My Soul (Prod. By Miss Antidote)

DESCRIPTION: Eponine wanders the lonely streets after having evesdropped on Valjean reading the letter she has just delivered for Marius, which reveals Marius' deep love for Cosette and confirms to Eponine what she feared most. Still dressed in mens' clothes, she walks aimlessly through the deserted streets and does what she does best; slip into an ideal reverie where the world is kind and her love for Marius is returned. The fantasy doesn't last, as the difficult situation at hand renders her escapist tactics weak, exposing themselves as such, and revealing to the heartbroken girl the desperately tragic life she has been living and how the survival tactics that are her fantasies are the only things that get her through the day. Now without that, she is left with only Marius as a source of sunlight in her dark life, as she decides to go against his wishes and return to be with him at the barricade. 

Often falsely said to be a whiny song about unrequited love, listening to the lyrics and minding the orchestrations reveals a very different angle: this is a song of strength, acceptance, and self-discovery. With an emotionally thrilling original orchestration by John Cameron, the moment came to life onstage in the original production with warmly lit, scattered, but shuttered windows as a backdrop courtesy of designer John Napier, with atmospheric lighting like painting upon a grey canvas by David Hersey. One of the most haunting and beautiful, visually stunning stage pictures I've ever seen. It is such a pity that both the orchestration, staging and designs have been dumbed/watered down for the lackluster 25th anniversary production which now has her with nothing but darkness behind her, singing to an orchestration that sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon. Depressing.

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ON MY OWN

Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer with input by John Caird and Trevor Nunn
Original French lyrics (originally titled "La Misere" and sung by Fantine) by Alain Boublil
Orchestrations by John Cameron

EPONINE: 

And now I'm all alone again
Nowhere to turn, no one to go to
Without a home, without a friend
Without a face to say hello to

But now the night is near
Now I can make believe he is here

Sometimes I walk alone at night
When everybody else is sleeping
I think of him and then I'm happy
With the company I'm keeping

The city goes to bed
And I can live inside my head...

On my own
Pretending he's beside me
All alone
I walk with him till morning
Without him
I feel his arms around me
And when I lose my way
I close my eyes and he has found me

In the rain
The pavement shines like silver
All the lights
Are misty in the river
In the darkness
The trees are full of starlight
And all I see is him and me
Forever and forever...

And I know it's only in my mind
That I'm talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say there's a way for us!

I love him!
But when the night is over
He is gone!
The river's just a river
Without him
The world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere
The streets are full of strangers!

I love him!
But everyday I'm learning
All my life
I've only been pretending!
Without me
His world would go on turning
A world that's full of happiness
That I have never known!

I love him
I love him
I love him

But only
On my own...

"On My Own" - Original Orchestration

Re-Animated @frawstakwa 
https://soundcloud.com/youngelderly/re-animated-164bpm?in=randther/sets/open-for-collab
Lyrics and vocals written and performed by RS Frawstakwa @frawstakwa
randther RS Frawstakwa
https://soundcloud.com/randther
Paploviante: Music, Bass, other Instruments, Picture, Mix and Mastering

Re - Animated Frawstakwa & Paploviante

Front Porch Step - Private Fears In Public Places (Cover)

Boats and Birds - Gregory and the Hawk (Acoustic Cover)

Hello everyone. This is my tribute to the musical Les Miserables, which I've been a fan of since age 6. I've since known and loved many other musicals but Les Mis holds a special place. I have an especially soft spot for the show's original orchestration, so thought I'd try recreating it!

Here is my humble attempt at recreating even a semblance of that iconic John Cameron orchestration and not-so-humble attempt at asserting how much better his orchestration is to the copy and paste cliche mess that claims to be the show's "updated" orchestration these days.. Sadly, that original orchestration has since gone through significant downgrades and MTI is no longer licensing the original orchestration. They offer now the 25th ann. reduction, which makes pretentious claims of being more classical with a chamber sound but it's first and foremost a money generating ploy to reduce costs, at the expense of character, cohesion, and integrity--the new concoction features work by 3 additional orchestrators. To say it is a train wreck is an understatement. I keep faith one day this will all just go away and the show's signature sound and gritty musical language restored...someday.

John Cameron's original work is the voice of Les Miserables to me and it can't be bettered, much less replaced.

I got the idea one summer to make my own backing tracks as a response to the cheap quality "Karaoke" tracks that were being mass produced at one time. I vowed to only use a real orchestra in my tracks but not being a millionaire and not having a full orchestra at his disposal, what was a fan to do? An emerging technology at the time (circa 2002) was the answer. It was called "Orchestral Instrument Sampling."

Many hours of trial and error and fumbling around with thousands of individual snippets of orchestral instruments playing a single note, I've reached a level of maturity in my work that I feel confident sharing it. I use NOTHING but REAL orchestral instrument samples in my tracks, all meticulously sequenced. It is arduous but rewarding work.

Most of all,  I've had a blast working with a score that has inspired me so much, and gotta love John Cameron's quirky mix of acoustic orchestral and synthetic "pop" sounds and styles that give this musical a uniqueness like no other, a hybrid musical style that at once sounds as classical as it does mainstream and is incredibly expressive.

Please forgive the so-so mixing as these are ALL work-in-progress preview tracks. A lot of them have crazy tempos in places and all could benefit from some equalization and better mixing / individual instrument positioning within the stereo image. 

At any rate, I'm not a composer and none of the work I present are my own original compositions. I merely recreate what I hear. I do NOT claim to represent or to have mastered anyone else's work/creation. I only represent my interpretation of their work and it comes from a place of deep respect and admiration, as well as strong focus on integrity.

These tracks are not for commercial use. They are for private individual home listening. 

All Les Miserables tracks feature orchestrations by John Cameron, to music by Claude Michel-Schonberg; Evita tracks feature orchestrations by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Hershey Kay--all as interpreted by me.

As for me? Hey, this isn't about me, it's about the music!!! XD

"On My Own" - Original Orchestration

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