Man V. Candy Machine

I had the pleasure of sound designing, mixing, and creating a shifting robotic voice from director Angeline Gragasin’s dialogue for the above piece. I’ve never worked on anything like this before. It’s futuristic, theatrical, visually stunning, sonically dense, and the most challenging sound design project I’ve EVER taken on.

I will do a detailed “making of” post at some point, but now I’d just like to acknowledge the herd of extremely talented people who worked on this (below). High five everybody!

SYNOPSIS:In the year 2137, MAN goes to the supermarket, with the intent to order the goods and supplies he needs. MAN v. CANDY MACHINE is the story of his encounter and ensuing battle with an all-consumering omni-bot, which knows all MAN’s tastes, his preferences, his dreams and his weaknesses. CANDY MACHINE deals MAN groceries, movies, appliance, narcotics, a beating, and worse. Does MAN ever give into defeat at the hands of the immortal machine?

http://manvcandymachine.com

DIRECTOR: Angeline GragasinSCRIPT: Jonathon AnthonyPRODUCER: Daniel PostilnikMOTION GRAPHICS: Rebecca Berdel and Rand SevillaSOUND DESIGN: Carl SondrolMAN: Dikker OurfenorfCANDY MACHINE VOICE: Angeline GragasinSOUND EDITOR: Daniel PostilnikSOUND DESIGN INTERN: Joshua SauvageauPRODUCTION SOUND MIXER: Brian SulpizioDIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Caleb ConditASSISTANT CAMERA: Robert CaubleEDITOR: Angeline GragasinILLUSTRATIONS: Karen Abad and Gretta JohnsonCOSTUME DESIGN: Gretta JohnsonWIGMASTER: Mark BotelhoSPECIAL THANKS: Alec Oliver, Eddie Jordan, Ben Kolak, and Super Mega Action Plus

Alice in Wonderland revisited

[video src=“http://blog.sondrolmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MadTeaParty_Loud-Music_Sondrol.m4v” poster=“http://blog.sondrolmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MadTeaParty_poster_500x281.jpg” width=“500” height=“281”]

Above is a project I scored & sound-designed for CollegeHumor last year. Since I’m about to go into a lot of geeky detail I’ve mixed the music a bit higher in the above than CH’s officially released version so you can easily follow along :)

This was a nice challenge, as my goal was to create a score true to the classic cartoon style of the original 1951 Alice in Wonderland score by Oliver Wallace. It required 21 (!) cues in the span of about 2 minutes… just a few seconds each on average. I have to confess I LOVE this kind of music.. it’s so spastic, unpredictable and intricate. Carl Stalling, who did all the classic music for the Warner Bros cartoons, is another hero of mine.  I suggest giving his music a listen without the context of cartoon sometime (you can do this on Amazon here).. it’s amazing how daring and downright bizarre it is!

Anyway, to do a thorough analysis I cut up the audio of the original score into small clips, labeling each with a stylistic description. (e.g. “mouse chase music” or “angry brass staccato” or “confusing rabbit - ascending chords."  Then I placed these snippets into CollegeHumor’s video as a sort of "texture guide”. I also notated some of the chord progressions - not to duplicate them with my own music, but to learn what kind of progressions Wallace was using to generate each mood.

(CLICK to see clips from the entire scene labeled)—

Then I created an original score, using similar textures and instrumentation. The screenshot below is what my project looked like after finishing.. each of those orange/yellow blocks near the middle represent string parts. I’ve got the woodwinds, brass, and percussion parts minimized (each gray/blue block is an entire group of instruments) and the at the bottom you’ll see the three trumpet parts (played by the amazing Gerald Bailey). I recorded him using two mics at once- a ribbon mic gives the bulk of the sound, and then a large diaphragm condenser room mic is used to capture the brassy “bite” of the sound. In a perfect world I’d have an actual orchestra at my disposal, but to keep things simple and within our budget the rest is covered with Vienna Symphonic Library samples… Except for the “jug” track at the beginning, which I made by blowing into beer bottles filled to various degrees.

(CLICK to zoom)—

————————————————————————————————————

Whew!

Now, if you’re really curious, here’s my score + sound design without dialog track so you can hear all the details exposed:[video src=“http://blog.sondrolmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MadTeaParty_No-dialog_Sondrol.m4v” poster=“http://blog.sondrolmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MadTeaParty_poster_500x281.jpg” width=“500” height=“281”]

Finally, for comparison, here’s a clip I found on YouTube of the original cartoon (at least until Disney takes it down)- the “Unbirthday Song” starts at 0:32, and regular score starts at 0:54.



How’d I do?

