Come one,
Come all,
We have balloons by the score,
Balloons of unique beauty,
Who could want anything more?

Join the covey of artists,
Those who paint the skies,
Your palette will be the rainbow,
A colorful feast for the eyes.

Higher, much higher,
Up where the air becomes thin,
The chill is refreshing,
The winds will whisper their hymns.

Everyone is invited,
The fare you find is quite low,
Guaranteed enjoyment,
For such an incredible show.

Why?! Tell me why are you waiting?
Tell me what possible pleas?
Could keep you from floating and flying,
Over hills, mountains & trees?

Higher, much higher,
Up where the air becomes thin,
The chill is refreshing,
The winds will whisper their hymns.

The chill is refreshing,
The winds will whisper their hymns.

Attached is a ZIP file with two concepts tentatively pounded out on the piano. Warning, they sound a little "train-of-thought" heavy (I tried to tighten up part of the first one) but I think they at least describe concepts.

The first one is a bit slower, with a chorus that picks up and sounds almost contemporary-Christian. I don't finish the chorus (around 0:32 seconds) before playing around with other parts of it, so ignore everything after that.

The second one is just verses so far. It sounds a little more like a barker at a carnival than a car salesman on TV, but perhaps it will do the trick.


I think the "Higher, much higher" part can serve as the chorus, and repeat it at the end, as well.


I'm also looking at changing the words slightly (of what I've looked at so far):

Come one, come all
We have balloons by the score,
Balloons of such beauty, (Originally: Ballons of unique beauty)
Who could ask for more? (Originally: Who could want more?)

Join the coven of artists,
Who paint on the skies, (Originally: Who paint the skies)
The rainbow's your palette, (Originally: Your palette the rainbow)
There's no critical eyes. (Originally: No critical eyes)

I think the fourth line of "Higher, much higher" will have to change, but I don't have any bright ideas at the moment.


I can probably come up with a few more ideas to try if you want to hear them.

The 2nd one is very vaudeville, and I like it best. (I like the 1st one too.)

And the actor playing Brautigan is ... (... looking it up ...) ... I see, one ... Martin Hash. So what part do you sing in the choir? Tenor (B2-A4), baritone (A2-F4), bass (F2-E4)? I copied the ranges off of Wikipedia.

I just listened to some of the lines in Seq07-Balloons, I'd guess tenor. Also, from the existing lines, it sounds like Brautigan is not quite so brash. If Myron doesn't get back to me about some IDWTGT stuff and I'm not getting together with someone to practice and play Fauré's Elegie (me on piano, she on cello), I will have some more time to look at Balloons tomorrow (Tuesday); otherwise I will probably be busy until Saturday.

Oh, I like both of them, but the second one does seem more like Brautigan.

Nothing really new here. Here's a slight update to the second sample song. It's the same thing as before but with the rhythm fixed.

Next step: write a melody for the chorus. I hope my progress will be a little more regular in the near future.

Got it. (Sounds great.)

After hitting a wall, I spent a while on research. (Google "dixieland midi") I came up with the first half of a chorus. I'm still working on the second half, but thought I'd share.

It will be interesting to break this up into multiple instruments. I can imagine at least a tuba, a trombone, and a clarinet. Maybe a drum kit, as well. I will need to figure out how to change the volume and maybe pitch of a note while it is playing. Either that, or get live performances. I have a friend that plays trombone. And maybe I could learn to play tuba and clarinet. (I'm just kidding there.)

Yeah, very ragtime.

WooHoo! that's great mouseman.

Another installment. The chorus is finished. I will have to come up with a "turnaround" to make it flow into the next verse at the end.

I wrote a complement to the existing third stanza so that and the third stanza can serve as the chorus. I hope you can hear the words with the melody.

Higher and higher,
As high as you dream!
Flying and floating
You'll feel so serene. (alternate: You'll feel like a queen [to Trot])

Higher, much higher,
The air, it gets thin,
The chill is refreshing,
The wind will sing hymns.

And now my evenings are booked up until Saturday.

Martin - yeah, there's a fine line between ragtime and dixieland, which I wouldn't have thought of before trying to research.

What a weekend. Database problems at work (curse you, MySQL and MyISAM!), DNS problems at home (curse you, zone transfer and secondary DNS!), routing problems at home (curse you, ISP!), mail problems at home (curse you, Postfix, Postgrey, and Spam Assassin!), and a very stressed out user that is running a candidate's web site for the current election (curse you, minority government) off of our system. In the end, it looks like all of the problems got solved, but an awful lot of time got sucked up.

I didn't get as much done musically as I had hoped. I just separated out the bass into a separate track and cleaned it up a bit. I should have time on Monday and Tuesday evenings to work on it.

I've gotten bits done added here and there. My main holdup has been work. I got over one big project (a new version of one of our websites), and another one comes in (moving the IT group to a new building, dealing with construction, etc., while also having to help with budgeting and reviews that are now all being done at the same time). Unfortunately, I've been mentally spent when I get home from work, so I haven't had as much progress on the music as I had hoped. My apologies to everyone.

