City Show on iTunes

About four years ago I was hired by my friend Brian Teasley to record the audio content for his GPS navigated tour of NYC. He began marketing and renting the City Show devices about 2 years ago, but since the iPhone and iPods have become equip with GPS, making the tour an app at the iTunes store seems to be a more convenient way of making it more available to those visiting or planning a trip to NYC.

The tour is a wonderful way to get around and learn about New York. Since it knows where you are, the patented Nearby feature automatically alerts the user to information regarding their location.

I enjoyed recording the tour. It is over 200 mp3s of audio information along with music and photos. Hopefully in the near future there will be a demand for other city tours and languages.

If you own an iPhone or and iPod Touch and are planning a trip to NYC or even live here and want to learn more about this great city, you can download the app by searching for:

City Show GPS Tour Guide of New York City

at the App Store on iTunes.

The Wake

This past week I did a short mix for a musical demo entitled "The Wake"
Music by Russ Kaplan
Lyrics by Sara Wordsworth
Book/Story by Russ & Sara

It was really a fun gig. Sounds like it is going to be a really funny show about the sudden death of a dentist who in life turned out to be a cheating spouse and no good father, and after his death his widow and son are determined to seek revenge on his mistress. Along the way they discover that his philandering goes much further than they expected. At least that is what I gathered from the tunes that I mixed. I will be eager to see the show in its entirety.

The tracks were pretty straight forward. Rhythm section of piano, bass, drums, and guitar. Four solo vocalists plus a chorus. Everything was tracked really well which made the mixing go quite smoothly.

Russ seemed very happy with the mixes and is looking forward to hearing good things from his submitting of the demo.

I wish him and Sara the best of luck!

The four songs I mixed will be placed in a Recent Mixes player on my blog shortly.

Snakes and snails and puppydog tails?

So what happens when you mix a purring cat, an outboard motor, a blow torch, a snoring old man, a match strike, bird wings, and a pot of boiling water? Well this week anyway, it all made for a pretty scary sounding monster.

I just did some work on a 30 sec bumper for the 2009 Film Making Frenzy Fantastic Fest bumper competition. http://www.filmmakingfrenzy.com/
The short film titled Boogie Knight features a young boy who slays yet another "Boogie Man" lurking in his closet. It turned out very well, with another great score from Brian Satterwhite which we mixed yesterday as well.

The project was about 12 hours of sound design and some Foley work. Gordon, the director, said "the monsters voice should sound like a flame moving through a tube".

"Ooo K", I thought, and then went to work. Not sure if I captured that exact sound since I didn't want to risk blowing up the studio trying to record a tube full of flames, but he seemed pleased with it out of the eight or more tracks of mixed sounds I used to produce the effect.

The bumper is posted on You Tube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGxwH7tg0o

Or scroll down to the bottom of the blog pages to the Movies player

Desolution

Just finished a quick Foley gig. A well shot 5 min short film titled Desolution. (don't let spell check fool you)

It was nice getting to record some sfx again. Some of them realistic and some more artistic. Nothing too crazy, but there is a scene in the movie where the main character is shaving his face in a partial slow motion sequence, and the director wanted the effect to be bigger than life, as if the sound is in the character's mind. So with a bit of reverb and close miking I think I captured it. Good thing I had not shaved yet.

I uploaded the files last night and I hope they like the work that I've done. It would be nice if this leads to more work like this as I enjoy Foley and sound design. Though it does make it difficult to watch movies as I am always listening and wondering what the Foley artist did to create the desired effect.

What Film Composers Already Knew

I found this article about how scientist confirm that it is scarier to listen to a horror film music or scary music in general with your eyes closed than it is with your eyes open.

Duh! Just think how lame horror flicks would be without music. You know that the blood you see on the screen is fake, but it's the music that asks, "is it"?

Dig it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090730/sc_livescience/scarymusicscarierwitheyesclosed

Irony

I know this really has nothing to do with recording or drumming, but I just saw an ad on TV. It was starring the late Billy Mays , may he rest in peace. The ad was of course, for iCan health insurance.

Which reminds me I still need to get some if it ever really becomes affordable.

Kinda Cool

A friend sent this to me this week. Quite a fun way of being percussive. I've played in ensembles like this a couple of times, but this is the most interesting I've seen in a while.

Now what?

Well when it rains it pours. I'm not complaining, but last week I had nothing going on, this week I've had a 8 1/2 hour book to edit, two gigs, two movie scores to mix, an hour long file to edit and five songs to mix. All due within about a weeks time. Geesh!

It has been worth it though. Mixed a short 10 cue film for Brian called Funky Pickles. Lots of interesting sounds and quirkiness. I can only imagine what images this music is reinforcing. Really looking forward to seeing it.

Hopefully things will stay busy, but that is always to be seen.

Yeah I hear you saying, "Well gee Matt, why are you wasting time blogging?"

Good question. Guess I'll get back to work.

The Retelling

For the last week I have been mixing cues for a feature length horror film, The Retelling. Brian Satterwhite, the composer, sends me cues in Logic and I mix them and then I stream them over the internet for his approval. The system works very well using the program, Nicecast. It allows me to broadcast straight from Logic at a bit rate of 128Kbps and higher as well as a sample rate of 48kHz. so Brian pretty much hears the mixes as I hear them.

It has been a very interesting score to mix. I enjoy the elements of mixing for film but especially horror films. Mainly because instruments don't need to sound or we don't want them to sound as they normally would in most other musical situations. I might eq a cello in a rather unconventional way or add fx to it, to make it sound particularly unusually, or in this case frightening.

Also having not yet had the opportunity to see the film I rely a lot on Brian to convey what he needs the mix to sound like so that it fits well with picture. Hearing particular percussion hits and melodies keep me curious as to how these subtle and sometimes not so subtle notes and motifs are supposed to emphasize and support the scenes in the film. It is always interesting and exciting to see the completed film with the score mixed.

So far we are staying on schedule and should have the mix wrapped up by the July 10th deadline.

Hello

Welcome to the new and under renovation www.mattcrawford.net.

In hopes of better marketing myself, and ease of web design, I have pointed my website to my new blog. I am anticipating easier navigation for visitors and to become more accessible to associates, future clients, and the just plain curious.

I look forward to building this site/blog into a fun and profitable endeavor.

Matt