Dream Hat Background Music

I was so excited when Apple came out with GarageBand. I could finally hear the songs I had written since high school externally, the way I had heard them internally for years. Then right in the middle of The Dream Hat, MacWorld introduced the Symphonic Jam Pack for GarageBand. It included just about an instrument you could want in a symphonic orchestra.

I intended to finish animating The Dream Hat and then compose background music for it, but as I would finish each scene and played it back, I could hear the music in my head, so I composed it as I went. I would lay down a track, hear a counter melody in my head and lay down that track. Usually in about a half hour I would have the background music composed and recorded for a scene.

I used some music symbolically:

For the Purple Man who held his breath for hundreds of years, I only used woodwinds (breath instruments). The percussion was wood blocks to sound like the ticking of a clock..

For Ralph and Louie, when they would speak in unison, I used a church choir. When they would fight, I would use a bell that symbolized both a church bell and a bell announcing the rounds in a boxing ring.

Dream Hat Songs

I didn't write the songs specifically for The Dream Hat. They were written long before I started The Dream Hat. Just like the songs in Yellow Submarine were old Beatle songs (the four new songs were just lying around and hadn't found their way to an album so they decided to put them in Yellow Submarine).

The funny thing about an artist is that certain themes keep recurring through their work. I went through my catalogue of over a hundred songs and found that some of the themes that ran through The Dream Hat had been explored in song of my songs. So I picked out the ones that fit in with the story.

In the 80's, I had worked on several music videos and really enjoyed the form. So I made each song a dream sequence that could stand on its own as a music video. Each song was animated in a different style to keep me excited about this long term project.

People used to complain about movie musicals that the story would stop dead for the song. Almost like the song was an inserted commercial. I am probably guilty of that in The Dream Hat, but what I was trying to do was have the songs comment on the story on a parellel plane. The songs can stand on their own and if they were removed from The Dream Hat the story could stand on its own. But together, I think they mirror each other organically. At least, that is what I was trying to do. You the viewer are the judge.