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My daughter's super in to figure skating, and for her first program she wanted to use Under the Sea from the Little Mermaid. (hardly a surprise) So I was to edit the thing down to 1:30 or so, no problem. It was kind of fun getting back in to the editing game as I've done for decades for dance teams, but this was much easier since it was just editing 1 song instead of 15 like for dance shows.

So the first order was to edit an instrumental version. Fine, easy. Now the complaint was that there's no lead melody. (sort of how instrumentals work most of the time ehh) So I play in a guide melody with some steel drums, easy. Oh, gotta burn a CD. Wow, it's been years since I've burned CDs. Good thing I still had a stack of media sitting around. Burn single speed (or whatever "slowest" meant) like in show masters.. no sure if that's still relevant, but sometimes burning max speed used to make CDs unplayable. Label the CD, all done.

After listening to the song inside out, I learned a couple of things:

• The bass and drums are doing a raggae thing pretty much the whole time, which was surprising since everything else is all calypso.
• The brass arrangement is done really well. I never realized since it just sounds like horns just blasting away, but they come in at the best times relative to the main melody to really keep the energy going. Horn section plays with a great attitude too!
• The chorus is beautiful. Maybe that's to be expected when you've got a whole crew of talented singers on board, but it's executed so well. They're not singing the most complex of lines, and the lines themselves aren't that expressive, but the vocal tone alone I think successfully creates a cheerful and festive mood. That's a whole chorus section's worth of good singing / voice acting! Powerful stuff.

Just a kid's song, but plenty of good stuff happening, lots to learn. A lot of work must have gone in to this. I think with productions involving such a large number of performers, it's hard to get everyone on the same page on direction, but here I think the consistency of everyone's performance shines through. That's already expected from a Disney production? Maybe, but still hard to pull off though.

But you didn't post the job to have a listen at it

Yeah I love your analysis so much I’m wanting to hear this.
I happen to covering heavy duty Brass lately and even have the chore of taking 2 vocalists assigning them each MIDI Controlled harmonies, vocoding, FX, etc.
I’m tryimg to make them festive.
I like ideas, it takes more than one idea usually, unless your stubborn.

not much to listen to since it's just an edit of the recording. I didn't reconstruct it or anything..
you can definitely hear the great work in the original recording tho. (somewhere on youtube)