Back in the Fall, I blogged about an amazingly fun project that I’ve been writing juicy, fully orchestrated and grandiose scores for (albeit with cheese-ball MIDI sounds) called Voyage Trekkers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the web series, to oversimplify, imagine a Star Trek meets Star Wars meets Galaxy Quest meets Arrested Development space-fantasy where the politically incorrect and error-prone Voyage Trekkers crew keeps messing up space-missions and putting their own space-priorities before the space-well-being of others. To better illustrate this, watch one of my favorite episodes — called Birthday Surprise — from Season One (it’s less than 3 minutes long):

Since the release a few months ago, the project has received an amazing amount of support and enthusiasm here in Arizona and now writer/director Nathan Blackwell is plotting the misadventures of the crew for Season Two. Among one of the more exciting things to show up in the second season is the desire to build a spaceship “bridge.” You know, a bridge — it’s that cool room where all the action takes place, where the captain sits and gives space-orders, and where all the cool 1970’s computer-y junk is.

Well, that said, cool “bridges” don’t come cheap which is why the Voyage Trekkers team has launched their own online fundraiser aimed at making their bridge as cool as possible. One can make a donation for as little as $5, or for $20, you get a friggin’ cool DVD to the complete first season! There has already been tremendous support — as you can see by that big bold number on the right — but with hopes that this might spark interest in some kind of feature length project someday, every dollar helps to make Season Two dressed to impress. Filmmakers in Arizona are already masters of shoestring budgets so you can bet your contribution will go a long way… like, maybe even, like, a few light years… but don’t take my word for it:

For my own contribution to the second season, I’m hoping to collaborate with a university orchestra to record some live cues for the series, and hopefully, at the least, the Voyage Trekkers Main Theme. How cool would that be?? Bridge + Live Orchestra = Crazy Awesome Space Adventure Good Time Great Job.

This week was an amazing week of traveling. The first stop was North Mesquite High School where their director, Jeff Jones, and the North Mesquite marching band has been preparing an “all Markowski” show called “Out There - Music from Beyond the Mark.” Like I mentioned in my last post, their show included music from Out There, Shine, Sitting, and Shadow Rituals, all fantastically arranged by composer/arranger Ryan Janus.

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten a lot better at knowing what to say about my own music in front of different ensembles, but when “points” and “moving your feet” and these things called “sets” are involved, I have to retrain myself a little bit. Marching bands are great (though I skipped out on this in high school), but I think it’s really easy to forget how musical they can actually be (which, I’m sure is no easy feat when 100+ pages of drill is involved).

In Texas, there are lots of marching band experts who know the game well, so my approach was to coach the students exactly as if they were performing their show indoors in a more concert-like setting. That is, I wanted to concentrate on more subtle aspects of the music that were not necessarily on the page, such as bigger phrasing ideas, blending, and knowing exactly what melody or idea to listen for. The group was incredibly receptive to my ideas, and I’m really anxious to see (and hear) how these ideas affect their next marching competition.

With less than 12 hours to sleep and repack in Arizona, I flew next to San José State University where Dr. Edward Harris and the San José State University Wind Ensemble were preparing to perform one of my newest compositions, Dreamland. Dr. Harris has programmed much of my music with his ensembles over the last few years, including performing Turkey in the Straw with the San José Wind Symphony, Tidal Forces with a San José Summer Music Camp, and has made a fantastic recording of Instinctive Travels which you can listen to here on my website. And now, he has done me a big favor to help produce a great new recording of Dreamland which I will post here soon!

The piece calls for a Fender Rhodes electric piano, as a timbre to pay homage to artist Gary Wilson, and while almost all synthesizers these days have a Rhodes patch, I totally dorked out at the sight of an actual Mark II Rhodes Stage Piano! Here’s to you, Gary!

It’s definitely been a big week. Walden even premiered the same night as the Dreamland performance so I will post that recording, too, as soon as Lawrence Stoffel at CSU Northridge sends it to me. It’s going to be hard for this next week to top the last.

