I’m overdue for a post- if you’re not on my email list, here are some highlights since last time:
While I was visiting AZ in December, my sister Ann and I interviewed Mom about her life. We’re so glad to get some of her stories on the record. e.g. when she was ~10 years old, she decided to get rid of a massive anthill with gasoline and accidentally set part of the house on fire! First she tried putting it out with her Alaskan Malamute’s water bucket. That didn’t work, but bought her enough time to get the garden hose and finish the job.
Speaking of pets, my parents’ dog Ben is still afraid of me for being a tall person. I know it’s hard to believe, but he’s hiding somewhere in the above photo.
Fear.
And as far as work stuff:
Jenn Medvin and Marcus MacDougald’s Little Hero has been making the festival rounds- from Belgrade to Nevada City to DOC NYC to St. Louis where it won a Crystal Gator (the award that deserves an award.)
This article calls my score “quirkily appropriate”. NICE. It’s kazoo on every score from here on out, k?
I’ve also been doing some recording lately, both at my place..
… and at Narnack Studios with the great engineer Griffin Rodriguez:
Andrew Conrad (bari), Walt Simonsen (trumpet), Ryan Dragon (trombone)
Brandon Dickert (drums), Griffin Rodriguez (hiding in the control room)
There is really nothing quite like recording great musicians live in a great room with a great engineer. I don’t miss my Chicago days of tracking everything in the kitchen!
I’m on a Timeboxing hiatus at the moment while I finish a bigger project, but here are the latest two if you haven’t caught ‘em yet:
Here’s Jeff Lamb’s new short film, for which I had the pleasure of composing a solo violin piece.
When I first met with Jeff he told me how important it was for the music to be beautiful but haunting. And man, it’s vulnerable! It has no dialog, is shot on 35mm film, and the piece is performed live on set (with a film this centered on music, is there any other way to go?)
Much of the music I make is full of instruments & textures & such, so it was a fun challenge to compose something this stripped-down. Jeff put a lot of trust in me (thank you Jeff!) and it was a rewarding & fun collaboration all around.
I hadn’t written for solo violin before, and what an honor to have the piece performed by Barry Socher, who (as Jeff pointed out) has been in the LA Philharmonic since before we were born :)
Barry and Jeff came by my studio one afternoon to discuss and rehearse the piece. Barry has a really cool beard and immediately struck me as sensitive, expressive, and humble- all qualities I aspire to as a music-maker.
Hearing your piece come to life through an enormously talented musician is quite a thing.. you get a whole new sense of the possibilities. And though he has decades more experience than me, Barry was very collaborative and open to my little tweaks about this phrase or that phrase- a glissando here, an extra swell there- and quickly adapted each into his performance. Details like that are one of my favorite parts of music.
Hope you like it.
Barry & I. Someday I’ll learn how to not get freaked out and awkward when waiting for a camera to take a photo, but know I’m excited & happy to be here :)
I produced some ridiculous music involving Russia, Canada, and Elvis for CH's Comedy Music Hall of Fame, which airs tomorrow at 10pm on IFC.
Paul F. Thompkins hosts, and it features comedy music luminaries such as Tenacious D and Weird Al. Here’s a trailer:
CH wrote the lyrics and I made the music. It involved a whirlwind of recording sessions including (Kazakh-American opera singer!) Timur Bekbosunov, vocalists Igor Komar + Mela Lee, comedy rappers Siobhan Thompson + Pat Cassels, and my trusty accordion (in mid-side, audio nerds!)
I also recorded percussionist Tim Carr (in the recording scramble I spaced on taking a photo.. sorry Tim!), guitarists Sasha Birrittella + Max Crowe (recorded remotely), and Klezmer clarinetist Andrew Conrad:
You have now seen “behind the scenes”. Was it enjoyable? Terrible? Both?
As Mila puts it in this interview, “Daddy draws the (un-intelligible) and his friend made the noises.” Ha!
This project came about when 3 year-old Mila Shane improvised a song about the Importance of Everyone’s Bee. (We all know everyone has a bee, so I won’t get into that here.) Then her fantastic filmmaking father Giga Shane animated it, and brought me on board to sound design. As you might imagine, I had a lot of fun with this project.
Giga and I chatted about the approach on the phone and he basically told me “go nuts!” (while of course leaving Mila’s song as the focus.) I think this is the best sort of collaboration- where there are a few guidelines and boundaries but plenty of room for experimentation and fun.
