Carl Sondrol :: blog

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.

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!

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.