Full circle pickleball, or, another way to put it; back to music? Getting my Pickleball songs in to the Facebook and Instagram sound library is a wish come true.

My constantly changing facebook cover announcing the arrival of my songs on Apple music and Spotify

Friends, I walked away from music. Bigger music anyhow, the kind with travel and suitcases and soundstages and big audiences.

One of the last gigs I played with Arrival before covid shut down the world, we had just played a Canucks game for Hockey Night in Canada at BC Place Hockey arena.

I also lost a large part of my 'online chatter' when I left the grind, no longer visibly relevant or being seen backstage anywhere, it's pretty easy to fall out of the noise. It's also peaceful, but I digress. I've been told over the years, on numerous occasions by disgruntled "music" fans, that my new pickleball obsession is annoying. (Some of those people now play pickleball by the way).

Waiting for our UBER on the way.....

I can also be annoying if you do like pickleball because I suppose I am; that girl in the room (or on the court) who wears my heart very loudly on my sleeves, and not everyone appreciates the noise. I've been noisy since forever, with horses, with music, with art, now pickleball. If I find something to love? I'm all in, completely and my world around me reflects that. I get all the feels about an experience and the creator in me needs to then express it somehow, so I do.

Its the poor mans formula for happiness and the richest way a human can live. And I'm done apologizing for it. Because griding away at a passion isn't a grind, it's a thrill and a privilege. So speaking as someone who feels blessed, finally, that I am able to call up my own music off of the Instagram and facebook sound library, and offically use it ( or see it being used by others for their socials ) for REELS and posts. FINALLY! Am I happy that I used Ai to help me? Not exactly thrilled, but I'm content with the way I use the tool, since I have never ONCE typed in a sentence simply describing a type of song I want in order to get one generated. That's how the slop exists.

And in a full flip where I was mad at AI for scraping artists? I now scrape myself, by uploading my own original recordings, rough demos / lyrics and I get the program to cover: myself. I play with it in manual mode where at least it's my own lyrics and changes. Previously I walked into studios with the same tools in hand (lyrics and melody ideas or rough drafts), and did similar collaborations with a human (they being the ones with the ability to harness all the instruments and put them into order on tape), only this time I'm sitting at the desk and a computer is composing around my lyrics and or melodies and I'm mixing the tracks around myself. Even though the AI program wont pump back my own vocal, I can hear where it takes from my own inflections. I also have downloaded the instrumental tracks to be able to perform the songs which I can do at my small private gigs and let me tell you I DO come across people who play pickleball and they DO like to hear a song or two! Anyhow, it's all been uploaded and accepted for distribution and you can search my name on Apple or Any Meta product and my artist profile with all sorts of pickleball songs should come up.

ON CBS at PPA as we were in some pretty wicked VIP seats, click the photo to see the view (on Instagram).

So how did I do it? I actually didn't know it was difficult until I was already in there and started getting ads from distribution channels promising to help get my songs listed. Then I fell down the comments hole on the forums with queries asking how to do it. The answer I figure is that usually the people who use the " type in a sentence to magically create a song " method won't have a great deal of success with it because it doesn't generate stuff that will bypass the algorithm's, you have to work it a bit I guess, or bring something original to the table. PS; my Pickleball SONGS should not be confused with the old Pickleball PARODIES which is what I started doing prior in my reels and what my books are about. The song books are of parodies of already well known songs, and meant for instant sing alongs. These SONGS I'm doing now are grown up songs, made for playlists, streaming and downloading and will require a little more time investment before you can sing along with them. But pay attention to the lyrics and you may get the odd giggle. All the lyrics are found on my REVERBNATION free player, where you can download the tunes directly if you don't have APPLE or SPOTIFY. Happy dancing out there. Please do share to me on my socials whatever you are doing with my tunes so I can share it too! Rachael.