I was thinking that maybe my holiday song,”The Christmas Door” was already a Hallmark or maybe Lifetime Christmas movie, but when I searched it, I found a painting by Nita Leger Casey.

I’m placing it on the back burner (but not on the fire) for now – maybe I’ll finish it for next Christmas.

I decided to take a little time to try some midi drums. I hooked up my keyboard to my laptop via USB and found an Ableton Live tutorial to make the attempt. The good news was that the software recognized my keyboard & I was able to hear drum sounds when I hit the correct keys. That seemed to be the end of my success for the moment. Even though I saw some that some information was saved in the midi track within the DAW, I was not able to play it back.

A little frustrated, but I’ll get it.

Be well.

-Sticks Bejzak

P.S. About the image up top: Obie dragged an elastic bandage out of our bedroom – maybe he thinks he’s a Saint Bernard.

A handful of years back, we spoke of having a holiday door decorating  contest at work. I had an idea to not only decorate the door, but write & perform an original song as well – The Christmas Door.

I wrote some lyrics which I “resurrected” (sorry, I know that’s more of an Easter term) from my iPod Touch. Still had a bit of the melody I had in mind in brain, so I did some work on the lyrics and recorded a quick sketch on my old phone using the FourTracks Lite app.

Enjoy the season all!

The sketch:

The events of this week made what I’m trying to say with this song all the more poignant (not sure if that’s exactly the correct word, but I’m sticking with it). I thought of adding lyrics saying something like “shooting at a mass,” but they didn’t make this cut. I am very disturbed how people can use their religion, almost any religion – or hand-picked portions of it, to justify nefarious actions.

I am still working through this track, but it’s time to call it a demo or I’ll never finish this album. Acoustic guitar, piano and vocals this time. I had an idea to add violin or viola, but I haven’t tested the (muddy?) midi waters as of yet and my keyboards strings are really cheesy (I did use them to add little in the background for color).

This week also found my good friend Dave (DavidHusted.com) releasing his 2nd long-player. It’s available on Spotify and is well worth a listen.

Personal Demo # 5: (Am I) Dangerous