One fun fact about this show is that I perform and produce almost all of the music you hear on the show. At the time of this post, the only exception to this is the song Carousels by the Soggy Ratz which appears on episode 8 and was produced by my friend Michael Gonzalez.
I usually try to have the music in an episode match the theme of whatever book is being featured in the "What I Read This Week" section. Since my show is very information heavy, I liked the idea of incorporating the music breaks to allow for one topic to "settle" for a bit before launching into another. As someone who is still learning about audio engineering, I also like that I have a reason to be producing two tracks a week. I feel that this has allowed me to grow as a performer and an engineer. I record my music on Mondays using Logic Pro X. The process usually takes me a couple of hours, sometimes I am learning how to play the song the same day I'm recording it. For songs with a piano accompaniment, I record vocals first and then time the piano around that. That's what I heard they did in the movie version of Les Miserábles andthat's one of my favorite movies so of course I'm going to borrow that technique.
I recently had the honor of performing some of the songs I've done on my show (and some you haven't heard yet) live at Delta College's In-Bloom Festival that was put on by the Horticulture club. As someone who usually likes recording in the dark, this was a big adjustment, but a very cool experience.
I play piano, guitar, and ukulele. Piano is my primary instrument, I have been playing since I was seven years old. Despite eventually becoming a piano teacher, I did not like practicing at all and actually quit lessons (no one tell my students)! Once I was old enough to pick my own music, I got super serious about it and would practice for hours at a time. Now I love playing piano, it's a great way to calm down. I've played ukulele for about two years now, it's a fun instrument that was pretty easy to pick up, but I found myself wanting a bigger range in sound so I started to learn guitar a couple months ago.
I think music tells a story just as much as books do. As a former musical theatre actor, I was often given the advice "when you're feeling too strongly to speak, sing". This is why I try to pick songs that tell a story to feature on this show (I mean technically all music tells a story butt if the story is primarily the word "booty", it's probably not gonna make it on my show).If there's anything you'd like to hear on this show, feel free to comment with the song title!