"A Vampire's Journal Entry" genre: Symphonic Electronica
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	Electronic orchestral piece used as the opening theme for a ballet production of "Dracula" by the Charleston Ballet Company.
	Credits: Composed by Micha-El; recorded, produced and edited by Craig Harding
	Story Behind the Song Sometime circa 1990, 1991, my partner Craig Harding (http://www.septaudio.com/) told me he had secured a project for us—rewriting the music for the opening sequence of a ballet production of "Dracula" for the Charleston, S.C. Ballet. As I thought about how difficult it would be and opened my mouth to express my misgivings, he informed me that we already had the job and, by the way, only had about two weeks to get it done. Furthermore, he explained, the company already had peformed the production once with other music, but no longer had the rights to it for further use. Because the choreography was already set, we would not be allowed to come up with just anything. Using a video of the original sequence, we had to first create a tempo and dynamic map that would conform to what the choreographer already had created—tempo changes and all! And, it had to be orchestral in nature. We went to work writing on a computer and on, what by today's standards, would be primitive composition software. Neither of us had used any of the gear in the studio (which Craig owned) to such an extent. Needless to say, budgetary restrictions (and the size of the studio) prevented us from hiring an orchestra to perform the music—and neither of us were keyboardist to any real extent, meaning we had to quickly learn to get a lot more out of the software and midi gear than ever before, but we learned quickly. If memory serves me properly, all of the sounds were produced on an early Kurzweil rack job then altered and sweetened by Craig. Each section of the electronic orchestra—and often individual "members" of the "sections" were recorded in seperate passes and the recorder then synched to the computer and another dub pass made. There are a lot easier ways to do this now, but it sure w as a challenge and a lot of fun for two midi neophytes at the time. Craig now owns September Audio in Chicago and does some interesting radio and television post production work—after a bit restoring old radio shows for a company that sells them and I believe has produced restored product for some high-end museums. Well, that's the story as I remember. Craig, hopefully, will take a look at this from his Chi Town nest and correct my recollections which are probably a bit shadowy from staying up so late to get roughs done and shipped out of town for so many days in a row. By the way, we did make the deadline by FXing the final product down south just hours before the deadline..

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