JOHN HERMAN: This song made a fascinating little journey to completion. It was a real monster. For a moment, the first artist suggested that we scrap what he'd done as it been such a struggle, but I kept the song moving through different people. The song made diverse stops on the way to its conclusion and now I envision a great monster being worshiped by a primitive people. The title suddenly becomes strange and dark, but the song is still a calming experience.

CHALLENGE #1: Go to http://archive.org and watch a silent film called The Dog Factory. If this is not possible, then seek and discover another silent short. Create a soundtrack on keyboards that best fits the story of the film.

Still from The Dog Factory (1904)

SEAN HURLEY: After reading the official first email and watching my assignment, the 1904 Thomas Edison film, “The Dog Factory”, which I was to charged with scoring, I went to the attic to fetch my old, awful, time destructed Roland S-50 keyboard. I don’t know when it came out, but I think in the early 90’s. The electronics have been degrading every “synth”. Haha..ug…no more puns. But I’m always hopeful! I’m the sort of person who imagines that broken cups mend themselves in the night. So I set the old S-50 up and loaded up the piano floppy. Not good. But, some of the keys worked and the volume variability problem seemed in remission. Maybe I would have a few minutes of playability!

I more formally set the S-50 up right in front of my monitor so I could “do a really good job”. I was immediately faced with a long period of static, crackling, and a great loss of keys. Pressing them down yielded haywire plonks. I went quickly to Ebay and began looking through the keyboards for sale.

After much Ebaying and web research on keyboards, etc, I decided to head in the direction of Korg. Triton Le’s are going for 699 and everyone seems to like them. I should note here – I’ve been wanting a new keyboard for a long time and I do have some other uses for it: this all to say that I was feeling guilty. I hardly ever buy anything and when I do, my body temperature climaxes at well over 200 degrees Kelvin.

I went to Daddy’s Junky Music to check out their stuff.

Then Ted Herbert’s Music Mart. (anyone know the link?)

Then Guitar Center.

The best keyboard display, by the way, can be found at Guitar Center in Nashua. A lot of boards to play, easily accessible, with nice help. At Ted Hebert’s I stumbled across the Yamaha YPG625 – and may I say here: Dear World: Please stop naming things with letters and numbers. Please start naming all products after the fashion of the car and drug industry. It’s very hard to remember these letter and number combinations. Why not just call it the “Yamaha McBeal”. Very easy to remember. Thank you.” The “McBeal”, as I will now call it, is a full 88 key standalone piano/synth. The keys felt really nice, almost too heavy, but I like that. I messed with it for a while and remembered how much I loved playing piano when I was a kid. We never had a piano but I knew where there were 3 or 4 I could play. One was at the local swimming club. I went to the club pretty much to play the piano. I don’t think my playing has improved much – but I realize now that not playing well is fine. Back then I felt a little ashamed and wished I could play the most complicated piece and be handed chocolates when I was finished. With this in mind, I began thinking about my son, Sam. I thought he’d probably dig a piano-like object, rather than an ice-cube tray Korg X50 (or, as I call it “The Bugaboo”).

So I got the McBeal. Set it up. Watched Dog Factory again (or as those in charge of naming might call it, “Film HGY011”) and started tapping out some possibilities.

Musically, as might be expected, I started out thinking “jingley jangley cantina piano”. Just really right up the middle to go along with how I remembered really old silent movie soundtracks. I quickly gathered that I no talent for imitating the old style soundtrack.

Next idea: I would follow the narrative and gesture musically. A new character entering would be accompanied by a certain sound, the dog turning into sausage would be accompanied by a certain sound…Reference music.

I learned for the second time, that my skill level does not accommodate such accompaniment. At this point, I realized that I really didn’t like The Dog Factory. It’s old and that gives it perfect historic validity – but it’s not an enjoyable film. It’s an accessory to the concept of cinema itself. Sort of a “Look what we can do” kind of movie. So then I thought I’d back up and pretend that the film itself was dead. It had died. And now I had to write some dirge. What I came up with, to me, sounds like Philip Glass meets Kenny G. I will not complain about it. It is fine. I still have technical problems. I could not, for example, figure out how to directly download my song from the keyboard to the PC and I could not figure out how to separate the tracks. So all I submitted was the Rough Mix. At any rate – I had a very nice time making the song…

CHALLENGE #2: Compose a trumpet track to compliment or mirror the saxophone in the attached song. This song is a dirge, bemoaning someone or something that has passed.

ROBBY RITTER: When i first heard the song, i wasnt too thrilled. I listened to it through once and heard the trumpet part in my head. To be honest, i didnt work on it until the day it was due. I had been listening to Broken Social Scene the day before and heard a trumpet part through a delay pedal and it sounded really cool, i thought i would try that for this song. After doing so i had my mom listen to it and she said it sounded too distorted, so i just took it out and left the clean trumpet part. It goes well with the saxophone, i think. Although i did not really like this song, i think the trumpet part fits and the songs sounds good, i can't wait to hear the finish product.

CHALLENGE #3: Please add a vocal track to the attached song. You cannot use words, but rather treat your voice like another instrument. Picture a social scene between the saxophone, the trumpet, and you.

FRANK:
I believe I'm beginning to understand some of the quirks of making music for somebody else to work on. I had a lot of fun making odd vocal sounds for this one. I've got to acknowledge a debt to Meredith Monk in my approach, but I think the editing after the fact kept it from being derivative. I really liked the way it came out - I might work on the source material myself some more as the basis for a piece. We shall see.

CHALLENGE #4: Please add a melodic vocal track to the attached song. The vocal must come in after the saxophone but before the trumpet. You cannot use words, but rather treat your voice like another instrument. Picture a social scene between the saxophone, the trumpet, and you.

ERNESTO BURDEN:
This one came at a tough time -- between Christmas and work I was out straight. I sat down with it on Christmas Eve after mulling for a week and came up with the vocal melody as it appears in the final track. It felt Native American, tribal, I guess, though not intentionally so at first. The t/ch sound seemed like a natural rhythmic fit, like punctuation. In the mixdown, I added plate reverb to the voice and I think that works well, makes it feel a little softer, and a little more like it's rising up out of the earth. Plus it hides some of the natural and immediately apparent shortcomings of my vocals. The reverb isn't on the raw vocal track - but
I'd be glad if it worked its way back into the final mix down. After I recorded it Christmas Eve I realized I'd gotten the levels on the mic way too low. Bad cable. I redid it Wednesday (tonight) and am sending it on.

JON BRIGGS: ENGINEER'S NOTE: We had some fun with this one. We cut up the strange vocal noises and used them to create a monster sound. This leads into the keyboard part. I added electric sitar and doubled the saxophone melody line on melodica. Then John and I added some harmony vocals to Erneto's track to create a sort of tribal chorus.