JOHN HERMAN: This song has a fascinating evolution. I really enjoy the twists and turns with inspiration deeply rooted in history and popular culture. It should be noted that there is a bonus challenge at the end. What we did was take a track from the song "Robotmeo" and added it to this song. The track by Ezekiel Alexander inspired "Robotmeo" even though it does not appear in it. It fit much better here as you can hear. I guess that makes "My Fair Lady Cleopatra" and "Robotmeo" sibling songs.

CHALLENGE #1: Choose a movie you believe people should see. Ignoring the existing soundtrack, record a beat to accompany a scene. The track length must match the scene length.

RYAN BAKER: I own very little in the way of DVDs, as my wife and I have moved around quite a bit this year (as we are fugitives) and we sold most of them. Netflix has been tied up with Seasons of Lost and Dune. What's a guy to do if he don't have a copy of his favorite life changing films that everyone should see cause they will change your life and stuff?

I know...I'll grab my sister-in-law's DVD player and whatever DVD is in there will be the movie (thank you john cage ). Then I got to thinking...should I score something (cause I've done some film scoring) and I thought...NO ...too much work. This is supposed to be fun and honestly, if it takes too dang long to pop a track off it takes time from my own shit. Then I was thinking maybe I could take some dialogue and convert it to MIDI and then make that the drum beat (I've been experimenting with doing this with mixed results on some of my own songs) inspired, kind of, by this. So I chose a dialogue heavy section of the emperor speaking in revenge of the sith (now everyone knows I'm a big starwars dork but honestly...I picked up the portable dvd player my sister-in-law has and the dvd that was in there was episode III...I SWEAR its a movie only people who are interested in computer animation or hammy acting should see) and I dumped it into the DAW and then got frustrated...again...WAY too long to do that. So I threw that (along with the dialogue track) out entirely.

SO then I just brought in some drums and synth stuff...watched the scene...cut my sounds up, added in some samples of my voice, processed it, cut it up, processed it, worked on it some, added some other stuff, listened to it...added some stuff repeat... ended up sort of scoring the scene anyways. tried to crash the computer (which is always the goal)...and then I finished.

CHALLENGE #2: Compose a bass line and electric guitar track for the song attached. Your challenge is to capture the essence of revenge. For your consideration, here is a link to revenge in art and culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge#Revenge_in_art_and_culture

JON BRIGGS:
I checked the wikipedia article and found it to be laced with too many Batman: The Animated Series references. As a result, I ended up just thinking about the concept of revenge. It ended up being (surprise, surprise) a metal track. This was recorded simply and quickly. I'm not satisfied with the rough mix I provided, but it should do the job. This is a typical recording: hard panned stereo metal guitars and a clangy tinny lightly distorted bass. It would sound a lot better with a proper mix, which I'm sure will happen at some point. See the notes for more details:

I used my custom all aluminum guitar for the guitar tracks and my Travis Bean TB-2000 for the bass track. Both of these instruments have a unique sound (as well as weighing a ton).

CHALLENGE #3: Choose an empress from history. The time period and culture is your choosing. Record a vocal track that dramatically tells through song an engaging, true story from the life of the emperor. Your vocal track should make up no more than 1/2 of the length of the total track, and it should reflect the tone and energy of the existing track.

VYVYVY: This is the hardest challenge yet. I have a rough mix of a "metal" song in which I will do vocals to while telling a story about an empress… Ummm… I suck at world history this is honestly out of my realm, but I asked for it. Luckily, I have smart friends who know about world history … I am gonna be myself and see what happens. I am learning so much because I have little knowledge of this… I sent
out a text and got a lot of responses. I'm taking this from Cleopatra's viewpoint… I am female, and well, here goes… (Luckily, when I was a little girl, I watched the movie Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor over and over again with my grandmother. Imagination is everything with this one.)

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed in the lyricism are strictly imaginary and written to tell the story of the
life of Cleopatra in less than four minutes… ?

Lyrics are done, and now practice. I have a head cold, and my alto-mezzo range just dropped some more, and the rasp is thicker than usual… So, circumstance prevails. I have some cool ideas to bulk this song up. It's missing the thickness of bass parts… I guess that those can be added later too… Who knows?
Darn it… Audio problems recording… Gotta start over!

Uggghhh… Well, this is interesting as I would not normally choose this style song for
myself and I did the best I could with it. I don't know if it's a likeable song, but I do like the story telling. I hope that this is okay… This is definitely making me feel a little insecure, as it has taken me out of my comfort zone. I was gonna do a bunch of vocal layers but with time constraints, I resorted to simplicity and of course the use of effects to thicken the vocals. I prefer them dry and doubled with harmonies normally, but this is it… Anyhow, I hope that at least the storytelling is compelling… (hee, hee, I made a
rhyme)… Remixing may have to be done to this one… Done…

Link #1

Link #2

BONUS CHALLENGE: Using found objects, toys, and anything beautiful small and subtle to create a thirty second track that in some way depicts a nursary rhyme of your choosing.

EZEKIEL ALEXANDER: When I was about 9, I had a little one-speaker, built-in microphone cassette recorder. I used to make my own radio shows, capturing songs off the radio. I also made sound effects for playing with ActionMan and G.I. Joe (and secretly, my sister's Barbie doll). I used it to make soundtracks for the puppet shows I put on with my stuffed animals. I also used it to record my first ever album, on violin and singing, for my grandmother who lived on the other side of the world in England. I didn't really practice the violin, and didn't know the words to most of the songs, but I gave them a good go anyhow. When I visited my grandmother 10 years later, many of the villagers smirked as they said, "ah, the musician." I didn't understand why. When I visited a couple of years ago, she returned the tape to me, with the comment that my rendition of London Bridge is falling down sounds like it really was falling apart. So, that was the source of inspiration for a piece I'm working on (secretly with some other people). I have a craptastic little mini-piano that I bought at a Cala Grocery store in San Francisco, and one of the little sheets of music is "London Bridge is Falling Down".

So I recorded two takes of it, purposely altering the rhythm to try to recapture the awfulness of the tape, layered them together, copied and reversed one of the tracks, then took these 3 tracks and time shifted them so they were the same duration. I also added an out-of-step drum beat to it.