On Our Way To Banff

Unfortunately, due to the studio being REALLY busy these days, my cunning plan to cycle from Winnipeg to Banff in time for the Banff International Television Festival has been thwarted. Instead Olaf, myself, and our spouses all crowded into a VW golf, and undertook the 16 hour drive to Banff for the festival. When we hit Calgary, Olaf and Sherri debated directions, while we endeavoured to hook-up with our newest employee, Kevin Aichele (starting in September!), who is wrapping up a run of Jesus Christ Superstar in the sprawling oil city. After finding the Aichele, we grabbed lunch... easier said than done in downtown Calgary on Saturday (or the-day-every-single-store-is-closed-day) afternoon. We ended up scavenging out of rubbish bins, while Ange hid under a palm frond to keep an eye out for other marauding bands of other hungry non-Calgarians that might have designs on our hard-won nutrients We finally said 'Goodbye' (for now) to Kevin, and hurried on to Banff to have dinner at the worlds-longest-sushi-table with the gang from Frantic Films. The staff at the sushi restaurant evidently had no idea that 30ish people were going to descend upon them that evening, and wanted to throw us out, until I managed to defuse the situation with some clever chop-stick acrobatics. ... more to follow as Andrew Dunn and I show the rest of the television world how golf is REALLY meant to be played...

from the archives...

Things have been really hoppin' here lately. We've been lucky to have a large number of original music projects crop up (more about these later when they are close to being wrapped), and our good friends at FatKat have got us auditioning everyone for their animations, including this dog who showed up and wanted to read the part of a shark in 'My Adventures With Cloe' (nobody had the heart to tell him the microphone does not care WHAT you are wearing). While I was looking through some archived projects for some old voice demos, I came across a radio play that I wrote and recorded with Nolan, Olaf and Ben Reynolds (formerly of the band Sweetsalt) in the style of 'The Lone Ranger'. This was for a scene in Frantic Film's 'Quest for the Sea' in which a girl was supposed to be listening to a non-copywritten radio play on an old radio about 40 or 50 years ago. So pull up a chair, warm up those tubes, and tune in to the continuing adventures of Captain Radisson © of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police © ® !

We're Gloomy About Ruby Gloom

Last month, Nelvana contacted us to request a submission for theme music for 'Ruby Gloom', a new animated series they have in development. We were honored to be asked, and happy to put something together for them. Last week, Norm from Nelvana contacted me to let us know that our production was among the finalists for the series theme. Hurrah! Unfortunately, the focus testing in the target market (young girls/female teenagers) identified another submission that worked better with that demographic... stupid *%##! focus groups! Anyhow, I still am proud of the work that Olaf and Kevin did on this music, and thought at least I can post it on the blog so's it can be enjoyed a bit before being relegated to the damp and dusty recesses of our basement archives... (a place, ironically, that Ruby Gloom would probably like!).

Anyhow, click HERE to have a listen at our go at a Ruby Gloom theme!

Jim and Karen drop by...

Jim Williamson is a great guy and a wonderful client, representing Manitoba Public Insurance.

Jim does all sorts of interesting things on the side, including a one-man show about Charlie Chaplin. Knowing his inclination to act, I have abused my friendship with Jim on several occasions, most recently when we made our independent short entitled 'Sound Productions'. Jim was kind enough to volunteer to act as the client 'Barry', who gets a little carried away in the studio... Jim as 'Barry' the unruly client in 'Sound Productions'

Anyhow, Jim and his wife Karen dropped by to visit with Sherri and I on the weekend to celebrate spring by hanging out, having a few cold ones, and chatting about life, pets, and and life with pets. Thanks guys! It was great to see you!

When the German is away...

As you might or might not know, Olaf has been visiting his folks in Germany for the last couple of weeks. However, since we acquired a couple of web-cams, I seem to be seeing more of him when he is away than when he was here, as evidenced by this photo of him and his family (that's his dad Klaus and mother Heidi... how perfect is THAT) having an internet Pilsner with Annalee and Nolan a few afternoons back (yes, I know, we work REALLY hard here!). Anyhow, because he is away, I am taking advantage of the situation to make fun of him a bit. Not that it is not deserved, and not that I don't do it to myself in equal measure! (see the Mister Rabbit post for any evidence that you might require).

Last fall, we wrote and recorded a Caillou musical with KOBA Family Entertainment, licensed from Cookiejar Entertainment. While we were in the midst of working on some of the songs, I asked Olaf to do some scratch vocals of Julie the babysitter and Caillou (a duet... he did both voices). Of course, being the sadistic bastard that I am I kept the rough files over the last 8 months waiting for the perfect chance to make Olaf's vocal acrobatics public.... Click Here to hear the result of Olaf's scratch demo session!

Important Studio Activities

It is a funny paradox... the more that goes on here, the less time I have to update this blog, and the less that goes on, the more time we waste making things up to post on the blog.

Really now, the last week has been crazy...but there is very little here to show for it! One of the more fun projects we had was three days in the studio with children’s' entertainer extraordinaire Mr. Fred Penner recording some fun new songs for Barefoot Books.

We had the pleasure of being visited by Barefoot's own Jo Collins who jetted in from Jolly Olde England just to hang with us for the week! Fred shows Jo how to dig into lunch... an important studio skill! Jo looks tentatively at Fred's enthusiastic gastric performance...

In ACTRA we trust...

