Spent the holidays finishing the score for Return of the Killer Shrews. Shrews is a crazy comedy/ horror sequel to the 1959 film The Killer Shrews and features a really great cast including John Schneider, James Best, and Bruce Davison. The final mix of the film begins tomorrow (Jan. 3), so my fingers are crossed that all goes well. There are also additional songs and tiki tracks from Gary Griffin (who was the keyboardist / musical director for several Beach Boys tours) and Dean Torrence (Jan and Dean). There is talk of a soundtrack CD – so I hope they decide to include some of the score. Great fun, hard work, and I’m glad it’s over. Now, on to 2012. Happy New Year!

Finishing up the music for Super Shark. I’ve had a blast writing this score.

Nice review of the Puppetmaster Soundtrack Collection in the January issue of Film Music Magazine. Glad I finally made it in there…it only took 10 or 15 years!

January 2011 Soundtrack Picks – Film Music Magazine

In 1998, I was asked to contribute four cues to the latest installment in the Puppet Master series for Full Moon Pictures – Curse of the Puppet Master or Puppet Master 6 as it is sometimes known. They didn’t have much money for an original score, so director David DeCoteau asked if I would score four scenes and the rest of the film would be tracked with Richard Band’s previous Puppet Master scores. They sent the 3/4″ tapes of the film from their studios in LA (I was here in Houston) and Dave and I discussed over the phone where he wanted music to go. Richard’s music was not on the 3/4″ tapes – so I went out and bought a couple of his CDs and rented a Puppet Master movie to familiarize myself with his style of writing. I only had about a week to write the cues and have them back in LA for post. It was a strange job trying to make my music fit with Richard’s and still do my own thing. The recording and mixing of the cues had to be done in one day and not with my normal mixer / engineer / good friend Dan Workman. Dan was always there to help me through the final crazed stages of completing and delivering a score and always did a great job mixing them – but this time was not available. Once the mix was finished, I overnighted the final mix to LA. I later found out that they had decided not to use my opening cue. So, I put the tapes away, moved on to the next project, and never listened to the music again… until roughly ten years later when I received a call (or e-mail) from Robin Esterhammer with Perseverance Records.

As these weird works of fate would have it, Robin wanted to release all of the Puppet Master scores as a boxed set soundtrack collection and asked if he could include my cues. I wasn’t crazy about the original mixes – so some sort of remix was in order. Robin and I had agreed that the music should not be rewritten in any way – but I knew I could make it sound better than it did. So I combined my original midi files using the latest orchestral samples in my library (which are so much better than what I had in 1998) with the original multi tracks from the film. I was much happier with the music at this point and then everything went quiet and I didn’t hear from Robin for almost two years.

Finally, sometime in early 2010, Robin contacted me and said the project was back on. I pulled the tracks back out again, made sure everything was okay, and booked studio time. Andy Bradley and I did the mix at Sugar Hill Studios (sugarhillstudios.com) in April of 2010 and I was pleased with how they came out. The tracks sounded much richer and robust and were more in line with how I wanted them in the first place. I think if I were to score the film today – I would probably have written them a little different, maybe better – but that goes with the territory of being a writer or a composer I suppose. Now, these four tracks are being released to the world and  I am super pleased and grateful, especially to Robin, to be a part (a very small part) of this collection. The five CD boxed set contains all of the music from the Puppet Master films and includes music by Richard Band, John Massari, and Peter Bernstein with extensive liner notes by Austin-based film composer Brian Satterwhite and is available through the Perseverance Records website perseverancerecords.com and many online soundtrack distributors.

I have been involved in so many different projects over the past couple of months – that instead of posting each one separately, I’ll do a quick rundown of them here.

First off, I scored a six minute promo for an animated feature film that (due to a non-disclosure agreement) I can’t talk about. The film looks awesome and maybe one day I can post what I did.

Next up, my good friend / producer/ musician Dan Workman and I completed a 60 and 30 second spot for a Jeff Davis Bank commercial. The spot is being produced by ZenFilm (zenfilm.com) under the direction of Ross Wells. They wanted something sort of hip-hopish and modern to appeal to a younger demographic. Ross came up with the lyrics and we put them to music. Dan brought in a couple of great vocalists to complete it and BAM! we were done. I’ll post it in the “television” listening section if you want to check it out.

And finally, I scored three different medical documentary shorts for David Thompson at ttweak. Two were for Texas Children’s Hospital and one for the Bluebird Circle Clinic. Chris Nelson edited one of the TCH docs and John Gremillion did the other TCH doc and the Bluebird piece. Beautiful work by everyone involved.

This DHL commercial was a super quick turnaround I did in late September for Bayou City Productions (bayoucityinc.com). It’s a 30 second broadcast spot mainly targeted to Latin American television and airports in the US. The spot features a sort of virtual airplane zooming to several countries around the world within a very short amount of time. The client wanted some sort of musical ID for each country and I only had about 1-2 seconds for each one. It was a challenge and I had about two days to complete it. The spot turned out well and the client was pleased.