Kudos to everyone else who worked on this: writer Dan Gurewitch, producer Ben Joseph, my old Chicago intern Josh Sauvageau, and of course Snark Rocket for nailing the animation.

New Card and Logo

My new business cards showed up in the mail yesterday! They were designed by the very talented Raphael Del Rio who described his work thusly:

“This has a strong art deco feeling because of the bold, tightly spaced lines and high arching typography. Think Los Angeles in the 1920s and 30s. The vertical lines are reminiscent of bar lines or the CDEFGAB layout on a keyboard which also happens to perfectly fit SONDROL. As you can see in the Invoice document sample this mark is vertically scalable for different uses […]”

What do you think? Was it.. “Why, look at that attention-grabbing yet stylish logo which cannot be contained by a single card side!! What sort of man would dare to be associated with such an uninhibited mark.. and what sort of wild music must he make!?”

Check out more of Raphael’s work here, then hire him immediately.

Seeking Intern(s)!

Loyal Blog Readers:

Now that I’ve had some time to settle into East Hollywood, it’s time to find an intern or two. I had a great experience working with Columbia Grad Josh Sauvageau back in Chicago, and am excited to see what kind of crazy talent I can find out here.

Here’s the info (I’ll leave this post up until the search is over):

[ And… removed. Wow, thanks for all the responses everybody! ]

Turn and Smile (a sitcom theme about sitcom themes)

This week I thought I’d do a quick write-up of a project completed before I had this blog called “Turn and Smile”. Basically, CollegeHumor asked me to make an 80’s sitcom theme a la Family Matters or Full House with piano, bass, and a scratchy soul singer. So, I listened to a LOT of sitcom themes on youtube, and did my best to incorporate the defining qualities of the genre into the above song.

My friend Hawk Colman is easily one of the best soul singers I know in Chicago and was a no-brainer for the lead vocal. I was dying laughing during the session, as Hawk is a natural with his delivery and knows exactly what lines to really sell and HOW to sell them (e.g. the way he sings “whichyo family” at 0:47, the slight character change at 1:10 for the “grouch” line, the airiness he throws in choice words for the outro at 1:26, etc). Also, when he sings “show’s created by THIS man” at 1:30 we discovered the way to get the perfect take was to have him VERY emphatically point at something when he sings “THIS”.

I remember the main note I gave him was “Hawk, that’s too soulful. Try to sound more like a white guy TRYING to sound like a black guy, and channel Rod Stewart”. And did he ever. I miss him greatly as a friend & musician out here in LA.

Max Crowe expertly laid down several layers of guitar, then I brought in a bunch of my best friends / neighbors for the gang vocals (Max, Alice Wedoff, Johanna Wiesbrock) and instructed them to sing as sitcomy as possible. Lastly, I added plenty of extra layers to stay true to the arranging style of that period: strings, french horn, and OF COURSE plenty of wind chimes.

Kudos to Vince Peone for directing, Dan Gurewitch for the lyrics, and to everyone else at CH for making such a solid video.

Many pop stars, one song (with Yvonne Strahovski)

Here’s something recent- a song written by Dan Gurewitch, starring Yvonne Strahovsky of Chuck, directed by Vince Peone, and produced by Leigh Myles.

This project had some pretty interesting requirements:

• A single singer to impersonate Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber
• Music production that switches to match each time the impersonation does

Enter Angela Ingersoll, one the most talented & hard-working singers I’ve worked with so far, below in gaga sunglasses:



In one marathon vocal session (the longest I’ve ever been in) she knocked out FIVE vocal impersonations (this includes a Taylor Swift section which was later cut for logistical reasons). She works really fast- vocal impersonation takes a long time no matter how you slice it. In this case we also had to make sure the characters were distinguishable from one another. Angela was constantly pushing for better and better takes to capture the subtleties of each singer, seemingly tireless even in a high key. As a producer I always hope for musicians with this kind of drive.

The shape-shifting music production was a nice challenge too. As this was very POP I didn’t need a lot of live musicians, but you’ll hear serial session player Max Crowe on guitar for the Katy Perry sections.

AXE COP 4... plus a little something special

It’s time once again to unveil a brand new episode of the

Axe Cop

motion comic! Per usual, my role was (very dense) music and sound design.

For those of you new to

Axe Cop

- it’s a popular webcomic written by a 5 year-old and illustrated by his 29 year-old brother (they’re now ~1.5 years older). I’m a big fan as I’ve never seen anything so perfectly capture the imagination of a child…

This one is special for a few reasons.. (

SPOILERS

below- I’d suggest watching the episode before reading)

1) It’s our first episode with DRAMA!

