FLASH ! Someone you may know has twelve new songs on YouTube with top ratings!

It's great to be doing something you love with all your hear 24/7 and see it expand by a factor of 1200% in just three weeks! The author of this post has had that success!
On January 24, 20009, I posted my first song on YouTube. Today is Valentine's day, just three weeks later, and I have 12 songs on YouTube with perfect 5-star ratings!
I have five others posted. Two have 4.5 (very good) ratings, and three are unrated so far. Now that's seventeen videos in 21 days. I could never have done with without the cooperation of my informal partner, Mao Sim. We work together a whole lot, in two totally different lines of work, and sometimes we don't even see each other for five or six days, but I contribute a lot of hours and some experience to her specialty silk ijmport business, having been in business for myself for over fouteen years, off and one, and having managed multi-million dollar edccational programs for about the same amount of time. In turn, she helps me with budgeting and helps manage the logistics and good order of our studio near Boston. Her contacts in the business community in both Boston and New York and over in Cambodia are terrific assets, and we enjoy each other's special qualities so much that it's often more like play than work.

Do you get any input from your readers or tho people who watch your videos on YouTube?
I really do, and I belong to Twitter, My Space, Star Search,MOG and Plaxo. Plaxo is very active, and is full of musicians, producers, record producers and label oweners, composers, performers, soloists and sidemen, with a huge number in New York, and in jazz and Christian music. It's lively, it's a pleasure to use, and the commradship almost leaves me breathless. The generosity, spiritual values and high energy level sort of tend to sweep me off my feet. Plaxo is so active that between actually writing my songs, rehearsing them with my guitar, doing the camera work, and corresponding with Plaxo folks, I hardly have any time for blogging or social networking.

I know this post is longer than most, and is maybe too long, but have you any suggestions for readers about how to write songs that get high ratings?
Yep, I have three suggestions, based on what I've done that seems to get me attention and make my work popular.
1. Learn, study, read, listen, play music, jam with people who are better than you, take lessons, learn the tavlature and keyboard of your instruments, try different instruments, and get involved with fun events, which your local music scene provides for you.
2. Travel,live in foreign lands, get to know families and individuals in those countries so well that you are considered a member of the family. So the same with families where you live. Music is an intensely human communication experience, an emotional thing, and unless you are involved with people emotionally, you just "ain't gonna cut it" as a musician.
3. Forget about instant fame. If you are an overnight child success, you'll probably be a noboy in ten years. If you're a nobody in music, like me, for sixty years, you may end up as a somebodyvery quickly when your chance comes, and you'll "knock 'em dead" with your talent and skills and savvy, because you're a seasoned veteral, after all, and for younger people you are a model, for those you own age, you will be a treasure, someone thay want to hug and hiss and cood for and spend time with,not just for the music, but because you such a fantastic human being.

So that's it, study,travel, and mingle?
Yeah, you can sum it up that way, but it's not just three quick words and you're done. Remember, I'll be 72 in a week or so, and I'm just beginning to blossom in music. It's been a lifelong development, and a whole lot of work.

Well, James, thanks for sharing. What can people reading do for you

I'm short on time, so i'll make it brief. Communicate with me. go to my "Contact Us" link on my website (just clink the link I just gave you), or post a comment on this log, or on Plaxo, and tell me A. one specific thing you like about my songs, and B. how you can help me develop into TV, radio, telephone interviews for radio, and appearances at events or other large gatherings where people might enjoy my singing.

Here's a list of my songs you can look at right now if you've at your computer:Click on the songs below
1. Dumbest Man Talking Blues on You Tube *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc7Uw6Q34bM&feature=channel_page

2. The Dumbest Man in Town *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSHjZ6mdfWY

3. Cajun Joe and Marie Laveau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EBCkbq_1yA&feature=channel_page

4. The Gooli-Goo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHHpNPRRbo

5. Faded Photographs *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC3wTuqTtP4&feature=channel_page

6. The St. James Infirmary Blues Explained *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g4oeNSaA70&feature=channel

7. The St. James Infirmary Blues *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7CvrbtxN1E&feature=channel

8. Day Glow *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z0ZmIMjKk0&feature=channel

9. Tell Me Why *****
\http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhVl3YxDtho&feature=channel

10. Cockelshells and Me *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnTImss9fbU&feature=chann

11. Get it On! - Hey Little Woman, Put Yo' Red Dress On! *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkapSBroJX8&feature=channel

12. Leather, Silk and Lace] **** 4.5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYpftChu928&feature=channel

13. The Sugar Palm Tree *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt-0bwRnW1M&feature=channel

14. You Came! **** 4.5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4-qXgR0Pr8&feature=channel

15. The Ballad of Sam Bede *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_NJFv74ffI&feature=channel

16. The Sam Bede Blues (Two Takes) *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqgkn-l6fjo&feature=channel

17. Thank you to my supporters on YouTube *****
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni3E9Knvnh0&feature=channel_page

Feeling good about a lot of 5 star ratings on YouTube~

I wrote some friends and asked them to view my video(s) when I first started posting some of my songs, and I was really grateful when I began getting viewers, but the comments and ratings came in from people I never heard of! Wow! And I keep getting high ratings as I keep adding more and more songs. It feels how? Like thrilling, okay? Like that feeling when you're on a roller coaster, or in a plane doing rolls and loops, I mean wow. At least 2 of my 4 kids tried sky diving. I think that's probably a little like I feel how, except instead of going down, I'm going up!
Thanks, everybody!

You can catch my videos on my blogs when I have time to import them (takes a while), but you can go to my music website at http://that-hands-on-music-guy.com and see most of the ones I've already posted there, along with the words and maybe a photo or two, and maybe some comments I've made. This is so much fun!
James/Peter/"Petah" (the name I used in a book a wrote, Mask of Africa (to be available as an e-book later).

Sugar Palm Tree Song

Ballad of Sam Bede

I'm going to keep my posts short from now on, but not as short as Twitter.
A week or so ago I began recording some of the songs I've written, and one or two traditional songs I just like to sing, and posting them on YouTube.com I was amazed when the first video, the Ballad of Sam Bede, got several comments and was viewer rated at 5 stars. Before I bought a guitar, I tried singing "Sam Bede" alone without my guitar. Here it is. My next post till have it with guitar.