The Journey of "Embrace the Moon"

My latest single “Embrace the moon” was written back in January 2021. It was inspired by a word prompt from a songwriters’ group that I am a member of - the task was to write a song using five words from a list. I ended up using four of the words from the list - rise, climb, moon and embrace. I liked the idea of “Embrace the moon” as a title - to me it suggested reaching for goals and stepping out of one’s comfort zone so that became the subject of the song.

During the summer following the release of my album Love and Harmony Combine I decided to work on releasing a single, and to involve others in the process. I wrote a list of all the songs that I had written in the past two years then narrowed it down to three songs that I thought might work as a single. I sent demo recordings of the three songs to fans on my mailing list and played them to members of one of my local folk clubs, and asked them which one they preferred. “Embrace the moon” was the most popular.

I started the recording process by laying down the guitar, vocal and ‘cello tracks, and thought about what instruments I could add. I recalled that Holst used celeste in a few movements of the Planet Suite (namely Venus, Mercury and Neptune); it is also famously used in Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet Suite. I felt that the celeste would enhance the mood of the song and conjure up images of the night with the moon and stars. My recording software has a wealth of instruments in its library so the celeste was easy to find. I also added soft strings and light percussion.

For the music video I used a website called Rotor which has a library of different styles and clips that can be selected and then processed into a video with accompanying music. I selected clips of the moon and the night sky which seemed to fit the mood of the song. Here's a link to the video on YouTube:

The single was released on 22 November, and is available for download and streaming on most digital music platforms. The video can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.