Despite the fact that this was one of those start-friday-finish-saturday turnarounds, I decided it would be a good challenge to not use any pre-existing sounds (i.e. commercial SFX libraries) since:
1) I like how constraints often lead to more interesting results. Given the amount of personality in Mila & Giga’s contributions, I wanted to put as much character into this thing as possible!
2) To paraphrase Alice Waters, if you want a great meal, start with delicious ingredients. I love applying this idea to music and sound, hence using homemade sound effects instead of “canned”. For this same reason, most projects I do these days involve at least a few live musicians :)
Here’s a list of how I made every sound effect in this thing!
sound effects
0:00 waves/water = bathtub/bucket sloshing
0:03 shooom = mouth sound
0:03 birds = the sound right outside my front door in the morning (featuring my neighbor’s birds)
0:08 logo disappearing = bathtub draining
0:10 title card = B’s played on the chromaharp
0:15 branches extending out = opening my blue umbrella
0:16 bears = me growling
0:18 bees = me buzzing
0:19 bee body pump up = accordion air release
0:19 bee’s wings sprouting up = umbrella
0:19 hammer hitting flask = tapping trumpet with harmon mute
0:21 honeycomb filling in = lips/finger noise with delay
0:25 grey transition = removing disc from led zeppelin boxed set
0:24 factory ambiance = bike wheel spinning + me saying “tikatikatikatikatika”
0:25 flask falls = me meowing
0:29 close-up flask bubbling = water boiling on gas stove
0:53 honey machine slams = plosive P’s (me saying “puh!” really close to the mic)
0:58 team hands = leg slaps
0:59 space cats = me meowing
1:02 bees fly by = me buzzing
1:17 bees exit = more grandpa whoas
Check out Giga’s write-up for even more Bee-hind-the-scenes goodness including storyboards and photos of him and Mila on their way to the Lower East Side Film Festival premiere.
I had the pleasure of interviewing classical hype man, cellist, and author Will Roseliep for ep 2 of Timeboxing. He recently released a new book (which I enthusiastically recommend) about how to quickly diagnose and treat problems within the classical music industry e.g. “being out-hustled”.
Finally, I played accordion in a 4-hour musical adaptation of Deadwood by the SIlverlake Children’s Theatre Group. (There are no typos in the previous sentence) Talented and ambitious kids!
I had the pleasure of producing the music for this Reading Rainbow parody featuring the man himself, LeVar Burton! The amazing Mela Lee is on vocals.
Thank you to director Charles Ingram, producer Rachel Goldenberg, and the other talented folks at Funny or Die for bringing me on.
LeVar is currently raising funds to get Reading Rainbow online and in thousands of classrooms for free… what a great and worthy project. You can join tens of thousands of people in helping him out here:
Sam Reich runs video for CollegeHumor, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him for episode 3 of Timeboxing!
Hear his thoughts on creativity, productivity, a “light hand” in the writers’ room, and the sociopathic gear shift between creative and executive modes. Then he brings up Getting Things Done and derails everything.
If you enjoy, feel free to like/share/etc! Write a short iTunes review and I will be forever in your debt.
I’m starting a podcast about creative pursuits vs. sanity called Timeboxing. Here’s episode #1 where I talk to filmmaker and illustrator Patrick Horvath:
Why does this exist? Over the past few years I’ve found myself compulsively pulling friends & collaborators into conversation about how they balance creativity, productivity, and sanity. Many people seem to have some useful perspective or personal angle on this stuff, and since I would be having these conversations regardless (almost as a form of therapy) I decided to start recording them.
After the interview I hired Patrick to do the cover art :) Check out more of his illustration work at soundofblunder.com
In other news, it’s been a great start to 2014.
2 of David Fishel’s films which I created music for had the honor of screening at Lincoln Center in NYC! A short called Natural Selection and a feature documentary involving dance, horses, and autism. Here is the trailer for the latter:
I’ve been mixing/scoring a video by Eric McCoy & Justus Meyer for Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Here’s Eric with actress Nicky Hawthorne in our VO session:
In February, I traveled to NYC to finish vocal recording with Angeline Gragasin for an upcoming project:
While in NYC (and then Boston) I also caught up with other friends and filmmakers:
I recently completed a score for a DVD series by DawnSignPress. Here are some of the session photos (Paul Fuller: banjo, Sasha Birrittella: guitar, Allen Fogle: french horn, Eleanor Weigert: bass clarinet, Jaimie Lee Mendoes: flute)
We’ve got some catching up to do! A few projects I’ve scored lately include:
The Pact II
This feature horror film is being released by IFC Midnight and hitting the festival circuit shortly. I had a blast working with directors Patrick Horvath and Dallas Hallam. They are ideal collaborators: sweet, hard-working, and creative as hell! It was also a treat to work with producer Ross Dinerstein and team. I’m a fan of their work (e.g. Jiro Dreams of Sushi) and they are total pros.
