The Brief:
For this project, I was given the creative freedom to compose and arrange around the original song written for just piano and voice.

The Direction:
As the piano and vocals were closely interlinked with each other, creating much of their own combined character, i felt that altering either part would take away from the energy of song. My proposed direction was to add a layer of atmosphere through the use of romantically soaring yet simple string arrangement.

The Composition:
Given the animated nature of the piano, it made contextual sense to taken a Gershwin-esque yet modern approach the composition, avoiding the risk of sounding too “Walt-Disney” or pigeon-holed into the 1920’s.

Trills, long swells, broken chords, dissonant chords and cross rhythms set set the tone through out the composition. Much to the comedic delight of May Dolan and her Guildhall College of Music colleagues, a single unexpected pizzicato pays a small homage to Frank Joseph Haydns – “Surprise” (Symphony No. 94)… obviously just not as loud.

Fortunate Obstacles:
The recording was due to take place within the larger auditorium of the campus. The acoustics of the auditorium was very controlled and ideal for creating space in the mix whilst avoiding excessive reverb.

However this room was locked over the weekend so we moved our recording session the largest practice room. Whilst we were compromised on ceiling height and encountered more early reflections, we took advantage of the TV to display the scores resulted in eradicating any capture of audible page turning noise making for easier edits in post.