Music and Songwriting: Singing Died and Songwriting Became My Life
It’s still the 2006-2007 school year and I’m still in California. I changed high schools though. Started back going to school in Pasadena, CA; decided to take up choir for the last time. Mr. Douglas was my choir teacher, and boy was he amazing! I ended up not only being in choir, but I was selected as an alto for B.I.B.S. which consisted of about 15 of us. I also got to perform at the Pasadena Playhouse with Up with People, and had some solos in our yearly “Ovations” Broadway-styled musical. We went on so many musical outings and random performances as well. I joined so much stuff at that school. I remember telling my dad I didn’t want to be on movie sets all day like my younger brother, I wanted to be at school…so that’s what I did. I promised it felt like a singer’s boot camp. I learned so many vocal techniques. I learned to accept my tone, how to pronounce vows differently that better suited my voice, listen to myself better and pronounce better. I think my favorite thing was vibrato. I have to say that because of this, I became more interested in background vocals and ad-libs vs. the main vocal. I started hearing melodies more clearly. At this time I also started recognizing different songwriter’s styles. I was head over heels for any The Dream or Rock City (Planet VI) written song. I also took a liking to Ne-Yo, Dre & Vidal, Adonis Shropshire and Sean Garrett’s writing style. All of these songwriters had melodies that caught my attention; it wasn’t even about the lyrics with these guys for me. So I had the females (Amy & Maria) for the lyrics, and the guys for the melodies. I started to despise singing a little bit. It was starting to become a chore. Singing in the shower and karaoking is extremely different than having to sing for an audience. With all the techniques that I learned, singing became more of a thinking process than something you would just do. I tried to keep that stuff pushed far in the back of my mind. Pasadena was calling all the high school students in the district to try out for a talent show, so I did. I performed ♪Like A Boy♪ by Ciara. I had added my on outro at the end that I wrote, I even had it choreographed a little, had a chair for my prop. I still knew I was no Mariah Carey…I accepted Rihanna lol! I was pretty and I could perform, so who cared if I could “sang” as long as I could sing/long talk. I ended up finding out that I got a spot on the show from a friend of mines on the day of the show. My dad had took my cell phone away because of some court stuff he was going through with my mom, had to be the only reason, so he had put his number down for the contact information. My dad never checked his voicemail then so I knew it had been sitting in his voicemail. My best friend tried to offer me an outfit of hers to wear but I turned it down. It was just too last minute. When it comes to performing, I don’t feel comfortable unless everything is right…and outfit looks are a major part for me. But I got a chance to perform later on that year at something held for my school. I can’t remember what it was for but I remember performing ♪Umbrella♪ by Rihanna. Of course I had an umbrella that matched my outfit, opened it up and everything on stage lol. I love the stage; it would be a lie to say I didn’t. Summer of 2007 I came to the conclusion though that maybe I could just sing background vocals somewhere or on some album. I would just demo my own songs that I write instead of looking for the perfect singer…Diane Warren does it and she’s not even a singer, but she is a songwriting legend! I had had enough of technical singing, I missed shower singing. I turned my attention to songwriting only.