Original Score For Dogtown Ranch Documentary

I recently had the pleasure of scoring a short documentary about Dogtown Ranch, an animal shelter east of Austin, Texas.

Dogtown Ranch Sanctuary Rescue and Rehab promotes education and training for persecuted and misunderstood bully breeds, but accepts all canine breeds in crisis, dogs needing to get off the streets and dogs needing to be rescued from euthanasia lists, and abusive situations.

Here’s the video:

And if you’d like to donate, you can do that, here.

Both tracks featured in the video are available for licensing, now:
Contemplation, Shelter

Shadowater Music Featured in Bronco Roads

Mysterio‘, one of the very first Shadowater Music tracks, was placed in the “Slim Pickin’s” episode of Bronco Roads, earlier this year. It was used for a segment detailing the history of Spanish American cowboys, the Vaqueros.

Mysterio‘ comes in at the 5:00 minute mark, but feel free to watch the whole episode.

Bronco Roads – 2.16 – “Slim Pickin’s” – Bandera, Texas from 41 Entertainment on Vimeo.

A Site Better

Wrong AJAX

I made some changes to the old website last week.

Most of the updates are code base and custom admin panel related and therefore invisible, but the music page got a nifty reworking. I took some of the stress off the page loads by switching to the Stratus SoundCloud player. Now, there’s just one player at the bottom, rather than a separate player for each track.

I also switched out the track navigation in favor of dynamically loading new tracks with jQuery/AJAX. On a side note, the Stratus player isn’t currently able to handle dynamically loaded track links, so I had to grab a copy and update it myself to handle them.

I am wizard.

Image Source: Wikipedia

The Music is New

Here’s that new music I was promising a few weeks ago.

It’s three tracks in three different styles: Rock, Alternative, and Flamenco-ish (who can categorize these things, really?).

‘Let’s Do This’ is a straight ahead rock track with some heavy drums and bass.

‘Two Ways To Get There’ is an acoustic oriented piece built around an interesting chord progression that my fingers found all by themselves while improvising.

‘Villa Maria’ is me once again expressing my love for the classical guitar, traditional Latin music, and the harmonic minor scale.

Hello Again

Hey everyone,

First off, I need to post more often, and I’m working on it; I promise.

Second, I’m a couple of weeks away from sharing a few new tracks, tracks that I’ll be using to introduce myself to a particular music library. No pressure.

Third, I’ve had a blast performing, composing, and mixing in my new studio room over the last year. Being able to trust what your ears are hearing saves a ton of time and just makes life more fun.

Finally, the latest episode of Pensado’s Place features Castle/Buffy/The Unit composer Robert Duncan. I enjoyed the interview (especially the junk yard music store segment), so I thought I’d share:

And…that’s it.

Sounds Like A Plan

The foam is on the wall

So, I’ve had a busy couple of months.

The wife* and I purchased a house in mid December of last year, the culmination of months of online searching and real world touring. There were all kinds of practical reasons why we needed to do this (our now 16 month old daughter becoming self-propelled, record low interest rates, wet bars, etc.), but we all know the real reason anyone buys a house: larger, dedicated studio space!

After getting moved and settled in, I set to work on turning the back bedroom into my new recording/composing studio.
The room has a walk in closet, perfect for isolating computer noise and storing extra equipment.

A Closet, I mean “equipment room”.

 

A little paint:

Before and after painting
Before And After

I went with Shadowater colors, of course.

The dimensions of the space weren’t bad, acoustically speaking. There was some obvious flutter echo among other things, so I worked with Auralex Acoustics to make the room sound better and bigger than it actually is. Here’s what they came up with:

Auralex analysis
We could have foam EVERYWHERE!
Two stacks of acoustic foam
No, seriously. Everywhere.

 

A couple weeks after placing the order with Sweetwater Sound, two giant boxes arrived on the door step, and with it, several days worth of physical labor (not to mention the requisite candy).

 

 

Peg Board And Foam
A more civilized solution

The standard installation method for the acoustic foam is to mount it directly to the walls with Auralex’s TubeTak liquid adhesive. We plan on being in this house for the foreseeable future, but I (not to mention my wife) wasn’t too excited about permanently modifying the walls of our new investment, so I watched an episode of Macgyver, then came up with the idea of gluing columns of foam to 4′ X 6″ strips of peg board, which could then be hung like picture frames onto the walls. For the ceiling and corner bass traps, I went with industrial strength velcro. The room sounds great, now.  Looks pretty good, too:

The foam is on the wall
Success.

 

Front of House

 

Wall of Sound 

*The wife took the great pictures, too.

Give The People What They Want

Directors Want Credits

Composer Deane Ogden is in the middle of an illuminating series of blog posts called Essential Skills of a Modern Day Film Composer which, as the title suggests, has the goal of identifying and improving the skills needed for getting and keeping work as a film composer.

There are three parts so far, but I’m focusing on Part 2, What Directors Want From Their Composers. Built from an anonymous survey of a handful of directors, it offers some great insights into their mindsets and approaches to music in their films and touches on everything from what they look for in potential composers to the drawbacks of temp scoring.

Filled with direct quotes and pretty pie charts, it’s a great read, not just for film composers, but for anyone interested in the collaborative creative process.

Current Project + A Little Improv

I’m currently working on a project I’ve given the working title ‘Conversational Guitar’. It’s a collection of instrumentals featuring electric guitar and ethnic percussion. It will either find a home with a production library or be the first release on my new publishing label, Jason Savell Music. Should be finishing up sometime in August.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a little guitar improvisation I recorded while working out a tone for the second track of CG. It’s called ‘When In Doubt, Improvise’. Thanks for listening.

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Trailer Music 101

Variety has posted an interesting article on the basics and trends of trailer music. It features quotes from several editors, music supervisors, and production libraries. Thought it was worth sharing.

Trailer shops cue music: Unique sound brands movies

Trailers for big, glossy tentpole movies typically deliver a booming symphonic score or operatic choral sounds to convey an epic feeling, though the downside to such larger-than-life bombast is the ring of overfamiliarity. The teaser trailer for “Battle: Los Angeles,” on the other hand, broke with convention by using the sparse, eerie tune “The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black” from techno musician Johann Johannsson that played over wordless human action. It’s among the nominees for a Golden Trailer award.

I Fought the Law…

My newest track, Most Wanted, got its first licensed use last week. The full track is being featured in a PR video for a police department. I guess I always knew the law was going to catch up with it; I just didn’t think it would happen this fast.