Sing Out 2008

Sing Out Songwriting Project 2008

One of the main things I achieved in 2008 was co-ordinating the Sing Out Songwriting Project. It was a monumental task and one which nearly drove me over the edge.

This is what happens when one person of limited time, budget and resources attempts to do the work of 2 to 3 people however, I don’t regret it one bit.

Let me give you a bit of background here.

Sing Out was initially created in 2007 by my good friend and amazingly talented singer/songwriter Heather Frahn as a “live music event with a community development twist”.

Last year I had the honour of being one of the songwriters involved with the project. This year Heather asked me if I could run it as she was touring Europe at the time. I said “yes” and the rest is history.

The premise of Sing Out is as follows:

“… connecting people through song and performance, “Sing Out!” explores the lives and stories of eight individuals from the Gay & Lesbian community with diverse and interesting backgrounds. Each life story is then presented and performed by seven of Adelaide’s finest singer/songwriter/musicians through a collaborative and creative process.”

That’s right, eight participants and eight songwriters are randomly paired up and a song is written about an aspect of the participants life. The difficulty of co-ordinating eight songwriting groups was something I wasn’t prepared for.

To compound matters, I also became one of the songwriters due to a last minute cancellation. Why don’t I just pile more work on top of me?

From the end of July to the end of November, I worked on putting together the Sing Out Songwriting Project with the end result being the Sing Out concert for the Feast Festival on November 26th.

Even though the events leading up to the concert were immensely challenging, the concert itself went without a hitch.

Everyone that was involved pulled together and we worked harmoniously as a team. At the end of it all it was a lot of fun.

The reason why I’m telling you this is that my involvement with Sing Out was one of the main reasons why I was off the air for a couple of months however, my involvement with Sing Out also gave me the clearest lessons to learn about myself and what I can achieve.

Looking back on it all, I’m actually very, very proud of myself. In fact now that I’ve proven to myself that I can single-handedly put together an event such as Sing Out, I can do absolutely anything!

Make time for my songwriting… Sure!
Practise what I preach… No worries!
Tame my inner critic to an inch of its life… Absolutely!
Embrace all that life offers me… YES!

Another thing that I learned to do was to operate my songwriting studio. Part of the Sing Out Songwriting Project was producing a CD of all the songs for sale at the concert. A couple of the songwriting groups chose to record their own works but the others used my studio.

I recorded, produced, mixed and mastered the recordings and helped with the creation of the artwork and the CD package. It was a valuable lesson in audio recording for me and an incredible confidence boost in using my studio.

If my present setup can produce a CD for sale then surely I can use it to demo my songwriting ideas? I have no excuse now.

Sometimes hindsight can be a cruel beast but fortunately, in my case it’s a bearer of wonderful insights all of which will help with my songwriting from now on.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

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