I got a Music Composition degree 16 years ago. This helped me greatly in getting some music teaching jobs. In this I fell in love with teaching! But now that I create Minecraft maps and have been working on returning to my fiction… What about my music?

The truth is, it’s hard to make a lot of money in music. With my lifeboat job, I use a website to get music for our trailers. It’s in fact very cheap to buy other people’s music now days. 

But I did compose music for my first game Chronicles of Clo. I listened to it outside of the game and found it to be okay. But in context with the game… well I think it fits the feel and moody nature of the story.

Speaking of, Clo is almost ready for that update. I just played through the game with the new dad voice replacing the old… and man, my brother brought such life to that character. That is the only voice I will change. I finished the multiplayer changes as well, I need to play through it one more time with a friend to test and see if all of that works. I need to write a new trailer for it since the old one has the old dad voice in it. Then I’ll send it off to Microsoft. Hopefully we can get the update in by the start of 2022.

One of the songs from the Clo game was used for the trailer I did for Huge. It is my favorite track! Here is the full version on soundcloud (keep in mind it doesn’t sound too great on a phone, though the YouTube trailer sounds fine). I can’t show you the Huge trailer until the map comes out.

What about the songs I’ve written? I have 5 volumes of journals full of songs. I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the last volume.

I’ve written a total of 307 songs. 

At one point in my life I wanted to start a band of some sort, but things have fallen through there. So, where does that leave me? Well, I have a great bass voice but most rock and pop music is in the tenor or soprano range. I don’t sound too good up high. I just need to find a muse with a great voice who can sing my music.

I’d prefer a soprano voice. This is because most of my music is written in the bass range. The bass range is an octave below the soprano meaning that my music is already written in her range. She would just sing it all an octave higher. Music sounds so much better in the higher range anyways. So, either me and said soprano start a band together (a very extroverted thing to do so maybe not), or we just put out some rough cuts of me on the piano and her on vocals. We can then use these rough cuts to sell my songs to other labels and split the profits. This would allow me to make money as a songwriter.

A third option would be to go indie. I honestly don’t have a desire to start a band myself, but I could produce a band that plays my music. This means I’d set up auditions for instrumentalists and singers and then teach them how to play my music. They could do the shows and travel around and all that other extroverted stuff, and I could just be in the background, silently writing tunes for the band to play. This would be ideal I think, though I’d need a studio and a lot of money, which means… If I go this route, it would be after I’m successful (God willing) with Minecraft and writing. 

Now that I think about it, I could do a mixture of writing songs for other labels and for the band I produce. I just need to find that muse. She’s gotta be somewhere…

Making a living as a creator is hard, but I’m in a place right now where I can actually start leaning in that direction. 

It’s hard to make choices in a new direction; it will often feel like chaos. There are moments of confusion and not knowing what will happen. All of this is normal. I get this feeling every time I enter an empty Minecraft map, or face a blank screen, or a blank page in my music journal. What do you do to overcome this uncertainty? What if what you create, the choices you make, fall flat? 

I’ve learned that the best thing to do is to just start. Create that Minecraft map; write that book; and composing that song. There’s then an ebb and flow of  “this is the best thing I’ve made in my life” to “I hate it”. These are also very normal emotions to have. But if you pray about it and work hard to create a new path, the Lord will walk it out with you. He will comfort you. And over time, uncertainty will wear away, feelings of chaos will leave you alone, a firm foundation will form, and what you create will change everything!

You can do it friend! Keep moving in this new direction. It will change so many lives. Think on all of the beautiful lives you are about to free!

Music is meant to be a release that heals the soul. Making hard choices and hungering after righteousness… this also heals the soul.