Grease Dilemma

I produced the music for this parody of Summer Nights from Grease, with lyrics by Jake Hurwitz.

This was the last project I made before moving from Chicago to LA, and was very glad to bring in one of my favorite singers, Leslie Beukelman as the voice of Sandy (Oliva Newton-John).  You might want to listen to the original song again first… she is EERILY accurate, and nailed every nuance we could find.

Lucky for me, she brought her friend John Tashjian along, who did a great job on the Danny (John Travolta) part.  I was shocked when he whipped out a dead-on Kineckie (thick Brooklyn or Bronx-ian accent) so I had him cover that part too.

Longtime friends Nick Thompson and Max Crowe respectively/respectably played saxophones and guitar/bass, and Josh Sauvageau was interning like crazy.  For the gang vocals I layed in a bunch of other fun people: Caroline Davis, Noel Taylor, Alice Wedoff, Jacob Carlson.

Enjoy.

Animated Bears, Brutal Metal

This sketch is about the true nature of animated bears, and required 2 very different types of music: “Happy Forest” music and EVIL metal.

To research the former, I scoured youtube for clips of The Berenstain Bears, Yogi Bear, Winnie the Pooh, and even some Charmin commercials. As you might expect, most music accompanying animated bears is pretty similar: usually flute, glockenspiel and some very pleasant strings. So I took that general approach for the happy scenes and then customized each to match the sensibilities of the scene.

For the latter scenes with “more realistic” bear behavior, I made the most evil-sounding metal I could manage (props to Max Crowe for the dropped-D guitar sludge). I even used my EastWest Symphoic Choir samples for some low male grunting (which definitely give Pooh’s scene a “ritual sacrifice mega-evil” vibe) and seasoned to taste with orchestral strings effects.

Someday I need to make a list of all the times CollegeHumor has attempted to retroactively warp my childhood.

Viral Video Pet Store

Here’s a project from the vault- I produced some “demented shopping music” for this short in 2008. I used mellotron choirs for the melody and then slowly shifted the pitch of the entire piece up and down throughout to give an uneasy rocking feel. Finally, I added EQ and lots of reverb to get that kind of tinny mall-ceiling speaker sound.

It’s one of the quickest pieces I’ve made for collegehumor but I find it’s one of my favorites to listen back to, on account of its ridiculousness.

Email me if you’d like an mp3! carl [at] sondrolmusic.com [dot] com