News
04.30.2008 - Pencil Award
I was over at my good friends the Sullivan's house Monday night working on some song writing techniques with Mia and watching the trailers for a movie Brian shot, and while hanging out on the porch with Linda we started talking about how much clout the Typophile project has been getting lately.Linda is one of the heads of the graphic design department at the BYU, and the project was somewhat of an assignment from her. She mentioned that the piece had won two awards, and seems to be all aver the internet. I told her that I was well aware, and attributed the internet success to Jon Canlas putting the You Tube video on his very highly viewed blog. I'm aware of its professional success because Cole is skipping out on our current project (for a whole week) to go to New York to accept one of the awards.
"Oh Micah, you should be going to New York too", said Linda.
"I know right? I'd love to, that would be so cool", I said.
"No. I mean it, you really should go."
"Yeah, I know. I wish I could."
"I'll have BYU buy you a ticket.?
?What? Really??
?Sure, we should have thought of this before. I?ll email you your itinerary.?
Then there was a bunch of whooping and jumping around in celebration. But it gets better. This morning I called my cousin Jaron who lives in Manhattan, to see if he?d let me stay at his place after the seventh, since we won?t have our hotel anymore. He?s letting me, but the point of telling you this is the fun dialog that followed.
Jaron, ?What are you coming out for??
Me, ?We won an award for the Typophile video.?
Jaron, ?Oh yeah? Which one??
Me, ?I don?t know?, (off the phone) ?hey Cole, what is the name of this thing we?re going to??
Cole, ?The One show??
Me, into the phone, ?The One show.?
Jaron, ?You won a Pencil???
Me, ?Is that an award??
Jaron, ?You guys won a Pencil??
Me, ?Is that good??
Jaron, ?That is VERY good.?
Me, ?Wow, I had no idea.?
Jaron, ?Can I borrow it sometime??
Me, ?Sure.?
Jaron, ?I just want to take it into a job interview (he works for an advertising firm)? be like ?you guys got any place I could set this?? ? (Jaron is very funny.)
Me, ?Any time. I don?t think I actually get to have it, but I?ll be sure to get a picture with it. Maybe get a replica made......"
Any way, we are all now very excited.
04.27.2008 - Nice
04.24.2008 - Lost Parties, and Picnics
I'd just like to take this time to say how much I love all my friends and family, who are also my friends. So I'm dedicating this piece to you, even though it has nothing to do with friends or family. I wrote it for a documentary I'm working on, that I'll blog more about later. This is called George Washington.
04.22.2008 - Show
This was one of the early ideas for the Typophile project. I sketched out a lot of ditties before nailing down the tune that we could all get behind, and would eventually evolve into the the final product, like everything, but this one is one of my favorites so I thought I'd share it. I used pretty much the same instruments as the post from yesterday, surprisingly. Also it may seem like a studied and classically trained opera singer sweeping in toward the end there, but nope. That is actually me. I know right? You'd never know. Fools me sometimes.
04.21.2008 - I Over the Oceans Go
These are the instruments I used to make this song happen. Casio's Casiotone CT-310, my trusty Fender DG-7, and The Redrum application in Reason comes in later. Also I guess my voice and Protools too. I just thought I'd mention because I found great pics of all of them on the internet!
04.18.2008 - Adventures in Music for Motion Pictures
These are pieces of one very long piece I did for a Pilates workout video (see example below). If you'd like to hear the whole thing, do some reps or something, click here.
04.17.2008 - Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
This song was written for the closing credits for a film, but we ended up not using it, in favor of something bigger and more orchestral. So this is rough and not mastered. Also the lyrics are still scratch (to be written later) since we went in a different direction. So you may notice the Candy Land bit, and the opening line is stolen too, but I can't remember what it's from. If you do (Dann) let me know. Also I'm testing out a new player so I hope it works. If not I've got the hyper link.
04.16.2008 - Olympic Tourch Runner
This little gem was composed for a branding video for a company called Synopsys. Cole Webley directed it for the production company Kineto. You can see the video here just click on "branding" then "The Challenge".
04.15.2008 - Ouch. Take that Basia.
Look what this old honey dripper wrote about me. What an admirable, amazing, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring, awesome, brilliant, cool, dynamite, excellent, extraordinary, fabulous, fantastic, groovy, incredible, magnificent, marvelous, miraculous, outstanding, peachy, phenomenal, pleasant, remarkable, sensational, something else, staggering, startling, stupendous, super, superb, surprising, swell, terrific, too much, tremendous, unheard-of, wondrous, best ever, cat's pajamas, choice, commendable, copacetic, crackerjack, doozie, exquisite, gnarly, great, hunky dory, keen, smashing, solid, spiffy, super-duper, wonderful guy. Thanks Jacob Hoehne."Micah is a musical genius. He reworked an out-of-date and lame song and turned it into something really current and catchy. It was exactly what the video required. Micah has also composed several tracks from scratch for our film. He's great to work with and easy going. I highly recommend his work."
