Anja

Vocalist, Songwriter, Writer

#singer #songwriter #writer #electronic #indiernb #house

What You Want On The Inside

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Happy Sunday!

I just finished my new demo “Wait Is Over”! You can check it below 🙂

This one is all about:

BELIEVING in yourself.
NOT WAITING for your “turn” to arrive.
DECIDING to turn on your own light.
KNOWING that you have been given a dream for a reason.
Going ALL IN without having one foot on the brake.
CHOOSING to be guided by your own intuition.

And, ALLOWING it to be easy…

The lyrics I write are usually quite simple.

They’re a bit like affirmations that I want to repeat over and over, so that I can pierce my whole being with them.

Words that I let marinate in my mind, again and again, so that they become my new reality.

Purposeful phrases that become my default, so that I can live a brave, soul-fueled life and not a life limited by my fearful mind.

For me, right now, believing in myself means moving back to the Netherlands after almost 2 years of living in Singapore.

Living here has been the most amazing and unexpected experience of my life.

[Read more…]

If Sneezebombing Wasn’t A Thing, It Is Now!

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My flatmate totally just sneezebombed my vlog! In case you haven’t heard, that’s like photobombing but with audio (and sneezing).
 
If that alone isn’t reason enough to watch, I also talk about how I’ve been experimenting with 90 -minute songwriting sessions this week.
 
I thought that all of the “this really sucks” – feelings in the finishing stages of a song were unpreventable, but I’ve now noticed that they don’t really occur that much when I work in shorter sessions 🙂
 
Ear fatigue can play massive tricks on your mind.

I also share a snippet of my now-really-almost-finished song WITH vocals at the end of the vid. Next week it will be utterly-super-finished and I’ll post it here on my page! Yay!

Defining The Box You Can Play In.

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Goodness. Ever have those days where words just come out of you in an utter random order? Like, not even an actual sentence?

And no, I don’t have a hangover!
It’s just old age people. Just old age.

Kidding. Not THAT old.

Let’s just blame the humidity here in Singapore instead (this works for any problem in fact).

Anyway!

What I had INTENDED to share with you in today’s video, and which didn’t quite come out, is that I’m working with a set of intentional “limitations” this month to create my new song.

I’ve done this before and it’s a really fun way to both challenge myself, as well as be creative within a specific set of boundaries.

The way I’ve done this is by working with a song template from Abletunes.

At Abletunes they create fully arranged, mixed and mastered songs that you can open in Ableton to learn exactly how they were made. You can see how the instruments were layered, what parts they’re playing, which FX were used, which automation was applied and so on.

And then, you can tear the whole thing apart and use the sounds for your own projects in any way you like. Super cool.

[Read more…]

Is Your Art Your Best Friend Or A Scary, Big Monster?

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 After almost 2 years of living in Singapore, I’m going back to the Netherlands, to pursue some new opportunities that have been knocking on my soul-door for a while now.
 
As I’m preparing for this big move, that is both exciting and challenging, I find myself with a lot of fun (that’s sarcasm) administrative tasks that come with changing houses, jobs and continents.
 
In the past weeks I’ve often found myself thinking:
 
“Yeah, I don’t have any time to make music right now”
“I’ll make music again when things have settled down”
“I just need to get A, B and C sorted first and THEN I will have mental space for music again”
 
And last week I realized yet again…yeah but, wasn’t music supposed to be my best friend? My partner in crime?
 
Wasn’t music supposed to be there for me in sickness and in health?
 
I still often find myself mentally positioning my art away from me, as though it’s some external goal that I need to achieve, and that I can only work on when I’m in an optimal state.
 
Only when I have at least 2 hours, can I work on my art.
Only when I have a lot of energy, can I work on my art.
Only when I have my sample library (and life) organized perfectly, can I work on my art.
 
In the past weeks, I’ve realized that that’s not what I want it to be like.

[Read more…]

Who’s Got Time For Feelings Anymore?

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“What should I do with all this sadness”? I asked.
“Umm…write a song about it?” He said.

I was like… “WOAH”!
Such a novel concept!

Are you saying I should express my feelings in my music?
And like… sing about the stuff that’s on my heart?

That is just BRILLIANT!!

Hehe…okay okay, I’m exaggerating a bit here.

It’s not that I forgot about this writing – songs – from – the – heart – thing entirely!

But, as a super driven songwriter-creator woman, I have found myself in this place more than once.

This place of forgetting to actually start with the ESSENCE of the music.
This odd place of not really taking the time to connect to the SOUL of the song.

Because there is simply so much to learn.

About composition, production, recording, mixing. The list goes on.

Who’s got time for feelings anymore?

So… on this lazy drowsy Sunday, I figured I would turn that around. [Read more…]