Here are Dallas and Pat playing a “vent hood” (a weird piece of metal traditionally used on rooftops). We recorded some cool and very “stereo” sounds by super-close miking it while they tapped, scraped, etc.
My elite squad of musicians included Joe Mendoes (cello), Lauren Baba (viola), Pasha Tseitlin (violin), and Brandon Dickert (drums):
The score also featured chromaharp (but played with a pickle jar lid instead of picks), radiator cover (e.g. low metallic BOOOOMs- don’t tell my landlord I ripped it off the wall), and piano (many thank yous, Dory Bavarsky, for letting me record your beautiful baby grand):
Here are audio gurus Rob Chen and Joe Loera at Lotus Post locking in the sound mix:
The last step of the score was naming the 40+ cues. "The Ghost Who Messed Up the Stuff" is probably the leading Grammy contender:
That’s all the PACT 2 news for now!
GRAY DOG
Another collaboration with the wonderful Celia Rowlson-Hall, which featured accordion, synthesizers, and more chromaharp. I don’t have a clip since it is hitting festivals soon, BUT here is a kickstarter video for her debut feature film MA:
Check it out and consider supporting if you find her work as exciting as I do!
Natural Selection
This playful short by my longtime collaborator David Fishel features the amazing dancer Carlye Eckert. It will have the honor of screening at Lincoln Center in NYC in February, and you can watch it online right now here:
Breaking Bad parody (SPOILERS! Don’t be stupid- watch Breaking Bad first.)
Directed by the talented Oren Brimer, who is now kicking ass at the Pete Holmes show- congrats Oren!
Oren moved to LA from NYC this year, and at his housewarming I found this in his bathroom. That is some mega Comedy Nerd Cred.
Also, here’s Alex Wand deftly playing his National Steel Guitar for my BB-esque theme song:
First Dates with Toby Harris
It was a treat to create some “Planet Earth” style source music for this episode of First Dates.
In my opinion, it is among the best-crafted web series out there. It’s rare to see this sort of tone pulled off so well (and consistently), but director Elliot Dickerhoof nails it. And of course, actors Seth Morris, Joel Spence, and Anna Wenger are hilarious.
It’s been a busy couple of months! Some highlights in reverse order:
Composed a solo violin piece for an upcoming film by Jeff Lamb. Here is the excellent violinist Barry Socher after our recording session.
Finally met VFX Wizard Mike Ritchie of Gloo Studios after five years of working together. One of the nicest guys in the biz.
Found a new use for the first tie I ever owned: foley for an animation by Ahmad Al-Awadi celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid.
Rented some fancy API pre-amps…
and used them to record 7 songs in a single evening (!) with Brandon Dickert, a drummer of the highest caliber.
Recorded bass with Griffin Rodriguez - an inspiring engineer/producer/mixer (Icy Demons, Beirut, ..) and person. He actually suffered traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident not 2 weeks later. As I’ve been mentioning on facebook, you can help support him here. Get well soon, Griffin!
Drove into the mountains on my birthday and bought a chromaharp from a nice banjo player named Dave.
Joined the cult of cast iron.
Recorded a song for The Pact II with Pat Horvath and Dallas Hallam (more on that in a future post!)
Found out I am KILLING IT in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Back in July I visited Chicago, caught up with a lot of old friends and did a bunch of recording (thanks to engineers Dan Smart and Max Crowe). I am humbled to have some truly world-class musicians involved…
Nicolae Feraru, a Romanian cimbalom player I’ve been a fan of for years. This year he won a National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Honor National Heritage Fellowship, our nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Though I am exhausted in this picture, I was extremely excited to collaborate with him.
Long-time collaborator Max Crowe on guitars & bass. (photo: Mikel Pickett)
I also recorded more vocals with my favorite soul singer on the planet, Hawk Colman, but we forgot to take a picture! I can’t wait to write & share more about the project all this recording was for :)
Before the recording kicked off, I also…
Did live sound at the Museum of Science and Industry for my friends Eric McCoy & Justus Meyer as they interviewed neuroscientist David Freedman about his work with “categorization”. I had a fun chat with David about James Brown, and enjoyed working with our cinematography/lighting team Mike and Leland.
