The Wagtunes Corner (Featuring My Best Yet)

[Allomerus]

These are the 33 musicals I'll be listening to in order to prepare for this along with their production dates. Some are not the original productions but the movies from the plays.

42nd Street - 1933
Alice In Wonderland - 1951
Annie - 1977
Annie Get Your Gun - 1950
Anything Goes - 1934
Babes In Arms - 1937
Brigadoon - 1947
Bye Bye Birdie - 1960
Camelot - 1960
Carousel - 1945
Cinderella - 1957
Damn Yankees - 1955
Gypsy - 1962
How To Succeed In Business - 1961
King And I - 1951
Little Shop Of Horrors - 1986
Mary Poppins - 1964
Les Miserables - 1987
Music Man - 1957
My Fair Lady - 1964
Oklahoma - 1955
Oliver - 1968
Phantom Of The Opera - 1986
Pippen - 1972
Producers - 2001
Rothschilds - 1970
Shendandoah - 1975
Show Boat -1927
Sound Of Music - 1965
South Pacific - 1949
Spamalot - 2005
Sweeney Todd - 1979
West Side Story - 1961

Wow that's dedication!

[wagtunes]

These are the 33 musicals I'll be listening to in order to prepare for this along with their production dates. Some are not the original productions but the movies from the plays.

42nd Street - 1933
Alice In Wonderland - 1951
Annie - 1977
Annie Get Your Gun - 1950
Anything Goes - 1934
Babes In Arms - 1937
Brigadoon - 1947
Bye Bye Birdie - 1960
Camelot - 1960
Carousel - 1945
Cinderella - 1957
Damn Yankees - 1955
Gypsy - 1962
How To Succeed In Business - 1961
King And I - 1951
Little Shop Of Horrors - 1986
Mary Poppins - 1964
Les Miserables - 1987
Music Man - 1957
My Fair Lady - 1964
Oklahoma - 1955
Oliver - 1968
Phantom Of The Opera - 1986
Pippen - 1972
Producers - 2001
Rothschilds - 1970
Shendandoah - 1975
Show Boat -1927
Sound Of Music - 1965
South Pacific - 1949
Spamalot - 2005
Sweeney Todd - 1979
West Side Story - 1961

Wow that's dedication!

Obviously, it's going to be a while before I actually start recording again. In fact, if I listen to 1 soundtrack per day, it will be over a month from now before I even begin the project. Hopefully, I can do 2 per day and start this project on October 1st.

[Allomerus]

Universe Home.
Cool sounds Wags. I like the bit after 1 minute.
Vocals sound great on this.
Well done!

[wagtunes]

Universe Home.
Cool sounds Wags. I like the bit after 1 minute.
Vocals sound great on this.
Well done!

Thanks. Glad this project is in the rear view mirror now. It was very taxing mix wise.

[wagtunes]

Update: 9/15/2020, 11:08 AM

This morning I listened to 42nd Street (1980 production) and did some study on musical show orchestration from listening to two somewhat famous orchestrators.

Some things I learned, in no particular order.

1. There are many moving parts to a musical show and each one done by a different person. Much to my surprise, musically speaking, the composer of the score doesn't do everything musically related.

Here is the breakdown

Composition - Done by the composer. This is simply the melody of each song.

Lyrics - Done by the lyricist. Seldom the same as the composer.

Arranger - This is the person who decides what notes go around the melody.

Orchestrator - This is the person who decides what instruments are going to play those notes, how they play them and when they play them.

In my situation, I have to fill all the above roles. I am discovering that this is no easy task.

Just taking "Singing In The Rain" as the example used, that intro was thought up by the arranger. The choice of using flutes for that intro was the orchestrator. A different arranger and orchestrator might have come up with something completely different.

This afternoon, I will be continuing my studies by learning orchestra pit sizes for a typical musical.

There is no question, if I want to make this sound authentic, that this is the most ambitious project I have ever attempted yet. Maybe my "covers" CD was prep for this.

More later.

[wagtunes]

Update: 9/15/2020, 3:31 PM

Just finished listening to "Alice In Wonderland" 1951. Much different from 42nd street. Recorded in mono, so difficult to get instrument positioning. Many tempo and key changes in this score and lots of starting and stopping, which makes sense for an animated movie.

Unlikely what I'd be doing will be in this style, but always good to listen to different styles of orchestration. A score of this nature would be infinitely more challenging than one like 42nd Street.

More later.

[wagtunes]

Update: 9/16/2020, 9:37 AM

Just finished listening to Annie (1977). What an amazing score. More traditional Broadway than Alice. Very complex score however with numerous key changes and changes in orchestration throughout. This is probably going to be the style I go for but still have 30 musicals left to listen to.

