Carmela’s Lullaby

I wanted to write a lullaby for our expectancy and a few weeks ago I came up with a few simple themes. Over the past few weeks I’ve been putting them together and the piece is now complete clocking in at 2 minutes and 34 seconds. After I neared completion I decided to look up exactly what a lullaby is.

A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive.

I’ve always been my biggest critic, but with that definition it’s hard to call my song a lullaby. First off, there are no lyrics. Second (off), it’s not a simple melody and far too many themes are introduced in the short 2.5 minutes. At times it’s epic and could fill the role of a movie score. It sounds like Beauty and the Beast, the Punky Brewster Theme, and most offensively, Kenny G’s “Forever in Love”. While it may be a contender for the 2012 Grammy Awards (Best Lullaby Performance By A Solo Artist Or Group Without Vocals), I don’t think it would serve as a sleep aid. Any given Linkin Park or Nickelback song better fits the textbook definition of a lullaby (zing!).

But I’m taking some artistic liberties in calling it a lullaby, or, Carmela’s lullaby.  Megadeth’s “Symphony of Destruction” isn’t a symphony. Kansas’s “Magnum Opus” arguably isn’t their crowning achievement and doesn’t even make it onto (at least one of) their greatest hits albums. Opeth’s “Death whispered a lullaby” would unleash prog-metal nightmares.

I’m confident at the piano, and I’m relatively comfortably playing live. However, when recording I tend to tense up as I know a single mistake will ruin the result. I’m no expert at the art of recording so for this project I plugged my keyboard into my MacBook using a 1/4 inch guitar cable with an 1/8th inch converter. After maybe 10 takes I successfully played the song while recording in Garageband. I can hear that the playing sounds tense, but maybe it’s just me thinking it can sound better than it really does.

Audio alone is boring so my wife and I turned the sap level to 11 and created a video slideshow. Apologies are over, so let me introduce Carmela’s Lullaby…

For those without a Kleenax handy, here’s the audio without all the self-promoting photos. However, it’s very possible there’s a considerable amount of bonus footage in the video that shouldn’t be missed. If you don’t like my interpretation of the song that I just wrote and think you can do better, go ahead. Play on Liberace!