Last December, the popular artist Beck gave all of us musicians a real treat by releasing a brand new album. The album, Song Reader, has 20 new songs, but you won’t be able to find this Beck work on iTunes or available for streaming on Spotify.

Instead of releasing a traditional album, Beck opted to publish his entire album as a book of sheet music. Meaning, although Beck wrote all the songs, he didn’t record a single one. Instead, he gave us the blueprints to complete the art together, encouraging each person to record and upload their works to be shared on the collaborative website, www.songreader.net.

My copy of Song Reader arrived at the end of March. The first song that I chose to record, “Please Leave A Light On When You Go,” took me a couple of months to actually produce. I didn’t know how to record music going into this endeavor, and I still admit that I don’t really have a solid grasp on it.  Nonetheless, I found out how to hook up a couple of instruments to my laptop and somehow made it work. I spent night after night trying to fine tune the song, but being the perfectionist that I am, I realized that if I just didn’t put it out there and move on, I would probably never be totally satisfied with it. I just had to do it!

The result is indexed on the www.songreader.net site and on YouTube at:

I hope you sincerely enjoy it. I’m working on another song from Song Reader, which I hope to have wrapped up in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening!

Oh, one more thing: if you have any tips on recording, please send them over to eliottlarge@gmail.com or write in the comments!