One year ago today we unwittingly took on a behemoth of a challenge that we called New Song November. To launch our Youtube page, we set out to learn, arrange, record, and share one new song every day for the month of November. And holy hell was it a wild month!
We had no idea how it would push us to our edge every day, 30 days in a row. We learned gobs along the way, had a ton of fun, and also got to confront more than a few our demons as we plowed right through the edges of our comfort zones.
We have so much to say about this experience, that for the rest of the month we will be sharing one song a day from last year’s recording along with a little reflection, insight or encouragement from our experience.
I think we can all agree that the character in this song is feeling passionate! While his passion for this woman is borderline creepy, he taps into such visceral honesty. He is filled with desire, he is focused, he is longing to reach higher. It’s almost uncomfortable because so many of us don’t allow ourselves […]
This song, first of all, is a blast! ? It has such a joyful sound. The playful lightness when brought together with the lyrics embrace a beautiful lesson about how to hold the longing we often feel for “The way things used to be.” The lyrics are about a changing heart.? Leslie Feist seems to be trying to reconcile […]
Experimentation is key to evolution. And success! ??? On this particular day of the challenge we went with something a bit out of the norm as we wanted to experiment with using some of our sound healing instruments. Our amazing Rav Vast steel drum is in an odd tuning called G Pygmy, so it took a bit […]
Collaboration! Life is so much better when we work together. This rendition of Home was super fun for us because our friends Cassie and John offered their instrumental and vocal support and Nathan’s younger brother Braden jumped right in too. It was so fun to lean on different people’s strengths. For example we had no […]
Perseverance. ?? That was the lesson from this song. We talk about it in the video, but this is the first song that we didn’t post on the actual challenge day. We struggled and fought our way through learning it, and I think we actually had a real fight because one of us was feeling particularly defeated […]
Finding a groove. Okay, it helps that this song just makes you smile! Or makes you hungry… But behind the scenes we were finding our groove too. Amidst the cherry pie, ice-cream etc, we were in a vocal sweet spot. This song gave us a reprieve from the challenge of some of the others songs […]
“Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.” Lets say it together 5 times! At this point in our New Song November process we had been confronted over and over again with our own perfectionism. It threatened to make even our best takes unusable. We would keep recording takes over and over hoping the […]
We can’t predict the unpredictable. At some point something will take us down and we will be blindsided. When all that we know comes tumbling to the ground – our relationship ends, our health wavers, our business fails, our confidence falters – we are faced with countless questions about how to proceed. “Can the child […]
Music is POWERFUL!? It can speak what’s in our hearts. Quell our anxieties. Lift up our spirits! ??Music can literally change our state of being, just by hearing it. I’m not sure how many people count this timeless song as one of their favorites, but millions and millions. Perhaps because the message of the song points to […]
Ah the dislike button. This is the first song from our challenge that received a thumbs down. ?? 2 to be exact, and that’s just at this moment in time. It’s not many in the scheme of things, but it still makes you flinch. We gathered our courage to put ourselves out there, knowing there would be […]
Wakes is made possible by the incredible support of fans like you. Fans around the world pitch in as patrons to keep the personal growth, deep sleep, and soul awakening flowing through our music and meditations.
