Why I am Delaying My Album Release

Hello all,

Today I bring you good and bad news. I have decided, with help of Dan Berry (lovely producer/engineer/guitar player on my album) to delay my album release by a month.

To be completely honest, it broke my heart to do it. But I need to do what's right for this album.

Musicians face scary deadlines all the time, and constantly face the possibility of not finishing their albums on time. More often than not, they have to settle for what their albums sound like, rather than allowing more time for the music to really come into its own.

The beauty of not being on a label is that I get to decide when my album comes out. As excited as I was for my August 31 release date (come on, how perfect does that sound), it did not give me enough time to make each song on the album really shine. I realized that I still had so many ideas, and the album might not live its full potential if I did not investigate these ideas. Needless to say, I refused to let my album not live up to its full potential.

I will write again with the new official release date, though I already pretty much know what that is. You guys will know when I'm 100% positive. I promise. ;)

I'm sorry, guys. But I am looking at this positively. I want to give you an album that we can all be proud of.

With love,
Leila

HUSH, LITTLE BABY - Song Stories

Let me just start off by saying that my recital last week was a blast! Not only were there were tons of people there, but the energy from all of the people that came was just wonderful. So if you were in the audience, I tip my hat to you. It was truly a pleasure performing for you.

Let's talk about one of the songs. The first song that I performed in my set, called "Hush, Little Baby" is a song that I hold very dear to me. Sure, it's on my EP (click here to preview on Itunes) which already makes it pretty important, but it's so much more than that. Since I wrote "Hush Little Baby" I barely ever perform a set without it.

Why is that, you ask?

I guess you could say that "Hush Little Baby" is almost like my anthem. Every singer-songwriter has that one song that stands out a little more than than others, and for me, this one is IT. I think the reason why is that it really captures the conflicted emotion that every single one of us experiences. Have a listen, and try to focus on the words.

                                            

 If you still aren't quite sure what this song is about, join the club. I wasn't even completely sure when I started writing it - all I knew was that I was experiencing a mess of emotion and anxiety that I didn't know how to handle. If you've ever experienced anxiety, you know that there are sometimes so many things swarming around in your head at such a high speed that it's hard to distinguish one thought from another. After a while, your thoughts start to blur together into one complex blob of tension that weighs down your mind, and sets its heavy little butt on your shoulders. This song works the same way. If you can picture it, the piano riff that repeats over and over again is almost like someone constantly poking at you, waiting to see when will break down and smack their hand away. In other words, everyone cracks - it's human nature.

So where does God come into all of this? All you really need to know is that He (or She, or it, or whoever/whatever you think is up there, if anything) represents the hope that all of us want to feel at some point in our lives. I'll stay away from talking about my religious beliefs, but I think we can all agree that everyone just wants something to believe in. That something doesn't have to be religious at all - it just has to be something that gives you hope. Whether you have hope in another person, your plans for the future, or your dog, everyone is a little hopeful about something. That's why it hurts so much when these forces in your life let you down. Knowing that nothing always goes your way is one of the most is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking parts of being alive.

For me, "Hush, Little Baby" represents the inner conversations that go on whenever I am too overwhelmed to take in what is around me. I'm sure you've noticed that the voices in my head are pretty patronizing, and some of your own inner conversations probably have that in common. No one really wants to break down, and we will do everything we can to talk ourselves out of it.

Here's to a hopeful week,
Leila

Negative Inspiration = Creativity x 100

I have to admit, sometimes it is much easier to write a song when bad things happen. I suppose this means I'll be writing a song soon. This week is full of negative inspiration and I'm hoping this negative will spiral into a few great songs in the process. At the end of it all, I try to tell myself one thing: Even if an experience was completely horrible, the best way to make light of it is to write a song about it. If I can do that, then no experience is ever a waste. I'll also know that when I look back at the negative experience I'll always be able to see at least one positive thing about it: that I was creative.

I hope you guys forgive me for this melancholic post of mine, and I'll definitely be posting again later on this week. Hopefully by then, I'll have a new song to tell you about.

Wishing you all a better week than I'm having,

Leila

Monday: Song Stories

 Although it's past midnight and technically Tuesday, it's pretty much still Monday to me. I've been up since seven in the morning, which probably seems like a treat to some of you sleep-deprived workers/students out there. Getting to sleep until 7AM used to be a dream come true, yet now I found myself groaning every time my alarm clock sings to me, whether or it's 7 in the morning or 12 o'clock noon.

Almost exactly two weeks ago, I wrote a song called "Monday." Yes, this song was actually written on a Monday, and it is actually about Mondays (how mysterious). That day, I sat down at the piano with the intention of writing a song, though I didn't know what it would be about. I wasn't directly inspired by anything, and I was completely distracted by the entire mess that had been my day so far. Then I realized that all my distractions and lack of inspiration had just inspired my song topic.

