Whenever it is time to create a lyric video for a song, I am still a novice. I do recognize that creating a visual-emotional representation of an audio-emotional experience is an art form and I respect it deeply. Some of my favorite music videos are Björk's incredible ones, as they truly seem to be ripe expressions of her songs. I also love how she has always collaborated with great artists, not only with her music and fashion, but with her music videos too.
I have been collaborating with a video creator named Paul BZ on Fiverr for all of my lyric videos. Before my first video, I did research on Fiverr for a video creator whose style seemed to match what I was looking for with the song. I found Paul BZ and have been working with him ever since. The creative process with him has been pretty great, as it is clear that he wants to deliver excellently towards your vision for the lyric video. For a reasonable price, he will go through as many rounds with you needed to get it right.
The first draft stage consists of me describing in precise detail what I need for the song to be represented well. With "Unstoppable Garden," since I was inspired by the Netflix show Bridgerton, I wanted the backdrop to the lyrics to be of English country gardens, during the day and at night. I wanted to have elements of a curated and landscaped garden, kind of posh... but juxtaposed with a wild and free natural area. This is how I felt with this series, in that there is such a Regency-era lockdown on emotional expression, only to unleash an organic, uncultivated, natively lush experience of love. I had tried to convey this with the song through my vocals, and so I wanted the lyric video to attempt the same, and I think we did. So, Paul and I had 3-4 rounds of back-and-forth digital discussions, and we ended with this final product. I hope you enjoy it, and also enjoy real gardens that are clipped and ones that are overrun with life.
To contact Paul BZ, you can find him here on Fiverr's website.
Song Credits Written by Kristine Moon and Kevin McNoldy Produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Kevin McNoldy All vocals performed by Kristine Moon All instruments performed by Kevin McNoldy
My producer mentioned to me that folks would be interested in "production notes." I thought to myself, "What are those?" After chatting more about it during our weekly calls, I understood. It could be very interesting to people how we create our music, and I'd be happy to share our process.
First of all, my music training throughout my life has been more recreational rather than competitive or professional. The closest I practiced to professional-style training would have been my summer program studying classical voice at The North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC. It is now an incorporated university in the UNC system. I also studied classical voice at UNC-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate. My music theory knowledge needs so much practice and discipline. I look forward to learning more in my life. My music foundation mostly stems from composing by ear.
I have created music off and on my whole life. However, it began in adulthood and motherhood when another kind of muse started visiting me. So at the beginning of creating a song, I hear something. Either in my head or from external source, like a bit of another song in a café or sounds in a city. It can be 1 or 2 bars of a melody. I quickly record that melody in my phone. I have to be FAST because it will escape me if I don't! Then I can go 2 different ways: I can think of a theme I would like to write song lyrics about, or I come up with a line or 2 of lyrics that I'd like to develop. After I get some seeds of lyrics or themes, I then kind of shop in my recordings to see which melody would fit these words or topics. I continue to cobble together the whole song melodically...sometimes just the music and then add the lyrics at the end, or do these simultaneously.
After this step is finished, I record this song into my phone with a specific BPM (beats per minute) through a DAW app (digital audio workstation). I may layer in another harmonizing vocal. I send this to Kevin with a few things... I send him the vocals with a little description of the song, as well as 2-3 songs by artists I admire to show him what I'd like the accompanying music to sound like. I have an in-depth chat with him about these songs, concerning what parts or feelings of those songs that I'd like to emulate in my song and in which certain locations. The more clearly I can articulate what I am going for at the beginning, then the closer the song will be at the first-draft stage of the process.
After that first phase, we will have about 1-2 rounds of revisions before we fully realize the song. Throughout these revisions, I am basically tapping into how the songs are making me feel and how they sound...do the sounds meet my taste and artistic sensibilities? Do the dynamics of the song meet my needs for the message I want to convey? Are we experimenting with different sounds? Are we stretching ourselves into new artistic territories? When these questions are answered satisfactorily and effervescently, then we are finished.
