March 15, 2014 by willedare

What’s It All About?

Last night I attended a party at a home in Medford, MA (a neighboring town just outside Boston).

The host had invited a couple of pianists and a bunch of friends who like to sing to celebrate his birthday.

After some delicious food and inspiring conversation — including how the Boston Beer company decided to withdraw its support of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston — we all moved from the kitchen into the living room.

And then we made music together for three hours.

Sometimes it was one singer accompanied by a pianist.

Sometimes it was the whole room singing together.

Sometimes one of the pianists sang.

At one point each of the pianists even accompanied the other — who was uncharacteristically standing to sing.

The daily news from our mainstream media brings so many unhappy stories into our homes and into our hearts — planes which mysteriously crash; snipers who fire on civilians; species being wiped out by poachers; wars being waged over natural resources and political power and religious beliefs…

I often wonder what we human beings are doing here on planet earth — and how music fits into the larger equations and patterns unfolding on a daily basis.

Are we here, as some teachers suggest, so that our souls can experience fear and love?

If that is the case, we are certainly doing a great job with the fear component of this cosmic experiment!

Maybe music is one of the tools we can use to respond to fear.

I know from my own experience that listening to music — and making it with others — can lift my spirits.

And can reconnect me with my deeper feelings.

And can bring my energy — for lack of a better word — into harmony with others.

Last night someone at the party sang the great Bacharach/David song “Alfie.”

It reminded me of a recording (embedded at the top of this blog post) which Doug and I made a few years ago at his studio in Lynn.

I am reassured that other human beings, such as Burt Bacharach and Hal David, have pondered similar questions, too.

And I am very, very grateful that my life is now focused on making and sharing music with others.

Thank you for reading — and perhaps listening to — this blog post!

ps: When I wrote this blog post over ten years ago, it included no photos. So in April 2024 I added some from a wonderful photographic resource called Pixabay. THANK YOU to all of the generous photographers and graphic artists at Pixabay!

pps: And when I first recorded this version of “Alfie” with the wonderful pianist Doug Hammer, I knew nothing about digital distribution of music. Now it is available on a bunch of streaming services — and you can click here to stream it.

February 28, 2014 by willedare

Hints Of Spring

Last weekend I saw a dad herding two small boys wearing rubber boots.

They were delightedly stomping their way across a very large puddle.

The sun was shining.

Snow was melting everywhere.

The air almost felt warm on my face.

Ahh, the intoxicating approach of spring!

Robins have landed twice on the bushes outside my bedroom window, eating berries that — miraculously — remain on the branches.

Two male cardinals have been jousting in the airspace around our house — flashes of scarlet fluttering from fence to roof to branch and then back to fence — all the while uttering a passionate selection of hormone-infused songs.

Soon tiny frogs will wake up and start peeping in the wetlands behind my friend Doug Hammer’s studio to the north of Boston.

A few years ago Doug found a great sound sample of spring peepers, and we added it to my Snow Flake Song (playable at the top of this post).

Right now the peep frogs are still hibernating under a log or behind the loose bark of a tree.

When they are full grown, spring peepers are only an inch and a half long.

According to a National Geographic article I found online, they tend to peep in trios….

Who knew?

If you have time, please consider clicking here to watch a video I made a few years ago for the Snow Flake Song.

It features many different kinds of flowers blooming.

Happy (almost) spring!

February 14, 2014 by willedare

And So It Goes

Another Valentine’s Day is here.

Lots of snow.

I bought a box of cards at CVS yesterday so that I can hand out child-sized Valentines to the little ones in my Music Together class.

There were cards which featured wrestling action stars and others with garish visual special effects.

There were cards publicizing children’s movies and TV shows.

I showed my final choice — puppies and kittens with accompanying tattoos — to a mom in the card aisle.

She assured me that most parents are OK with temporary tattoos.

We shall see…

I have long admired the song I included at the beginning of this post.

“And So It Goes” is one of Billy Joel’s most beautiful, wise ballads.

I recorded it with Bobbi Carrey — who provided harmony near the end — and Doug Hammer — who played piano and engineered simultaneously — at Doug’s great studio outside Boston.

It is one of the tracks on our CD, If I Loved You.

There are more tracks from that CD in the music player on the right hand column of this blog, including “I’ll Be Here With You,” “What Is This Thing Called Love?” “Dog At The Pound,” and the title track, “If I Loved You.”

