The Sound of the Pantomime Horse

Musical salutations from your resident nutjob!

Ha ha, just kidding, we’re all nutjobs really… O.o

Anyway, thought I’d drop an update on this site with regards to the music! Following our very successful weekend in Greenwich, I came to the decision that I wanted to play about a million and one instruments for the show. Live. So, I compromised with myself; I made backing tracks for both shows, with me playing a million and one instruments!

For the past two days, I have been hauled up in my friend’s home-made recording studio with no contact with the outside world except for his parents, who fed us, his sister, who lent us her alto saxophone and her sister’s best mate, who played the french horn for us (I’ll be damned if you ever catch me playing one…).

So we started about 2pm on Monday thinking “7 tracks? 2 days? Eeeeeasy”. By midnight, we were thinking “5 tracks? 1 day? Better start now…”. The result was my friend’s mother coming out at 1:10am in the morning telling us to shut up. Fortunately at this point, we had just finished recording the ever popular ”Zuper to be Bad’.

‘Only 7 tracks? But there’s 10! ‘ I hear you exclaim in a panicky, prepubescent squeak. Aaaah, my dear Watson, it’s elementary! You see, the other three I merely constructed from other backing tracks, as they were already available online. Simples! *squeak*

Like I said, it’s been a long couple of days (lasting exactly two days incidentally), but we’ve got the job done. We did Indiana Jones originally intending for the instrumentation of each song to be a Nazi Jazz Band. Unfortunately, ambition got the better of myself and Tom, the aforementioned friend, and we splashed out on every track. Sherlock Homes suffered a similar fate… Here’s an idea of just how much fun we had:

Fook’s Cazbar & Zuper to be Bad: Soprano Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, Trombone, Piano, Bass, Drumkit
Leaving Song: Horns * 2, Piano, Timpani, Bass Drum, Clash Cymbals and Military Snare
Pat’s Song: Piano, Strings, Horns * 4, Bass, Drumkit
Raider’s Finale: Piccolo, Flute, Clarinet, Horns *2, Strings, Timpani, Bass Drum, Clash Cymbals, Military Snare, Drumkit, Piano, Bass
Let Me State: Flute, Oboe, Bassoon, Clarinet, Horn
You’d Be Scared: Piano, Marimba, Strings, Bass, Djembe, Congos, Shaker, Drumkit

I’d just like to mention at this point: We recording every single one of those live; not a single one is a midi file or something silly like that! Also, we all collaboratively fail at playing the trumpet. *Fail*

Also, being the musical snob that I am (I’m not, really, I promise!), I changed bits of some of the songs to make them just that little more satisfying. However, in doing so, I inadvertently added sections of which I now need to write lyrics for. Curses.

HOWEVER! That does mean that we can now advertise these shows as having new, never-seen-or-heard-before material! It also means that the directors are going to lynch me for taking up 30 seconds more stage time…

To be completely honest, I’ve had a massively fun time recording these tracks and have epic plans to do something similar again in the future. I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Tom Bland, Cathy Bland and Jo Amison for all the support that they have given me in recording these shows. I think a pint is in order at the very least.

So, this is goodbye from your resident musical director; I’ll hopefully get back to you again when we’ve started rehearsals down in Oxford this Friday.

Sayonara!
Piano Panda x

Comments

  1. Isn’t he just? As Harry and I said when he started arranging You’d Be Scared for five separate vocal parts at the weekend: “Squeeeee!!!” 😀

  2. Awesome musical Panda is Awesome. I feel the need to reiterate exactly what Ros said – Squeeeee!!!

  3. To find out how these songs sound means handing our casts over to our tame musical director…..

    …Some say that he dreams in crotchets or quavers…

    …Or that his brain is one big organ…

    …All we know is that he’s called Piano Panda!

  4. Congos!!! Congos!!!! Congos!!!! My dear boy you need to be hung, drawn, and quartered – TWICE! How many times to have have to educate you! Its amazing you know all the strange and bizarre percussion instruments yet the simple, common ones are a mystery to you! Educate yourself. NOW – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conga

    Yes I did sign up and all that jazz (start the car I know a…) purely to put my gesticulations in to writing as I don’t think the computer or the surrounding mountains appreciated them!

    My most undignified regards,
    The Tooth Fairy