Locked Tower, My Original Princess Album, Is Complete!
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A little over a month ago, I shared my desire to create an original album of princess songs inspired by the original fairy tales, giving the songs darker and more melancholic vibes than the Disney versions. I'm pleased to announce that I finished recording the final track yesterday, and the Locked Tower album is available on SoundCloud with full lyric videos on YouTube. I also submitted it for streaming on Spotify and other music sites. This was a really exciting project for me as a beginning piano player. I had no idea I'd be able to begin composing original songs within less than a year of learning to read music. I've been working with a talented instructor who's been a huge help in the process.
Locked Tower contains ten songs, each based on a different fairy tale featuring a princess character. Since I'm still learning about chord progressions, most of the melodies are fairly simple, drawing inspiration from other famous princess melodies. This is the most obvious in "Swan Song," which uses melodies from Tchaikovsky's public domain "Swan Lake" ballet. Piano playing is not my biggest strength at the moment, so I focused more on making the lyrics as insightful as possible to capture the heart of these famous stories. My favorite song on the album is "Captured Beauty," which is inspired by "Beauty and the Beast."
As much as I love Disney, I have no desire to compete with the exceedingly talented Alan Menken, so there are several things that set Locked Tower apart from a Disney Princess album. These songs are quite a bit darker than Disney, focusing on elements of the fairy tales they removed. For instance, "Silent Siren," which is inspired by "The Little Mermaid," references the original ending, in which the mermaid sacrificed herself for the prince's happiness. The song focuses on her silence, literally and figuratively, because he never knew of her sacrifice. "Forgotten Wishes," which is inspired by "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp," contains the lyric "I have someone waiting for me," referencing that the princess was engaged to the son of the grand vizier when Aladdin found her. The album also references some stories that Disney didn't adapt, including "Rumpelstiltskin" (unless you count Once Upon a Time) and "Swan Lake" (which was adapted by a smaller animation studio).
Mixing these songs myself taught me a lot about music production. "Silent Siren" was the only song I ended up recording twice because my production technique had evolved so much by the time I reached the end of the album. The lyric video on YouTube uses the original recording, in which I played the piano keys in front of the microphone to capture the audio, and the version on SoundCloud is the updated one, in which the midi music from the piano was captured directly into a soundboard. Because I'm still a beginner at playing piano, I recorded three separate tracks for each song--one for the treble notes with my right hand, one for the bass with my left hand, and one for the vocals. I know there are times it's obvious that the tracks were played separately, but I did my best to sync them by listening to the parts I had already recorded on headphones while creating the new ones.
I'd love for all my followers to listen to the complete album on SoundCloud to hear all the songs in the order they were intended. I'm also producing a limited number of physical CD copies through Kunaki, which will be available upon request for a small fee. Please reach out to me if you are interested in receiving one. A few lucky readers may also have a chance to win a free copy of this album, along with a signed copy of Hope and Love's Legacy, when I reach my 1,000th blog post. If you've had a chance to listen to all of Locked Tower, let me know your favorite track in the comments below! Thank you for joining me on my musical journey.
Today is a major accomplishment for me. I started this blog 100 days ago, and I've managed to write a new post in it every day since then. Some of the topics were easier to come up with than others. I also had to go back and edit some after the fact due to poor proofreading. Speaking of which, I'm really sorry about the disastrous short story from my first Story Saturday post . The whole thing was written on my phone on the way to a Mermaid Art Show event in San Diego, so I was a little distracted. I promise to put more effort into future Story Saturdays, which should be easier now that I will no longer be writing new posts every day. Don't worry, though. I will still keep everyone informed of the latest princess news and review all the new princess movies and specials. Without further ado, in celebration of my 100th post, here is a list of 100 princesses with all of the posts I've made about them (in no particular order). Thank you so much for reading my blog. 1-11:...
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