Well hey, a film I posted about last december has finally been released! Congrats to director David Fishel on wrapping up this ambitious 12-minute short. It was a nice challenge making music that pulses, swells, and occasionally waltzes.
Thanks to these very talented musicians (remember Eleanor from last week?) for playing on the score:Eleanor Weigert - clarinetScott Copeland - trumpetMichael Beach - violin/viola
I recently collaborated with Richard Howarth on music for the game “Critter Chaos”, available soon on the Apple App Store. It was a treat working with creators Ryan Sandberg and Tim Wood on this, and I look forward to writing an in-depth blog post when it’s released!
For now here’s a peak at our BOSS MUSIC recording session with clarinet extraordinaire Eleanor Weigert.
I recently made this track for Lawrence Daufenbach and the good people at uglysweaterstore.com. They requested something with a “summertime, chill, but kind of trippy” feel that “sounds a little off”. Thus: mellotron drifting in and out of tune, with healthy dose of Waves’ Enigma plugin
I was lucky to have the supremely talented Danielle Birrittella on la-las.
Brian Sacca and Pete Karinen of FCU: Fact Checkers Unit were in studio this week to collaborate on a song for the upcoming Season 2 of the series. It was a treat to work with these guys, who are as hardworking as they are funny.
Don’t want to give away too much of what we worked on, but I will tell you Brian is really good at saying “Damn”…
I’ve been making music full-time for 5 years now :) Well technically, 5.5 years. Thanks those of you who made it out to my 5 year get-together a while back! We even turned the audio booth into a photo booth for the night.. the results of which are above (sorry it took me so long to post, friends).
A glimpse of a quick foley session featuring talented collaborator/intern/professional scribbler Richard Howarth. While sound-designing a bumper at the end of my pal Angeline Gragasin’s video we began searching for the perfect scribble sound. We tried highlighters, sharpies, but finally settled on a plain old ballpoint pen.
Angeline’s vid is below, which documents (and nicely captures the spirit of) last weekend’s “Occupy LA”. Rebecca Berdel, another recent Chicago-to-LA transplant, made the awesome scribble motion graphics. Thus, a mini-reunion for team Man v Candy Machine!
I’m in NYC this weekend and will have a chance to hear Ray Kurzweil speak (heard of Kurzweil keyboards?) Above he appears on TV as a teenager in the 60’s. I won’t spoil it, but you definitely get a sense this kid is going places.
His company Kurzweil Music Systems has been making synthesizers for decades. Their very first unit in ‘84 was actually inspired by a bet with Stevie Wonder over whether a synthesizer could sound like a real piano.
Kurzweil’s Wikipedia bio is fascinating: he’s a grad of MIT, invented the first flatbed scanner, text-to-speech synthesizer, etc. as components of the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind. Stevie bought the first production model in the 70’s which was the start of their lifelong friendship.
More recently, he’s become known as author and “futurist”, writing books on events such as the moment artificial intelligences surpass human beings as the smartest and most capable life forms. Sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie. I find it pretty interesting that Kurzweil is one of the few bold enough to make predictions with dates.. and he’s been right, many times.
So, if you have any questions about The Future, send them my way!
A sincere thanks to my good friend and associate Paul Lazarre for the invite.
Here’s a short I worked for one of my favorite filmmaking duos: Giancarlo Fiorentini and Jonathan Grimm. A candid glimpse into the life of the world’s most famous paparazzo, starring the amazing Thomas Middleditch (talk about “inhabiting” a character… sheesh)
I made an uplifting sort of “everything’s going to be alright” cue for the ending, and Danielle Birrittella stopped by to contribute some perfectly airy & sweet “buh buhs”.
It’s always a pleasure to work with Giancarlo & Jonathan. A few of our past collaborations include Elevator and The Old Man and the Seymour.
Here’s a little waltz I put together last week. Someday I will make a full-on grand, sweeping one… :) In the meantime, this taste will have to suffice.
