Spooky Birthday Party for kids and late night in the studio...

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Saturday was Morgan's birthday party. She wanted a halloween theme this year so we had spooky music and sounds; Amie made creepy spooky food. Emily made great decorations and all the kids had a lot of fun. 

In the studio we had the rough video come in from Gary Streiner early Saturday. I started working on it Saturday night; then it it really heavy Sunday. I had already had a piece completed that I added more instrumentation to as well as some sound effects. Adding the new instruments and their parts as well as the sound FX took longer than expected. By 9;30pm I had something to send up to Gary back in Evans City. We had a meeting over Skype at 10pm. We went over what I sent, listened to it with picture. The music and sound FX together in the beginning seemed too much and the sound FX during the first part of the video was not fitting with the feel that Gary wanted. The pictures were of the cast and producers of the film; starting with George Romero and going through the cast. Gary wanted something that was less horror. While it should remain spooky there should be a certain "heroic" quality. We listened to some parts of the "Night of the Living Dead" to listen to some of the cues in the film. The whole video soundtrack needed to be more orchestrated. After the meeting I sat down with the video picture and created a whole new score for the beginning. Changing the time signature from 4/4 to 3/4 added a serious and uptempo needed to add energy. Staying in a minor key kept it spooky. Think Elfman and "Nightmare Before Christmas". However now when it came to the big cresendo that accompanies the first shot of the poster for the movie it didn't work. The rest of the piece was written in 4/4 and had a total B Movie feel. The video score had changed to something more modern but just as spooky. SO...I rewrote the whole thing. By 2am I had a pretty complete piece for strings, brass, english horns, flutes, and percussion. I sent it off the Gary and slowly crept upstairs to bed. Gary liked the piece although asked if I could "thicken" the second part a bit. I'll work on that tonight after a discussion with him. The video is been locked in today so anything I add will have to fit in the time of the video. That's cool.  

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