I realize — not surprisingly —that almost every song in the right hand column of this blog is about love.

Music has an uncanny power to re-connect us with our hearts.

May you have much music in your life on this — and every — day.

January 15, 2014 by willedare

The Starry Night

What is it about Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night” that touches so many of our human hearts?

At the end of December I was wandering through the Museum of Modern Art in New York City when I happened upon his masterpiece.

First I noticed the scrum of people who were jockeying for position in front of it.

Then I noticed the guard who had the extraordinary responsibility of making sure that none of the members of the scrum got close enough to damage the painting.

And then I saw it…The Starry Night.

And tears immediately appeared in my eyes.

Even with a crowd of people taking photos of it, taking photos of themselves in front of it, and tweeting and texting their friends about it, “The Starry Night” was serenely, astoundingly beautiful.

I don’t know if I cried partly because I, too, love to gaze at the night sky — amazed at the beauty of the stars and the vastness of the universe — and Van Gogh captures it so well in this painting?

Or if I was reminded of Don McLean’s song “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night),” which speaks so poignantly about how little respect or success Van Gogh earned in his lifetime — as well as his eventual suicide?

The juxtaposition of the clamoring crowd of art-lovers in the 21st century and Van Gogh’s downwardly mobile existence in the 19th century was odd.

And yet we all still share the same huge questions — about how our finite lives relate to the unimaginably vast realms of space, about what happens to us when our bodies die, about how our wonderful blue-green planet fits into the swirling patterns of the universe, about time…and space…and love…and loss.

Ahh, art.

Ahh, music.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

If you are curious to learn more, here is a link to MOMA’s web page for “The Starry Night.”

Special thanks to pianist Doug Hammer, at whose Dream World studio we recorded the version of “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)” you can hear by clicking at the top of this blog entry.

January 6, 2014 by willedare

I’m A Baby Monkey

One of the things I love most about teaching Music Together is the concept that each person absorbs and processes music in their own way.

Some children — and some adults, too — like to sit still while they soak up the sights and sounds swirling around them.

Others like to move their bodies — swaying, clapping, tapping their toes, nodding their heads, or even jumping up to dance in the center of the circle.

Still others prefer to wander around the room, seemingly oblivious to the musical activity unfolding all around them.

And yet these same children will often start singing their own versions of the songs as soon as they leave class…

I love the respect for different learning styles that is baked into the Music Together pedagogy.

As long as no one is hurting themselves or distracting the rest of the class, whatever she or he wants to do in class is OK.

At times this can make for a somewhat chaotic classroom experience.

But if the teacher and a majority of the adults are able to keep participating — singing, moving, chanting, drumming, dancing, marching, and so forth — the class flows on.

The grown ups copy the teacher.

The children copy their accompanying grown up, the teacher, the other grown ups, and the other children.

And I am always looking for movements and ideas from the children and grownups in the class which I can mirror, highlight, and somehow incorporate into the flow of my lesson plan.

It can become a very rich — and fun — environment of “monkey see, monkey do” feedback loops.

I wrote the song at the top of this page, “I’m A Baby Monkey,” before I became a Music Together teacher.

Serendipitous foreshadowing?

I have not officially released it to the world…

But many families have enjoyed it over the years via an email copy.

Thank you for reading and listening to this blog post.

Thank you to Apple for creating their laptop computers and their GarageBand program.

Thank you to the terrific photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to the wonderful monkeys in these photos.

And thank you to all of the families who have chosen to make music together with me over the years!

I am very grateful.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

November 18, 2013 by willedare

We Never Know Who Is Listening…

One of the truly magical aspects of a musical life on planet earth in the 21st century is how widely one can share one’s songs if one has access to the internet.

After Bobbi Carrey, Doug Hammer and I — with lots of help from Mike Callahan, Jonathan Wyner, and guest musicians — recorded our CD “If I Loved You,” we heard from family, friends AND folks whom we had never met.

One listener included our version of the David Friedman ballad “I’ll Be Here With You” (which you can hear by clicking on the right hand sidebar of this page) on a CD she sent to her fiance who was serving in the US military overseas.

Another fan — who had been given our CD by a friend — tracked us down and told us that she listened to our music each morning while she worked out. When her husband died, she asked us to sing at his memorial service.

