It’s Up To You

 

- A holiday track that got away-

 

In 2019, something highly suspicious happened: I wrote a Christmas song.
This alone should have raised alarms, because anyone who knows me knows two things about me:

I’m a progressive rock musician, andI hate cheesy Christmas music.

Not cheese itself—cheese is fine in reasonable doses. 

But jingling, glitter-covered, forced-happiness Christmas music? Absolutely not.

Still, there I was, a brave newbie to home recording, opening my very first audio track

like a scientist pushing a big red button labeled “Do Not Touch.” 

With my right hand hovering nervously over the mouse, my left hand started casually

noodling on my old Korg Triton. No plan. No vision. Just vibes.
And then fate intervened. The Triton happened to be set to a bell-like sound.

I froze.

Bells… in December…
“Oh no,” I thought.
“Oh yes,” the universe replied.

That single, accidental bell sound planted the dangerous idea: What if… Christmas song? 

And just like that, my prog-rock defenses were breached. Against all odds, the lyrics started

flowing—easily, suspiciously easily—as if my brain had been waiting years for this exact moment to betray me.

But I refused to let things get too festive. This was not going to be some sleigh-ride singalong. No.

To balance things out and give the song a serious tone, I decided to include excerpts from a 

New Year’s speech 1953 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Nothing says “this is art” like solemn royal wisdom layered over accidental Christmas bells ;-)

For vocals, I enlisted Ana Maria Nickel, the singer from a friend’s band.

We didn’t meet in a fancy studio. We met in her kitchen. A very real kitchen.

She had just baked cookies, so we were surrounded by the smell of sugar, butter, and mild musical rebellion. Somewhere between microphones and pastries, we recorded the song, probably powered

40% by creativity and 60% by baked goods.

And then… I stopped.

Because this song was never meant to conquer the charts.

Christmas music wasn’t my core competence. So I never really mixed it. Never mastered it. 
It remains exactly as it was born—raw, imperfect, slightly chaotic, and completely honest.

Today, that track still exists in its original form, a frozen snapshot of a moment when a prog-rock musician,

a bell preset, and a plate of cookies accidentally created a Christmas song.

It’s not polished. It’s not perfect.

But it’s a reminder of how far I’ve come on my journey into music production.

And honestly?
For a song that was never supposed to exist, it does pretty well ;-)