Behind The Scenes #14
Candy Cane Lane
  (link to video)

I asked my daughter Nicole about suggestions for this year's Christmas song. She pointed me to a Christmas album by Sia. I listened to it and I liked it a lot. In fact, I found myself humming one of the songs, Candy Cane Lane. It was a really strange song and I couldn't stop humming it for couple of days. Somehow, it reminded me of the music in Nightmare Before Christmas, which I love. It had a strange effect of being little bit spooky but still happy. One afternoon I sat down at my keyboard and started plunking out the chords to it. I wasn't really thinking of recording it at that point, I was just curious about the chords and melody. But as it came together, I started to like it even more. So, just for grins I recorded a piano part and sang it a couple of times. Then I added a Hammond organ part, then another organ part. The instrumental rhythm parts were sounding pretty cool. So, I added some drums and a bass guitar. It was definitely turning into a fun little song. Some of the embellishment parts just seemed to scream for a Mini Moog, which I used to add the intro and a few of the riffs. At that point I felt like I should just finish it and use it this year. I hadn't set out to do it as my annual Christmas song. It just sort of happened. The choruses seemed like they needed a female voice, so I asked Suzie to do them and some of the harmonies as well. When we finished her parts we were both pretty happy with it. The song has lots of strange vocal harmonies, and we both love that sort of thing.

The visuals that came to mind for this song were colorful and vibrant. I gave myself a couple days to see what I could create. They were created in Cinema 4D along with a few effects were done in Adobe After Effects. It also seemed like there should be some animated characters. That's something that can take forever, but I gave myself an extra couple of days to see what I could do to "up my game". It's not an epic animation, but I think it does add to the overall effect. There were a couple of jumping gingerbread cookies (of course) and some dancing mice (what fun would it be without dancing mice?). Their dancing was a bit odd... but it's an odd song.

The instrument aficionados among you might have noticed a Mini Moog in the video. I got that Mini Moog when I was in high school. Its serial number places it in the first 1500 Mini Moogs ever manufactured. It was considered a pretty cool keyboard back then, and it is still being used by keyboardists today. Very few electronic keyboards have remained so popular for so long.

Finally, several people have asked me to include links to the the Christmas songs from prior years. In general, on YouTube you can find any song I've done by just doing a search for "Steve Mansour". Also, here is a video playlist of all my Christmas Songs. And finally, here a list with direct links to each Christmas song: