It's been a while, but there have not been many positive things to write about until this week. This story requires a bit of a background, so, here goes.
Tom Gordon, recording engineer extraordinaire, contacted me several months ago about a CD that he was going to be compiling, the working title of which was "Spiked Egg Nog". The CD was to help create awareness and raise funds for research of Type 1 diabetes. If you don't know what it is,
click here to read the Wikipedia entry about it. Basically, it's a form of diabetes that affects children. Most die before the age of 30, which means there are only about 150,000 people with it at a time, because they die so young. The pharmaceutical companies don't invest much money into research on the topic because they can't make as much money off of it as type 2...so these kids are left having to go through as many as 15 blood-sugar tests a day and several insulin shots per day just to survive. So...now that I've got your attention....
The CD was to be comprised of Christmas Songs by various artists, most likely artists that had recorded with Tom in the past. Tom had wanted to do something big as a project of his own on the album. Being the genius that he is, he managed to find a beautiful Christmas song that most have never heard. A feat unto itself. In the movie "Toys" (circa 1992), there is a piece of music called "The Closing of the Year", originally written by Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Transformers 1 and 2, Pirates 1,2 and 3). The opening lyrics are, "If I can not bring you comfort, then at least I bring you hope". So...here we've got a Christmas song...an obscure one...that just happens to have exactly the message that one might want to send to a child stricken with type 1 Diabetes. Can't get much better than that. Check out
this video to hear the song if you're interested.
The original piece has lots of keyboard and synth madness, some percussion, and that's about it. Tom was after something different. So...Tom explained his vision to me. He was looking for an orchestral feel...but with a drum corps complete with drumline behind it. I said "alright", and after several weeks of research, brainstorming and musical sketch-booking...I was ready to start arranging.
Nearly 3 months later.....my piece was finished. Emails had begun being sent out to various musicians in the area to cover the instrumentation that we were after, and it became clear that this thing was really going to happen.
About a month into my writing, Tom called and informed me that Mike Love and Christian Love of The Beach Boys (whom I'd done some arranging for earlier in the summer but never had the chance to meet) had agreed to sing one of the verses in our version of Closing of the Year. I was quite excited at the news...and he then went on to say that there was a good chance that Trisha Yearwood would also be doing one of the verses. Holy God. So...a couple of weeks ago, I met Mike and Christian Love at Tom's studio, we joked around a bit, and got to work on laying their tracks. Once it was all said and done, we parted ways, and I went back to writing my orchestral parts.
That went on until about a week ago...which brings me to the point of this story.
The original version of the piece had a children's choir in the mix. Tom and I decided it was a very important part of the piece, and we wanted to keep it. So, Tom did a little leg work and ended up getting about 15 children from the area, most still in the single-digit age-group, that actually HAVE type 1 diabetes. They all came to the studio, excited and nervous, and I had the incredible pleasure of working with them for about 2 and a half hours. Most had never sung before, certainly had never recorded in a professional studio. We all huddled around the piano and I got to teach them their notes and rhythms, as well as the words to the song. They were so well behaved...so attentive...and so happy to be there. I caught myself more than once having to hold back a tear or two...kind of like right now as I'm writing this. These are amazing kids...and it was such an amazing experience to get to work with them. I'll be riding on that feel-good experience for quite a while, I know that. There were lots of funny moments, as there tend to be with kids, including one little girl completely breaking my concentration at the beginning of a take by whispering "this takes foreeever" to the girl next to her. She failed to realize just how much the microphone would pick up, and her comment went straight in to my headphones loud and clear. I couldn't contain myself and the take was ruined by my laughing through it. So funny. They all worked so hard...and should be very proud of the product they put out. I'll never forget Thursday night. Those kids left an impression on me that I'm so glad to have. Such an amazing and adorable group.
A few days later, it was finally time for the instrumental part of the mix to come to life. At 10:30 this morning, 21 strings players (9 violins, 4 violas, 4 celli and 4 basses) gathered in Nightingale Hall at UNR to record the non-drum-corps parts of the piece with me conducting, and Tom in the control room downstairs. Being some of the best players in the city, the session went quite smoothly. After about 2 hours, we had plenty of takes and doubles to put together an excellent sounding orchestra. Then, at about 1:30, the 12 brass players (3 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, 3 souzaphones) arrived. Again, being an amazing group of players, things went fairly smoothly. For both groups, I had written some fairly challenging parts (special thanks to Tony Cataldo for owning some very difficult trumpet parts that I just couldn't live without). The groups rose up to the occasion, and the product turned out even better than I had envisioned. Very thick and lush sound. I can't wait to hear the final mix. Finally, Robert Lightfoot, timpanist for the Reno Philharmonic, stopped in and recorded some expertly executed tracks, Brian Boydstun played some damn fine whole notes on bass drum, and I had the honor of recording a suuuper fun chime part. Basically needed it to sound like a huge notre dame bell tower. It was a blast recording that. Then, I finally got to go downstairs and hear everything that I'd been working on for the last 5 months all fall in to place. Nothing has been completely mixed or mastered yet, but just hearing the rough tracks had me grinning from ear to ear.
Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of playing bass drum in the battery parts that Brian Boydstun had arranged for the piece. We performed outside at Reno High Shool during the late evening until the sun went down. It was a great time. I hadn't had the opportunity to play in a drumline in years...and when I had played, the writing was certainly nothing like Brian's. Needless to say, I enjoyed myself. After a few hours of mixing and nit-picking yesterday, Tom and I got the drums to the point we wanted them...and it was time to move on to some "toys" type percussion. Triangles, sleigh-bells, cymbals, etc. Tom and I went through his arsenal of equipment and came up with a really cool underlying fabric of metallic sounds to fill out the top end of the piece. When it was all said and done, we were both very happy with the product. Finally, we dropped in a few gong hits and cleaned up some little loose ends...and I left Tom for the night. I received a text from him at 2a.m. (guy never sleeps) saying that he'd finished putting Mike Love's vocals into place. Can't wait to hear those...
Finally, I got to talking with Kristian, the wonderful lady that's putting this whole thing together, and it looks like I'll be designing the album artwork for the entire charity CD. We batted around some ideas, and I think we came up with a very touching look for the album. Not giving it away at this point, though. Best of all, after talking with Kristian, I got to chat with her incredible daughter, Jessie. Jessie has Type 1 Diabetes...which was discovered when she went in to a coma before she'd even had her first day of school just a couple of years ago. Jessie is an incredible girl. So amazingly friendly. We talked about her horse, her toys, Disneyland (her favorite place...girl after my own heart), her favorite movies, foods, colors...pretty much everything there is to talk about. It really makes one sit back and think.....and realize that life is so short. Potentially much shorter for some than others. I probably learned more about myself sitting there talking to Jessie than I have in the last 10 years.
So, I suppose the point of the story is to say thank you. Thank you to Tom - for giving me this opportunity, Brian - for your help in arranging and being such an amazing friend, Alan - for all of your help with pretty much every musical venture that I've come across in the last year, Van - for all of your help with arranging for the strings players and their placement/seating, Cody - for your advice and your help with contacting brass players and bringing instruments, and of course, the entire string ensemble, the entire brass ensemble. Most importantly, I'd like to thank the small group of kids that I got to work with on Thursday. As I said before, I'll never forget you, and I can't tell you how amazing you made me feel and what an impact you had on me.
It's been a rough year so far.....but I'd go through it all again if it meant that I got to work on this project 1 more time. I certainly hope that there are more of these types of things in store for me in the near future.