I have contributed a few songs for Kenny Chumbley's new musical, A Goblins' Christmas Carol. Here are some demo tracks with songs I worked on that will be featured in the full production.
01
A Gravedigger is Hard to Find
This was the first track I worked for the musical in the fall of 2021. Out of all the tracks I worked on, this one takes the most inspiration from my academic background, with a few accompaniment styles in the piano. It's meant to be a fun, jaunty
melody with text-painting in the music's tendency to fall.
02
A Christmas Love
In spring 2022, Kenny sent me a melody he liked, which I re-arranged for strings and piano to give it a gentle love-song flavor. In the demo you can hear how the orchestra backs off to let Marion sing her melody alone, but as the piece progresses, the two sing a duet, and the violins can't help but join in with their gorgeous singing.
03
Grub's Burial
I worked on this track as I had a few more covers produced under my belt, and I could utilize my software instrument library in Logic even more. I went all-in for a musical instrumentation, and tried to write a track that would groove and still feature that falling motif I'd established in the first track's text-painting.
04
The Pub Song
I worked on this next trio of songs in the spring of 2023. The melody for this song was determined rather quickly, which I sketched on a walk. It is meant to be sung by patrons in a pub, and I was asked to use a simple chord progression to keep it folksy. The accompaniment took a few rounds - originally, it was actually too jazzy and too close to a song from a musical I had been listening to, but I changed it to have a more Renaissance flavor with fiddles, tin whistles, and tambourines. This really helped separate it and make it more part of the Goblins world.
05
A Christmas Vesper
This song uses a 1600s English country dance tune, and so I tried to match that arranging for fiddle and guitar, keeping things relatively simple. The violin roughly follows the melody through the track while the guitar's 6/8 rhythm helps keep the music moving forward.
06
Grub's Anthem
This track was by far the most ambitious. After writing a simple accompaniment for strings, I was inspired to try rearranging the entire song for full orchestra to give it a grander effect, and purchased Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony Orchestra - Core software instrument pack to help bring this vision to life. This track has its own story that builds through the song as choir joins the orchestra to back Grub and the Goblin singing about the beautiful Christmas Day.