Sandy's Letter
Dear Everyone,
I would like to start by saying that I recognize and appreciate all the support that so many people have shown my work over the years, and my gratitude to you is immense. The idea of this website was to put more of my creations into the world, and perhaps more people would see them because I've made so many things. However, while I was looking for things to put on this site, there was very little that I felt I could put up. I've never thought of myself as a particularly good writer, songwriter, or poet, but I was surprised by how much I just felt I couldn't put up for one reason or another. Most of the songs that I wrote that are online, I didn't really want to record but I did put up the words and guitar chords. I'll look at trying to record some of them in the future no doubt. I have made loads of recordings of other things, but most of them are unlabeled, so I'll need to go through them. Perhaps I'll make a page for them if I find anything worthy of putting up. I'm also going to use this site to share any other research that I do or just anything else.
I wasn't going to write this next part because one might argue that the age of 16 is far too young to know about the following topics, but then I remembered that there are kids my age trying to be "online influencers" and they act like they know everything. I've nothing against them I'm just using them in my defense. I would love to be able to say that I run everything in my life like a tight ship, but in reality I run everything like a ship that has been completely overrun by foreign pirates who have taken control over the ship before throwing the original crew overboard. There's alot things that have happened that I no longer even want to think about, but that's true of most people I suppose. I grew up in a very rural part of the Scottish Highlands, I would go in to school but I wouldn't see too many people the rest of the time, so I'm sure that that didn't help my social ability very much. I should say at this point that I do not wish to complain, I have had so many blessings in my life and I love this part of the world more than anywhere. I have lived a very privellaged life so far and I'm so thankful for all of my freinds and especilly my family. Regret has always been a huge part of my life but I don't know if it's anymore than the avarage person. I've always thought there is a battle happening within me, the good fighting the bad and sometimes the bad wins over the good. This is probably where alot of the things I write come from.
That's the explosvie bit out of the way. Moving on. I've always been interested in music, I can remember being about three of four years old listening to Irish CDs that we had because of my mothers Irish family, on repeat, for hours. There's always been music that I've listened to religiously at different points. Then like so many five to seven year olds, I was made to go to piano lessons, which I never liked. Today my piano ability goes about as far as being able to thump out a few chords for someone to sing along to and I could probably give you a quick blast of three blind mice if I thought about it hard enough, but that's about it. I have very little memory of learning how to play guitar, I know I must have done it at some point but I really don't remember much about it. I did have lessons at one time but I didn't have them for very long due to certain circumstances. I may have learnt a few chords and things there. Later on I discovered that to play the type of music that I wanted to play at the time, all I had to learn was to play an E shape barre chord and just move it up and down the fretboard. Quite a rough way of playing guitar but it suited what I was trying to do pretty well. Then I returned to my roots and started playing more old-time music. I needed to know the basic chords, which I knew all ready, so the only new thing I had to learn was picking the bass string first before the rest of the chord. Again, this is a rough way of playing guitar, but it suits the music. Latterly, I also learned to play the autoharp, which if you don't know is a zither like instrument but with chord bars. I learned to play melody on it, not just the rhythm.
It's funny how ironic life is. In school, I always hated writing anything. Anything to do with literature I detested. But now it's one of my favorite things to do. I started with songs that were at least somewhat singable, and then I started to do poems and such. I've recently started short stories which will hopefully get posted on this site soon. I've never thought of myself as that good a writer, and I had difficulty finding things I could put on this site, as previously mentioned.
To close, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this and for looking at my creations.
Respectfully Yours, Sandy.