Anyway, it features:Brian Mantz: TrumpetMax Crowe: Guitar
For some reason I recorded a few scratch vocal “mmmmmmmmm” tracks.. then ended up leaving them in for texture. I really feel myself growing as a lyricist.
I shot* the above video for my buddy David Fishel’s Davey Dance Blog on a recent midwest vacation. He describes DDB thusly:
A project started while traveling Europe during Spring 2007. Armed only with an ipod and a Canon, Davey picks a location and a pop song. Then Davey records an improvised dance.
He’s now made over 120 of these! They always make me smile.. here are a few of my personal favorites:
* stood very still while holding a fancy camera. You might say the first video is a retrospective of my DP work.
Before I talk about the track, I just want to give major props to the two amazing singers I brought in for this one: Maurice Smith and his friend Dejah Gomez. I can’t thank them enough for taking the time to bring their world-class musicianship to this ballad about cell phone technology.
You may remember Maurice from his amazing vocal work on the demanding Boyz-II-Men track we worked on a while back. Maurice was one of the first singers I worked with after moving to LA.. and was a real wake-up call to how insane the level of talent is out here. Here’s one of my favorite live clips of Maurice:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoF6me0yffw#t=1m40s
Dejah is equally stunning… as you’re read in her bio, she’s sung with Justin Timberlake at the Grammys, Al Green, Smokey Robinson, Mariah Carey, and the list goes on. Here’s a hilarious clip of her signing a duet with the great Stevie Wonder:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tbQ2k1T7Jo#t=2m18s
Making the backing track was fun, too: music-wise, Streeter wanted a RnB slow jam with a sort of sung-spoken approach to the vocals. So, I listened to a bunch of Usher songs and R. Kelly’s infamous ‘Trapped in the Closet’. Usher-y arrangements seems to be all about keeping the drums very tight/dry sounding, and the arrangement pretty minimal as most of the activity is in the vocals. This actually worked out really well in our case since we have a LOT of lyrics in this track and want to make sure they remain the focus. I threw in a musical accent here and there (piano, claps, whooshes, etc) and that seemed to do the trick.
I made a scratch track with some vocal melody ideas but Maurice and Dejah’s parts were largely ad-libbed. Directing world-class singers when you’re not a singer is equal parts embarrassing and hilarious :)
edit: as an added bonus, check out this video Maurice just released:
I’m on vacation (hello Chicago!) but wanted to share a little treat with you: a montage of the very talented Danielle Birrittella:
She stopped in the studio last week with some past recordings and we put together this demo. The goal being to give an introduction to her wide-ranging vocal skills (my words, not hers… Danielle is extremely modest) in the span a few short minutes, since we all know how busy those decision makers can be..
I recently had the pleasure of scoring and sound designing an animation for Microsoft by director Ahmad Al-Awadi of Moving Blue. It was screened last month at Microsoft’s annual MGX event- a huge production with over 15,000 people in attendance! Above is a still (and yes, it did involve scuba diving)
Ahmad was quite fun to work with- he’s talented, organized, and works well under pressure. Our 10 hour time difference (Ahmad is based in Kuwait and I’m in LA) actually worked out really well because I would turn in a draft of the audio at night (morning in Kuwait) and Ahmad would pick up right away with the animation. Then at the end of HIS day he’d render out the latest animation for me. We kept trading back and forth in this manner, thus the project was speeding towards completion around the clock.
Anyway, Ahmad wrote me a testimonial for this and 2 commercials we collaborated on shortly after :)
Carl is an amazing composer & sound designer, the quality of his work is just outstanding! When we started working on our first project and I got to listen to the first music draft I was in awe, because he nailed it from his first attempt, it’s like he is inside my mind!
So far I’ve worked with him on several projects and he tackled every single one while being spot-on with his deadlines. It’s very rare to find someone who quickly understands the kind of sound design that works in any given situation, and Carl is that person. Moreover, when it comes to communication he’s a cool and friendly down-to-earth guy who is easy to work with. Overall I’m very pleased with his services and will definitely keep him in mind for future projects.
