Look who stopped by the studio!! (courtesy of my buds Lucia Aniello and Paul W Downs) I hit record and tried to stay out of the way.. Zac had a very clear vision of what he wanted (hint: it’s awesome, man)

Check out more “Diary of Zac Efron” here. (I particularly recommend Dance Hoops)

p.s. in-studio pic:

This was a lot of fun, as there were plenty of diverse music needs (often the case with comedy)… here’s a walkthrough of the first few eps:

Episode 1 (ft. Moby):

Made a quick instrumental version of Moby’s “Sleepy Sleepy Grandma” for when she wakes up at 3:01. The second piece I made was described thusly in the script:

INT. JORDACHE’S OFFICE – LATER

Jordache sways to some bizarre indie music. Amy watches.

JORDACHE
You’ve never heard this song. No one has. The band made one song then they all died. Their early stuff was better.

Heh. I recorded a bunch of random parts and “sang” through a pitch-shifter overtop, resulting in the potentially the strangest piece of music I’ve ever been contracted to make (at 3:30).

Episode 2 (ft. T-Pain): I produced/recorded the song “Party in My Mouth” for this one, and co-wrote it with the illustrious Pete and Brian aka Russell and Dylan. Pretty impressed by T-Pain’s acting in this.

Episode 3 (ft. Kyle Gass!) Did a little angelic cue for when “Mirage” is floating around the sky at 0:40:

More episodes coming soon..

Sundance is a blast! I’ll definitely post a few pictures and what not once I get back and caught up. In the meantime, above is a little behind-the-scenes vid.

I had the pleasure of meeting a wonderfully talented singer named Adjoa at Sundance this week. Amidst a room of endearingly tipsy partygoers, she played this song.

Enjoy. You can help fund her album here (1 day left!):
http://indiegogo.com/adjoaskinner

Also, worth a re-post: David Fishel‘s 3-channel video for College Humor’s 2010 “Galactic Empire State of Mind“. Music by yours truly, vocals recorded by James Czeiner in NYC. Fullscreen it and enjoy!

Starting the year off with a bang! I scored & sound-designed this spastic promo for frequent/fantastic collaborators Rebecca Rerdel (motion gfx) and Angeline Gragasin (director). This was my first time working on a project with DP Jeff Katz (his work is awesome, check it out!)

Thank you, moment’s-notice live musicians for breathing so much energy into this music:
Max Crowe – guitar
Brian Mantz – trumpet
Andrew Conrad – bari & tenor sax

All the guys IN this video (Mystery Guitar Man, Mike Diva, DeStorm Power, Corridor Digital) are monstrously creative, hard-working badasses who I have a lot of respect for. Hopefully we did them proud.

And last but not least, special thanks to my pal Steph Belsky for throwing such a fun project our way!

Happy holidays from my blog and I to you!

Thank you Max Crowe, for sending me this, and the neverending stream of guitar riff .wav files.

Here are a few favorites from what I found:

Overtime: an incredible & moving Jim Henson tribute by Damien Ferrie (thanks Jordan)
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(thanks Angeline)
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(thanks Kerstin)

I brought in a great singer to add vocals to one of the tracks and we had so much fun we decided to record something every week. She’s a filmmaker by trade (a gifted one, IMHO) and we even have plans to make videos for as many of these songs as we can.

Here’s where you come in: it turns out neither of us have much legit experience writing lyrics. We figure, why not find a lyricist who cares about words as much as we do about writing/producing/singing? We’re thinking some songs will be more collaborative (we have snippets of words here and there that might be promising starting points..) whereas for others we’d lean on your amazing abilities more.

If that sounds interesting to you, email me with a little info about yourself, and we’ll send you a few snippets of our work-in-progress tracks to see if they pique your interest.

Let’s see what you’ve got, internet. Excited to hear from you!
-Carl

My contact info is up at: sondrol.com

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 – clarinet
Scott Copeland – trumpet
Michael Beach – violin/viola

I must give a shout out to the amazing Frankie Cordero who played and “designed” Felix (you’ll see..) I’ve had much fun working with him in the past too.