blastingcompany

First off, that is so cool that y'all do that. We have a family thing of watching Twilight Zone every new year and Josh's kids watch OTGW every halloween, as well. Under duress. But no, to answer your question, we didn't come up with that combination. That song was written by David Stevenson, one of the board artists on the show.

Here is a general list (in no particular order) of a lot of the music we were listening to while working on the show:

1. Chopin's Nocturnes & Preludes
2. Tom Waits (esp. Rain Dogs and Black Rider)
3. Louis Armstrong Complete Hot 5s and 7s
4. Ekrem Mamutovic (& Boban Markovic & Elvis Ajdinovic etc.)
5. Taraf de Haidouks
6. Adam Stinga
7. Haydn's Erdody String Quartets (Tatrai Quartet)
8. Randy Newman (esp. Sail Away and Good Old Boys)
9. Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf
10. Humperdinck's Hansel Und Gretel
11. Memphis Jug Band
12. Mississippi Sheiks
13. Moon River Radio Program (from Cincinatti)
14. T. Rex (you figured that one out pretty easily!)
15. Blind Willie McTell
16. Toni Iordache
17. Debussy's Preludes
18. King's College, Cambridge version of O Holy Night (makes sense, I know!)
19. Cab Calloway
20. Frank Fairfield, Blind Boy Paxton, Janet Klein, Jack Jones, Chris Isaak, and all the amazing musicians who were willing to work with us
21. Scott Joplin
22. James P. Johnson
23. Willie (The Lion) Smith
24. Woodie Guthrie
25. Carter Family

Aw thanks! We did! Here it is. https://blastingcompany.bandcamp.com/

Hello! We would love to hear the music you've been writing if you wouldn't mind sharing.

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1. That is a very flattering question! I think maybe our main 'trick' with writing melodies is to leave them and come back to them if time permits. So in the case of the Prelude for example, we wrote it at the piano very late one night. Then in the morning if you still remember the piece you wrote then it's probably worth pursuing. So in the case of the prelude we started arranging it on paper for SATB. That process is incredibly helpful for finding cool harmonies and countermelodies. (I highly recommend Tchaikovsky's Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony for SATB stuff.) Then once that's finished, listen back and make sure that it's working. I remember in a lecture that Ira Glass gave here he mentions how important killing mediocre ideas is. It's so important to let something go even if you've spent a lot of time on it if it's not working. I'm probably dwelling on this question too long...
2. There is a list here! Though since it seems like you might be a harmony nerd like us, I would particularly recommend Chopin (duh) and Willie the Lion Smith (Duke Ellington's piano teacher).
3. There is some that came with the vinyl record which is the most accurate (especially for Into the Unknown which is often played somewhat differently than we wrote it) but not that much. Which pieces are you hoping to look at? Perhaps we have some laying around here somewhere!
4. Josh: La Grande Illusion by Renoir // Justin: Hook by Spielburg

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I guess one of the major reasons people get into making music is to try and move people in a way that you yourself are moved by music, so it is extremely heartening to hear that you felt some of the feelings we were hoping to share. Thank you so much for that.

Dang that's a really good question. I (Justin here) think Fargo on FX has a really impressive soundtrack. That's been one to recently stand out big time for me. Stranger Things also has an excellent soundtrack. Josh quite fancies Avatar: The Last Airbender. We both agree Batman: The Animated Series was pretty special. Oh! Twilight Zone I mean, that's one of the greatest. And Looney Tunes. Charlie Brown. And now Josh is on a nostalgia kick going through cartoons he liked. Hey Arnold. Courage the Cowardly Dog. Animaniacs. Oh! Atlanta on FX. But I think now I'm just recommending good TV shows.

We'd love to do a feature film. More immediately we're trying to release some more original music. In fact, we're working on our first animated music video, so that's been really exciting. Can't wait to release that. But yeah, broadly speaking, I think we both really enjoy this marriage of music to moving picture and aspire to keep getting better at it.