Happy holidays! / 2024 recap

Happy holidays, readers!

I hope you’re doing great and will soon be spending time with people you care about.

I have a lot to be grateful for this year.

I made horror music and commercial music, indulged in fun accordion & microphone rabbit holes, and started rehearsing with an eccentric band on the weekends. I hope to talk about the results of all that in 2025.

I avoided having a The Bear style meltdown while sous-chef-ing Thanksgiving, but decidedly did not avoid several emotional meltdowns (in the best way possible) watching Six Feet Under for the first time. 🤯😭

Anyways, some photo highlights are below if you're curious.

I'd love to hear what you've been up this year to as well, and in any case wish you a very nice 2025!

♥
Carl

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I met the fascinating Dave Caballero, who started an Atwater Village accordion school in the 70’s which was open for 50 years! He also repairs accordions for everyone from Danny Elfman to Weird Al to The Pogues.

He gave me a lesson and completely re-tuned mine — a tedious process involving hand-filing hundreds of metal reeds, one at a time! This was necessary because the entire instrument was intentionally tuned sharp when it was made in 1960's Italy. Apparently, European instruments (and orchestras) sometimes tune differently than our usual western A=440 Hz, especially before things were standardized.

By the way... you know that stereotypical French café accordion sound that's kind of "wobbly"? I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together before, but I learned that comes from having two or more reeds per note intentionally out of tune with each other. The amount of wobble / de-tuning in a given accordion varies by genre from none (classical music) to an absolutely unhinged amount (I'm looking at you, Scotland!)

Dave’s back wall. At 78 years young, he's "retired", but it seems this is one of those niches you never truly escape.

Another cool thing this year was scoring a horror feature (deets next year 🤞). As the film spends a lot of time stuck in the protagonist’s head, I wanted the piano to sound borderline claustrophobic, so I bought these tiny Danish microphones. They're small enough to fit inside the piano with the lid mostly closed! Then I draped a comforter over the outside to complete the “in bed with a piano” effect.

Tiny mics were also helpful for accordion — an unruly thing to record because half the instrument is constantly in motion! Normally, finding the perfect microphone position can come down to nudging it a centimeter this way or that. Having mountable mics (you can see one near the bottom right) solves that problem.

For the non-moving (piano-like) part of the accordion, my full-grown mics worked great.

Big milestone: Nicole and I have been together 10 years! Here she is on her birthday, doing what she loves: getting totally jacked on iced tea refills.

Another highlight was visiting my sister Ann and niece Adalyn (pictured) on the beach in La Jolla.

And doing some important excavation with my nephew Axel (left).

Finally, interrupted this 🐿️ during a hike (sry bro).

Will Roseliep, Roshin Mathew, Accordion for Deadwood

Time to catch up on a few updates:

I had the pleasure of interviewing classical hype man, cellist, and author Will Roseliep for ep 2 of Timeboxing. He recently released a new book (which I enthusiastically recommend) about how to quickly diagnose and treat problems within the classical music industry e.g. “being out-hustled”.

I recorded voiceover with my new friend Roshin Mathew / Big Bowl of Ideas.

Finally, I played accordion in a 4-hour musical adaptation of Deadwood by the SIlverlake Children’s Theatre Group.  (There are no typos in the previous sentence)  Talented and ambitious kids!

Los Reyes Omitidos

This haunting animation about the origins of Cuzco, Peru is by one of my favorite Chicago filmmakers, Gus Gavino. Check out more of his work at middle mind project (I especially love his music videos.)

My main focus with this score was tone. It features a lot of accordion.. but more for mood than melody (e.g. the “breathing”, key rattling, shakes..) Other elements instruments included: string bass, a few woodwinds, harp, faint whistling, and some close mic-ed “low sighing” for the skulls scene.

Thank you Richard Howarth for assisting with sound design on this one! With this piece especially, the sound FX are just as important as the music in making the piece feel right.

Also, my old intern Alex Wand (who gave a very inspiring MFA graduation recital at CalArts on Wednesday by the way) was kind enough to translate the text of the story:

The story begins with the telling of the founder of the Incan dynasty, Ayar Manko. Legend has it that he turned to stone once he got old. Others say he magically flew away to a place where he continues to protect his town. His Successors maintained that they were children of the sun and in this way, they were able to secure the obedience of the nations of Tawantisuyu.

The text then explains how the Spaniards, who came with an ambition for gold, conquered the land. (i.e. barbaric mistreatment of women, murders, destruction of sacred monuments). Manko II attempted to retake Cuzco from the Spanish, but ultimately lost.

Finally, thank you Mike Ambs for letting me use the audio from his project The Lonliest Mix in this animation. It’s the wonderfully low sound of a “last-known hybrid blue whale” which sings at 52 Hertz… much higher than its fellow whales, whose calls fall in the 15 to 25 Hertz range- hence the nickname, “The Lonliest Whale.” Beautiful… you’ll hear it for a few seconds starting around 1:03.