MUSIC SCORES I MADE: a tiger, kids & a hippo

I realized I've never shared movie music I've created!

The Tiger's Gift is a wonderful animated short film for which I had the honor of composing and recording the score. Josh Addessi and Jimi Bonogofsky, Digital Media Arts grads from Huntington University, created and animated it. They've since entered it into several shows and it seems to charm children's audiences! In fact, it won the Animated category in the 2012 Sundial Film Festival

(Quick story: I was under a deadline to complete The Tiger's Gift score. Deadlines and me hate each other. Nonetheless, my enemy Deadline always wins, and as it was approaching I ended up staying up literally all night on the final day. A 3-hour detour from composing came in the very unexpected visit of a nervous friend of ours named Joel who knocked on our door after midnight with a bleeding finger. He said he was trying to open a can. Upon inspection, I found that it was DEEP and I tried to stop the blood flow with peroxide, gauze, Neosporin, bandages, etc. to no avail. So I took him to the emergency room [he doesn't drive and was probably too frantic to do so, anyway] where I watched him hilariously and repetitively drill the staff about how this was going to affect his work with cleaning a fish pond the following day for a shut-in woman. Joel is an inquisitive man. They told him, 'Don't stick your hand in a pond.' He also asked the triage guy if he'd ever seen a cut like this, to which he replied, 'Only about three thousand times.' Joel turned out fine and I finished the score in the wee hours, and the two events shall always be linked in my memory.)

Two more films I provided music for are I Think I Might Be that Jimi worked on with my sister Colleen and Birds of a Feather, a stop motion short film that Colleen and her husband Cevin made (I particularly enjoy the way the theme turned out for the titles). Enjoy!

All We Soldiers

Today is February 2, 2011, Groundhog's Day. And the 22nd anniversary of my dad's death. His name was John Dillard "J.D." King III.

I'm certainly sad about this, but the sadness is more of what I would call an 'old sadness,' not one that truly affects me day-to-day. At least not consciously. In fact, most of my memories from childhood are very sunny and warm, like an old photograph. Still, there's a nostalgic sense of sorrow mixed with sweetness whenever I reflect on these periods. So in that way, I am definitely a sentimental person, but quite optimistic, interestingly. 'Old sadness' is kind of a theme of a song I just wrote and recorded as part of a week-long songwriting/recording challenge called Record Time VI (check out the blog here).

While the song isn't specifically about my dad, I incorporated many of the ideas I mentioned above in both the song and the artwork (which is of me and my brother as kids, taken by my father) without really meaning to. It's appropriate that it worked out to be done on Feb 2. Could it be... SATAN?! (A little Church Lady reference for you old SNL fans.) Ha! Actually, quite the contrary: I think God has beautiful and unexpected ways of reminding me He loves me.

Anyway, here's the song. Enjoy!

And here's the lyrics.

CAMERON KING

"ALL WE SOLDIERS"

© 2011

I wonder how far I’ll get walking backwards
I wonder if I care if I’m getting anywhere
Looking back there, everything’s yellow
And looking ahead, it seems the color’s left the air

Walking time in a straight line, so
Part of me is still behind me

Memories and dreams hang around like phantoms
A flash of your eyes, and in the night I hear you call
A moment we shared and you have both gone
So can I be sure that it ever happened at all?

Who I am and who I was, see
One of us is surely dying

Earth is spinning, stars are singing
We’re all waiting while we’re fading
These old days, they’re growing hazy
We’re still fighting, hoping brightly

All we soldiers
Marching onward
Towing all our dreams behind us
They define us
As they blind us

All we soldiers
Marching onward
Holding tightly to what’s rightly ours
Towing all our dreams behind us
They define us
As they blind us
Can’t rewind us

link updates

Just wanted to give you the chance to see some other music projects I'm involved with if you haven't already.

This is Ryan, me and Bernd (from Germany), 3 of the 4 members of 'Of Things to Come,' a little jam foursome (Billy Williams is the fourth and vocalist with traditional and original chants out of his Shawnee heritage). As you can seek, I try to provide ambiance with the keyboard but I think I'm usually outdone by Bernd who loves the reverb effect for guitar. Ryan gives us the beat on the djembe. So check out our myspace!

Also, me and Ryan get together and record some songs of ours (his words and my music) where I play guitar and he plays percussion, usually his (and I'm not sure how to spell this) kahon that Bernd actually made for him. It looks like a box and has a little pad on top he sits on. He beats it on various sides and it has some things within that make different sounds. We call ourselves 'O Rise Above...' and we also have a myspace. Enjoy!