Following are some thoughts on the third, and by far the most important, principle.

3) The music is a tool used to provide real benefit to others  – The greatest joy I’ve experienced in music has been when others have been touched by my music, or have used it to help others.  It has been used in fundraising activities, towards educational efforts, and by organizations I support and admire.  (A recent example is a US Army video using the song Men of Honor.)

Those contributions, however, as gratifying as they were, were all reactive.  What I have in mind is being more proactive about using the music to help others.  Basically, can “it”  (maybe each song, maybe an album…I don’t know)  be created with the express purpose of helping a particular beneficiary?  I recently read about an artist who sold her pottery to raise funds for a library in Africa.  You may have heard about a young  boy who raised money from a lemonade stand for cancer research.  Those are the kind of purposeful efforts  that focus the creation or artistic effort on serving  others, and bring true meaning to the music beyond anything else I could imagine.  That it what I desire  to do…bring real purpose and meaning to the songwriting and recording.  And, because those things can’t be done alone, it can hopefully also build a sense of community – working towards the greater  good.

That all sounds great, but to be honest, I don’t have any concrete ideas or plans.  I do have a few brainstorm ideas in terms of  favorite charities/groups, as well as some ideas on how to go about it, but nothing more.  That’s OK, though.  I need your input and engagement to make this a reality, so I don’t want to limit the possibilities at this point anyway.  (Along those  same lines, this could  impact what the “final product” looks  like.  It could be another CD and even another promotional effort in some form, but we’ll see.)

So – there you have it.  I’ll stop rambling now, but will go deeper on this later.  This effort will clearly be a bit more of a discovery process, and I’m looking forward to see where it goes.  One thing I already know, however, is that I need your input.  After all, it is impossible to conform to principle #2 without it!  And, I need your help and  ideas to make #3 as effective  as possible.

In the next Post, I’ll talk about the nuts and bolts of sharing some of the song clips.  Within the next week…real music to listen to!

All the best -