Firstly, sorry this email is a little late…all I can really say is, I’m reminding myself of last week’s message and I’m kindly pausing every now and again!

I want to share with you some advice which was given to me a few years ago by a very good friend, and fellow harpist.

I was preparing my album ‘Nae Sweets for Shy Bairns’.  Truth be told I had been preparing it for around about 9 years.  It just never felt quite ‘good enough’.  There was development I could be doing in the arrangements.  I wasn’t happy with every aspect of my playing.  I still needed work.  This is what I told myself time and time again over the 9 years.

Here’s the advice.

A album is just like a picture.  Once it has been taken you are not the same person anymore.  You can look back on it fondly and see who you were then, but you will have changed and you will have grown.  Just like that picture, your album is a snap in time of where you are musically in that moment.  And it will change, in a year, in a month, even in a day.  So just do it already.

Pretty good advice right?  6 months later I recorded that album back in 2018.  

I want to add to this advice.  When you create music, you can often feel so connected to it that it feels like an extension of you.  Maybe to a certain extent it is.  But, there is always going to be room for improvement.  And you don’t have to define yourself by all the improvements you can see need attending.  You can just be you, and that’s ok.  That’s enough.

I could go on explaining what I mean here…but that’s enough.