On the Other Side of the Table

On Friday, I had the privilege once more of doing one of my favorite things to do all year long: I got to serve as an evaluator for the Fine Arts Festival here in Florida.  For those of you who don't know what Fine Arts is, it's basically a performing and visual arts competition for Assemblies of God youth.  Here in Florida, Fine Arts is really big.  Like 4,000 students running around and competing in difference categories like human video, choir, songwriting, and short sermon.

Every year since 2012, I've made it a priority to serve as an evaluator.  If I'm working, I take a day off work just so I can attend.  One of the reasons it's so important to me is that half my lifetime ago, I was standing on the other side of the judges' table, competing in Fine Arts myself as a young teen.

When I see a young lady step up in front of a small crowd, swallow nervously and grab the microphone to sing a solo, I get it.  That was me.

Oh, the joy, sweat, and tears it took to prepare for my solo every year!  I painstakingly took the time to choose the best song for my voice and practice it with the track (cassettes in my day; I know, I'm dating myself) and perform it in front of my family.  Oh, the nerves of performing it in front of strangers who had the power to "advance" me to nationals if they thought I was good enough.

I still remember the year I was a sophomore in high school and I wrote a song just for Fine Arts.  It was a good song and also very vocally challenging.  I had a track made and sang my little heart out.  My solo did not advance and I was devastated.

So I try to keep my personal experiences in my mind as I delicately write comments about the young girl in front of me singing her solo.  I try to remember the exhilaration of nailing a solo and the devastation of not quite hitting the mark.  I try to be the encourager I needed all those years ago from the evaluators.

In retrospect, I value Fine Arts for the yearly experience I got to express myself through my music.  It was great training for all of the writing and singing and performing I do most days of my life now.  What the evaluators said to me is now long-forgotten.  But the experience remains special to me.

I love what Christian recording artist Natalie Grant said once when she talked about competing in Fine Arts herself as a teen.  She said, "I never won anything, but I savored the experience and it's priceless to me."

For someone who never won anything at Fine Arts, Ms. Natalie seems to be doing pretty well for herself these days.  Oh, and I heard quite a few of her songs being sung on Friday.

I guess that means there's hope for me!

New Opportunities

What a year it's been!  And it's not quite over yet.

If you had told me back in January all of the opportunities I would get with my music this year, I wouldn't have believed you.  It all started when I decided upon my motto for the year: "Make Something Happen".  You see, each year, I come up with a theme or motto to base my entire year around.  This year, those three little words kept coming back to me, so I decided to let them frame everything that happened in my life for the next 12 months.

Then came the song, "Make Something Happen".  Initially, I was irritated when I woke up singing the chorus and the bridge that I either dreamed or composed in my sleep.  When I looked at the clock, it read 5:30am and I had 40 minutes left to sleep.  The last thing I wanted to do was leave the comfort of my warm bed to go work on a song.

Still, I grabbed my phone, trudged dreary-eyed to the bathroom, shut the door so I wouldn't wake up my one-year old son, and hit record on my phone.

A few days later, I put some verses and chords to the chorus and bridge, and I had a song.

The song inspired the project, and fast-forward 11 months, and I am getting ready to release a 5-song album to the world entitled Make Something Happen.  I am really pleased with how this project turned out and am so excited to release it soon.

This week, I'll be traveling to Nashville for the 4th time this year to discuss some exciting music business opportunities.  What a whirlwind, landmark year it's been!  I wouldn't have it any other way!

(Doing some tracking for my project, Make Something Happen, right on Music Row in beautiful Nashville, TN)

Inject Some Enthusiasm

I have to admit that I'm having an off day. My energy is not quite up to par, but I think this makes it a great time to discuss a concept that is so important to utilize in singing, in making music, and most importantly, in living life.

This is the concept of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is vital to the success of your life. Remember the quote, "if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything"? Sometimes you lose your zest for life because you think you have nothing to be excited about. The solution is to inject a little enthusiasm into the many tasks in your day and see if it doesn't change for the better.

I use this technique when running a choir rehearsal on a weeknight. I realize that people have been working all day, and I appreciate that they are committed enough to show up for a two hour rehearsal after a long work day. I know they're tired; so am I! But if I can get them enthusiastic about what they are singing and how they are singing, rehearsal goes from drab to fab, and those two hours fly like minutes!

You can inject enthusiasm into just about any task and make it more desirable to check off your to-do list. Gotta clean the house? Put on some good jazz tunes (or whatever else you prefer to listen to) and double your cleaning as an exercise routine. Need to run some unexciting errands? Envision how you will feel after you've completed them and imagine how the completed tasks will make your life easier. Have to brave the long morning commute? Download some new podcasts to your mp3 player and use your time in the car as "personal development". The fact is, you can turn anything you have to do into a more desirable task if you find a way to develop some enthusiasm for it.

In music, if I'm feeling apathetic about a particular task I have to do (chart a song in a new key, for instance), I first assign myself a time limit to work on the project. Usually it's 30 minutes to an hour. I promise myself that if I can't get into the work at the end of the time period that I can quit for the day and at least I'll have gotten started. But what usually happens is I get into the project and get excited about it and plow through until it's done.

Are there areas of your life that need an injection of enthusiasm? Maybe your singing needs some new life. Try to imagine what the author of the material you're singing was thinking and feeling when he/she penned the words, then try to get in that same spirit. Experiment with different vocal tones and dynamic levels. Research the style of music you're performing and see if you can find out something interesting about it that you didn't know before. Or, go completely off the wall and choose a new piece of music in a different genre than you ever performed before (reggae, anyone?) No matter what you do to spice up the music in your life, taking the time to become enthusiastic about it will be anything but boring!