Thank you for
your interest in our songs. We want you to hear
all of our
Gospel
Songs.
I
call them
Alfred Ward's Miracle Songs.
This page explains some
of the miracles and struggles surrounding me,
Al Ward,
as my friends call me,
and the creation of my songs. Please continue to read my
testimony of the goodness of God, especially in the miraculous ways he
has enabled me to perform and produce my music which is all dedicated
to him and to his glory. The below explanation is rather long
but for anyone who may be interested please read it all the way
through and I think you will then understand why I call my music
Miracle Music. Continue
reading below.
Click here to hear Al Ward's songs
Click here to read Al's life growing up
in Tennessee and beyond
Click here to read Al's testimony of
other works God has done in his life
The Lord my God has given
me the opportunity to glorify him in the creation of my songs, in
that, all of my songs were created solely by me using the special
gift the Lord has given to me which is the reason I call tkheir
production Miracle
Productions. Since I am the
author, performer, engineer and producer of all materials
presented here. It is some kind of miracle that I am able to do
this. I played all of the music on all of the songs
presented here on a small inexpensive midi keyboard, and sang all
of the voices myself, this means the many drum parts, pianos,
organ, guitar, sax, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, bass,
congas, and etc. I did not use any kind of automation to
generate any of my music, praise the Lord. I must say it is
very time consuming. Would you
not consider this alone, a miracle? How otherwise
is this possible? All songs are original and meant to glorify God whom I
thank dearly for the talents and gifts He has given me. As I have
said, some of
these talents and gifts are rather unusual in my opinion and
perhaps should be considered somewhat miracles. In years
past I tried writing songs and paying musicians to record them in
expensive studios and it usually did not turn out the way I wanted
it nor what I thought it would be. I did not know enough to
explain my music effectively.
As I have already said,
I have never been and I am still
not an instrumental musician,
nor
are there any musicians in my family that I know of, with the
exception of my grandson, Randall who has the reputation of being
an excellent horn player
even though I have never heard him play. Neither did I
grow up around any musicians that I had access to, and I have
never had any lessons or help for me to play any instrument other
than just curosity, asking a question here or there. I surely recognize these songs were not
produced by a master musician but I believe they are real music. I
had to compose the songs, play the music, sing the lyrics while
recording it all myself. I never practice what I am
going ot play and usually do not even think about it until I am
ready to record a track. That is when I sit down and hum to
myself what I am going to play and then figure out how to play that
sound on the midi keyboard. I only do a small section of the
track at a time, then piecing all of the sections or pieces
together until i have a complete track. That may be a piano
part for example. But when it comes to the drums I have to
play a separate track for each drum instrument, one for the snare,
one for the kick, one for the open and closed hi-hats, one for the
crash, one for the toms, one for the cowbell and one for each of
any other percussion tracks. Then of cource I have to do the same
thing for the guitar, bass, piano, Fender Rhodes, lead guitar,
sax, trumpet, trombone, violins, and at least one track each for
any other other instrument sounds that I use.
Then of course I
have to make usualy three vocal tracks for lead vocals and one
each for three or four background voices, so that is seven or
eight vocal tracks. Of course you can imagine I can only do one
track at a time. I may end up with 40 or more tracks for one
song While I am playing or singing my little
bits and pieces I am also recording them myself. After
everything is all put together then I have to mix it all.
This means adding many different kinds of sound effects to each
individual track, cutting out some of the mix where there is
clutter or where the sounds do know blend together well.
After all of that then comes the mastering which is the process of
tying it all together to become a finished product. I have
no training for any of this stuff except my ears and a lot of
research in books and the internet. The internet is where I
have learned the most about mixing and mastering. And then I
am forever changing everything so a lot of this process must be
repeated. I am now, as of this writing, trying a
mastering service on a website called Landr. So far it is
working pretty good. Instead of paying $50.00 to $1500.00
per song for mastering services, I am paying $6.00 per month for
unlimited use. Of course this is the lowest quality service,
the highest can cost $20.00 or more per month.
I know I was enabled by
the Lord and I know this is a miracle, although it took lots of
patience, hardwork and perserverance over many years. I recorded
the songs on my home computer, using Sonar X1, X2 and X3 and
finally the Premium edition, work station software. I built
the computer used for the recording myself, and am using very
modestly priced recording accessories such as one microphone and a
set of small speakers and some headphones and ear buds. I
hope you do not think that I am boasting, I can see where one
might possible draw that conclusion but my only boasting is in the
Lord.
