This Is Halloween

"This Is Halloween" is the opening number from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), composed by Danny Elfman — who also voices Jack Skellington's singing parts. The song is a masterclass in orchestral arrangement: dozens of character voices layered over a dense instrumental bed of woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion, piano, harp, celesta, and xylophone. It's one of the most complex orchestrations I've ever attempted to recreate.

This was a tremendous challenge that Malinda gave me. Recreating this instrumental required finding the original orchestrator's score in PDF, because the vocal mix was so dominant that isolating individual instrument parts by ear alone was nearly impossible. With the score in hand, I spent over 30 hours recording — 8 hours on woodwinds alone (clarinets, bassoon, oboes, flutes, English horn), 6 hours on brass, 2 on saxes, 7-8 on strings, and 4 on harp, celesta, and xylophone. All performed using EastWest orchestral libraries.

Final Result with Malinda

The mix for this video was done by Johnny Deltoro.