The

previous

episodes

I’ve worked on have been wall-to-wall intense action. Ethan Nicolle (the elder brother and artist) and I chatted on the phone before I started to make sure we were on the same page re: how the music’s tone should change through the course of the episode. Thus, you’ll get to hear some heartfelt drama cues and even a bit of my excellent EastWest Symphonic Choir samples for Uni-Avacado Soldier’s first wish.

2) “Axe!”

That music you hear in the end credits is indeed very closely inspired by Isaac Hayes’ classic “Shaft!”. Ethan had the idea of the giving Ralph Wrinkles a wonderfully deep/low voice and therefore asked if I could do something Shaft-ish for the walking-with-sunglasses scene. I quickly knew exactly who to call:

Will Wheaton

, a great singer I worked with on an

internet love song

somewhat recently. As I’ve mentioned before, Will was the guy that Southpark called in to voice “Chef” when Isaac Hayes was out sick. So obviously… he hit it out of the park.

Friend/collaborator

Angeline Gragasin

and I handled background vocals (mostly Angeline.. my falsetto only serves to help fill it out a bit, hehe). Session favorite Max Crowe provided porno guitars, Chris Murphy played trombone and I dusted off my trumpet to play a few stabs as well.

This project was a lotttttt of work/fun. (same thing, right??)

Lastly, Webby Update: Looks like we couldn’t beat Galifianakis & Bieber for “Best Comedy Short”. But as our video had no celebs I think we held our own pretty nicely. Thank you everyone who voted!

It's Webby season.. vote for us!

I’m very excited to announce that another short I scored for CollegeHumor is up for a Webby Award (considered the “Oscar” of the internet). We’re in a tough battle against a slew of celebrities (Steve Carrell, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bieber to name a few) You can vote for “Grammar Nazis” by clicking HERE.

Sam Reich directed, Vince Peone and Josh Ruben starred. Oh, and hey! My friends at Gloo Studios handled VFX- you might remember their amazing visual work on our winning Pixar Intro Parody last year. Kudos to everyone involved, though- I think it’s one of CH’s best.



Here’s my original write-up on the project from May of last year:

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.

Last but not least, huge congrats to my friends Jonathon Grimm and Giancarlo Fiorentini for their nomimation. You can see and vote for “Facebook Ruins Job Interview” here.

p.s. CH has another nomination for Girls are Bad at Sound Effects. Yeah!

Chicago Screening

I’m excited to be returning for my 3rd year to the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival!

Tortue, an experimental short I scored for David Fishel will be screening before the documentary “Sound It Out”:

Saturday, April 16th, 3 pmWicker Park Arts Center, 2215 W. North Ave



You’ll find this and other films listed on Saturday’s screening schedule, here. Come say hi, Chicago friends!

An original song about the Internet

This is one of my favorite recent projects, for a few reasons:

First, I got to write all the music and had a good amount of creative freedom. Expert internet humorist Streeter Seidell wrote the meme-packed lyrics and gave some basic direction (a deep sexy voice rapping the verses with occasional singing, a chorus that “swells”, etc). I had fun layering in different stuff to build as the song goes on… pianos, vibes, mellotron, synthesizers, and even brass.

Secondly, I got to work with some great musicians. Will Wheaton is featured in the verses, and seems to have the deepest sexiest voice in LA (he’s subbed for Isaac Hayes on Southpark if that gives you an idea of his caliber). He’s extremely hardworking and nailed all the details.

Singer/actor Matt Geiler is the prominent voice in the chorus and you can also hear him “emoting” throughout the verses. He had me laughing a lot during the session with his spot-on pop adlibs.

I also brought in my friend Greg Nicolett to season the last chorus with trombone and I played some trumpet as well.

Josh Ruben directed the video. Enjoy!

MSI Chicago: Science + Jim Henson

The other day I checked in on the website of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and was pleased to find they’ve been cranking out podcasts. Before I moved to LA I had a blast helping to kick it off by engineering and producing the first few.

I think my favorite recent one is this interview with Karen Falk, Archives Director for The Jim Henson Company:



Theme song by yours truly with some sound effects by podcast host, Jason Meyer. Keep up the good work, guys!

If All Movies had Cell Phones

Here’s an early score I did for CH, a little multi-genre challenge.

As I didn’t have any sailors handy, you get to hear my best attempt at some Gilligan’s Island style singing. I used a ribbon mic to make it sound more old-timey, and layered in a whole bunch of Carls to sound like the original.

Dragon Ball Z meets... Jersey Shore

I love working on animations, and the above sound design + music project was no exception.