This season of Voyage Trekkers is nearing its end, and episode seven — The Clutches of General Kang — is the most musical yet! (Download an mp3 of the score here!) I know I’ve blogged about this web series a lot lately, mostly because it’s been a lot of fun having a weekly composition assignment to fulfill. I’ve written in the past about how I’ve been able to turnaround these short scores, often overnight, but Nathan made sure I had a couple of extra days with how involved this particular homage to Flash Gordon was supposed to be. So in that respect, it took about three days.

I really respect Nathan as a director because he is able to communicate how he wants the music to feel without using musical terms. It seems that many film directors don’t know much about music and are lost when it comes to words like crescendo or stab, but I’m not convinced that directors would necessarily benefit from picking up a music dictionary. On the contrary, I think this could open up an opportunity for directors to try and write through a composer rather than simply letting the composer write.

This is why I love Nathan. Instead of giving me specific music-related notes, he gives me fun, metaphorical emotion-full notes, my favorite so far which has been, “25% more adventure!” For some reason, I can better relate to this type of feedback than I can to something like “Can I have more trumpets?” “25% more adventure” implies, perhaps, the idea of more brass, but by saying “adventure” versus “brass,” he has given me the creative freedom to figure out the best compositional/orchestral solution to fit his direction.

I guess this post is kind of a rant and kind of my two cents to film directors who are collaborating with composers, perhaps for the first time, and to other composers (who, perhaps, are also collaborating with film directors for the first time).

Directors: while the film is ultimately your vision, try not to write through your composer. It can undermine your faith in their craft.
Composers: music can change tone so easily. Make sure the one you choose matches your director’s vision! (And don’t be afraid to rewrite to make things better)

Remember that this is a joint effort. Don’t forget to work together, to [professionally] argue for what’s best for the project, and find a best solution that both parties are proud to own.

Right on schedule, Squishy Studios released yet another new webisode for Voyage Trekkers this morning, as they have for the last four Mondays, and as they will continue to do for at least the next five Mondays. If you haven’t watched them yet, check out episodes 3 and 4 below (don’t worry, they are so well-crafted that you don’t need to necessarily watch them in sequence).

Of course, I share these here because I have been lucky to write a bit of music for each episode, including the series’s theme, a wonderful rip-off/reinvention of the Star Trek theme. It’s been a tremendous amount of fun, mostly because I think of the series as a live-action cartoony comic book. That is, the characters are so comical that my quirky orchestration style, Star-Trek-meets-1950s-Western-serials, doesn’t seem too out of place in the Voyage Trekkers universe.

I’m also lucky to basically have free range over the music I write, aside from a few well-pointed director’s notes. Of course, Nathan, the show’s director and creator, does the final audio/music mix, so if something I wrote isn’t totally working, he has the tools to splice, dice, and replice [replace] the music with another track written for perhaps another episode.

Since every episode now has a specific deadline for release, there’s not a lot of time for second-guessing or music rewrites, considering the other aspects of post-production that must also get done. Basically, Nathan emails me a locked cut of an episode somewhere between the hours of midnight and one in the morning usually about a week before the release, and I try to have a complete score to him, in his inbox, by the time he wakes up some six or seven hours later. The process is a busy one, but one that I enjoy for the sheer fact that I don’t have to stress out by overanalyzing what I’ve written. Once it’s finished, aside from — maybe — a few small tweaks, the score ships! That is, it’s out of my hands and into Nathan’s.

In comparison, when I have a lot of time for a wind band commission, I often get to a point near the end where I have just enough time before a deadline to sit down with a red pen and criticize my own work. I usually end up digging myself into holes by rewriting or reorchestrating certain sections that my gut said I should have just left alone. I suppose in this respect, deadlines can be a gift.

Episode 2: Social Network. Tune in for more at Squishy Studios!