Saw David’s band FuzZz (which consisted of him on guitar, another neuroscientist on keyboards, and KILLER rhythm & horn sections) with my friend and colleague Paul Lazarre. Paul is an entrepreneur and science enthusiast, and conceived of the interview video in the first place.
The otherwordly Harry Partch Ensemble (featuring the talented Alex Wand).
My friend Gina and I saw Björk! One of my creative heroes… an Artist with a capital “A”. I feel bad haven taken a photo after she asked the audience not to, but I promise my flash was off as to not distract anyone from the fireballs!
THE AMORALISTS licensed a track of mine for this promo video by David Fishel. If you’re in NYC and find this teaser as intriguing as I did, go see “Rantoul and Die” between now and July 20th, 2013!
It’s May once again.. which brings me up to 7 years as a composer! Many thank yous to my friends, family, and collaborators who have been so supportive all the while.
As time goes by, I find myself increasingly interested in the “craft” of creative work… How do I push myself to continously improve? How do I maintain balance and “long-term hustle”? How do I become more brave, honest, and original in my work? What mindset & conditions best allow me to do so?
That last question is an interesting one, since we’re all humans who get excited/bored/happy/depressed/hungry/inspired/lazy/distracted/etc for a multitude of reasons. That’s why I love this talk by John Cleese. It isn’t about *how* to be original but rather *how to make circumstances ideal* for generating the most original ideas. If you do any sort of creative work, I think you’ll find it pretty excellent.
(I’m late to the party on this one- thanks to my friend Spencer Griffin for putting this on my radar)
I had the pleasure of arranging and producing this song for the season finale of Very Mary-Kate- a webseries just named the 5th funniest web series of all-time by TimeOut New York. Congrats to creative masterminds Sam and Elaine! and all the other sweeties at CollegeHumor who make this happen.
This project was a fun challenge as the Marilyn Monroe song it parodies features a kickass big band. One thing I CANNOT STAND is the of use virtual instruments for jazz horn parts (if I am allergic to a sound.. this would be it), so I knew right away live horns were a must.
We obviously couldn’t afford to bring in a 20-piece jazz band (someday!) so I opted for the happy medium of a small but efficient live horn section (trumpet, trombone, and sax) accompanying a sequenced rhythm section. We also recorded a few overdubs (2nd horn parts, solos, etc) to fill things out a bit.
It’s a real treat working with musicians as skilled as Walt (trumpet), Dan (sax), and Ryan (trombone)- many thank yous, guys.
A few photos from the session, courtesy of my friend Vivi Hoang:
Here’s an episode of Fact Checkers Unit featuring the amazing James Franco as a shapeshifter. The LA Times even gave it a nice write-up here.
I had fun creating lots of chase cues as well as some evil lab music for unstoppable director Dan Beers. Scoring scenes with actors as skilled as Franco, Pete and Brian is a real treat. Their timing & performances open a lot of doors for the score as my job becomes much more about complementing the energy onscreen than driving it. So fun.
Props as always to the rest of the team: editors Kyle Gilman and Steve Makowski, exec producer Thomas Bannister, producer Larry Laboe, and many more.
Last but not least, thank you to spy guitar-ist Max Crowe for his work starting when Franco flees his lab at 3:16.
Hey socially conscious friends, do you know of a tragedy / travesty / suppression / coverup that hasn’t seen enough publicity?
reason is: I’m working on a song which is at times very delicate/pretty and other times horrifying. I would like to find audio from a real-life tragedy to add in somehow.. audio clips such as civil unrest, chilling testimony, eerily calm news broadcasts, etc..
A few more well-known possibilities i’m considering are: north korean suppression vs. the beauty of their “mass games", final moments at jonestown, lost boys of sudan… but am open to ideas- it could even be something affecting a single person.
It’s been a very fun but busy month. I spent the first two weeks on the road- first on a relaxing family vacation for my Dad’s 65th birthday and then straight to Austin for SXSW (after a 4 hour nap on the floor of LAX).
As mentioned last time, I was there with Celia Rowlson-Hall’s film “Si Nos Dejan”. (I’ll be posting session photos from the score at some point). Our screenings went well and people gave some very nice feedback about the film. Since Celia lives in NYC it was fun getting some time to hang out with her and her co-star (and husband) Andrew :) Here’s Celia with the most interesting lady we found in the Mexican restaurant where we were eating:
Narrating my entire trip would probably take about 5 hours to write (at my blogging pace), but here are a few of the highlights for me:
A panel with indie animator Don Hertzfeldt, Dimitri Simakis of Everything is Terrible, and Hadrian & Bret of Cinefamily. In my opinion, Don is one of the most uncompromising artists in any medium today. His latest feature (which I highly recommend) is available to stream on vimeo for just $2- trailer above.
