It’s that time of the year again, where we celebrate the passing of the year itself as it is replaced with another. It really is trivial, but we human beings are masters at finding meanings in meaningless things.
It may be argued that meanings exist only because we ascribe them to things that are related to us. You, readers, dwindling as your numbers may be, are meaningful to me, for example.
And as you are indeed meaningful to me, I want all the best things to happen to you. I hope we’ll take all the lessons and experiences of the passing year to heart, and let’s make 2019 the best year ever.
Some of you who know me personally are aware that I’ve always been somewhat musical. But probably not too many know that I am actually some kind of a musician too.
My parents bought me a Casio mini keyboard when I was in first grade; I don’t remember what the occasion was. It was one which had a library of popular old 60s-70s songs in the form of electronic sheet music with some predefined arrangements. Not too long after learning how to play the keyboard on my own, I was able to play the melodies and chord fingering of a few numbers like The Beatles’s Yesterday, Sinatra’s My Way and Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters.
I knew then that I had some musical inclinations. I have two older brothers who are quite a bit older than me; the youngest one being eight years my senior and the oldest one is ten years older than me. They were both playing in bands and I sort of tagged along every once in a while.
I also played in bands in high school and in college. My high school band actually had some local TV gigs, but none had any real serious impact even though we had our own songs and some demo mixtapes.
After college, I dabbled in self publishing, both as a solo musician and as a part of a band. But in hindsight I realize I did not put enough effort into it or was just too lazy to try that it never made any meaningful result.
So afterward I found more gainful employment in the linguistic arena by becoming a translator, interpreter and copywriter, first as a freelancer, then in corporate settings and then finally now as an owner of a firm that employs linguists.
Now that I am able to put food on my family’s table, the music itch on my back is starting to come back. And now I’ve decided to scratch that itch.
I’ve been trying to update myself with the workings of digital music distribution. After considering my options with the help of this very helpful review by indie artist Ari Herstand, I’ve signed up with the digital distributor DistroKid, which allows me to upload unlimited number of songs for an annual fee.
So this is the story behind the release of my first single On Cloud Nine, which is a bluesy rock/pop tune that I’ve actually had since high school, but now updated with English lyrics. It is now available everywhere that DistroKid distributes music to. Here are some of them.
