Spatula Madness Production Blog

When I first started thinking about making a Spatula Madness feature I knew I wanted it to be part-musical. Many people told me that their favorite section of the original short was the France song, and I personally love musicals and think they can really add a lot of personality to a movie.

The problem of course is that I had no idea how to do it “right” without a large budget. I was very inexperienced with music composition, and so most of what I put together was just drum loops with incredibly basic 4 note melodies thrown on top.

Then I found GarageBand, a program that came with my Mac. I can not imagine a better application for idiot beginners like myself - the interface is incredibly simple, but it still maintains all the tools necessary for putting together a pretty darn awesome song. So, I bought a USB piano keyboard and started writing some tunes.

I can’t play the piano. I also don’t know a thing about music theory. However I am able to come up with some pretty cool tunes in my head, and GarageBand has helped me translate that into real music. There’s a pretty silly process I do that has worked rather well for me:

Step 1 - I record myself singing all the notes.

Step 2 - I then figure out how to play those notes on the piano.

Step 3 - I record a rough version of the song with the piano.

Step 4 - Using GarageBand’s note editing tools, I match all the notes I played with my singing, so it sounds exactly how I want it.

Step 5 - I do the same thing for the harmony and other instruments.

And bam! I’ve got a song! I move stuff around and fiddle with the instruments until it sounds juuuusst right. The stuff I’ve made with GarageBand is far better than any of the tunes I’ve put together before.

For anyone interested in writing music I also highly suggest checking out this Scale / Chords guide, it has provided me with great help in figuring out what notes work together:

http://www.8notes.com/resources/notefinders/piano_chords.asp

In total there are 5 full musical songs and 2 mini-songs. It’s a rockin’ and a boppin’.