My soundtrack for the Warren Hall implosion-And welcome!

Warren Hall Implosion Original Soundtrack

When I heard from Marianna that there was a date set for the implosion of Warren Hall (the landmark building at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, CA) I got permission to come into work late on that day so I could attend the implosion.  My wife, Marianna, who works at the university, surveyed the area and located a convenient hillside with a clear view of the tower.  There actually was an organized, publicized viewing area set up in a parking lot below the hill, but in order to avoid crowds we sought out an alternative, and watched from an undeveloped hillside above the building.

The implosion was to take place at 9:00 AM so we hauled our lawn chairs up the hill at about 8:30.  I set up my tripod and camera, and we ate bagels and fruit we had picked up at Safeway on the way.  There were a fair number of people on the hillside with us.  It was almost a Fourth-of-July atmosphere.  I took a few preliminary panning and zooming shots, then set the camera up on its tripod, fixed on the day's victim.

Warren Hall at Cal State East Bay was a big 13 story glass building, built in 1971, not at all earthquake safe, and it was built directly atop the infamous Hayward Fault.   In January 2013 it was authorized for demolition, to take place on August 17, 2013.

I brought the video I had shot home, and edited a first draft of the video portion of the project, using Corel Video Studio.  Then I opened up Sonar.  Cakewalk Sonar is so fun to work with on projects like this.  I have a Tascam FW-1082 control surface, which is a special mixer which interfaces with the computer and controls the operation of this awesome recording software.  I import the video edit I created into Sonar, and it appears in a small window at the top right corner of the screen.  I go to work creating the music.  The FW-1082 control surface has a wheel on it that I can use to navigate through the music and the video simultaneously, so I am able to link up visual and musical events with precision.  The finished soundtrack has 16 tracks of instruments.  Once I had all the music mixed in Sonar, I exported the music as an audio file, which I then imported into Corel Video Studio.  I had created the soundtrack to make sense musically, using my original video edit as a loose framework. When I re-edited the video in Corel, I tailored the visuals to the music.

The music was mostly voiced by Roland Juno Gi and Proteus FX synthesizers.  Marianna and I had been watching the Arts Network and we'd seen a performance of Rossini's Stabat Mater; and I heard a very dramatic passage that I thought could be effectively employed in an epic soundtrack, so I found it and snatched the desired audio clip.  It was the perfect finishing touch.  The project took me about a month, although it would have only taken about a week and a half if I was capable of any kind of focus.

Oh yeah, and welcome to my blog!