Finally, in order to keep these posts in line with what this thread is to be about, here is an old song from my "Lost Tapes" collection. It's quite flawed but I never posted it before so I figured what the heck. Feel free to pass this one up as it's not really very good.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -tapes-iii

[wagtunes]

Update: 9/16/2020, 2:42 PM

Just finished listening to "Annie Get Your Gun" (1999).

The 1950 version was not on Youtube in its entirety so I listened to Bernadette Peters, which I like better anyway.

Great soundtrack. Lot of legato in this score. Possibly the easiest of all the ones I've listened to so far, though far from easy. None of this stuff is.

Made a decision. Am actually going to write a play for this project. The title is "Jerry And Company" about a nerdy kid who dreams of being a star and runs into the usual shady characters looking to take advantage of him. The two main characters are Jerry Torkleson and his friend Chuckie Norman.

They are the same characters in my original show tunes production of 2003 that I started and never finished, ultimately leading to my giving up music altogether until 2008. Here is their first song together where Jerry laments about being a nerd and not being able to get a girl. Yes, both voices (Jerry and Chuckie) are me. Hopefully, this play I will actually finish. Obviously, poor recording (way too loud) but the song itself was praised by quite a few people in the industry and score quite high in a song contest. In fact, there only criticism was that the intro was too long.

Anyway, here it is. Turn down your volume.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim/im-not-a-nerd

** EDIT ** Here is the cast of characters for my upcoming play and brief descriptions

Jerry Torkleson - Main character, dreams of stardom

Chuckie Norman - Jerry's best friend. Along for the ride

Avanna Lang - Girl Jerry meets and falls in love with

Daisy Jane McDonald - Member of trio that Jerry forms as backup to him. Has eyes for Jerry who loves Avanna

Dee Dee Banister - Another member of the trio. Has eyes for Chuckie

Ruby Polanski - Another member of the trio

Stu Carson - Jerry's crooked manager

Dexter Quinn - Stu's partner in crime

Yuri Andropovitch - Russian spy working for Stu to get dirt on Jerry and the girls.

Jerry and Chuckie will be performed by me. The rest of the cast will be performed by The Vocaloids

Avanna Lang - Avanna
Daisy Jane McDonald - Cyber Diva
Dee Dee Banister - Daina
Ruby Polanski - Ruby
Stu Carson - Cyber Songman
Dexter Quinn - Dex
Yuri Andropovitch - Yohio

This should be a lot of fun, if not fondly received.

[Allomerus]

I can see this is your real joy! At the very least you will have fun. "I'm not a nerd" has lots of potential. Nice melodies and definitely a song from a musical.
Well done so far!
Best of luck with it...

[wagtunes]

I can see this is your real joy! At the very least you will have fun. "I'm not a nerd" has lots of potential. Nice melodies and definitely a song from a musical.
Well done so far!
Best of luck with it...

Thanks. Nerd was 17 years ago and I never finished that play. This one I will finish. In fact, I started writing it last night. I very well may upload the script to Dropbox or Google Docs if anybody wants to read it. Have 27 more shows to listen to. Listened to "Anything Goes" and "Babes In Arms" yesterday. Tha latter was a real joy and a very big surprise. Probably my favorite so far.

More to come.

[wagtunes]

I have returned. Studying up for my Broadway soundtrack. In the meantime, some very old crap to entertain you.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -tapes-iii

[Bansaw]

He's back! What happened this time?
...good to have you returned to the forum.
The Worf track reminded me of something modular, or for some reason "Native Instruments" popped into my mind, don't know why.
Anyway, its was quirky interesting enough to keep me engaged.
Welcome back

[wagtunes]

He's back! What happened this time?
...good to have you returned to the forum.
The Worf track reminded me of something modular, or for some reason "Native Instruments" popped into my mind, don't know why.
Anyway, its was quirky interesting enough to keep me engaged.
Welcome back

That was an old track I did when I first started recording in the box. I had no idea what I was doing. I've come a long way.

As for what happened, eh, it's not important. It won't happen again.

Thanks for the welcome back.

[layzer]

Worf:
here we go with another Wagsterpiece.
ahhh we all started somewhere, this kind of
reminded me of some of my own first works
back in the 80's bouncing tracks back n forth
between 2 tape decks. i had a cheapo casio keyboard.
and that was it. the mix on this was actually not that
bad considering being an early effort.
i can easily hear this being on one of kraftwerks rare
early albums "Drunkwerks"
fun listen.

[layzer]

dp