The stop-motion short “Oh, Willy”- visually stunning and the story goes in directions you would never predict. I can see why it won Best Animation.
Pixar’s new short, and the fact that director Saschka Unseld was gracious enough to stick around and sign a poster for EVERY person in the theater, what a class act!
Julia Pott’s terrifying and moving animation set to a Tom Chivers poem. I love how it blends animation and live action (shot by the talented Adam Wissing).
The other shorts from Borscht Corp (Si Nos Dejan was one of four they had in the festival). Above is Jillian Mayer & Lucas Leyva’s “comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical” and an animation by Bernardo Britto. Wildly creative and diverse work.
Stephen Finnigan’s HAWKING. The film tells Professor Hawking’s life story in his own words (and voice!) I found it to be very personal and moving. Also, here’s a video I took of the audience filming a hello to Professor Hawking.
Black Metal by Kat Candler (produced by Kelly Williams, who also produced the SXSW feature Pit Stop) explores some very interesting territory re: the terrible actions of a fan “inspired” by a band, and how it affects a metal singer and his family.
SXSW’s “Best Narrative Short”: New Zealand native Michelle Savill’s Ellen is Leaving. A well-deserved award, IMHO. When I sheepishly told Michelle that my primary NZ reference is Flight of the Conchords, she laughed and assured me “that’s a good reference” :)
Sarah Gertrude Shapiro‘s Sequin Raze is a narrative short set in the reality TV industry, from a perspective I was SO happy to see- as were the judges, because it garnered an honorable mention for Best Narrative Short.
Lauren Wolkstein’s Social Butterfly, a very human story inspired by a personal experience she had in France. Great performances & story.
Jason B. Kohl’s The Slaughter. This one is QUITE intense/graphic, but in a way that serves the story. As with many of the shorts I’m linking to, great acting & production quality.
Caleb Johnson’s Root, a film he explained he had to make because he “couldn’t get the idea out of his head”, ha! One of the best “Midnight Shorts”.
Hugo Vargas-Zesati’s Boy Friends was another of my favorite “Midnight Shorts”- unpredictable, ridiculous, and hilarious.
Matt Adams’ We Cause Scenes is the documentary Improv Everywhere has always deserved. Hats off to editor Nathan H. Russell for sifting through what must have been mountains of footage from the prank collective’s many “missions”.
I couldn’t find links for everything, but also really enjoyed Dustin Bowser’s Weighting, Jeremy Hersh’s Natives, and many others.
Whew! So there’s my attempt at a “brief” re-cap. It was a treat meeting so many inspiring and creative new friends. Until we meet again, Austin.
I’m excited and humbled to announce that I’ll be attending SxSW this year with a director I immensely admire, Celia Rowlson-Hall!
We’ll be there with her film Si Nos Dejan (pictured above)- “a love story flooded with good intentions and missed connections.” I composed the music and look forward to writing about the scoring process here.
She also has a 2nd film in the festival, which sums up the audition process in a bold and painfully accurate way:
Congratulations to my friend and collaborator Ethan Nicolle, who recently announced that he will be marrying a wonderful woman named Jessica!
Ethan is a freelance comic artist (as I’ve mentioned many a time on this blog, he created Axe Cop with his little brother, Malachai). As you might imagine, it’s tricky to pay the bills making webcomics.. especially really BIG bills. But, Ethan’s come up with a great & creative idea to help finance his wedding: a Kickstarter-like fundraiser where you can get all kinds of rewards (such as personalized art) in exchange for helping him out with the bill.
If you love Axe Cop (or his other webcomic Bearmaggedon) as much as I do, consider kicking in a few bucks and getting some great art by visiting this site: http://axecopwedding.com
Also, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while:
Last Call with Carson Daly did an excellent piece on Axe Cop- one I feel does a great job capturing both the awesomeness and sincerity with which it’s made. And several of the motion comics I scored & sound designed are featured!
As Carson will tell you, Axe Cop is currently being turned into an animated series on FOX. Huge congrats to co-creators Ethan & Malachai! This ridiculously creative series continues to expand into many forms of media :)