I get song ideas from many things. From personal struggles like healing from past wounds, being inspired by art, or basking in the peace of nature, I write to help myself and others. With the song "Unstoppable Garden," it is funny - I became so entranced with the storyline of Season 2 of the British show Bridgerton on Netflix! I acknowledge that that can seem a bit too saccharine, but it's true! One big reason it carried me away was the fact that 2 dark-skinned South Asian women were at the center of a usually non-diverse medium, Regency-era British romances (like all of Jane Austen's films). They are fun and comforting (despite the non-diversity), and so when this show came out celebrating all colors and experiences of different cultures, I felt like that it was a good start for healthy representation on screen. This show filled me up, and so when my cup overflowed, this song came to me. I think I already had the the basic melody in my recordings, that I had recorded from an entirely separate moment of inspiration. I read some romantic poetry to massage my songwriting muscles and inspire my words. I took some of the images from the show into my mind...a garden at night, candle-lit everything, the juxtaposition of a totally repressed mode of conduct and wild, unstoppable passion...all the sappy things! These aided me in expressing in this song what I wanted...the persistent beauty of true love.
I am constantly learning. I want to continue to grow. Please share with me any sounds and artists you think we would like to hear (and any shows and films I should watch!). I am always wanting to add more colors to our palette. I think I will always feel new to this, but that is beautiful too.
I can be quite the hopeless romantic. As a teenager, I came close to being clinically obsessed with the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I know that it doesn't resonate with everyone and reality doesn't reflect such fatal arcs in young people's first love experiences. However, as a 14-year-old, it rang true with me, and has since imprinted in my mind-body-spirit an operating system if you will of how romantic love should be. My husband tempers my rhapsodic releases of rapturous passion I engulf him in with humor and unconditional love.
(I know that there is a current lawsuit alleging child abuse around the nude scenes of this film, and so I hope justice is reached.)
Through my music I can traverse this deep romantic galaxy I have within me, and I hope that you feel a bit of it in my latest song "Unstoppable Garden." Another romantic tale made me rather unwell with how obsessed I became with it, and that took the form of the episodic Netflix show "Bridgerton." Starring 2 dark-skinned South Asian women set in a Regency period English story... this hit my sweet spot as a Filipina-American Anglophile viewer (I can recite swaths of the aforementioned R&J, Pride & Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and more). So, this show sent me spinning, and this song helped me create what I was feeling. I hope you enjoy and perhaps it can add something to your Valentine's Day if that is a thing for you... or for whenever you'd like a little lilt in your eyes and voice towards your special person.
"Unstoppable Garden"
V.1: Unstoppable firefly Unleashed from the night sky Excruciating tenderness Trembling ears of mine
Pre-chorus 1: Radical, delicate, trust
Chorus: Breathe my echinacea Drink my honey Garden clover, for you On me, all over... yeah...
V.2: Always inviting Your look, piercing From the edge of the street Lantern-lit skin
Pre-chorus 2: Forgiveness Force trespass In your dance
Do you ever get swept away with a romance novel? Maybe you are all not hopeless romantics like me. André Aciman wrote a novel in 2008 entitled Call Me By Your Name about two young American men falling in love in Italy one summer in the 1980s. Their days were “numbered” because of the discriminatory nature of society. I have read the follow-up novel Aciman wrote recently, Find Me, and that is why I ended the song the way I did…
Ever since high school, I have obsessed over romance stories (with a tragedy-bent). I watched the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and began a year or two of watching it at least once a week. I read the play, and I performed both roles when I was on the Forensics Drama and Debate team. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting gave a superb performance, the best I have ever seen.
In Aciman’s book, the prose carried me to a place of sweet joy as well as frustrated impotence…and the result is this song. Enjoy! Also…share with me any works of art that have touched you so viscerally that it caused you to create something…thank you! And thank you André…
Numbered
I wake up and know that it is all sinking
Our diamond-crusted reef… I am blinking
Fire tears through me as I feel when we first met!