Service Category: Music composer
Year first hired: 2007 (hired more than once)
Top Qualities: Great Results, Personable, Creative
I'm blushing.
04.07.2008 - R.E.M.
Last night I dreamt that I hung out with R.E.M for about a week. Mike Mills didn't come around too often but Michel and Peter went with me wherever I would go. When I woke up this morning and saw their picture on the apple home page it felt weird that I didn't really know them. I felt so used to being around Michel's bald head, and Pete's moodiness. I wonder if they dreamt about me. They're really cool guys in dream life.01.27.2008 - Speechless
Speechless, is a short film about a man who gets gum thrown in his hair and pants at a football game. Because of his crippling shyness he can never find the right words for a good comeback, though he does does obsess over slights, and records would be comebacks in his notepad. On this occasion he feels so wronged that he decides to track down the boy responsible and give him the tongue lashing coming to him. a Brigham Young University TMA 285 Project. The music I wrote for this film was inpiered by a song my brother wrote about a vampire.
01.27.2008 - Blind Faith
Blind Faith is about a Newly-ish-wed man named Kerry, and who we think is a blind guy, named Isaac. Kerry doesn't believe Isaac is blind. He sets out to prove he's not, and hilarity ensues. Garrett Batty Directs.
Doing the music for this was fun, despite the stressfully short deadline, especially that I got the chance to go very orchestral. Though I think to get it into festival they had to trim the time down a lot. This turned out bad for me in that the music doesn't work for me with some scenes like it had before since I composed to action that is no longer there (they cut after the music was done). But time was short, and I understand making hard decisions in a crunch. All in all it turned out good, and my mother told me she really liked it so that's that!
01.27.2008 - Bonjour Danny Bonjour
Bonjour Danny Bonjour is one of my favorite movies I've worked on. It won yet another award last weekend, its fourth I think, this time it won Audience Choice at the lds Film Festival in Orem Utah. Brett, the director, came out to Utah to present it and sell a few copies at the festival. We got to hang out for a bit afterward. What a cool guy he is. It was a lot of fun at the festival. JR, who plays Danny in the film, was selling DVDs of Bonjour like a 19th Century snake oil show. And with success!
Very funny.
The sound is a bit messed up on these, I've tried many different things, but now it seems that you tube keeps showing the original up load instead of the new attempts. I'll put better versions of everything up once I figure it out.
11.09.2007 - More Feul TV
10.30.2007 - Fary Tale Forest Battle Music
Click on picture... hear the music!
09.17.2007 -
Here are some very cool, short, spots done by Steve Olpin (music by me), that appear on Fuel TV. Just click on the logos above to view them.
08.24.2007 -
I figure I have to put a picture up for every blog, I think because all the best blogs I've seen belong to photographers. Here is a cool picture of Voltron I found on the inter web.
Any way, I put up more stock music, Here is one of them that i like a lot.
Listen to Killswique
08.17.2007 - Typophile Credits
Here is the Credits music for the Typophile project.
Listen to Typophile Credits
08.17.2007 - New Day Remix
This is a remix of the eighties hit New Day For You, by Basia, I think, that I did for Issimo Productions for a company called Unicity.
Listen to New Day For You Remix
08.15.2007 - Typophile
07.01.2007 - Burnt Out
Last summerish I started doing music for a project with director David Aller, called Burnt Out. The film is about a guy (Ben Gourley) who works at a advertisement firm, and can't think of any good ideas, until one day when he discovers that if he burns himself, great ideas come easily to him.
listen to Good Idea The film is in the festival stage of its life right now and I can therefor put no video clips up of my favorite bits. But David sent me these great stills that will go along nicely with the music I chose.
listen to One Great DeedDoing the music for this film (which I ended up doing twice) was great, because I got to be very dark, which is my specialty I think. And it ended up being some of my best work. I started off doing the film very organically, hardly using any sampled instruments. I had pretty much completed the film when David came into the studio and told me it was all wrong. I wasn't very bothered by that. It's a short film. He said he wanted the music to go more in the direction of Fight Club, the Dust Brothers. So I did, and it turned out very good. This time pretty much everything is sampled.
Yes that is John Heder in the board meeting with his brother... Sean, I think.
06.14.2007 - Dreyer's
I had a great commercial up in the video clips section with music that I did for the dryer's Ice cream company, but for legal reasons had to take it down. It was the first of two that I've worked on with the Aller Brothers, and co. Here's what it sounded like.
dreyer's one
and
dreyer's two
it was a very long commercial, used at Supermarket conventions. I tried to make the the music as ice creamy as possible. These pieces were mostly inspired by Ice cream trucks, Homer Simpson's fantasy of the "land of chocolate", that Geico commercial with the dogs that had their heads out the windows, and an overall feeling of joy and care freeness.
04.29.2007 - Zeitgeist
I really like the ending credits/exit music I did for Zeitgeist. And here it is.
listen to Zeitcredits
