Things Are Happening Fast...

Since the last post all parts of the musical have been shaping up. Leslie Stahle came up with a fun cover design showing the lifecycle of frogs, and our printer has built the cover around it. I'll inspect the proof tomorrow morning, and then they'll be printing a thousand front covers within the next couple of days.

Meanwhile we tried out a new singer, Dana Shaw, of Moorpark, CA. She sang a solo on the song, "All Parents Are Cute" and did a magnificent job. I'll be looking forward to engaging her services for future recordings.

Ace guitar player Mike Fishell came by on Friday and in just two hours, played on four different songs. He actually put three different guitar parts on one reggae-flavored piece, and dramatically transformed it for the better. I think Mike would have spent eight hours experimenting with different ideas, but I pushed him to do all his recording in an even two hours.

Saturday morning Brenda Tzipori arrived to sing. Brenda has sung on every recording we've done for the last several years. She's had a nasty cold and barely has her voice back. But I think you'd never know that from listening to her performances.

Just this morning Leslie Stahle dropped off the illustrations for the play. This is Leslie's fifth project with us, and her best work by far.

Are we done yet? Not quite. Lyricist John Heath pulled the songs together into a simple script appropriate for grades 1-4. First grade material isn't easy for us, because we tend to get too complicated. But John's script seemed very good. I made a few small changes and sent it back to him.

Meanwhile I still have one song to record completely (I'll be playing all the instruments and singing this myself.) And most of the songs still need some tinkering with. I've scheduled Tuesday as mix day---that's when the original eight-track digital recordings will be mixed down into stereo recordings in the computer. It's not that hard to do, but there are eight songs to mix...and then I have to strip the vocal out of each of them and replace it with an instrumental melody for the "karioke" version. Last of all I have to burn a master CD and sit and listen to every second of it to make sure all the tracks are in the correct order, with no skips or audio distortion.

That's about 40 minutes of listening, so I usually spend the time cleaning my kitchen.

Next Friday through Sunday we'll be in Palm Springs for the California Association for the Gifted annual conference. The Life Cycle books won't be finished, but we'll have a mockup and a CD that people will be able to listen to. I expect we'll start shipping a week from Monday.

Music Shapes Up Quickly

Yesterday I sat down and made rough recordings of all eight songs for John.

As I went through each song I discovered in many cases that the music wasn't really finished. So I had to finish composing before recording the tune. And in one case I realized that I had never written anything worth keeping. So I wrote music for that song in about fifteen minutes and quickly taped it.

Next step was putting the songs into a computer and making mp3s. Then I emailed them to John so he could see what I'd done with his lyrics. This is always a nervous time for me, as I'm hoping he'll like everything. On the other hand, I'm often unsure about the quality of my work and I really want him to catch the stinkers.

In this case there was one song he absolutely hated. So I've started over this morning on that one.

In several cases he had specific comments, such as, "I like the feel and melody of this song, but the first and third lines of the verse don't seem to work." In this case, the first and third line of the verse were the most distinctive part of the music. Sigh...

So I'm rewriting and I'll phone the changes in to John. Then tomorrow I'll notate the song for the singers and record the songs they'll be doing. I'll have transposed the songs into approriate keys for the kids, since I haven't worried about that so far. Right now the songs are in whatever keys they came to me, which means they might be too high or low for the average child to sing.

The cool part of this is knowing that in a week I should have a finished recording---and by early March teachers across the country will begin receiving their copies to share with their students.

Where Does Music Come From?

All the lyrics are pretty much written, and I think they're quite good. So now it's my turn to come up with something worthy of the Bad Wolf name. Or at least something that amuses me and is singable by first graders.

A few days ago I was experimenting with trance music. I was trying to write something in a style that I'm not very familiar with. My daughter had shared some tracks on her iPod that she thought would demonstrate the style...and I kept listening, trying to figure out how to make it work.

I worked for a few hours to construct a track using a synthesizer and a computer. It eventually started having the right feel---but it was too close to deadline to finish and turn in (this was a non-Bad Wolf project.)

So I failed...until last night when I realized I could go back to the track and reshape it for one of the Life Cycle songs. I started working on it today, and discovered it was an easy fit to one of the melodies I had already composed for the show.

So at least one and maybe two songs will have a trance feel, which is certainly something different for us. John hasn't heard any of this yet, so he may yet veto it, but I doubt it.

I'm certainly looking forward to reactions from the teachers. And all because I missed my deadline.

First a Trickle...

"Life Cycles" is going through the normal process of writer's block followed by bursts of material.

Lyricist John Heath kept looking at his list of topics for songs and saying, "There's no way to make this interesting for little kids." After a whole bunch of days, I jumped in and threatened to write the words myself. And I started proposing solutions on how the show could work.

The problem is that for young kids it's very hard to tell a story and also cover a curriculum. In this case I think the curriculum is more important. The kids will like it as long as the songs are fun.

So John has come up with five lyrics in three days. I've written music to three and a half of them. We're moving along nicely.

Here's a first draft of one of the songs:

Creatures have features
That help them survive
If it is snowing
Fur keeps them alive.

Running from lions
It helps to have speed
Creatures have features
That do what they need.

The teeth of a tiger
The smell of a skunk
An elephant's packing
One heck of a trunk.
The polar bear's white and the leopard is spotted
Whatever the habitat calls for they've got it!

Creatures have features
They don't learn in school
If you like swimming
Then fins are quite cool

.Some try migration
And some hibernate
Creatures have features
So they acclimate! [cool word for 6 year olds, eh?]
copyright 2006 John Heath and Ron Fink