L.A. soundtrack adventure!

There's a friend of Yurika's who's wanted a taiko for a while now - he works in Hollywood doing music for TV and movies. He has a project for the upcoming adaptation of "Avalon High" (being shot for the Disney Channel) and wanted to use taiko in the opening sequence. Since I had the time and the interest, I was hired to pick up a taiko and drive it down to L.A. later in the week.

During the talk about how this would all work out, the offer to actually play tracks for the movie came up. I was very interested, less for the prestige (if any) and more for the experience itself!

So last Monday I drove up to Concord to Mr. Kato's residence/workshop. You can visit his site here. He makes some seriously beautiful taiko that sound wonderful as well!

I took a Budget truck down to L.A. on Wednesday with the drum tightly packed and he was thrilled to get it! However, because he's inhumanly busy right now, there was only a little time for him to enjoy the new arrival... Also, there wasn't any time to record that day, so I would have to come back in the morning.

When I came the next morning, he showed me what he had so far - a real simple framework against the video for the opening scene of the movie. The scene starts with two groups of knights on horseback, galloping towards each other along the coastline. The black knight and the white knight take the lead, getting closer and closer, until the white knight's horse is riderless and the implication is he's been knocked off or slain.

Within about 30 minutes, he had fleshed out the framework, playing and editing notes with impressive quickness, changing entire sections before I had realized what he'd done! The main part of the song is in a meter of 5, with a couple of single "oomph" hits in the beginning and quicker notes to build up to the ending.

When it was my turn to record for him, I listened to a click track over headphones and watched the monitor that showed graphical representations of the notes to play (when to hit, basically). There was also a monitor showing the film itself, but that wasn't important to me.

I played on top of the patterns he created, with my own flavor, about three times for the left channel and three for the right. The fun part was when he wanted me to add some flourishes on top of the previous recordings I did. Essentially, I got to listen to me playing in the right ear, another me playing a slightly different version in the left ear, and improvise on top of that!

So although the movie doesn't look like anything to write home about, I finally found someone who can hang with my solos: me! Seriously though, it was a fun little trip that I would love to expand on somehow, but ultimately the experience itself was the reward. I'll let people know when the movie comes out and maybe be able to find something to post!