Harlem rhyming jive 101

Busy week! I have a half-written blog post about cartoon scoring, but in the meantime thought I’d share a few videos I’ve been pretty fascinated by this week.

Basically, these are rap… from the 1940’s (!)

“Brother, Beware!” (starts around 3:40)



“Look Out, Sister!”



That’s Louis Jordan, who I have to confess I’m just starting to learn about. People like Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Little Richard and James Brown cite him as a huge influence. And many consider him an undeniable precursor to rap. “Harlem rhyming jive” was the term back then.

He’s also one of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time… understandable given all the above.

Enlighten me! Who else do I need to know about??

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.

New Score Preview

I recently finished a score for the David Fishel film Cogitat Ergo Sum, and thought I’d share a few snippets with you.

Here are 2 versions of the “pulse” theme which propels several scenes, followed by a swelly dramatic thing that accompanies a montage sequence:



And here’s a waltz which comes later, followed by the reprise for the end credits:



It features these very talented LA musicians:clarinet: Eleanor Weigerttrumpet: Scott Copelandviolin/viola: Michael Beach

Poster:



Happy Holidays!

Music Reminder

Last month a random person emailed to ask for an mp3 of one of my short film scores.

When I asked if he was looking to use it for anything in particular, he told me it would be for his grandpa’s cremation. I was pretty speechless.

It was a nice reminder: you really never know what your music or art might mean to any one person.. how they might uniquely interpret it. In any case, it’s encouraging to see someone really connect with it.

I also sent him a score in a similar vein that I made for the doc Outspoken: Los Angeles (a track from which is posted above).

Happy to help, Kenny- I’m honored.

Man v Candy Machine trailer / "Carpe" gets distribution

Two things for today… first, check this out:



This is the trailer for something I’ve been slaving away at for a while now: Man v. Candy Machine. It’s easily one of the most intense and fun sound design projects I’ve ever worked on (you’ll hear just a snippet or two of my sound in this). Basically, director Angeline Gragasin rounded up a crack team of mad scientist creative types and set ‘em loose (see: motion graphics).

It’s futuristic, crazy, and I’m not really sure what to compare it to. Be excited.

Secondly, HUGE congrats to director Eric Bednarowicz and everyone at team Carpe Millenium. This film I scored earlier this year just got distribution, as part of a collection of shorts from around the world. Among the nine other shorts is Israel’s Oscar submission… good company!



Click here to open the facebook page and “like”.

Nightmare Before Xmas Parody

I don’t have anything Thanksgiving-themed to post, but I do have something holiday-related. This is a piece I did music and sound design for earlier this year.. a parody of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

As with Web Site Story, I:1) didn’t have sheet music so did my best to recreate all the parts by ear.  (I’m of course using samples and a few great musicians rather than a real orchestra) Here is the original if you’re curious to compare.2) thoroughly enjoyed dissecting this track and figuring out what makes it work. Danny Elfman is one of my all-time favorites and this was a real joy to work on. A very intensely-fast-paced-race-to-the-deadline kind of joy.

That’s Jacob Carlson on vocals (as Danny Elfman!) and one of my Chicago favorites, Gerald Bailey on trumpet. Last, and surely least importantly, I cameo (vocally) as a drunk priest at 0:55.

The lovely claymation is by Chelsea Manifold, and a few nice visual effects are by the wizards at Gloo Studios.

As for my friends at CollegeHumor: Josh Ruben and Vincent Peone directed, Ben Joseph wrote & produced, and David Fishel edited.

Article on reelgrok.com

I wrote an article about filmmaker/composer collaboration for the great filmmaking website reelgrok. Check it out!

Seamless Collaboration with a Film Composerby Carl Sondrol

Good film music communicates. It helps a film inject emotion directly into the viewer’s brain, gives them information about a scene, smooths a transition, or any number of other things. But none of this is guaranteed just because you throw a composer at it. The success of the score in your film is very dependent on…

[read more…]

Batman Vanishing

I got a request for some Dark Knight-ish music last year for this CH sketch. I checked out a few Hans Zimmer cues and created a similar sort of “stuff’s happening!” pulse accompanied by appropriately ominous low brass swells.

