I’m off to Sundance with my old Chicago friends Eric Bednarowicz and Joe Martinez. I’ll be there the whole time, drop me a line if you want to meet up!
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!
Here’s a song I produced for my friends at CollegeHumor. Directed by Ben Joseph, lyrics by Streeter Seidell, and VFX by the wizards at Gloo Studios.
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:
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:
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’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!
Above is a project I scored & sound-designed for CollegeHumor last year. Since I’m about to go into a lot of geeky detail I’ve mixed the music a bit higher in the above than CH’s officially released version so you can easily follow along
This was a nice challenge, as my goal was to create a score true to the classic cartoon style of the original 1951 Alice in Wonderland score by Oliver Wallace. It required 21 (!) cues in the span of about 2 minutes… just a few seconds each on average. I have to confess I LOVE this kind of music.. it’s so spastic, unpredictable and intricate. Carl Stalling, who did all the classic music for the Warner Bros cartoons, is another hero of mine. I suggest giving his music a listen without the context of cartoon sometime (you can do this on Amazon here).. it’s amazing how daring and downright bizarre it is!
Anyway, to do a thorough analysis I cut up the audio of the original score into small clips, labeling each with a stylistic description. (e.g. “mouse chase music” or “angry brass staccato” or “confusing rabbit – ascending chords.” Then I placed these snippets into CollegeHumor’s video as a sort of “texture guide”. I also notated some of the chord progressions – not to duplicate them with my own music, but to learn what kind of progressions Wallace was using to generate each mood.
(CLICK to see clips from the entire scene labeled)
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Then I created an original score, using similar textures and instrumentation. The screenshot below is what my project looked like after finishing.. each of those orange/yellow blocks near the middle represent string parts. I’ve got the woodwinds, brass, and percussion parts minimized (each gray/blue block is an entire group of instruments) and the at the bottom you’ll see the three trumpet parts (played by the amazing Gerald Bailey). I recorded him using two mics at once- a ribbon mic gives the bulk of the sound, and then a large diaphragm condenser room mic is used to capture the brassy “bite” of the sound. In a perfect world I’d have an actual orchestra at my disposal, but to keep things simple and within our budget the rest is covered with Vienna Symphonic Library samples… Except for the “jug” track at the beginning, which I made by blowing into beer bottles filled to various degrees.
(CLICK to zoom)
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Whew!
Now, if you’re really curious, here’s my score + sound design without dialog track so you can hear all the details exposed:
Finally, for comparison, here’s a clip I found on YouTube of the original cartoon (at least until Disney takes it down)- the “Unbirthday Song” starts at 0:32, and regular score starts at 0:54.
How’d I do?
Kudos to everyone else who worked on this: writer Dan Gurewitch, producer Ben Joseph, my old Chicago intern Josh Sauvageau, and of course Snark Rocket for nailing the animation.
This week I thought I’d do a quick write-up of a project completed before I had this blog called “Turn and Smile”. Basically, CollegeHumor asked me to make an 80′s sitcom theme a la Family Matters or Full House with piano, bass, and a scratchy soul singer. So, I listened to a LOT of sitcom themes on youtube, and did my best to incorporate the defining qualities of the genre into the above song.
My friend Hawk Colman is easily one of the best soul singers I know in Chicago and was a no-brainer for the lead vocal. I was dying laughing during the session, as Hawk is a natural with his delivery and knows exactly what lines to really sell and HOW to sell them (e.g. the way he sings “whichyo family” at 0:47, the slight character change at 1:10 for the “grouch” line, the airiness he throws in choice words for the outro at 1:26, etc). Also, when he sings “show’s created by THIS man” at 1:30 we discovered the way to get the perfect take was to have him VERY emphatically point at something when he sings “THIS”.
I remember the main note I gave him was “Hawk, that’s too soulful. Try to sound more like a white guy TRYING to sound like a black guy, and channel Rod Stewart”. And did he ever. I miss him greatly as a friend & musician out here in LA.
Max Crowe expertly laid down several layers of guitar, then I brought in a bunch of my best friends / neighbors for the gang vocals (Max, Alice Wedoff, Johanna Wiesbrock) and instructed them to sing as sitcomy as possible. Lastly, I added plenty of extra layers to stay true to the arranging style of that period: strings, french horn, and OF COURSE plenty of wind chimes.
Kudos to Vince Peone for directing, Dan Gurewitch for the lyrics, and to everyone else at CH for making such a solid video.
