I'll Sing For Me

52.

I practised the song of Mr Woods choice for the week.

Unfortunately that meant lunch times at school and every hour after school and including my normal music classes were absorbed with this project.

Dean felt the slight rejection as much as I did but I was putting all my focus on this project.

What was hard though was Mr Wood wanted me to create my own song, work with the lyrics, write the music, work with each instrument and when I was done, we were tuning it altogether through his laptop.

I tried country, I tried hip hop, I even tried soul and grunge, but I couldn't put two words together. I was blank.

But then, it came to me. I was tapping my pencil in history to a beat and I suddenly had it. I ignored everything around me and instead of writing about how the Vietnam War shaped the world and it's effects to each country, I used my writing book for my song.

My hand glided over the pages and I kept writing. I added notes scratched out many words and rewrote them. I changed lines around and when it was perfect to my liking, I looked around the room. It was empty and I was the only person in the room.

Grabbing my stuff, I ran to my next class, geography.

I quickly sat down, apologising on my tardiness and once again, I was lost to the world around me as I started to rewrite my song, adding in the music for each instrument.

After class, I gave Dean a quick kiss, leaving him startled as I went to the music room. I showed Mr Wood my history book as he read it, slowly nodding. "Right. Good. Instruments?"

"I'm thinking, piano, bass guitar, the dreadnaught as well." I stated, pointing to it across the room. It's my favourite one here. "Also, maybe, drums, just for a beat, maybe just a light tap but not congos."

"Well, you are in control. You go figure out what you need, I'll set up the microphone and let me know when you're ready, I'll start recording."

I nodded, eyeing of the instruments, repeatedly looking at the song.

"Ok." I whispered softly to myself. "I can do this. Let's start with the guitar."

****

So through the week that's what I did. I perfected my song. And when the instrumentals were finally finished, it played in the background as I sat on a desk cross legged, a floor tom drum in front of me as I lightly tapped it, singing from the lyrics I wrote.

It was the final day of the piece and I had just myself and Mr Wood in the room as we finished recording.

I felt sick with nerves but so relieved once it was done.

"Excellent. I may not have a good recording studio, but I think we've nailed it." Mr Wood smiled at me. "I'll have the music ready by end of day."

"Thank you." I smiled at him. "I appreciate it."

"Well, it's your portfolio."

I left the music room in search of my friends. They were a few metres in front of me, all splitting and going their own ways.

I had a free period and ran up to Dean, grabbing his arm.

He quickly turned and saw me, a large grin on his face as he took my hand. "How's the music piece going with Mr Wood?" He asked me.

"Done. I'll pick up the final piece after school." I told him as we walked around aimlessly.

The school boasts hundreds of students and there were small groups of two or three students every where, also on free period. Usually it meant studying, catching up with our school and homework, which that would have been me, but now, I was more than happy to walk for fifty minutes, holding Dean's hand, talking to him.