Old Dog, New Tricks (Hello!)

[kingpinpearce]

Hi everyone!

My name's Shawn.   I'm 48 years old, happily married for 18 years with two teenage children and the most patient wife ever.   My day job is working for my state government, and I have a side gig arranging vocal a cappella music.  I am on the Autism spectrum (my specific spectrum color used to be identified as Aspergers).

A cappella is truly my passion - I started singing in a group for the first time in 1991 at my college, and over the next several years, I founded two groups there, one of which has been going strong for over 25 years now.  I have over 200 a cappella vocal arrangements (of other people's music) under my belt.    I WAS a tenor, until a major auto accident 10 years ago caused major damage to my body; I have minor disability in walking, but the tracheotomy they had to do to save my life affected my vocal folds and the accident itself damaged my lungs - I can breathe, and have decent vocal tone, but no support.

I compensated by throwing myself into vocal arranging and, over the past year, music production.  I founded The AcaLumni Project, with a collective of singers across the world that contribute their vocal parts from where they are and I mix/master it where I am.   For fun/passion.

I found this place because I want to write originals for the group (the "new trick" for this old dog), but am starting from very little experience.  I've written two songs lifetime, and I've forgotten both of them.  I recently took a Udemy course in commercial songwriting (since I want to write pop for the group), so I have a starting point, but haven't written a new song yet (I'm starting to build hooks/lyric fragments to work with).  Stronger with melody than lyrics but want to learn both.

So...hi.

[Peggy]

Hi Shawn,

 

Welcome to Songstuff. Nice introduction! It's a good community of people here. We have tons of resources for development and support. Have fun!

 

Peggy