I checked out a bunch of dragon ball z clips courtesy of youtube to get a flavor of their sound design. It’s largely a mix of explosions, jets, whooshes, etc. mixed with old-school sci-fi sounds (synthesizers galore!) I’m assuming the sonically dense fight scenes are the reason so many DBZ episodes consist of the characters just standing around grunting… their sound guys just needed some downtime?

The music mostly stays in line with the american DBZ music, which I must say is VASTLY inferior to the original Japanese music. Holy moly. In contrast, the former often sounds like some guy ham-fisting away at a casio.

Other than that, you can also hear me doing some vocalizations e.g. Goku yelling at 1:47 and Piccolo (the green guy) grunting at 2:15- probably the closest I’ll ever get to “acting”.

This project was my introduction to Jersey Shore, which I was quite fortunate to have never previously seen. This amazingly astute Netflix review (thanks reddit) pretty much sums up my feelings on the show ;) I have to say, putting a nice huge punch sound in at 2:21 was QUITE satisfying.

Elevator

Here’s a quick short I scored for my pals Jonathan Grimm and Giancarlo Fiorentini. They also directed another favorite past project of mine, The Old Man and the Seymour.

Featuring always-funny actors Josh Ruben and Heather Cavalet (another Seymour alum).

New booth!

Last week was a very exciting one here at the studio, because I upgraded to a huge new booth! I took a time-lapse of my extremely handy friend David Forrest and I assembling it, then some strange people showed up and took a bunch of pictures.

It took me a few hours to put this video together using the free (and extremely buggy) program that came with my computer.. but I’d say it was time well spent. Enjoy!

I'll Make Like to You - with Romany Malco

Here’s a Boyz II Men parody I produced for CollegeHumor featuring Romany Malco (No Ordinary Family, Weeds, 40-Year-Old Virgin). I was all of 12 years old when this song came out… working on this was such a bizarre way to be revisiting my childhood.

To keep things simple / affordable, I decided to tackle this using 2 singers instead of 4. I really lucked out: that’s the incredibly talented Maurice Smith on lead vocals + some harmonies, and another great singer, David Vines, filling out the rest (including the airy “super-bass” vocals during the choruses.)

They shot this one out here in LA and invited me out to the set! (which happened to be a crazy mansion) A few pictures:



Myself with Romany Malco & backup singers. Left to right: Nic Huffman, me, Romany, Jordan Carlos, ____ (name escapes me!)

Sam Reich directed this one. Here is he working with the backup dancers on some smooooth choreography.



The outdoor stairway scene.

Music, Parkinson's, and my Aunt

I recently found out my aunt in Indiana, Dr. Pam Kelly, is working with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic to study whether live music has an effect on Parkinson’s symptoms. Above is a local news report about it, and you can read more here.

Congrats on the very cool work, Aunt Pam!

A Beatles Parody

Here’s another song I produced with lyrics by prolific parodist Streeter Seidell.

When I first started listening to music as a kid the only CDs I had were by the Beach Boys and the Beatles.. and to this day I never get tired of revisiting them. This was my first time, however, recreating a Beatles track from the ground up and it was definitely a good learning experience. There are some pretty bold creative choices in the original mix such as:

• the bass and acoustic guitar are extremely compressed
• the electric guitars are mixed very high towards the end
• the vocals have a very strong slap-back delay (pretty typical for lennon, of course)

In my opinion, all this results in an overall sound that’s pretty compelling & interesting.. a nice reminder that experimentation and non-intuitive choices can lead to a much cooler result than playing it safe.

Props to Matt Geiler on vocals, Max Crowe on guitar & bass, Jon Steinmeier on drum sequencing.

Harry Potter: Sorting Hat revisited

Here’s a CollegeHumor Harry Potter parody I scored recently. CH requested a few spooky cues as well as simple orchestral accompaniment for the Hat (sung by Josh Ruben once again- he also directed)

Kudos to the Puppet Wrangler on this one! That hat looks exactly like the original.

Tweetlejuice

Here’s something I scored for CollegeHumor back in 2009- a parody of one of my favorite childhood movies, Beetlejuice.

The dialog is so fast-paced (that’s the amazing Josh Ruben as the titular character) we opted to just give it a little intro and outro music score-wise. In any case, Elfman is one of my idols so it was a lot of fun.

Then there’s the end tag in which I do my best to sing like Harry Belafonte. Funny story… when I was working on this video the REAL Harry Belafonte just happened to be in town for a screening. I managed to get his agent’s assistant on the phone on the off chance he’d be interested in stopping by to record. As expected, they told me Harry’s about 80 years old now and doesn’t sing much anymore. Worth a shot!