This is “The Dancer”- the second video of three that I had the pleasure of scoring for Jason Bateman and his company DumbDumb, as part of their campaign for Orbit gum. Ben Joseph and Spencer Griffin at CollegeHumor produced once again.
This was definitely the first request I’ve ever gotten for “cowboy stripper music”, heh. I put together a slow blues track with Rocco Labriola on telecaster & pedal steel (clean, and then distorted for extreme sleaziness!) Max Crowe handled bass and I added some honkytonk piano overtop.
I also whipped up a fast & light piano cue for the “transformation”, some light orchestration for the closing scene and finally a bit of über-generic club music for the intro.
Two of my favorite people got married last weekend: Jeff & Kate Becker! As a surprise wedding gift, I made a song (warning: 5min) for them and played it as a ‘toast’ during the reception (click link to download):
It of course contains a few inside jokes, but these facts might help you make sense of it:
Jeff and Kate live together in Madison.
They have a dog named Barkitron 3000 (see his blog here), who was pretty old when they adopted him. Jeff once explained he envisions himself as running a “retirement home for dogs”. Bkt3k rarely barks.. but when he does it is deep and earth-shaking.
Jeff proposed to Kate in a treehouse. (awesome)
This turned into quite the epic scale project when I decided to involve as many of our mutual friends as possible, and even some of Jeff’s family members..
Spoken Parts:
I managed to get Jeff’s mom and one of his brothers (Matt) on the phone to narrate during the verses - I basically just interviewed them for 5 minutes each and edited it down later. I had no idea what to expect but I think having family members handle the 'verse’ narration was a great route.
For the bridge section I decided to make a “life advice” section full of half-serious/half-ridiculous thoughts by all the other friends I could manage to either get in front of a mic here in Chicago or over the phone: Mike Sudmeier, Rich Kirkendall, Max Crowe, Mark Quiner, Paul Skinner, Alex May, and Nick Thompson.
Musicians:
Hawk Colman (vocals, some narration) is a great friend and one of the most talented singers I know. He’s actually never met Jeff & Kate.. but was up for helping out. I’ve had him in mind since I came up with the initial idea a year ago… thanks again so much for the session, Hawk!
Nick Thompson (tenor & bari sax) lives here in Chicago, and stopped by to knock out the parts one afternoon.
Kestrel Wright (french horn) now lives in Seattle but just happened to be in town for a few days. I hadn’t seen him in years and the first thing we did was have a recording session… after that we went to a Thai restaurant to catch up.
Will Roseliep (cello) is in Boston and recorded remotely with a flash recorder, playing along to a rough mp3. Will’s pretty hi-tech.
p.s. dear other friends: I wish I could do something like this every time someone gets married, but holy moly did I ever underestimate the amount of work it would take… so I’ll probably have to go a more traditional route for future weddings to stay healthy & sane. Take my word that I love you equally!
Here’s a sneak peak at something I’m sound-designing right now. I didn’t do any of the sound in this screen test, but it will give you a preview of some of the very cool motion graphics work it features.
It’s directed by my new friends at NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, who describe it as an interactive “Internet Tele-Play”.
Definitely the most futuristic project I’ve worked on (robot voices and sound effects!) Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it’s all wrapped up.
Every once in a while, the internet calls our attention to something truly amazing and unique. One of my favorite examples is the webcomic AXE COP which is written by a 5 year-old (Malachai Nicolle) and illustrated by his 29 year-old brother (Ethan Nicolle). It’s a pretty wonderful thing to see Malachai’s wild imagination fully-realized in comic form by a professional comic artist. I’ve been a huge fan ever since it came out.
I am very proud to say I scored and sound designed the above motion comic version last week- easily one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on. I worked hard to make the action music as ridiculously OVER-THE-TOP as possible, and have the sound design continuously punch you in the face! I’ve been listening to the Die Hard 2 soundtrack a lot over the past few weeks to get in the right mindset :)
Anyway… enjoy!
I’d like to give a shoutout to Tony, Glenn, and Donald of Promo Scape in Australia who did an amazing job animating and producing.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s one of my favorite past scoring projects. It’s a 30-minute film by the very talented duo of Jonathan Grimm and Giancarlo Fiorentini in which a 47-year-old, growth hormone deficient man gets mistaken for a new kid at his nephew’s high school, where he quickly becomes the most popular student.
It features Steeter and Amir of CollegeHumor, Shawn Harrison (Family Matters), Liz Cackowski (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and Jordan Carlos (Colbert Report).
If for some reason you can’t get enough of my sports music, here are a few more chances: parts 2 and 3 of CollegeHumor’s Turtle Race videos with Brian Baumgartner and Jerome Bettis.
More new work coming soon. I just counted and have 6 (!) completed projects that could post any day now..
It’s a real privilege to announce I recently scored 3 shorts directed by Jason Bateman for his new comedy enterprise with Will Arnett: DumbDumb. They were sponsored by Orbit and produced by some good friends at CollegeHumor, Ben Joseph and Spencer Griffin.
