We asked the members of ETHEL who are performing their original soundtrack to La Nave de los Monstruos (Ship of Monsters) here on Friday, October 30 in a co-presentation with Cinema Tropical and Williamstown Film Festival to tell us a little bit about the collaborative creative process that went into scoring the film.   Ralph Farris, who plays the viola in this rocking string quartet provided the first installment which he entitles “Diving Under the Hood”

Ralph from ETHEL here. Greetings from sunny Manhattan!

ETHEL cannot wait to bring this show to North Adams!

We had a blast putting this live soundtrack together this season (thank you Rachel Chanoff!), and now we’re digging through the whole show, picking everything apart to bring YOU the most coolest day-before-Hallowe’en show y’all have ever seen!

Here’s what-all we’ve been up to of late:

Neil and I just finished two days of high-intensity working sessions together.

– Yesterday was mostly concentrated on the big picture (“What was the name of that toy percussion instrument that you said we should get?”, etc.)  …And then I went out and bought me some of those toy percussion instruments. Don’t tell Neil, but his new recorder is green. Should go nicely with my new red slide whistle.
– Today was digging into some particulars (“Are you SURE that we should play a-sharp minor for that funky groove? I mean, the monster seems so peaceful…”) …And then we copied DVDs and made sure we each had the same version of the score, as we are now about to step away from our respective home offices for a few days.

Dorothy has been doing some super-intensive ear training work — she’s been working with the original score, figuring out harmonic structures and melodic elements where we can accompany the already-awesome soundtrack. The result is a very cool blend of old-fashioned orchestral sci-fi awesomeness and lush, super-romantic, kitschy strings.

Mary’s floating down the Mississippi now (really!); she had pounded out our tech rider and all of the lighting and sound cues before she paddled off. She also said she was gonna determine if that was an F-sharp or G in measure 15 of the overture…
Will check in next week with another update. See y’all on the 30th!