BarlowGirl: Home for Christmas
Christian rock band BarlowGirl has been around since 2003 or so, and I’ve done several string arrangements for their albums over the years, including their hit song Surrender and Never Alone. Their trademark trio harmonies melded with straight-ahead rock has been their signature ever since. When producer Otto Price called me up to work on their Christmas album Home for Christmas, I assumed it was going to be a straightforward string-sweetening-over-rock-band kind of project. “No,” Otto said enthusiastically. “We want to do it all different. Classic. Harry Connick. Timeless.”
Otto sent me rough outlines of how they wanted the songs to go, and I proceeded to work on some larger string orchestrations. Some songs ended up as just strings and vocals, while other songs had a lot of overdubs added later. All in all, this was a tremendously rewarding project to work on. Once the orchestrations were complete, I flew to Prague to conduct and record a live string section. More details on that session, including some video footage, can be found here.
Preview some clips from a few of the songs here:
Home for Christmas is available on Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes.
Well, that was dumb: I accidentally updated to macOS Sequoia. I thought I was updating to the latest Sonoma. And I didn't do a TM backup beforehand. I'm hoping all my software is compatible. I usually have to wait several months before all my software suites is safely certified.
Hold on while I switch chunks.
Fellow @The_SCL, I hosted a seminar on tips for submitting to the upcoming SCL Awards. Hope it's helpful!
You can only save one; the other is erased from history. Save:
You can only save one; the other is erased from history. Save:
An important career PSA for my fellow musicians: tell people about your passions. Tell people about your goals. Do not be shy about the gigs you dream about. You never know who has the ability to put you on a path that accomplishes them, if they were made aware.
