always admired. The result was that on these demos, I was only present as songwriter- I don’t sing, I don’t play any instruments. The only “me” that is to be heard is “me, the songwriter”.
Excited about how the demos turned out, I wanted to do something more- something fully produced and ready for public consumption. Specifically thinking of commercial appeal, since it would be an expensive undertaking, I decided to write some Christmas songs. These brand new Christmas songs are what I today bring to the SDMB. Enjoy, ignore, or call them teh suxx0r.
P.S. I did the graphic design (such as there is) for the slideshows. I’m still in my graphic design infancy and for some reason they only look good if you set the YouTube player to High Quality. Definitely teh suxx0r if you don’t up the quality setting.
Family Thanksgiving, Family Christmas
That Early Winter Sundown
Spending the Holidays With People I Love