I hold my breath as our sun sets
I can’t believe that I forgot to remember
That you and me, our days were numbered
I had eaten the crumbs on that path back
To myself, and I know I can’t find my way
My eyes, liquid love at our memories
As I realize the door is locked, and I have no keys
Back in the house of my soul I crawl
Your portrait is on the wall
There, I stare (2x)
Time will thicken my skinny membrane
Covering my thoughts and flesh of you, untamed
I run at top speed away to you
Only go the distance through me
Where are you?
You’re here, you’re near…
Listen on Spotify, get a high-resolution download of the song by signing up for my newsletter.
Hello everyone and thank you for coming to read this blog. I truly appreciate it.
This song was simply inspired by the breathtaking images I have seen of the southwestern U.S.A. The rusty red rocky landscape of the Grand Canyon, the ancient Joshua trees, and the “milky turquoise” of the Colorado River…these made me think of the themes of beauty in rough terrains, how to find love for yourself and others during the rugged parts of your life. The Colorado River seems like such a salve flowing through that dry part of the planet, and the color of its water heals. I hope to go there one day! Have you? What experiences can you share, about this area or any place, that offered a feeling of peace and wellness for you and your spirit, when you felt like you were inside a dark cave in your mind and life?
Thank you for your input – here are the lyrics for Turquoise. Enjoy!
Turquoise
Verse 1
Flailing around, stubbing toes
In crazy town, blue-black crows
Crusty view, no one knows
You hold my hand, in that cave we go
Refrain
Your river cuts through, making waves
My curves are soothed, echoes in my cave
Milky turquoise caresses me
Diamonds in the dark, Joshua trees
Post-refrain
Stay close to me…my thorns can creep
Your voice dives deep…strong hands can bleed
Verse 2
Climbing slow up the crags of my
Jagged soul, scratched up thighs
Cool aloe, you apply
No more burns in green skies
Repeat Refrain
Post-refrain
Breathe lungs, aware…send my own flare
Blood-knuckles up that rock-face…I remember the way!
The way! The way! The way! The way! (2x)
The End, thank you!
Listen on Spotify, get a high-resolution download of the song by signing up for my newsletter.
Thank you for coming to this blog – I would like to introduce you to my second single called Searching. I wrote this song when I wanted to explore the feelings I can get from time to time being in a long-term relationship. We don’t learn from a book how long-term relationships should work. We all usually look at what our families’ and friends’ relationships are like, those of our partner’s as well as our own. My life-mate and I have all kinds of examples, healthy and dysfunctional, to view with a non-judgmental eye… we pull from them what we want and what we don’t. Every relationship partners make their own rules for health and happiness, and so do we.
To begin this exploration, I just did a stream-of-consciousness brainstorm of all the feelings I have at this stage in my relationship with my husband – 20 years now! I wanted to create with the soundscape of this song the flexing stages of grace and peace with confusion and longing. A longing for what we had in the past; what I long for in the future because there seems to be a growing pain happening in the present; and then the feeling of the resolve and effervescence of coming back together after traversing these mountains in our understanding of one another. We are always searching for the truth, looking at each other in confusion, anger, listlessness, and pain…but with deeply empathetic listening, we can also look with love, relief, kindness and understanding. I wanted to end the song with such resolve.
May you all experience joy and resolutions, intrigue and fun, in all the relationships you have on this planet.
Here are the lyrics for Searching for you to enjoy:
Searching by Kristine Moon
Hazy, clenching
I see you in your duties
Burning my insides
Climbing up our new building
No more abandon, but
Clasping the never-horizon
Is it the same?
Do you call my name?
I am here
I hang here
I feel hard, I feel soft
I breathe deep trying to smell you
I still need you, I still need you.
Searching for your
Fingerprints you left in me
Is it a chore?
The cinders from our chimney…
Remind me of our hearth
When your wool would wrap around me
Our windows are thick
Ice fractals can stick
I stoke it
You stoke it
We feel hard, we feel soft
We are always together
On this floor of ours
On this floor of ours.
Are you aching inside tonight?
Your eyes are open wide
We curl up by that fire
Whispers reassure me
We built that chair
We built that staircase
To climb up with our hands
We go outside
We pull our tides
In the warm, wet sand
Always shifting sandcastles from our beginning
A new moon sighs
A new moon tries
Kissing my closed eyes
Searching, finding, losing, and binding
A new moon thrives
A new moon ties.