And I recently learned — in a reply to my blog post about music and spontaneity — that a CD of my “Will Loves Steve” show (which features songs written by people named Stephen, Steven, Stevie or Steve) had traveled from Massachusetts to Argentina, where it helped lift the spirits of someone who was feeling very low.

Here’s a selection from that show — “Overjoyed by Stevie Wonder…

The pianist is Doug Hammer, and the horn player is Mike Callahan.

I am curious to see how my musical endeavors may continue to ripple around the planet thanks to the internet.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Ahh, music!

ps: Since I wrote this blog post almost 12 years ago, I have begun distributing music to various streaming platforms.

You can click here for a streaming link to my version of Overjoyed” in case you might like to add it to a playlist and/or “like” it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

Thank you for reading, listening and maybe even leaving a comment!

October 4, 2013 by willedare

Music and Spontaneity

I am at an open mic run by the Boston Association of Cabaret Artists (BACA) in an elegant UU church in Watertown, MA.

Steve Heck — a wonderful local pro — is playing the grand piano, and I am singing “Over The Rainbow.”

It is one of the songs in a new show about Harold Arlen which I have recently begun performing with pianist Joe Reid.

After Steve takes a piano solo, I re-enter at the bridge of the song (“Some day I’ll wish upon a star…”) and then I hear elevator doors opening behind me.

Three women — friends of Steve Heck, I later learn — appear on stage with me.

They did not realize that the elevator would deposit them there.

I turn and — still singing — welcome them so that I can escort them across the stage and down into the audience.

But as I do this, I realize that they probably love music and very likely know the words to “Over The Rainbow;” so I encourage them to stay with me onstage and sing — which they happily do.

One woman in particular catches my attention because she is adding a beautiful harmony in a great big, belting voice.

We make eye contact as the song builds to a dramatic climax of “Why oh why can’t I?” — each of us singing at the top of our lungs, my microphone completely unnecessary.

The entire series of events lasts less than a minute, and the entire room is happily caught up in the moment.

Afterwards, during a break period, I am asked how I managed to time their arrival so perfectly.

I explain that I had never met them before and that the entire experience was utterly spontaneous — unfolding moment by moment with no guidance other than the lyrics of the song, Steve Heck’s solid accompaniment, and our shared love of music.

Ahh, music!

Ahh, spontaneity!

I have been experiencing a lot of spontaneous musical moments in the past few months.

Joe Reid and I put together our hour-long Harold Arlen program in one rehearsal that lasted about two hours.

He is a jazz pianist who is very comfortable making music in the here and now.

I brought a bunch of Arlen sheet music to his house plus a rough idea of a song run order.

We double-checked the keys for all the songs, played each one through once or twice, and Joe was ready to take it public.

So far we have performed at two retirement communities with very enthusiastic audiences (and we did get together for another hour-long rehearsal between our first and second performances…)

I also spent many additional hours making sure I knew exactly how the song was originally written, reading several books about Arlen I ordered from my local library, recording practice piano tracks with Doug Hammer, memorizing lyrics, and writing the “patter” to lead from one song to the next.

All of this preparation helps me to surrender to the moment when we are performing these wonderful songs.

Me and one of my favorite MT participants of all time!

I have also begun leading Music Together (MT) classes in Arlington and Belmont (a neighboring town where Mitt and Ann Romney used to live).

MT is a very-well-researched and very-well-planned program to introduce small children — along with their caregivers — to the joy and fun of active music-making.

Although participants are encouraged to learn 30 new songs accurately — each one carefully selected to include a wide variety of keys and rhythms — per semester, we teachers are given free rein to be spontaneous and improvisatory during class.

I am sure my training during the past six months to become a MT teacher helped me to go with the flow at the BACA open mic when those three women appeared onstage.

And I have experienced many moments of musical connection with children and caregivers during my first two weeks of MT classes which have given me a similar jolt of delight.

I think this might be what I am supposed to be doing here on planet earth…

The song in the player at the beginning of this blog post is a Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer classic called “Accentuate the Positive” which I recorded with pianist Doug Hammer during a rehearsal for the “Mostly Mercer” show that singer Bobbi Carrey and I created last year.

Image by Gabriele M. Reinhardt from Pixabay

Thank you to Doug Hammer, Joe Reid and Bobbi Carrey for being important musical collaborators.

Thank you to the generous and skillful photographers at Pixabay.

Thank you to all of the families who have signed up for my Music Together classes.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts!

Deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

June 23, 2013 by willedare

The Magic of the Humble ‘Ukulele

I started playing the ukulele three years ago after attending a class in Harvard Square led by the marvelous Danno Sullivan.

Ukulele enthusiast, teacher and humorist Danno Sullivan — Danno Sullivan

Not only is Danno an inspiring teacher, he also has a terrific sense of humor — sprinkling his classes with droll asides and insights.

Since then I have been strumming on a regular basis — thanks to Danno’s handouts, the wonderful Daily Ukulele songbook, and the amazing group mind of the internet (where one can find chords and lyrics for almost every song under the sun).

Soon after discovering the chords for Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida” on line, I realized that many of my favorite pop songs have a surprisingly simple structure — four chords.

And some do fine with just three chords — as in the case of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

And thus my life as a budding songwriter took root…

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Cover image of THE DAILY UKULELE songbook

I had written lyrics in the past with a friend, pianist/composer Steve Sweeting (and you can listen to one of the songs we created together called “Stuff” by clicking here if you are curious).

I had also collaborated on a couple of songs with a guitarist friend (again as a lyricist).

And I had co-written a couple of songs with bandmates in a pop/rock band.

But until I picked up a ukulele, my songwriting efforts had been restricted to what I could cobble together using Apple’s blessed GarageBand program — songs consisting of my vocals plus various loops and samples from the GarageBand library.

Now, in the past three years, I have written a bunch of ukulele-based songs.

And in the past month I have attended three singer-songwriter open mics — accompanying myself (solidly but not very gracefully) on the ‘uke.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

In addition to helping me write songs, the ukulele has also given me a new way to hang out with my mom, with my dad, and with other friends and family members.

All I have to do is pick up a ‘uke, open up a songbook, and start strumming.

Almost invariably the mood in the room shifts to something lighter and (literally) more harmonious as everyone starts to hum and sing along.

I find this to be somewhat magical and amazing.

And it inspired me to write the song featured at the beginning of this blog post — a version which I recorded with Doug Hammer playing a shaker egg and his Schimmel grand piano — as well as a GarageBand version I recorded by myself using my Apple laptop (which I have included below.

I highly recommend that anyone reading this blog post consider buying a decent (but inexpensive) ukulele.

Then you can check out all sorts of fun, free, instructional videos on YouTube AND start attending a wonderful, welcoming ukulele Meetup gathering near you.

They happen all across the USA — and in many other countries around the world.

And the sound of many ukuleles being strummed together is quite heavenly.

Will McMillan wearing a tuxedo and strumming a blue ukulele — Me and my first ukulele (Photo by Stephen C. Fischer)

I think the largest group of strummers I’ve been part of was at The Cambridge Center For Adult Education in one of their front courtyards.

I helped organize it, and we had at least 40 people strumming and singing together with delightful leadership by the aforementioned Danno Sullivan!

ps: Since I first published this blog post, I’ve released a lot of music on various streaming platforms and have also created a new website which you are welcome to visit by clicking here.

Here are some links to songs I have written using my various ukuleles (I now own four of them) and then recorded with Doug Hammer playing piano — “Ode To Water,” “Can We Slow It Down?” “Heaven Here On Planet Earth,” “Boil A Frog Slowly,” “The World Within,” “Asleep At The Karmic Wheel,” “Waltzing With COVID-19,” and “Democracy Is Under Attack!”

Thank you for reading and listening to this blog post!

Thank you, too, to Danno Sullivan for his excellent instruction and ongoing inspiration.

Thank you as well to the Cambridge Center for Adult Education for offering ukulele classes with Danno (and to Michael Cicone — then head of educational programming at CCAE — for hiring Danno in the first place).

Thank you to Stephen C. Fischer for his fun — and very patient — photography sessions.

Thank you to Liz and Jim Beloff for their wonderful Daily Ukulele songbooks.

Thank you to Steve Sweeting for helping me get started as a songwriter.

Thank you to the generous photographers at Pixabay for their colorful ukulele photos.

And one final thank you to a few of the goddesses of music — Euterpe, Hathor, and Saraswati.

I welcome any comments — ukulele-related or otherwise — that this blog post may inspire!

amusicalifeonplanetearth

Music and the Thoughts It Can Inspire

love of music

What’s It All About?

Hints Of Spring

And So It Goes

The Starry Night

I’m A Baby Monkey

We Never Know Who Is Listening…

Music and Spontaneity

The Magic of the Humble ‘Ukulele