Let's think of everything that Monday means to most people: work, getting up early, stress, the start of a new week, the end of the weekend (i.e. back to reality), and let's face it: leaving the people you love to go do whatever you have to do to pay the bills. Whether that means going to your job or classes, it all pretty much ends up being about the same thing in the end: money. If you're lucky, you love what you do and actually enjoy going to work every day. Regardless, for a lot of us (even musicians, believe it or not) there is a bit more to life than work, and it is these simple life pleasures outside of our careers that keep us going. There is a reason why we look forward to Friday, and it isn't just that the simple fact that the work week is over. For some of us, it is that there is someone we're waiting to see who we've been missing all week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xkBq-4OQ84

Reach for the Sky: Is any topic too ridiculous for a song?

So here's my predicament for this week: I have to write a song about Buzz Lightyear for my next master class. Think I'm kidding? Well, I am absolutely, positively, 100% serious.

I guess I should give you guys a little background. Aside from being a singer/songwriter and trying to actually make it in the music industry, I also study songwriting at the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College. SUNY Purchase is a wonderfully artsy place full of inspiration and people who are not afraid to express themselves. Sometimes people's sense of expression can be a little alarming, but hey, whatever floats your boat. 

Anyway, I take a master class in composition and my professor likes to give assignments. My particular weakness in songwriting is writing to a topic, so naturally my assignment for the week would be to write to a topic. That's all fine and dandy. I don't mind a challenge, even if I complain about how unfair it is the entire time. However, only at Purchase College would I be forced to write about something so quirky and utterly ridiculous: Buzz freaking Lightyear. 

Don't get me wrong - I adore Buzz. This all started because a girl in my class was carrying something (though I can't remember what) with Buzz Lightyear on it, and I just so happened to express how much I love Buzz. Little did I know that I was digging my own grave, because suddenly my professor's face lit up with excitement and he said "Yes! That's your assignment for next week. You're going to write a song about Buzz Lightyear!"

So here I am, completely clueless about how I'm supposed to start this song. I guess I'll just have to do a little Toy Story research (i.e. watch the movies a few million times) before I figure out how I'm going to do this. By Thursday. Wish me luck - I'll need it!

Reach for the Sky!

Leila

Introduction: Inspiration, Ideas, and Experiences

I think the question of the day is, why would someone who writes songs also need to have a blog? Considering that I'm always working on a song of some kind, you'd think that I wouldn't need to express myself any further.

Let's think about this. In life, do we ever really get to say everything that we want to say? Usually not. There's always just a little more to say than what has already been said. What I'm starting to understand more than ever is that a song is only a 3-minute representation of the actual life events that surround it. So from an outside point of view, I'm forced to leave out a lot of details. This seems unfortunate in a lot of ways, but I'll tell you why it's not. It is often these unsaid details that make a song beautiful. Just because you didn't hear me mention what I ate for breakfast that day, or that annoying thing my ex used to do, doesn't mean that I didn't express these things in some way. Context is everything, and this makes writing very subliminal. So does performance. If you wonder why I pound my fingers down on the keyboard during that chorus, or why I always look like I'm dreaming when I sing that verse, it's because of the context. You might not know why I'm singing the words that I'm singing, but I do. And if you asked me to, I could look back and describe to you in detail all of the 7 million things that were going on in my life at the time when I wrote that song. 

I suppose now would be the time to introduce myself. My name is Leila, and Eric Clapton spelled my name wrong. I guess he's awesome for writing a song with my name in it to begin with - I mean, L-A-Y-L-A would be the most obvious spelling. But hey, I like to think my way is better.

Like Sir Eric, I write music. I think it's safe to assume that you've realized this by now, but there's no harm in stating the obvious. I've been writing music since I was eleven. Technically I used to make up songs in the shower when I was in elementary school, but I suppose those don't count since I never actually wrote them down. All of those little songs were about ridiculous things like Elmer's glue and Crayola crayons - I guess as a child I would either be considered weird or cute, depending on your standards. 

Despite all the songwriting speeches I've been giving you, I really started out as a singer. Singing was probably my first love, and I still love it more than anything. A lot of singer/songwriters don't put a lot of stock in the "singing" part of their title, but this is one of the most important parts of my music. I take the singing part just as seriously as the writing part, because as I briefly mentioned before, performance has a lot to do with the way a song is perceived. That being said, I write my songs to suit my voice. This could  be a slight problem if I ever have to write for another artist, but I'm not sure I would ever want to do that.  If context is everything, I probably couldn't handle giving my song to another singer that didn't live through the specific experiences that I did while I was writing the song. This may seem amateur, but I suppose there's a little bit of childish pride in all of us. At this point in my life, I'm just not ready to let go.

The piano was my second love. Don't get me wrong - I didn't treat it very well, and I neglected it pretty often in many ways. I rarely ever practiced in the traditional sense of practicing, and this is probably why I don't sight-read or do any of those things that crazy pianists do. As soon as I figured out that I could use the piano to accompany my singing, I began to write songs. And that was pretty much it for me. Of course I was still playing piano all the time, but let's just say that scales and Bach inventions unfortunately took a backseat after that.

For now, that's all you really need to know about me. I'll try not to pour my heart out too quickly, and I'll try even harder not to give away all the background of every song I write. My only hope is that you can reflect on your own experiences as you listen. 

With love from a humble singer/songwriter,

Leila