The year: 2020. Somehow in between nurturing a sourdough starter and getting to know my cat’s deepest thoughts, I orchestrated three new musicals for Beat by Beat Press in 2020. And I’m not gonna lie - I have a clear favorite of the three, and that’s Could You Hug a Cactus? A New Musical.
It’s heartfelt, it’s funny, it’s honest, it’s bizarre. The music is so modern and distinctive, and it’s constantly surprising. And we really went nuts with the orchestrations here - knowing that he was trying a lot of new stuff in his songwriting, I decided to match them with more evocative and specific decisions - mixing electronic drums with old European folk instruments, using machine and bicycle sounds for the drum programming, and including way more FX-as-arranging overall.
”Rodney” is probably the most fun piece I did, for me. We got to use a whole array of hardware synths, bicycle chain and spoke wheel percussion, wah guitar - the works. Skip to that one and listen to it first. You’ll be glad you did. Rodney’s the coolest kid in school.