Happy Holidays Everyone!
Welcome to the first in-production Backers Update for "Phineas McBoof Crashes The Symphony!" To those who've been requesting this… THANKS for your patience. From now on, I'll write updates to all backers monthly or even more often.
There's a lot of news already, so this first one will be longer than most and should give all who want it a really thorough behind-the-scenes look into the project. I'll try to hit all the major areas from business to creative -- I wanna keep you posted on the important stuff, but I'll try to avoid taking your time with updates on our pet Luigi the bearded dragon.
So, yesterday Luigi ate… Oh wait, sorry, bad start there. Here's what's going on, in brief:
•We've raised the funds for the orchestra and are booked to record with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra on May 27-28, 2014. We'll record vocals and mix in the summer, and are still on schedule for a Fall 2014 release!
•We have now raised about $90,000 for the project! Just last week, the McConnell Foundation pledged at the Executive Producer level. According to our project Budget, we aim to raise about $25k more in donations or specialized work to complete the recording at the highest technical and artistic level possible, from vocals to 3D illustrated artwork -- and we're still actively working on that, as last week's McConnell Foundation news indicates. If you have ideas or abilities to help with this, please let us know!
•A new FUN development… Nathan, Isabel, Kyle and I are starting to book live orchestral shows with ALL FOUR OF US! Looks like the first one will be in early 2015, with more to come. More as it develops. If you have connections to an orchestra you'd like to see us perform with, please let us know!
•A wonderful singer/star -- Tony award winner, Emmy award winner, cast member of one of today's most acclaimed TV shows, and portrayer of an iconic film role that many of you probably know and love -- is considering playing our final uncast comic role. I'll let you know more later if it's a go -- of course you're never sure until it's official. I'm mailing a requested packet to this individual TODAY!
•I completed the last major song/scene of the work on Thanksgiving vacation. It's a funny and catchy waltz duet between Nathan and Isabel called "What Kids Want." It's a duet between two clueless parents about what they think kids want, which of course has nothing to do with what kids want -- complete with a funny kid vocal part too where the kids are verbalizing what Mama Meanie and Placido Flamingo really WISH kids would say… Such a duet was the last major structural/plot block that was needed, and now it's done.
A few people have asked how a project like this gets composed, so here it is in summary -- at least here is how I do it. The way I work, on this and all Dr. Noize productions, reflects my "efficiency geek" nature"…
(1) I sketch the whole plot/song/scene outline first, without having much of the music or libretto written in detail. (This was initially done several years ago, with occasional amendments along the way as an idea struck me.)
(2) Then I spend months or years getting the whole thing written "in my head" in detail, which I call the "La La Land" portion of production and causes my wife to say "Cory? Are you here?" when we're out and about on occasion. Most Dr. Noize productions go through this gestation on and off for a few years -- this symphony album, for example, is the 4th Dr. Noize album, but albums 5 and 6 -- both the story and song details -- are already pretty much written in La La Land.
(3) I only start scoring/recording once most of these details are already done, because I hate the time- and money-waste of committing things to paper or recording when I know I'm gonna massively revise a bunch of stuff. So I almost never do that.
•So we're on stage 3 now, and I've started scoring already -- here's Page 1 of Scene 2:
[Supporters get a copy of the score of Strange Island (Scene 2) here.]
•Most importantly… What might this all sound like? As the story literally winds through an exploration of multiple music history periods, there will be a lot of orchestral variety on the album. But I'll start by sharing with you my demos for the first two Scenes, which are created with the goal of engaging kids with something that is easily accessible (Scene 1), and then immediately getting them excited for a more adventurous ride (Scene 2)...
Scene 1 is called "Mystery Monkey." It introduces the storyline by grabbing the listener with a mysterious vibe, but then quickly moves to a rather accessible song that is more musical theater than operatic and shouldn't scare too many newbies to orchestral music off. Here's a demo of it, with synthesizers playing all the orchestral score parts (nowhere near as great as the Colorado Symphony Orchestra will sound…) and me singing all the different characters' vocals (again not nearly as good as our full cast will sound)...
(Supporters get to hear an exclusive download of the Mystery Monkey demo here.)
Scene 2 is called "Strange Island." Our Band lands on a strange island with LOTS of exotic things going on, which is expressed in the music. There are vocals -- both singing and narration -- in Scene 2, but I'm gonna post the instrumental demo of it below (sans vocals) to focus more on the orchestra and show you that we are quickly taking kids to much more adventurous musical territory than in Scene 1. While Scene 1 sounded like a modern musical theater song, Scene 2 takes the SAME melodies and themes in a direction more akin to Berlioz, and combined with the vocals is not for the unadventurous...
(Supporters get to hear an exclusive download of the Strange Island Instrumental Demo here.)
I hope you enjoyed this and got a real glimpse into the project. I'll update you again soon! THANK YOU for your support!
Cory