Well, it seems like the year has been going by pretty fast. For a lot of the year, I’ve been away from music production due to another commitment. Been starting again on getting one of the last songs (called Test Me with Fire) on the Before the Harvest music album ready for mastering. I think it’s getting closer to being ready, but still trying to fine tune it a bit. Learning that there’s only so much that can be done if the original recordings (on my part) aren’t that professional. Also, this song recording is so old that I ended up adding more lyrics to the song years later, but it’s not in this original version of the recording.

Along the way, I’ve been working on writing some new songs in the evenings. Even with just spending about a half hour a night during many weeknights, I believe that God has given me many new songs. Really excited about a lot of these—especially ones for an album called Spirit Fruit. It’s an album that hopefully includes some Biblical Scripture and some thoughts about what the Fruit of the Spirit might look like or involve [1].

I’m really enjoying these songs, though, and I hope they are somehow encouraging to you as well. For now, these particular songs are written in (however poor) Japanese—but I usually like to try to include an English translation of the lyrics on my Music Scrapbook when this is the case. I think one song on this project has been translated into English, if I recall, so maybe it’s possible to do more of that someday. Even though I’m not that good at using Japanese effectively, I really like using Japanese for songwriting due to the fairly consistent consonant+vowel combination of sounds. It makes it easier for me to make lines rhyme or sound like they match. With English, though, I like how there are many ways to use short, one-syllable words to be able to fit lots of meaning into a single lyrical line.

With all of the challenges going on in our own lives and around the world, I would like to encourage each of us to keep looking to Jesus even more when life gets tough. Thanks for taking the time to read this update!

[1] Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV)

Been mixing the next song on the Before the Harvest album, lately. It’s called Dragonfly Skies. Pretty happy with how the mixing has turned out with this, so I’ve sent it off to Andrew to be mastered at some point in the future. This is probably the first song on the album where I think the bass guitar felt more like a “glue layer” between the drums and the rest of the layers of instruments/vocals on this song.

Spent some time after work on some upcoming song projects, this week. One of the songs is the next song in the series from the Before the Harvest album. It’s called Dragonfly Skies. Began adding a little bit more to the drums around the middle or end of the song. Still need to check and make sure it works with the song. After that, hoping to finish mixing that song and then planning to send it off for mastering.

Had the opportunity to recently record some of the “base layers” (rhythm guitar, vocals, and bass) along with electric guitar this week on a song called Seek First. Added a little bit more to the drums on this song today, as well. This is a song from last year, but thankful for the opportunity to record it now. Ordered a percussion shaker in order to use it on some songs if possible. These are harder to play/use than I thought, but I like how it can add some percussion. I might have to do some copy/paste or re-recording in some places, though, because I ended up losing rhythm or getting tired during some of the recording.

Also had the opportunity to get some of the base layers recorded for other songs, including two new songs: A Path Divides and Fireside. Still trying for “as good as possible at the time” for the recording while still learning that it probably will not be perfect recording whether on the musical side or the technical side. Added some percussion (using the new shaker) on an old song called Narrow, too, and I like how that is turning out. Learning that when I try to make something perfect, I usually never finish whatever it was I was trying to make perfect.