Here’s something recent- a song written by Dan Gurewitch, starring Yvonne Strahovsky of Chuck, directed by Vince Peone, and produced by Leigh Myles.
This project had some pretty interesting requirements:
Enter Angela Ingersoll, one the most talented & hard-working singers I’ve worked with so far, below in gaga sunglasses:
In one marathon vocal session (the longest I’ve ever been in) she knocked out FIVE vocal impersonations (this includes a Taylor Swift section which was later cut for logistical reasons). She works really fast- vocal impersonation takes a long time no matter how you slice it. In this case we also had to make sure the characters were distinguishable from one another. Angela was constantly pushing for better and better takes to capture the subtleties of each singer, seemingly tireless even in a high key. As a producer I always hope for musicians with this kind of drive.
The shape-shifting music production was a nice challenge too. As this was very POP I didn’t need a lot of live musicians, but you’ll hear serial session player Max Crowe on guitar for the Katy Perry sections.
I’m very excited to announce that another short I scored for CollegeHumor is up for a Webby Award (considered the “Oscar” of the internet). We’re in a tough battle against a slew of celebrities (Steve Carrell, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bieber to name a few) You can vote for “Grammar Nazis” by clicking HERE.
Sam Reich directed, Vince Peone and Josh Ruben starred. Oh, and hey! My friends at Gloo Studios handled VFX- you might remember their amazing visual work on our winning Pixar Intro Parody last year. Kudos to everyone involved, though- I think it’s one of CH’s best.
Here’s my original write-up on the project from May of last year:
I had a fun time scoring this pitch perfect Inglorious Basterds Parody. I even play a bit of accordion for the intro (a la the Nick Perito piece in the real film) over a whopping 3 chords by regular session player Max Crowe. For the rest of the score we decided on subtle tension building, with a big swell at the end.
Last but not least, huge congrats to my friends Jonathon Grimm and Giancarlo Fiorentini for their nomimation. You can see and vote for “Facebook Ruins Job Interview” here.
p.s. CH has another nomination for Girls are Bad at Sound Effects. Yeah!
This is one of my favorite recent projects, for a few reasons:
First, I got to write all the music and had a good amount of creative freedom. Expert internet humorist Streeter Seidell wrote the meme-packed lyrics and gave some basic direction (a deep sexy voice rapping the verses with occasional singing, a chorus that “swells”, etc). I had fun layering in different stuff to build as the song goes on… pianos, vibes, mellotron, synthesizers, and even brass.
Secondly, I got to work with some great musicians. Will Wheaton is featured in the verses, and seems to have the deepest sexiest voice in LA (he’s subbed for Isaac Hayes on Southpark if that gives you an idea of his caliber). He’s extremely hardworking and nailed all the details.
Singer/actor Matt Geiler is the prominent voice in the chorus and you can also hear him “emoting” throughout the verses. He had me laughing a lot during the session with his spot-on pop adlibs.
I also brought in my friend Greg Nicolett to season the last chorus with trombone and I played some trumpet as well.
Josh Ruben directed the video. Enjoy!
Here’s an early score I did for CH, a little multi-genre challenge.
As I didn’t have any sailors handy, you get to hear my best attempt at some Gilligan’s Island style singing. I used a ribbon mic to make it sound more old-timey, and layered in a whole bunch of Carls to sound like the original.
I love working on animations, and the above sound design + music project was no exception.
I checked out a bunch of dragon ball z clips courtesy of youtube to get a flavor of their sound design. It’s largely a mix of explosions, jets, whooshes, etc. mixed with old-school sci-fi sounds (synthesizers galore!) I’m assuming the sonically dense fight scenes are the reason so many DBZ episodes consist of the characters just standing around grunting… their sound guys just needed some downtime?
The music mostly stays in line with the american DBZ music, which I must say is VASTLY inferior to the original Japanese music. Holy moly. In contrast, the former often sounds like some guy ham-fisting away at a casio.
Other than that, you can also hear me doing some vocalizations e.g. Goku yelling at 1:47 and Piccolo (the green guy) grunting at 2:15- probably the closest I’ll ever get to “acting”.
This project was my introduction to Jersey Shore, which I was quite fortunate to have never previously seen. This amazingly astute Netflix review (thanks reddit) pretty much sums up my feelings on the show 
I have to say, putting a nice huge punch sound in at 2:21 was QUITE satisfying.
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