Welcome!

I thought I should say something about this site and its purpose. Many of you have found your way here because I created a Facebook page for my music project and I got a bit excited and shared it before it was really ready which probably left you wondering what the heck was going on when you found a virtually empty website.

So, what is this “Songs for All Seasons” project about?

About two years ago I had a sudden inspiration and it was this: There must be an awful lot of public domain poetry just lying around doing nothing when it could be set to music and given a new lease of life. So after some consideration, I thought I would see if I could find poems to cover the events of an entire year, from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve. Then I reflected further and thought “What about all the significant events in people’s lives that aren’t tied to a specific day, such as weddings, birthdays etc.?” I included those in my list as well. It took some time to find a selection of poems that I was satisfied with and that were suitable for musical adaptation – poems that were neither too long nor too short, with the right rhythmic structure and so on. But eventually I started writing my first song in February 2023.

Averaging about a song a week (the quickest one was about five hours from start to finish) I finally wrote the last note in June 2024.

Throughout this time I had also been planning what exactly I would do once I finished. I would like to get the songs published but I need a bit of help along the way.

So, I may have invented the concept of beta choirs. I certainly didn’t invent the concept of beta testing – that’s been around for a long time – the concept involves sending a new product or piece of software out to a selection of intended users so they can try it and provide feedback. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done it with choirs before, but I currently have a list of choirs that I will be emailing to invite them to beta test my songs. Hopefully I will receive a good response and each choir will get a song each and be asked to video record themselves singing, which they will then send back to me along with their feedback.

Then the plan is to refine the songs and find a publisher!

At the time of writing (9.30pm on Friday, October 4, 2024) I am about halfway through uploading tutorial videos to YouTube and adding the links, which you can find on the “Tutorial videos” section. These videos are screen recordings of my ancient Finale 2000 software playing them so they only feature MIDI sounds, but they will give you an idea of what they sound like. There are several pieces I am quite proud of – particularly No. 30.

So, welcome to the journey! I’m very excited about it, and I hope you will be interested enough to follow along and see how things develop.