There is also one other issue. I've not historically listened a lot to the style of music that we're using for this song, and it's a little more complex than the sea shanty genre. I've done some research, but there is not a whole lot of reference out there. So I've had to do some experimentation (difficult given lack of brain power mentioned above). It's getting there, just slower than I had hoped. I just got a CD from a friend that I'm hoping will be helpful.

Here is a URL with what I have so far:
http://home.intranet.org/~mouse/creative/m...s_testmix01.mp3 (~2.0MiB)

I think you established a great sense of humor & light, nursery rhyme-like appeal (I know it attracted me!)

Nice! The background music could be abit busy, but what do I know. Your voice is a good in between, but I hope the voice artist will get into it abit more. The "Higher and higer" bit reminds me of an old 80s song......can't think of the name....but it's in the chorus too and the voices are really high.

Here's the words....

Higher and higher,
just a little bit,
just a little bit more....something something.

Ken, I agreed with you that the background music sounded a bit busy. I presume you meant mostly in the verses. I tried to simplify that. I took out the flute part; parts of it worked, parts of it didn't, I'll work on it a little more. I also re-recorded the guitar part, but apparently am having a bad-tempo day.

I mentioned a friend of mine had a CD ("The Great Dixieland Bands") which was educational. Most of it is much faster than this song, and the "licks" (for lack of a better word) they use don't work as well slowed down. They make use of a lot more trumpet and/or trombone, which I want to try using, as well. There's a brief attempt at the very beginning of this latest attempt.

Anyways, here it is with those changes (2379860 bytes), bad tempo guitar part and all. More changes (hopefully improvements!) to come this weekend.

I'll get voice actor to sing the song at his character's tempo and you could possibly match to that?

Sure, whatever you think would be the easiest way to convey that tempo change, let me know and I'll work it in. Also, I'd like to get an idea how much to change the range / pitch. Based on the Brautigan voice clips I have listened to, I'd guess that the voice range would be closer to tenor, so probably up a third or so from where I have it currently, but any guidance I can get on moving it up or down would help.

I've been struggling with this for a while. When something just isn't working, you have to start doing some weird things. I tried adding a horn (trombone), emulating some other music I've heard. It didn't work. Martin had suggested a tempo change, so I tried speeding it up from 120bpm to 160bpm ... too fast. Went down to 130bpm, that was better. But it still wasn't quite working.

So I changed the melody for the verses. I think it's an improvement. I also added a little ending cadence, which I think works pretty well, where the animator can have Brautigan can ham it up to Trot. (My scratch vocal recording is a little shaky at the beginning, and it sounds like the trombone part in the first verse has a bad note in it that will need to be fixed.)

Here it is. Comments, suggestions ... let me know what you think.

That has a nice "carny" feel to it - hope it's well suited to the voice actor ...hmmm...now let me go see who that voice actor for Brautigan is ....looking it up right now...er..yup,...uh-huh...it definitely fits that P.T. Barnum rein-carny-ated type.

Braugtigan stopped by the studio the other day . . . . .

I like!
It'll need some fade in/fade out and wind effects to perfect it but I can easily picture Braughton and our heroes floating and flying up into the sky.

I'd love to see the credits at the end of the movie run through this song sung straight/serious as a contrast to this.
It'd be a nice echo background.

Note to self: Get DianaRossWhitneyHoustonCelineDione to sing that version!

Two additional notes:

I like the minor change in lyricks very much.



sounds much better as



The chill would have been refreshing once... but after that.. it's just cold.

Jolly good!


This song doesn't not lend itself readily to repeated singing as sung by Braugtigan does it?
I just listened to it a couple dozen times. Braugtigan's voice being intentionally a little too grating makes it nice for a moment in time though.

This whole theme of art and song and painting on a canvas while traveling across the sky is an inspired one. Have the song sung without the excited trills at the end of the movie will really drill down deep into the soul. As an echo back to this version it will prove to be an even more impressive song as the pace is slowed, the words accentuated and the whole view of the movie appreciated.

There is one aspect of this song one could wish might be elevated a little higher.
I'm not sure if it'd be possible to change/improve upon.
As a personal detail I'd like to see what Braugtigan is promoting (in the song) change from Balloons to something more ethereal. The idea being that he is not selling balloons as much as he is advocating the experience of soaring above earthly cares to gain a new perspective on the world. I cannot help but think that by emphazing the balloons the idea isn't raised to its full potential.

Note: Of course even if a change was effected on the underlying song Braughton could still sing his version emphasizing balloons.

That's the Braugtigan voice - a mixture of MLK & Bob Dylan.

MLK? - Martin Luther King sounded like a Billy Graham Goat?

I thought the trills were coming from the balloon engines revving, or else Holmes was blowing bubbles on Martin's stomach.

Perhaps it's the fifth of Scotch that was emptied, or else this must be how old people sound.

Croakitudenally - it's eccentrically interesting. Yup.