Mia Arsenault

I've been going through a big transformation, loves, so many things changing, even though everything seems the same with a glance. I'm switching patronage from both Patreon and my website to just my website. There is a free tier that lets you get on my discord server, and also new perks that include tarot readings....

Oh yeah.... I have a tarot channel now :) It's called The Melissae

It's funny how magic works, I released my getting to know me video talking about my musical and magical journey, and everything started falling into place on this now illuminated path before me that was once hard to see. I'm ready to fully step into the role I came here in this life to take up, and part of that is letting the gods, ancestors, spirits, cosmos speak through me. Which is exactly what they want with my big musical project as well.

So please check out the revamped tiers below, and head on over to my website so we can continue to be connected in this beautiful weaving of life. I won't promise constant posting on the discord, as I'm just not someone who wants to share absolutely everything and anything, but I do want us to build a beautiful little community of like-minded people who wish to support each other, the arts, and the wonderous magic of life. ✨

Hello loves! I thought it high time to start making some videos about being a creator, but first thing's first…. who am I? 24601, of course! Lol.

But here's an introduction to me! Albeit long, but there's a long history for my singing and witchy path, how I finally realized I was a music witch, duh!

I plan on making more vlogs of behind the scenes on whatever musical project I'm working on, insights into what being a creator is, musical witchery, and general whimsy and shenaniganery! 
This is a way of posting regularly on my YouTube to keep growing, and also because I've got some bigger projects that are going to mean singing videos will be irregular as I focus in on what my heart desires. 

So welcome in to the story so far of my being a music witch, and I hope you'll come along with me as I continue creating and discovering and just plain being whimsical! ❤️

Something that occurs to me every so often, and usually when I have a big emotional/inspirational moment listening to or creating music, is that anyone can create it and create it beautifully that touches not only to the core of the creator's own being, but is able to reach into others and call to their beings as well. 

I was privileged enough to be able to go to college and pursue music in the way that I thought I wanted to at the time. My brain understood music easily, and even though my sight-reading wouldn't be great until I was actually in college, because I'm a life-long singer, that too was also pretty easy for me to do fairly well once I sat down and figured it out. 

But there are so many who don't have the opportunity to go, or have realized that school is not necessarily for them. And coming at this from a classical music perspective, as someone who wanted to be an opera singer, the other avenues of getting into music such as folk and aural learning were not something on my particular path because to sing opera is to apparently require a degree. 

And here's where my wonder and awe and deep knowing that we are all musicians, we are all singers, we can all create music hits me every so often….
You don't need a degree to understand how music works at all. 

You know when there's a wrong note played (unless it's atonal jazz)
You know when something really cool happens in a chord progression
You know when someone is singing a powerful part of a song
You know the patterns songs usually take, but you also know how they can be different

This all happens from a lifetime of listening to music. It is in your bones already. It is in you already. (I truly believe this of all arts… there is an innate knowing purely by exposure, and purely by being human, art is fundamental to the way we understand the world).

So, yes, learning music theory and sight singing can be incredibly helpful in being able to communicate to others what's going on in the music or being able to quickly pick up what your part is in the band when you're replacing a player who's sick last minute. 

But that music is in you.

You can write music right now without really knowing what the exact notes are because your mind knows them, and if you can sing them into a mic, there are apps that will hear that note and plug it in to a DAW for you. 

There are symphonies in you. 

I originally posted this as a thread on Bluesky. 

Something I think about often because I'm really over capitalism and constant productivity; but at the beginning of this year, I had a flash of inspiration to write a narrative album/possibly a musical that pulled on my love of mythology, but also my love of self-discovery tied to loved ones truly seeing us and reflecting it back onto us. Yes, the reflections are shaped by who we are seeing that reflection from, but when the reflection comes from someone who looks upon us with love, with understanding, with wanting us to be our truest self.... 

Like art, who we are is not created in a vacuum.

So that's the main idea behind my initial inspiration. However, despite being moved by that, I've been having a hard time sitting down and fleshing it out, getting the music created. Partly because this year (like the last 5) has been really difficult for me with family things and a death on top of the stress and anxiety of these years having done a doozy on the way my brain actually functions as I'm slowly healing from the stress damage.

But also partly because I needed the world to help me cook this idea more. 

To become something greater than the story of just these two characters, but also the people who they affect around them.

Connection is so important to me, despite being a bit of a hermit. We are all woven together, connected by threads to one another. Our stories shape the people around us, whether by the stories of our lived lives, or the stories we create.

My story needed the world to crash in through its unfortunate, unnecessary, cruel horrors to remind me that the microcosm of the two characters is a reflection of the macrocosm of all the people around them. 

That their songs would be heard by the people, would call out to them; that the song of the people would call out to the two main characters. That the ripples off all these voices together could create an enormous wave to crash down upon oppressors.

This idea needed time to cook. 

This idea needed the world around me to hear its song to know what story I'm telling here. To know our collective story that will be filtered through me.

The music, art, magic you make comes not just from you. It is a reflection of the whole. Sometimes you just need the right lens to see it.

Is she calling out for her lover to join her, or is it a siren luring her prey?

Though I had to take time to recover from the plague, therefore I haven't been able to record vocals yet, I feel pretty normal in my whole singing system, so I'm hoping to get them recorded soon as I cannot wait to hear what it sounds like whole. 

I'm so very excited about this song. I have honestly been listening to the instrumental on repeat while I've been writing some Baldur's Gate fanfic, lol. It's been just persistently stuck in my head since the first few notes and lyrics came to me last month. 

Another cool development is that more songs have been popping into my head lately, and I'm so excited to write those out too! I know I've been working on some Barbara Strozzi songs in my voice lessons to eventually record, but right now, the muse is with me, and it seems like my own inner fantastical music needs to be brought into the world. 

Again... terribly excited for everything happening musically right now!
I hope you've got something equally as fulfilling and exciting on the go too!

Mia
❤️

The music of The Lord of the Rings will always be held so close to my heart. I know each song so well after listening to my CDs for hundreds of hours in my youth. So magical, and hits all the heartstrings.

This song has truly become part of my spoopy season tradition, you can oft find me singing it whilst I sit on the porch during sunset while the kitties roll in the dying sun, or while I'm walking in the woods. I truly love how immersive music can be for the stories we tell, and this is one of my favourites from The Witcher 3.

This is such a lovely lullaby that's tinged with sadness. It's from the Dragon Age Inquisition game, and I loved making this with Brume. It's so wonderful to make music with others, what a joy! I hope you like it ❤️

Follow Brume here:
@Brumemusic