Dreams and Dreaming

Two of my brothers did something very nice for me years ago. The two of them built a computer for me, one I could use to record music onto CDs.

I can read music (Mama taught me when I was six to eight years old) and play several instruments. I don't play them well but I enjoy what I can do. I also enjoy listening to music but I had no Celtic music. One day, I decided I would buy myself an inexpensive four track recorder and record myself playing my electric piano, guitar and penny whistle. I found several piece of Celtic music on the Internet and set out to learn them all.

After hours and hours of practice, I set up my wee recording studio in the breakfast nook of my apartment and began the task of recording my first CD.

It took days. I made so many mistakes and had to re-record all four tracks several times. But I was pleased with the end result. My first CD sounded as though I had recorded an orchestra as my electric piano replicates many different instruments and backgrounds in several different beats.

I grinned when I put the finished product into my CD player and listened to that which I produced. As I sat in the middle of my living room floor listening to the music I had recorded, I realized that I had dream number two come to life. I had become a recording artist...

Over the course of the next couple of years, I wrote several compositions. All are very simple but - none the less - are pieces I composed. I even composed a wedding march for my brother. Taking the letters of his first name and the letters of his fiancee's first name, I transposed them into notes of the music scale. The first letter of my brother's name determined what key the music was to be in.

Again, it is not a complicated piece but my brother and sister-in-law love it and the fact the music is comprised of the letters in their names.

Dream number two evolved...