Songs on Sunday

The rain kept us in all weekend.

We spent most of Sunday singing together and playing music and then recording it. We had such a blast!

It all started when Sunburst realized that her rat Ronia didn't have a signature song. A while ago Einstein, the dad, made up a reggae song for Sunburst's rat Pepper, and all the kids sing back-up on it. It's very cute. But poor Ronia, Sunburst felt, was feeling a bit left out. So Einstein came up with the chords, and Sunburst set to work creating "Redwall-style" lyrics with three verses and a chorus. Here's just a taste:

"If'n you see a rat who's sweet as can be
Who can cuddle like a babe an' seem so free
Eat like a hare an' go like a flow
An' have a belly white as the snow

Yer lookin' at
Ronia, Ronia
Love 'er, hug 'er, hold 'er
Ronia, Ronia..."

We were having so much fun that we decided to change the words around into a birthday song for Einstein's mom. Yep, we're one of those families that will call on your birthday and sing the most ridiculous things just to show you how much you're loved-- our style falls curiously somewhere between the Partridge and the Addams families. (Did the Addams Family ever sing?) Anyway...

There was quite a bit of flute music going on, too. I've been writing a lot of songs lately to go with Moonshine's lessons, but I've been struggling with finding the time it takes to write them all out in musical notation. Now that Moonshine has really taken off with the flute, she has been delightedly compiling each song she learns into her own music book. This is great fun, and such a joy for her! Except that she has to wait around for me to write them out. Waiting for mom is... well, not so much fun.



My ultimate plan with having Moonshine compile this music book is so I can eventually teach her to read the music that she already knows, like I did with Sunburst. Ergo, it's important to have the songs all written down properly.

Enter the new love of my life-- Finale Notepad. I don't have a ton of free time to sit around and write things out, but I can enter them into this software, tweak and tweak, and play it back until it sounds right. I was so inspired by how quickly this process went, the songs just came flying. The program is easy enough for Sunburst to work on her own. And it's a great way to self-check your own musical writing, at least for me, because sometimes I screw up. It's true. Or worse yet, I make a song up and completely forget it an hour later. I hope that's a sign of a full life and not an aging brain. ;-)

Here's a simple little math song:



Don't forget to notice the clever title. ;-)