Rick Reifenstein

It's been very busy at Reifenstein House. My kids are involved in a local stage play, as well as a few sports teams. Seems like rehearsals and practices are coming together as a perfect storm, fighting for time. But the play is a good thing and gives the kids a chance to experience that which was a big part of my life over ten years ago. At one time theater production was my main focus outside music. As fate would have it have also gotten involved by agreeing to be the sound designer and engineer. Of course that's not all that's going on. I am currently writing and recording music for a meditation series by award winning author and leading authority on health and wellness issues Dr. Kathy Gruver. I've known Kathy since college and have composed music for her for some of her other projects. I like the project because it allows me really dive deep into slow evolving and layered synthesizer patches. Something I always have enjoyed creating. Of course I am continuing to w...

March 3 brought sleet and snow to Central Virginia; causing UVA to cancel classes and allowing non-essential personnel to stay home. So I'm using today to get sound cues ready for a community theater production my kids are involved with. It's been years since I put together sound FX for a theatrical production so it's a nice little diversion from the production music I've been writing lately. I have been recording a lot of production music lately. Right now I have three pieces currently in various states of being done. It's typically how I compose lately. I'll work on one to a certain point, leave to rest, while I move to another piece. Then I go back and tweak the previous one with fresher ears. This keeps me from "burning out" on a piece. If your ears are tired, then you can't hear anything new. The recent spark of creativity is largely due to my sample collection getting a nice big boost from some recent additions to the collection. The additi...

I spent much of the day working in the studio. One major orchestral piece and one little quartet piece. Brass, Strings, Woodwinds, and Moog, making a dramatic racket for sure. In the end it all got under control. Moog photo bombs over my shoulder.

We are deep into Autumn here in Central Virginia. Leaves have turned color and most trees have completely lost their leaves by now. Autumn has always been a time of creativity for me. I'm not sure why. It might be the cold weather giving me a good reason to stay in my cozy, warm family home, brew coffee and spend time in the studio. What ever the reason this Fall has been no exception. Since August I've been working on the Autumn collection of music to add to my Jingle Punks catalogue. Many of these pieces were from the play list of new music that I performed at the 2013 Living Dead Festival in Evans City Pa.  I've been making various alternative mixes to include in the catalogue. It's important to make various mixes for production music so as to allow for different passages and or instrumentation to come into the foreground and thus change the feel and character. It also can allow for easier editing for a show. One thing that has changed with the latest music is that...

Even though I'm on a mini vacation this week; it occurred to me that the XBox one is another example of Microsoft being ahead of the rest again. How? As I was thinking about my own home technology I was reminded of the many Media Center PC's that we made that looked like home theater components, ran Windows Media Center, and managed online and broadcast TV. Unfortunately at the time online content was very limited. You could record and playback recorded tv. Remember the commercials? "Yeaaah cloud". But at the time no one wanted a PC in their living room and connected to there tv. You could however link your XBox 360 to your computer running Windows Media Center and see Netflix, recorded tv, pictures, etc. XBox 1 is what you get when you combine a media center PC and the XBox 360. The difference now is there is a lot more online content. 

I had some good sessions in the studio this weekend. I didn't have much of a plan. I fired up drum machine and just jammed. One piece took shape on Saturday evening that started out as a retro-computer game sounding piece. But after writing the main melody riff on keyboard using a distorted analogue synth sound; I decided to find out what it sounded like played with an electric guitar. The piece suddenly took a turn into the realm of an anime soundtrack or something from a Power Rangers show. The riff was catchy and I ended up wanting to play it through several different amps and in different harmonies which ended up creating a huge wall of guitars. I may still go back and lay in some of the original analogue synth playing the melody. I brought in my 6 year old son to see what he thought of the song since it was the type of music and TV shows he watches. He loved it! Guess I'll need to download it to his music player. I don't like to pound away to much on one composition ...

Whew! Closing 2012 and opening 2013 was filled with lot's going on. In December I was contacted by Gary Streiner asking me if I was available to score a short film, "Dayplanner of the Dead", which just lost the original composer. Even though I was about to move into an new studio, I agreed to contact the director. The director sent me a rough cut of the film and some temp tracks. At first I wasn't sure I was the right composer for the job after listening to some temp tracks sent by the director; but I liked the film and I wanted to do a horror/comedy so I sent some samples of my usual stuff. After hearing my work he assured me that if I just went ahead and composed it my way it would sound great! So I accepted the gig and got to work. I wanted to stay with the flavor of the temp tracks. These tracks would remind one of a quirky haunted Appalachian  or haunting circus music. So I locked on to some key instruments like a dulcimer, snare drum, brass, piano and violin; ...