Making Music

Daniel Tashian is a songwriter. He’s written songs for famous musicians such as Kacey Musgraves and Brett Eldredge. This month, he released Mr. Moonlight. It’s a new album he wrote with his three daughters: Tigerlily, Tinkerbell, and Matilda. The album is a collection of songs they created together while sheltering at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

To create the album, Tashian used his songwriting skills to set his daughters’ ideas to music. Tashian wrote the music and decided what kind of story he wanted to tell with each song. The girls used their imagination to come up with the lyrics. There are songs about being a pirate, creating your dream house, and visiting Paris, among other things. “I would ask them to fill in the blanks,” Tashian told TIME for Kids. “Like what they would put in the house, or what they think pirates would say, or what they would do in Paris.”

This album is special to Tashian because he was able share the joy of making music with his daughters. “It was a way to continue doing what I love to do and be with them,” he says. “And to have a fun, collaborative project while we’re all in the house together.”