Carl Sondrol :: blog

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!

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 Steinmeier
Hoodie Vocals – Jason Jackson
Cello – Lilianna Wosko
Guitar/Bass – Max Crowe

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

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.

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.