It took many years of practice and research on the internet and in
books to teach myself to do all of these things and I thank God first,
then all the
wonderful people for all of their explanations and examples they
left on the internet, free of charge to help others like me. If you ask
me to play any of the instrumental parts, I cannot do it without
figuring out how to play it all over again. If I took the time to
practice playing, I guess I could become a regular musician, but I
do not believe I have enough spare time to do that. I wear many
hats and work on many different kinds of projects simultaneously
but all of my music is dedicated to the Lord. And of course that
also applies to everything else I create including all of my computer
software products which came about through the same kind of
miracles such as my AllmyData, a Multimedia Database
Manager, and others. I worked on developing AllmyData for more than
fifteen years. And I
may as well tell you that this website came about in the same manner.
It is the only website I have ever built, lots of blood sweat and
tears went into it also, another area where I have no training.
It may not seem like much to you, but it is to me and I dearly
thank the Lord for enabling and empowering me.
Most of the time my first
step is to roughly compose the vocal parts of a song, especially
the lead voice. From that point I build the instrumental
parts of the songs in a way that is somewhat analagous to building
a house. I start with a foundation which in the beginning is
just an idea. Then I add some very, very basic drum parts
for timing. I start with just the kick and snare drums to
establish the down beats and back beats. Then I will imitate a
cymbol, usually closed hi-hats, to lock in the timing to have
something to play the other instrumental parts against. Then
I start making up a bass line in my head and I actually sing the
bass notes to myself until I get something that makes a little
sense. The next step is to use the instrument sounds
provided by my Sonar workstation software to select the appropriate bass guitar
settings as well as the settings for all of the other instrumental
sounds.
Now the fun begins as I hunt and peck around the keyboard until I
find the keys that produce the notes, timings and feelings that I now have in my head.
It is usually very crude in the beginning and becomes more
polished as I go along. I lock the bass notes that I play on
the midi keyboard into the time of the drum parts. If I play
some of the parts a little sloppy, I use a process in Sonar called
quantizing that locks the notes into the established time
signature, if that is the right term. I am familiar with
some musical terminology but much of it is foreign to me.
After getting a rough bass line, I am now ready for a little
guitar and I use a similar process as in the case of the bass
guitar. I may lay down some rather amateurish and crude lead
parts and later some kind of rythym parts here and there.
Now it is time to garnish it a bit with some overly simplified
piano parts. And I love the sound of a Fender Rhodes
electric piano so I will add a little of that also. At this
point I may develop the background vocals and record them.
One other challenging
part of the process is choosing the way I want each intrument to
sound. There are zillions of combinations of sounds and
effects in Sonar, to the point of being mind boggling. When
the rhythm parts have started to come together a bit, it is time to
make up some sounds for the horn section. I usually use a
trumpet, sax and trombone with just three part harmony.
Occasionally, I will feel fiesty and venture out into a scary
little solo part on one of the horns or other instrument sound.
Now to sweeten it all up a bit, I start to experiment with the
violins, cellos and etc. Of course I am
constantly mixing all the tracks as I go along. The first
stage of each instrumental track is to select an instrument and
play a midi track. The next step for me is to convert the
midi tracks into audio tracks. This brings an additional
challenge called latency. As I punch my audio recordings in
and out, it takes time for the electricity to travel thru all of
the circuits accumulated by the many effects and etc., so the
timing for the new recording being inserted is off, it will be
slightly but noticebly behind the time of the existing recording.
So I have to manually adjust it. I may do this 50 or maybe
even a hundred times dkuring the entire recording of a song,
whew. But I can work better with audio
than with midi and there are many more plugins and effects for
audio than for midi. Then after it all becomes a song there
is the final mixing phase and last of all, the mastering, which I know
almost nothing about. But I do manage to crank out something
that is listenable, praise the Lord. It is with much prayer
and faith that I am able to do this and I do not credit myself
with any of it. If it were not for the Lord, then I would
not even exist, let alone, not be able to do anything, you must
first exist before you can perform. Secondly, which of these
talents did I give to myself? Not a single one. So
where would these songs be if it were not for the Lord, they would
not even exist even as I would not exist.
My only past experience with music is in singing, I sang for a
few years in my younger days in clubs and later in church for
three or four years. Then I stopped all music activity for about
20 years but then again felt compelled to start again after that time
had elapsed.
But this time I began writing songs for the glorification of the
Lord and with his help designing my own music as I feel it. It was
very difficult at first, it was like, duh, what should I do?
But it becomes easier like most things as I continue to pound out
the beats. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I have enjoyed
creating all of my songs. All praise and glory to God our
Father and to Jesus Christ my Lord, Savior and Master.
Love forever, in Christ Jesus,
Alfred Othaniel Ward
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