That’s it, thank you, good people.
Listen on Spotify, get a high-resolution download of the song by signing up for my newsletter.
I wrote this after experiencing the darkness that can come with motherhood, within my own life and within the lives of my friends and family. I wanted to write a song that brings some awareness around maternal mental health, especially new moms with young children. So ladies, don’t worry, it all gets better, and seek support and help around your pregnancy and beyond… I love you! Also for all of you living with mental health mountains to climb, I am here with you, you are not alone and you will make it through to the light!!! The lark is a bird who sings when going into flight at daybreak… that is you too, my loves.
High five my hearts,
Kristine Moon
Lark by Kristine Moon
I was drowning in the darkness, now I am a lark
With a message for you, through, you… Come here to me
I am ready to break these gates, on a motorcycle chase
Lone tree, say “Cheese!”… and naked man, stand up, and be, with me, be… a useful memory
I walked into the vacuum, of my mind in the grip of doom
Sailing into the clouds, my pinky snatched the fabric of day, just in time, mine, time… I made it out this time… time, I made it out this time!
They’ve torn me many times, the wolves of the night
Orange and blue skies, bruised eyes, yesterday is far away, far away, far away!
I was drowning in the darkness, now I am a lark
With a message for you, come through, you… Come back to me!
Listen on Spotify, get a high-resolution download of the song by signing up for my newsletter.
So, yes, reading my past blogs has reminded me that I have been telling folks who have been able to visit my blog that my three songs would have been out a lot earlier than now. Okay, so my apologies for that! I have learned SO MUCH this past year about the timeline with art in that there really cannot be one! The songs will be ready when they are ready, and that process has a lot of different elements that affect its progress.
One big element that influenced my progress was that I had to change producers in the middle of this creative process. I realized that I needed a different creative collaborative experience and was able to find a new musical partner whom I am very thankful to have found. I am very grateful for my early stages of this journey and for all those involved within it. They helped me come into my voice even more, and lead me to my current team with whom I am immensely blessed to have joined. Many blessings abound for us all and may we all go forth in Love and Light!
My first single Lark is yours for free in a high-resolution file when you subscribe to my newsletter Listen-Letter here, or you can listen on Spotify. The next songs will come out over the next few months in stages, and so stay tuned my sweets!
Another singer with whom I have found such deep connections.
I went to Norway earlier this year on a roots vacation – rediscovering my Norwegian roots by visiting family I have never met before and getting to know the landscape where my ancestors grew up and created their reality. I am so grateful for this experience. Perhaps some of that Viking blood still flows in my veins…
I feel it does in my singing voice, and the more I get to know Scandinavian singers I feel their musical spirit resonating with my own. AURORA is a current Norwegian singer who has affected me so profoundly and I love her sound, style, and life outlook so much. She lives in Os, in Hordaland, outside of Bergen, on a fjord which translates to The Fjord of Light. That speaks to me so much because with my music I want to create a feeling of diving into an ocean of light. Also, getting to know the fjords near my great-grandfather’s family home in Telemark was just breathtaking (even though they were completely frozen over, which was absolutely magical as well). Also Bergen is about midway between Telemark and the Lofoten Islands where my great-grandmother is from…a completely mesmerizing place, jagged snowed mountains muscling straight out of the Arctic Ocean, where I friggin’ wholeheartedly believe Norse mythology was born.
Here is a live performance she did in Austin, TX of her song for her fans, called “Warrior” – for some reason I love this performance…perhaps it’s because it feels like intimate and foreign snow falling sweetly in the American Deep South.
I also love this live performance (sponsored by Honda) she did of a song called “I Went Too Far” – it just feels very special and it seems like the audience is made to feel so special when she sings. So many people can relate to this song’s message, the fruitless attempt to make people love you.
I love how she, like the NY Times has described her music, creates lyrical storytelling about the darkness of life through the musical tools of light, ethereal pop. I relate to this, as I do feel the creative-musical side of myself uses this art to bring lightness to the darkness, within myself and my experiences as well as within what the world experiences.