Ahmad Al-AwadiProducer/Director - Moving Blue
I’m excited to work more with Ahmad in the future! I leave you with a still from one of our other (unreleased as of yet) projects:
It’s hard to believe this day has come: Pipe Dream, a film I finished scoring 2.5 YEARS ago* has finally been released. It’s interesting to hear the musical approach of a younger me and I look back on this one fondly.
I’ve written a bit about it before in a previous blog post:
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…)
I must give kudos to our good friend Joel Anderson for his top-notch sound design, and of course to director David Fishel for not only making the thing but also having the persistence to get through many a technical setback. Here’s his description:
This is a cute little short I shot on 16mm in Paris in 2007. When backing up the hard drive it was on before making the final mix, the hard drive crashed and I lost everything. It has taken until now to rebuild it from the negative and complete it, thanks to the help and support of many friends.
summary:Set against the less than conventionally romantic backdrop of the Paris Métro, “Pipe Dream” tells the unlikely connection between two would-be lovers despite social, cultural, and linguistic boundaries.
I’m lucky to have two very talented people helping out in my studio this summer. They each have serious skillsets in contrasting areas of music, which is great for keeping things interesting around here. Here’s a quick introduction in alphabetical order:
Alex Wand is pursuing an MFA in Music Composition at CalArts, studying under Mike Fink. This after triple-majoring in Music, International Studies and Spanish at the University of Michigan. He’s studied composition under greats such as Bright Sheng and even spent time abroad in Spain where he also studied classical and flamenco guitar.
What drew me to Alex was his natural sounding compositions and very broad knowledge of music. Here’s one of my favorites by Alex, a track from his band Light in August:
Richard Howarth has worked with some heavy hitters in the hip hop community including Raekwon and Ghostface Killah (of Wu Tang), Pill, Prof, and YelaWolf. In addition to the hip hop work, he’s also done soundtrack work for a sports documentary and remix work for Taylor Swift’s iPhone app.
I was drawn to Richard’s work as it’s full of creative, compelling textures that I find quite motivating to listen to as a producer. Here are 2 of my favorites:
I’m out of the studio today for my birthday! So instead of an update or article, here are a few of my favorite pieces of music:
Mike Patton, one of my all-time musical heroes, released Mondo Cane last year - a great album of Italian pop songs with a 30-piece orchestra. He did a few live performances, too- above is one (music starts at about 1:00).
Jazz pianist/composer Uri Caine has several albums of beautiful/adventurous/genre-bending interpretations of Mahler music. This particular disc won the German Mahler Society award as the best new Mahler CD of 1997… to the outrage of some society members (Full story here.) A fascinating and fun listen.
One more… a track from Soul on Top, which features a young James Brown backed by the smokin’ Louis Bellson big band… I really enjoy him in this context, wow!
Topless Robot named Axe Cop the #1 motion comic in existence! That is pretty high praise and I hope all the guys who worked so hard on those things get a big warm fuzzy from that article.
I sure did!
The article described the soundtrack as “
the greatest cartoon music since the 1960s Spider-Man series
.” What do I say to that?? I am quite flattered. :)
Well, director Angeline Gragasin’s currently making a new film, and only has 3 days to go on her Kickstarter. Check out the video above, and consider donating if you are intrigued. I did! I am!
I’ve been putting my booth to good use lately with a few VO/ADR sessions and thought I’d share some memories.
First, here’s the scarily-talented (and strong) Luke Sholl (aka Bodyguard aka Lord Sinister) recording some minotaur/monster voices for an upcoming CollegeHumor video:
Here’s Very Mary Kate (courtesy of the hilarious Elaine Carroll), who recorded some lines a few weeks back but quickly became cold and/or sad:
Lastly, Luke also recorded a bunch of dialog for Season 2 of CH’s impressive series “Troopers”. Just look at that crazy set & costumes!
