Many of you know I've been writing a musical for over two years. The first draft is nearly done. If you received an email directing you to this blog it's because I've shared the folder at dropbox.com with you where I've kept recordings and the script. While that site has proven useful I want to build more of a community around this project, hence this blog. It will be easier to promote and will be completely open to the public. I anticipate most of the posts will be fairly short, but the first few will be longer as I try to give some background on myself and this creative endeavor.
I'm 64 years old (so not young) and have been a composer for four and a half decades. It's a craft I'm still learning and expect I will be to the end of my days. I studied composition as an undergrad and have added to the education along the way. I spent the summer after graduation at the Aspen Music Festival and Music School and last summer I did the CORO Choral Composer institute. This video was the result of that fabulous week. https://www.facebook.com/steve.chandler.90663/videos/10156649009393279/UzpfSTU4NjI1MzI3ODoxMDE1NjY4ODA2NDg4ODI3OQ/
To give younger folks some perspective I got involved with making music on computers early. My first music computer was an Apple II+ (pre-Mac), it had 48K of RAM and a 5.25" floppy drive. I ran Dr T music software on it. My current music computer is a 2010 Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM and 3.75 TB of storage (2.25 TB of SSD drives) and runs Logic Pro X. FYI, that's more than 666,000x more RAM.
This week I've been mostly working on the climax of the musical, Glory to God. Prior to this week my rhythm to the text had been a bit square and I wanted to make it more conversational (which basically meant more dotted rhythms). That meant singing all the parts over again at least three times (I'll explain why in detail in coming weeks, suffice now to say in order to comp a good vocal performance). The three verses and chorus went well, but the harmonies at the end were very tiring. I finished that process yesterday and that recording is the first item in the list of recordings. I've now added alto and soprano harmonies at the end and Michelle (who sang Do I Know Him) did an amazing job in adding them. She also contributed parts to some other songs which I'll be uploading soon.
This week I also did a bit of repair on Is This What my Life is All About in act 1. I didn't like the horns nor the oboe. So I've now replaced them. The horns had been from Kirk Hunter's Concert Brass 2 and the Oboe was either EastWest Hollywood Orchestra oboe or the 8Dio Claire oboe. The problems were that the volume transitions in the horns were too obvious and the EastWest oboe sounded phasey, the 8Dio oboe the legato transitions were simply awful. I replaced the horns with Organic Samples Majestic Horn (what a lovely instrument) and the oboe by adding the SIPS script to the 8Dio Claire oboe. Both now sound much more convincing.
Please enjoy these songs.
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