Aurora makes me proud of my Nordic heritage, the Arctic winds blowing out of my lungs…I love the idea of singing wrapped up in “hyggelig” sweaters, scarves, on fur carpets in front of a hearth with a big cup of cocoa…I will not eat whale Norway, but I do love you.
Enjoy Aurora…green lights in the night sky…she does sound like that magnetic painting of Northern Lights…even though she says Norwegian songs can be a bit darker compared to other musical art coming from Scandinavia, perhaps due to their long winter. I have a tropical heart, but I do feel at times the ice-cold, dark Nordic blood flowing in me, and I love creating Songs of Ice and Fire (apologies George R.R. Martin, but I can’t help it).
Peace, ha det bra,
Kristine
P.S. I am also OBSESSED with learning Old Norse, which is the mother language to all the Scandinavian languages (as well as a big linguistic contributor to English)…check out this awesome cowboy professor who teaches this language.
I am learning that collaborating with others on creative projects can be a fragile thing.
As someone who has not been in the music industry world, I know I have a lot to learn. These past few years, as the muse has been visiting me, I have talked to many friends and colleagues in the business, and they have shared so many gems with me. I still am at the beginning of this journey, and so I am constantly wanting to absorb as much good advice as I can.
One big lesson I learned this past summer is that I am a type of person who likes to work with many different personalities. I like to feel my mind, reality, and psychic territories stretch to places where I would have never ventured myself. I don’t want to let go of the handlebars when my bike is going down a completely unknown path in a dark forest – to get to know ideas that I have never explored. I do like to even question what I think I know about myself, about how life works, or to merely visit another person’s perception of the human condition and how it plays out on their patch of the planet. I recently ventured into an unknown valley of words, exchanges, and collaborations from which I grew so much. I am grateful for all I gained from this collaboration and now that it is time to move on from it, I am more ready to stand in my own voice as a budding artist in this industry.
I look forward to learning more in the future, to creating more and more my musical style and truth, and to trust my own gut with what my spirit breathes out of my musical mouth. I hope the same for you all in whatever passion you pursue.
Raven-haired, Northern Lights-eyed, wild lark on a glacier.
I am not sure if my Nordic roots had anything to do with my love of Björk’s music – I definitely was not thinking this when I first fell in love with her debut single of “Human Behavior.” I was in middle school I believe, right before high school, and it started a chapter in my musical evolution that I would entitle “Wild, Raw, and Ingenius: Björk’s Beautiful Musical Guts.”
The chords she creates are otherworldly. I have always loved and obsessed about creating harmonies, harmonies that explore all the different hidden corridors around the main melody. I regard Björk as a rugged-yet-elegant virtuosa of harmonies that sound simple and innocent yet exude a discovery of paired notes that have never found each other before…like an archaeologist finally finding hidden treasures from a different planet in a dark Scandinavian volcanic cave. She also seems to do so effortlessly, with untamed abandon, as well as a little unhinged…however she still controls her vocals to barely exist within a pretty disciplined set of digital or acoustic directives in the instrumentation she creates and produces. She mentions in an 2001 interview with Charlie Rose that she does exercise these two realms of her brain: the need for her vocals to be wild and raw YET at the same time the need for her to create very exact, scientifically precise digital accompaniment. The way these juxtaposed elements result in such moving soundscapes fascinates me. It can seem hard to relate to at first, yet upon deeper listening and feeling of her music, it is very soulful and cerebral at the same time, as well as almost primordial.
Here is one of my favorite songs of hers where her harmonies just explode together like blobs of lava leaping into the air and then sliding together down the volcano to become one rock…
This also exemplifies how she creates digital sounds to sing with, as well as visual artistic genius, and these sonic planets she rockets us into show us what is possible in music, within conventions as well as throughout what she creates from her own feelings in the moment. Simply stellar.
I feel like I am going to leave it right there for now with Björk…this song is a lot to digest. I do not sound like her mostly…I mostly just strive to enjoy bumping into her on my journey in creating my own sounds. I may have bumped into her in my third single to come out this summer, “Hide and Seek”…I hope you enjoy it.
