While my sisters and I were curating the contents of our parents’ estate, I found and collected a group of compositions and arrangements that my mother, Margaret Morgensen Owen wrote. Notable about this is —I never knew that she composed ANYTHING. We always knew her arranging skills, which she routinely employed during the years that our family performed anywhere that would listen to us.
I knew that I would re-turn my attention to them, someday. Because of still raw emotions, I had not been able to visit these pieces UNTIL this year. The song “Christmas Bells,” pictured below, is one of the pieces that I referenced above. I hadn’t noticed until I was looking at the picture that the lyrics are by her accomplished mother —artist, poet, author AND suffragette, Emma Breck Morgensen.
My Christmas project for 2024 has been to arrange, perform and record her composition. This is the first project on which I have used and recorded Yamaha’s “Vocaloid” singing synthesizer. The female voice that I chose was one of approximately a dozen voices available. A multitude of adjustments are available for continuous control of many aspects of each singer’s sound —similar to all other synthesizers. I have only begun experiment with it, and hopefully to use it for many more projects —ones that I would not have been able to do without a readily available vocalist.
Because Mother typed the lyrics to “The Christmas Bells” on her (old) manual Underwood typewriter, and not on her newer (script-font) electric Smith-Corona —indicates that this piece was written before the mid 1960’s. Obviously because her name says “Owen,” it was after 1950, her wedding anniversary.
My manner of working on a project like this one —involves playing individual parts a multitude of times, exploring parts until I find ones that are tolerable for me to me to record. I have been doing that for the past month —experimenting with piano, bass, and string parts —finally ditching my plan to add B3 organ —so that I might finish not later than today.
This is the first CMMM video that I have hosted at my Creative Minds’ Music’s domain. Till now I have posted my videos on YouTube, which also I did with this one. However, after having difficulties making this square-not-rectangular video display properly (to be stored with my other videos, and not in the “Shorts” section because of the fact that is both brief in duration, and not rectangular) here, this is an experiment —self-hosting a video on CMMM for the first time. Please let me know if you experience any difficulty viewing or hearing the video.
I barely finished in time for its Christmas debut. I hope that you enjoy my work.
Merry Christmas, 2024 from Stan Owen, Jr. & Creative Minds’ Music.
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