Featuring Pete Holmes as Batman (with a spot-on subtle lisp… “lightly irradiated bills-ss”, ha) and the very funny Matt McCarthy as Gordon.

Pipe Dream score

Part 1: (intro and buildup, 2min length)



Part 2: (narration into HIT at 1:10, 2min length)

Above is some audio of a dreamy score I made last year for the film Pipe Dream (again by David Fishel). It still hasn’t been released but when it is I’ll be sure to post it.

Vocals by my great friend Alice Wedoff, who’s also an amazing theater actress.

The goal for this score was to match the tone of the film with something like an echoey French pop song interwoven into sweeping/dreamy swells and neurotic sound design. I used a mix of synths, a broken guitar I found in an alley, orchestral elements and more to get it there.

This was also a fun challenge because it required French lyrics– and I don’t speak French! Solution: I sang a temporary track of the melody (in gibberish), David wrote lyrics to match, then Alice came in and nailed the real thing. Voila! (Ok, one word of French…)

Audio Montage

I recently had a request for an updated montage “reel” of music I’ve worked on and took the opportunity to put this together. If you’re unfamiliar with my work, this is probably the quickest intro I could offer. Snippets from feature films, a documentary, bands, dozens of viral shorts, etc. produced over the past 4 years or so.

As an added bonus, here’s a picture of myself and Jason (my co-pilot during the massive u-haul roadtrip to LA a few weeks ago, as well as the operatic voice of The Hoodie) posing by some of our favorite gas station merchandise finds.

Carpe Millenium in the 2010 Director's Circle

Above is a sneak-preview of the 15-minute film Carpe Millennium by the very talented writer/director Eric Bednarowicz. It involves a guy trying to lose his virginity on the eve of the year 2000 by telling increasingly bold lies about knowing a celebrity. I had a lot of fun scoring it last year.

Eric recently informed me the film has been accepted into the 2010 Director’s Circle.. Carpe being one of only 32 narrative shorts selected from 2500 entries from 40 countries… not bad!



It’s also had a lot of other festival activity- the full list as of this posting:

• Winner: The 2010 Accolade Film Award
• Winner: The Golden Kahuna Award For Excellence In Filmmaking (2010 Honolulu Film Festival)
• Winner: The Silver Ace Award (2010 Las Vegas Film Festival)
• Official Selection:  The Los Angeles United Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Chicago International Reel Short Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Hoboken International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Charleston International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Geneva Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Alabama International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Chicago United Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Riverside International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Reality Bytes Independent Film Festival
• Honorable Mention:  The National Undergraduate Film Festival

Whew.. kudos to Eric and the rest of our team!



The score was a nice challenge. Much of my job was to enhance the lead character’s neurosis.  I used various light percussion for this, including the sound of condom wrappers tearing and the SMACK of a condom being stretched and let go… a 3AM idea I’m pretty happy about. Anything for the perfect score!

Check out carpemillenniumfilm.com for more info - you can also read Eric’s interview at hollywoodchicago.com.

Tortue (my first score)

I safely made it to LA! While I unpack, take a gander at the first film I ever “scored”, which happens to be a one-shot 6-minute video of a turtle swimming around. My friend David Fishel sent it to me randomly one day and asked if I’d like to put music to it.

I did my best to follow my instincts, as I’d never written music to picture before. I played accordion, trumpet, a cheap synthesizer I had at the time, and even hummed a bit. It was a pretty eye-opening & fun experience for me.

Coincidentally I’m scoring a new film of David’s right now… more news about that soon.

Scare Tactics (puppet sound design)

One more post before hitting the road to LA…

“Scare Tactics” is a live action puppet piece co-directed/co-produced by the great Frankie Cordero and the also-great David Fishel.

This was a lot of fun to sound design.. my favorite part was recording the vocalizations (vocal parts besides the actual narration, which is by Andrew Schoen). Turns out my go-to guitar/bass expert Max Crowe is great at screaming so I had him handle the numerous freakouts for “Charlie”. I handled the narrator character’s vocalizations (e.g. grunting for the fence jumping at 0:47, ugh!’s and such for the fight scene at 1:20)

Back to packing!

