Love Letters to Myself - Room & Permission

This is another mostly raw and vulnerable, partially cheeky and self-aware song. Lots of fun effort sounds! I also wanted to showcase the piano a bit more in this one, just in soloing and somewhat improvising over certain chords. It's also a reminder to let myself take breaks, and let myself rest.

Breathe.

In my previous songs (that I'd written before this album), I barely had any space in my melodies. They were hard to sing because they were piano melodies, continuous notes with almost zero space. So in this song, I was really purposeful with writing it and singing it at the same time.

This one had a lot of other words and sections that I ended up scrapping entirely. They went a bit off track and sounded like a completely different song. Maybe one day I'll make that into its own thing... Or maybe not!

I like the middle, where the piano reflects the vocal melody, then the piano plays a new melody that the vocals sing afterward!

This song mostly uses I, IV, and V, but I do always love me some secondary dominant chords! I use V7/IV (which is just I7) as well as V7/vi (which is III7). It's just so dramatic and satisfying!!

The lyrics for this song came from a little illustration I made of my logo, which is in my SECOND ever Instagram post. I had originally written "Everyone has the room and permission to shine" but I changed it to "Give yourself the room and permission to shine" because that felt a bit more applicable to my own experience.

—

You gotta give yourself

The room and permission to shine

Oh shine

Give yourself the room and permission to shine

Nobody else is gonna give it to you

You gotta search within yourself

Until you find what's true

You gotta dig with your bare hands

And face all the pain

Sometimes you stay on the same two chords all day

What if you knew there was more?

Give yourself

The room and permission to shine

Oh shine

Give yourself the room and permission to shine

🎶

Room and permission

Room and permission

Room and permission

Room and permission

Room and permission

Room and permission

Room and permission

Shine, shine

Shine so brightly

Room and permission to laugh

Room and permission to cry

Rest

And breathe.

Sometimes you've gotta do nothing all day

All day

Sometimes you've gotta do nothing all day