North Hollywood, California
Moving right along. Today was the first "official" recording session for the demo - in quotes to signify that Leo's been recording for weeks, but it's the first session that's involved other people. In this case, the percussionist (OK, drummer - but when Leo's talked about putting drums into the score, I've interpreted it as turning into some boppin' thing, which is not what he means and not period-appropriate! He just means some cymbal things and drum brushes and stuff like that), and the sound engineer. I don't know yet how it went, but I do know that we've survived our first major near-catastrophe - last night Leo called to tell me that something was wrong with his system and he couldn't record any more tracks. Fortunately, it was just some MIDI problem, and when I checked in with him during the session, everything was good to go. Next week we begin the vocals. Would have liked to start them this week, but you know how it goes...

I'm going to be reducing my hours at the data entry place so I can concentrate more of my attention on the show, and, specifically for the immediate future, the demo. There's just a lot to be done and I haven't had much chance to tackle it...

Although, we did some make some headway in tightening up the show, at least. My turn is coming, since I have a complete rewrite to do, but when we started getting times on the songs, some of them were coming in over 5 minutes and that wasn't sitting well with me. It's fine on your standard musical, but with all the ground we have to cover...well, we had some discussions about it, and Leo made some changes on a few of the songs and brought them down in length, which made me feel better. Keep in mind, I'm going to be making more changes than even he will with the dialogue! But also, there are a couple of songs where his only crime was putting music to what I wrote, so, if they're going to get shortened down, I'm going to have to consolidate the lyrics. Generally, I try not to ask him to do something I wouldn't be willing to do myself. I just can't do my part of it for a couple of months yet. Right now all I could do is give it an hour here and an hour there, and I just can't write like that. I don't want the quality of the show to suffer because I'm in too much of a hurry.

All that being said, I want to go on public record and say that Leo's compositions are phenomenal. I might have said that before, but it's a sentiment that bears repeating. You guys are gonna be blown away - I guarantee it!