Jason had a clear vision for the piece (a plucky, whimsical score with a heavy presence throughout) which was very fun to bring to life. I have a lot of respect for his work and he was great to work with- very professional, focused, and friendly, even on the tightest of turnarounds.
CHICAGO – Carl Sondrol is on a huge winning streak. The musician, composer and soundtrack scorer for CollegeHumor.com is a vital part of the Webby Award winning shorts “Web Site Story” and “Pixar Intro Parody.” His work has also expanded into television, short films and feature films.
Last month a song I produced for CBS kicked off their 2010 Upfronts presentation (where advertisers can purchase airtime “upfront”) at Carnegie Hall! The song and accompanying animation introduced the president himself, Leslie Moonves.
Lacy Daigle at CBS was very enthusiastic and fun to work with throughout the project. It was also a pleasure working with Mike Ungar of Broadway Sound, who handled sound design and the final mix. Aside from being an expert at fine-tuning audio for Carnegie Hall, he was a sound editor for ThunderCats back in the day… pretty much instant credibility in my book.
Special thanks to vocalist Steve Frisbie for his meticulous attention to detail on this one. Also, to Max Crowe for the ever-solid guitars-‘n-bass-manship.
While I can’t post the song or video, feel free to use your imagination and check out a few pictures from the opening (click to view big versions):
I made some sportscenter-y music for a series of videos about turtle racing- this is the 1st episode. It features Brian Baumgartner (aka Kevin of The Office) and Jerome Bettis (aka real-life football expert Jerome Bettis).
One of my favorite Chicago horn players, Gerald Bailey, is on blazing lead trumpet, Max Crowe on sports guitar, and Jon Steinmeier covers vocals & instruments on the backwards Beach Boys track.
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
A couple years ago, I was creating some test monster voices for a filmmaker friend. I brought in my very animated friend Johanna to get some female options. It was a hilarious session to say the least.
A while later I randomly came across them and decided to make a song with them somehow.. and give it to her as a gift. So, I made a quick track and started dropping in the voices. Strangely enough… a few were in the key of the song! I added some gentle background vocals, and walla!
Enjoy. I love making weird random stuff like this.
I had a fun time scoring this pitch perfect Inglorious Basterds Parody. I even play a bit of accordion for the intro (a la the Nick Perito piece in the real film) over a whopping 3 chords by regular session player Max Crowe. For the rest of the score we decided on subtle tension building, with a big swell at the end.
I’m in total awe of Josh and Vince’s acting in this one.
The first new project I’m posting this month is a 2-second “song” for animator extraordinaire Mike Parker’s CollegeHumor project. My good friend Jason Jackson provides vocals dripping with game show schmaltz. It’s about halfway through.
Jason and I have a long musical history together- he was the singer in our science-themed band accompanied by live powerpoint presentations. A “one take wonder” all the way, it’s always a pleasure working with him.
I’m very excited to announce that Pixar Intro Parody has won both the Webby AND the People’s Voice awards for Best Animation. Furthermore, Web Site Story has garnered the People’s Voice Award for Best Comedy Short. Thank you so much for voting, everyone!!
If you can spare a few minutes, I (and my friends at CollegeHumor) would really appreciate your vote in this year’s Webby awards. They are the most prestigious awards in internet media, and we would be ecstatic to win.
Click here to sign up or follow the direct links below:
Web Site Story (for which I produced the music) is in a tight race (screenshot below) with The Onion for best writing, and has a lead in the best comedy short category as well.
Pixar Intro Parody (which I sound designed & scored) is utterly dominating the animation category.
p. s. Here’s a very cool write-up by Mike Ritchie about the experience of creating the Pixar animation.
Earlier this year I completed a theme song for Chicago’s live graphic design talk show, The Show ‘n Tell Show. My friends at Optimus made a video for it featuring Chicago’s improv puppet troupe Felt and have posted a few behind-the-scenes pictures of the shoot here.
I’ve also posted some candid (read: blurry) photos from the shoot on my facebook page.
Finally, if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the final product (I cameo in a labcoat taking cloud readings near the end):
Two projects I did for CollegeHumor last year are up for Webby awards. They are:
Pixar Intro Parody (Best Animation)Web Site Story (Best Short, Best Writing)CollegeHumor is up for 6 total per Sam Reich’s blog. Kudos to CH!
By the way, the incredible animation work on Pixar is by Mike Ritchie of Gloo Studios- I’ve gotta say, sound designing and scoring is a real treat when you’re working on something so well-done! The amount of detail in the visuals is astounding.
In case you haven’t seen these viral video gems, here they are. Fingers crossed!
Sometimes our fans do something so amazing, that even Darth Vader has to be impressed. The Jedi Masters & Sith Lords over at CollegeHumor.com made this awesome fan movie to the soundtrack of Jay-Z & Alicia Keys “Empire State of Mind.”
