Winter Sun: The Beginning

Photo of the Charles River, Boston in winter

Winter Sun is the first song I wrote on guitar. It was inspired by an assignment from my guitar teacher to improvise with the E minor pentatonic scale. My voice teacher helped me learn to sing the song and adapt it to my voice. To me, this song will always be a lullaby because its first audience was my children.

The music and lyrics of Winter Sun are quite personal to me. The timing/rhythm (or lack thereof), the phrasing, the interplay of the lyrics and the music, for example, during “the sunshine crawled” verse, you are crawling up the scale and then during “the sunshine walked” verse, you walk up the scale. I wrote this way because I was so new to learning guitar scales myself and seeing how they move was inspiring to me at the time.

The final message of the song is that, even if you don’t know where to start, just start small and don’t be afraid. It doesn’t use 4/4 time or have a catchy hook or traditional rhyming patterns, but Winter Sun is a perfect first song to show how and where this part of my musical journey began.

Much love - Kiko