Her sound has influenced me since I was a teenager. Her ethereal soundscape has always taken me to a beautiful place. Perhaps because I grew up Catholic and the music in those cathedrals always had a somber, almost melancholy element to their melodies and harmonies. Enya went to Catholic boarding school and I imagine she experienced that beautiful, chilling, solemn, holy feeling of the music…she said she loves Gregorian chants, which I love as well. Although I don’t practice anymore, I still appreciate the sweet spirit of that holy music. Enya’s music has the same effect on me, and she has always helped me tap into my dialectic, between hope and sorrow.
I strive to connect with my music like this. Like a candle in the dark. She has brought so much love into my life, and I hope that I can maybe do some of that through my music.
I also love when she sings in different languages, as I am a polyglot-wannabe. This song of hers in her native Gaelic is my favorite, about mourning the loss of youth…
Also of course, her songs for The Lord of the Rings…I just melt. I did a cover of “Aniron” (“I Desire”), and so let me know if you’d like to hear it. I do it in a different key because it was what I felt comfortable with; I just love singing that song. Also, how amazing that her lyricist-partner Roma Ryan created another fictional art language, Loxian. I mean I just so love that. Roma then went on to create a world for the Loxian people because she just needed to build a culture that would explain these folks’ sounds. I know that this may not connect with many people – however I like how Enya described it. She said that when she creates melodies, sometimes English, Gaelic, or Latin (a few of her staple languages she sings in) just don’t fit well. As a singer, I do feel sometimes that I wish I could create an art language that better captures the emotions I am feeling and the sounds I am making. I have studied many languages, lived in a good amount of other countries where I needed to speak in different languages. I feel that each language is another set of paints with which to paint one’s life, and music. I would love to learn the language you speak from wherever in the world you call home, as I always want to connect with people’s hearts!
Thus I believe you may hear this songstress’ influence in my music! I hope you enjoy, and again my first single “Lark” comes out by summer 2018.
I had another session at a studio, this time in New Jersey. I have been recording at another studio in North Carolina, but my producer lives in NJ and I was able to record with him helping create my vocals. It was a great experience and it felt so good. I am learning every time I record, as it is an interesting exercise. It involves the balance between feeling connected emotionally to the music as well as executing the technical needs for the recording. It reminds me of some acting classes I have taken, where you learn different methods to practice in order to create a performance that is natural and alive. I feel like I am getting used to it, but it is new and funny at times. My producer wanted me to insert “vocal fry” here and there, and it was just hilarious how much I was not able to do it…even though I love how Bjork does it. That night it was not coming out, but perhaps next time. Any vocal fry techniques y’all can share?
I was so exhausted by the end of the 2-hour session because it started at 8:30pm, and I had been flying solo with my three children for three days before then, my back hurt, and I had allergies. Luckily my hubster was able to be with the children that day, as I literally needed to recover during the whole day. I tried to clear the post-nasal drip-everything about my face-throat-voice…it was good by recording time. I was coughing as well, but not too bad. I am now researching many different ways to help with my allergies…singing has illuminated this need in my life. Please let me know if you all have magic sinus-de-blocking ways that I could employ!
It is a beautiful experience though, when you are working with people whose talent you respect and who are dedicated to making magic with you in a collaborative way. I hope that you all enjoy the end result! I will probably release the three songs separately, by summer 2018. Peace and love,
It is nice to be starting this journey with you. My name is Kristine and I have been singing my whole life, but it hasn’t been until now that a muse has been visiting me full force. I am happy to listen to her, write down words from my life and life-inspired-imagination, and create songs. It is interesting to observe that the music scene may not have as many singers traversing this certain arc in life that I am in, but let me tell you…mothers and parents, they are some of the most passionate people I know!
I have three original songs coming out by summer 2018. I will be sharing my thoughts and heart-whispers about my songs with you, so I can introduce my songs to you all in paintbrushes before you meet the full painting. I hope you like them and can share them with others!
