Only ONE WEEK left to go!
The first of this year's "Rockin' Around the Town Square" holiday concerts is exactly one week from tonight. I am excited and cannot wait for next weekend! The full band has only rehearsed together twice so far, but both rehearsals went very well. It's been a ton of fun to watch and listen as the other musicians bring my arrangements to life! Personal highlights so far of the rehearsals include my new arrangements of Pachelbel's "Canon in D" and Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," plus my arrangement of "Joy to the World/Ode to Joy" from last year. The band is sounding tight and is hungry to perform.
This next week will be filled with more rehearsals (four left to go, beginning with this Sunday afternoon) and other last-minute preparations for the shows. In addition to planning and coordinating the musical side of the performances, I've also spent the past couple weeks passing out event flyers, doing interviews with local newspapers and e-zines, and working on rehearsing the material on my own. It's been a labor of love, and even though it can be exhausting at times, the end result will be well worth all of the effort.
After the concerts have been completed, my next goal is to finish recording my original arrangements as featured in the performances. For last year's show, I recorded rough demos of the guitar tracks for my arrangements and sent them to the other musicians as a way for them to learn the material and rehearse it in such a short period of time (last year we had 3 weeks to construct and rehearse for the entire hour-long performance). Because that approach worked very efficiently last year, I repeated the same process for this year's performances; however, this time it has been taken a step further - so far, basic guitar tracks, vocals, and drums are recorded, with bass and keyboards to be added soon. The ultimate fate of the recordings is still undecided. I'm contemplating releasing a Christmas EP of my arrangements; otherwise, the finished tracks may be posted online for others to stream and enjoy. Nonetheless, I definitely plan to complete the recordings and hopefully finish with a professional-sounding result.
Much is happening at the moment... with much more to happen soon. Stay tuned!