Moving to LA / The Hoodie Song

Big news: I’m moving to LA next week!

Chicago has been a great place to build momentum over the past 4+ years, but the timing feels right to get out where all the film infrastructure is (NYC was very tempting too).  I’ll miss all the talented musicians and filmmakers I’ve had the pleasure of working with here.

I’ve somehow managed to trick my great friend Jason Jackson into co-piloting a moving truck across the country so I’ll have some entertainment for the trip.  Speaking of Jason… I had the pleasure of recording him recently, as the operatic voice of a (usually) inanimate object:



Kudos to Dan Gurewitch for writing the song (and starring in the video for that matter), and to the following killer musicians for some very fun sessions:

Man Vocals - Jon SteinmeierHoodie Vocals - Jason JacksonCello - Lilianna WoskoGuitar/Bass - Max Crowe

Meet Josh!

I’ve been lucky this summer to have Josh Sauvageau as an intern. He’s been a great help with everything from cleaning up dialog audio to researching the latest/greatest virtual instruments & recording gear to sound design.

A recent grad from Columbia College Chicago (BA in Audio Arts & Acoustics), he studied recording under & worked alongside R&B producer Ron Gresham, Chicago Sessions (jazz label) owner/engineer/producer Nick Eipers, as well as WFMT Classical Engineers Mary Mazurek and Jesse McQuarters

In addition to being one of nicest people I know, he’s quite the interesting guy (for starters, he travelled the world as a nuclear reactor operator in the Navy!)   A few current projects:

• Production/audio editing and general research intern for 98.7 fm WFMT’s Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin, a nationally syndicated, nightly radio program
• Live sound tech doing everything from hip-hop battles to church services and wedding receptions
• Bassist/background singer for two bands that have CDs due out in about a month: Stealth Like a Canoe and As 40 Sleeps

I can’t thank him enough for all the hard work over the past few months. Hire this man!

joshuasauvageau at yahoo dot com

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.

Zoo Horn

Every once in a while, I get hired to create some baaaaaaad music.  In this case it was muzak for a fake commercial about a product called “Zoo Horn”. Fortunately, it’s hilarious.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Ska's back!

A few months ago I found out I’d soon be making a full-on ska song for CollegeHumor. I know a ton of amazing horns players here, so was pretty excited right off the bat. Even better, the premise of the song involves an increasingly out-of-control horn section.. so I knew it would involve lots of very fun sessions.

Pat Cassels wrote the song & sent a rough demo- I added a couple melodies here and there, arranged a bunch of ridiculous horn parts, and got to work recording & producing this beast.

Thank you very much to all the great people who played & helped out on this:Vocals - Kevin GibsonTrumpet - Gerald BaileyTrombone - Andrew ZelmFrench Horn & Kazobo - Anna SuechtingGuitar & Bass - Max CroweDrum Sequencing - Rob KleinerDidgeridoo - David Fishel

This is definitely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever made (and that is saying something). Enjoy.

AXE COP 3 + writing process + testimonial

I just finished scoring & sound designing another episode of the AXE COP motion comic! There’s actually a video of Malachai (age 5) writing the story for this episode.. so if you haven’t seen that, watch it first. That’s his brother Ethan (who illustrates the comics, age 29) interviewing him:

And here’s the new episode. I did all music & sound except the opening/closing credits… it’s a real WHOOSH-BOOM-stravaganza. In addition to the usual crack team of people who work on these we are joined by Maurice LaMarche as the voice of Avacado Soldier. You might know him as “The Brain” from Pinky and the Brain or from any other cartoon in the past few decades. Pretty awesome of him to help out.

Finally, Ethan wrote me a nice testimonial which I’ve posted at sondrolmusic.com.

The Neighborwood

Early this year I had the pleasure of scoring this short pilot for animator-extraordinaire Mike Parker. We’d previously worked together a few times as he does a lot of great animation for CollegeHumor.

This score involves a lot of dramatic star wars-esque music as well as a mixed bag of other genres (gotta love cartoons).

Voices by Diedrich Bader and Will Friedle, guitar ‘n bass by the ever-solid Max Crowe, and trumpet by Nick Sednew.