The Musicals of Matt Buchanan

Selected Demo Recordings

Composer's Disclaimer

This is not how I'd prefer my music to be heard. These are the roughest of rough recordings, and are made available only because I know how difficult it is to choose a musical without hearing the music. If you are a competent pianist and music reader, I'd recommend playing through the score yourself as a better way of hearing these songs. Alice on the Other Side has never had a full production. (If you are lucky enough to score the first production, I'd love to teach your cast how to record a "cast album.) Consequently, all of the recordings of that show were made by me, in my rudimentary home studio. The "orchestra" on these recordings is entirely electronic (with one exception) and all of the vocals were done by me (and there's a reason I'm a composer and not a performer). This means that it's my voice even on the songs that are meant to be sung by a girl. On duets I did record the two parts separately, and I made an effort to make my voice sound different for each part (with sometimes odd results). Odder still, I recorded the chorus numbers using overdubs and an octave doubler. This made it difficult to understand the lyrics, so I mixed my own unaltered voice louder than the chorus. I think the result sounds like me, accompanied by my army of evil minions, but at least you get a sens of when the whole chorus is singing. By contrast, Prince Ugly has had dozens of productions, including a couple of professional productions and two in translation, but for one reason or another the only one I have recordings of is the original production at The Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, AL. That cast (of middle-schoolers) had a heart as big as all outdoors and enjoyed themselves immensely, but professional musicians they were not. These are recordings I pulled off of the home video a parent shot of the performance, so the recoding quality is all of a piece with the performance quality. Still, they should give you some idea of the music.

--Matt Buchanan

Click on any song title to download the Mp3.