BWW Blog: Abigail Shapiro - Creating our SHAPIRO SISTERS: LIVE OUT LOUD - LIVE AT 54 BELOW CD

Creating our "Shapiro Sisters: Live Out Loud - Live at 54 BELOW" CD

Hello Broadway World! Our CD is officially available today!!!! I can hardly believe it. The creation of our CD was a new and exciting process for my sister and I and I'd love to tell you more about it!

For this CD, we did a live recording from our series of performances at 54 BELOW. Creating a live recording is different from cast recordings, like Milly and I've done, for Matilda the Musical and Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas. First off, obviously it's all recorded from our live performance, rather than in a studio. Therefore, I had to keep in mind that it cannot be perfect, and there's a limited number of opportunities to record what's needed. That brought up the nerves quite a bit during our performances...For example; one of the songs we really wanted on our CD was "Johnny One Note," however because of a small lyrical error when it was performed in the show, we could not include it on the CD.

Milly and I had to listen to all of the performances to choose the songs that were fit to go onto the CD - and I'm not too fond of listening to myself. If you read some of my previous blog posts, you'll know that this was the activity of choice on our trek down to Florida this summer (/article/BWW-Blog-Abigail-Shapiro-SIDE-SHOW-at-the-Kennedy-Center-in-DC-20140812). We listened to each song very closely to see if there were any mistakes or issues and to consider which performance we should use for each song.

Because it was a live recording, we not only had to decide on music but we also had to determine parts of dialogue we would use, what should be edited, etc. This was actually simpler than selecting the songs, because of the editing flexibility. When I was down in FL, with our producer, Van Dean, we wrote out all of the intended dialogue that we would use on the CD. This is when color-coding comes in handy!

Choosing pictures for the booklet was a bit difficult due to our supercritical judgments. Luckily, we had lots of great shots to choose from our photoshoot for the album cover, as well as photos from our first performance at 54 BELOW. Our producer, Van Dean, put together the booklet and he did a fantastic job. It was really amazing to see it all come together graphically-personally; I am in love with the picture on the back of the booklet. You'll have to grab a copy to see if you agree or have a different favorite!

I'm glad the CD came out the way it did! I felt so accomplished, and grateful, when I actually got to see the complete version. When I first opened the box with our CDs inside, I nearly screamed! It was so amazing to see a copy of all of our hard work in my hands-and I was on the cover!!

I'm so glad we can help the No Bully organization. That's one of the main reasons we decided to do a CD in the first place, to support No Bully. A portion of all of the proceeds will go to the organization and I hope our message gets out there-especially when our fans listen to Milly sing "Let It Go".

Creating a CD like this takes a lot of effort and time, but it all pays off. Both of us are thrilled to be able to have our very own CD, and it's been such a surreal experience.

Well thank you, Broadway World, for being so welcoming and to all of you for reading my blog, and be sure to purchase our CD!!!!!

-Abigail Shapiro