I have nothing fundamentally against ACTRA. The union works to ensure performing talent get paid a fair wage for commercial work - nothin' wrong with that. However, if I were to say ACTRA was complicated from a producer's point of view I would REALLY be understating things. Brain surgery is complicated. Successfully landing a Mars probe is complicated. The ACTRA Commercial Agreement is really REALLY complicated. Take this little doozie of a paragraph for example...

Single Voice is a performance category applicable to Performers engaged in radio commercials, including an actor engaged to execute or interpret a role in a dramatic form of presentation when one or two actors are engaged in a commercial. When one or two Actors and an Announcer are engaged in the same commercial, they shall be categorized as Single Voice.

If you can make sense of that in less than a unionized work week, you are a better person than I am, and I'm guessing a 'wonderful' career awaits you in complicated verbiage construction. Congratulations!

Anyhow, the other thing that strikes me about the tone of the ACTRA collective agreement is the very RELIGIOUS bent of the prose they employ. With this in mind, Nolan and I wasted some time in the studio, putting together an excerpt from an ACTRA Church Service...

Miiiiister Rabbit...

There are certain things that people were never meant to see. Like your diary. Or that skanky dream you have at 3 AM when you drop into REM sleep, or a Protools session you made by yourself when you were overtired AT 3 am...

A couple of turns of the earth ago, we were asked by the North West Company to put together a stupid radio spot for their board to listen to at an upcoming marketing meeting to give them an idea of goofy new directions they could take their radio spots in. We were pretty busy at the time, and I was spending the night at the studio finishing up some projects when, lo and behold, inspiration hit me at about 3 AM... I had the perfect Easter spot for the North West Company (or so I thought)! Before I forgot (or wised up!) I set up a microphone, set a ProTools session a running, walked into the voice booth and recorded all the parts for the spot myself.

The next morning, before I could come to my senses enough to realize the travesty I had created, Olaf found the recording session and laughed so hard he pissed himself. He then made a little playback featuring the highlights of my performance. In self-deprecating good humour I have posted it HERE. And yes, those footsteps you hear ARE me walking in and out of the voice booth in between takes...

Let them eat cake...

Audra (from Taylor George Design...they are great! they designed our logo for us,) and her partner George dropped by over the weekend to say 'hello' to the daCapo gang. Here's a few photos of our 'fête'. Thanks for the great evening guys!

Olaf and George are shocked when they discover they both sport the same hair style! Audra decides she wants a glass of red AND white... after all these glasses are SO SMALL! Nolan eats the better part of a cake... keep er' down buddy! Clint tries to distract everyone's attention as Nolan's dessert discomfort climaxes...

Ruby Ruby!

Olaf and Kevin have been working on a submission for Ruby Gloom, a project currently in development by Nelvana. We snuck a video camera into the sound studio and grabbed some hot footage of Kevin laying down some ripped vocals for one of our demos...

Click here to witness the creative process at its finest!

Kevin grooves to the gloom.

The Aichele Has Landed!

This weekend Kevin Aichele our long time vocalist and ruiner-of-coffee-makers extraordinaire jetted into town from Toronto to help us out with a few projects on his way to spend the summer in Calgary performing in 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. In between all the craziness, Kevin usually finds time to work on some 'extra curricular' sound projects, like this 'Unofficial' theme for Frantic Film's Bomber Boys series that he wrote with Olaf last summer....

Click Here to Hear the Unoffical Bomber Boys (BOYZ) Theme!

....Olaf pondering how to create a fresh sound for a WWII historical series...

...Olaf subtly reacts to Kevin's proposed theme and suggests that Hip Hop may not have been that popular in 1940.

A Frantic Dinner Party

On friday night, our good friends from Frantic Fims came over to Olaf's house for a dinner party. We have had the privilege of working on many television projects with Frantic, including music creation for:

Till' Debt Do Us Part,

Kitchen Crimes,

Bomber Boys, and

The Flying Bandit. Thanks Frantic! It's been a great year. Cheers!

While Jeff, the 'evil' bartender contemplates what to drink. Note the artistic use of my thumb in the corner of this photo...

Annalee gets excited about salad...

While Olaf gets artistic with a tomato...

These socks are making me angry!

Olaf has this annoying habit of wearing the most ugly and obnoxious socks you ever laid eyes upon. Believe you me, when you are staring at these ugly toe covers first thing in the morning, before you even had the reassuring hit of coffee your body craves, it can make you violently ill. I could probably post a series of photos of these socks, but for now I'll content myself with today's aesthetic travesty...

Eat a cake to remember a cat

On a sad note, one of my cats, Gigalo, recently passed on. He was a great tabby, who you could always count on to make your hands bleed, give your furniture that really popular 'shredded' look, and use the neighbour's flowerbed as a litterbox. The daCapo staff decided to cope with their grief in the only way they know how... by eating! Annalee had a great cake made with the likeness of our good friend on it. To express my true feelings for our striped friend, I decided to post a song I wrote a while ago that talks about the true nature of our realtionship. Ahhhh... cats! I got Nolan to sing it for me, as had I done this myself, odds are you would have prefered the sounds of cats mating in the alleyway to my vocals... A Fuzzy Conundrum (mp3)

Welcome to daCapo Productions' Blog!

daCapo Productions is an audio production company located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We create original music and sound for television, advertising, internet and multi-media. Our web site at www.dacapo.ca is good, but there's lots of crazy, creative, fun and silly stuff that goes on here that does not really fit in the corporate look of our website... hence this blog! As this blog develops, you'll find samples of some of the less serious audio we create, photos of daCapo events, and amusing anecdotes from our day-to-day operations.