- Brainstorming – My parents were visiting me and I told them I was trying to figure out what cover song I would do for December. My Mom told me that her favorite Christmas song is Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire. I replied, “ok, that’s the one then.” I arranged a jazzy piano version of this song back in college at USU. It happened to be the only time this one professor seemed to be impressed with me!
- Arranging – I’ve already done the majority of the arranging work back in college, but I tweaked the piano part a bit. I had been playing some of the rhythms a little differently. Then I began to play with the melody/vocal part. I got creative and wrote in a few runs and different notes, including one octave jump up on the lyric “fly”.
- Sheet Music or Lead Sheet – I had the sheet music all written out from back in the day, but I had used a different program – Finale, back then and now I use MuseScore and I wanted to make changes to it and add the vocals on there. SO, I had to re-do the whole song. It took me probably about 2-3 hours, but it was broken up over like a week, doing about 20 minutes at a time.
- Polishing/Practicing the Song – I want to be able to belt the full range of the song, at least have that option. So I am practicing getting more comfortable belting/mixed belting (mixed belting is a blend between your belt and your head voice, it doesn’t bring as much of the chest up to the higher notes and has a more forward resonance). I practice this by singing the song (maybe 8 measures of it) 4-5 steps down (transposing down using my keyboard) with my belting “Hey” exercise. I then do another 8 measures up a half step and gradually continue bringing it up until I’m at “as written”.
Arranging the song “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”
I love learning about the different steps you take to get to your finished pieces. Very impressive!