In collaboration with Norway’s largest public TV broadcaster NRK, Larvik-based design and animation house Sandnes Media has produced a series of animated shorts based on works by the famous and influential Norwegian songwriter and musician Alf Prøysen. The narrative for each short is provided by the lyrics of one of the children’s songs that Prøysen wrote and performed during his main period of work in the 1950s and 60s.

As the project’s sound designer and audio post production engineer, I’ve been responsible for the creation and mixing of a cohesive and believable soundtrack for each short.

Watch a montage of scenes from the shorts:

Directed by Wolfgang Danner, this 50-minute documentary provides vivid and authentic insights into the street life in urban Thailand and the vast majesty of the tropical mountain landscapes. The score that I’ve written blends traditional elements of Indonesian gamelan music with more modern, upbeat styles.

The production was released in January 2011 on a two-DVD set, which includes lots of bonus material. It can be purchased worldwide at Touratech retail stores or from their Webshop.

Check out a medley of music from the film:

In the course of my recent move to SoundCloud, I have started to compile medleys of scores that I’ve composed and produced for various documentary features in the past. These music showcases will appear next to the entries of their respective projects on the references list, but I also keep them in an easy-to-browse track set on the music page. Check ’em out!

http://soundcloud.comJan MorgensternSince it went live in 2007, the music publishing platform SoundCloud has gathered a strong following of musicians and listeners alike. Its slick, no-frills Web 2.0 interface, along with its refined embedding features, makes it an excellent choice for putting music on-line; therefore I’m happy to announce that I will be hosting my music in my own SoundCloud account in the future. I’m also in the process of integrating everything they provide back into this site, so that listening to all music on these pages will get much easier and more hassle-free (of course, I will continue to provide download links to archives where it makes sense, e.g. for my short film score albums). As a start, the entire Music page is turbo-charged with dynamic SoundCloud listening facilities now; in the future, I’m also planning to add cues, excerpts and audio showcases to project entries on the References page.

Enjoy the new features, let me know if you run into any problems – and if you’re on SoundCloud yourself, maybe you’d like to follow me and be the first to know about new tracks!

In a recent collaboration with German motorcycling equipment retailer Touratech, I’ve written and produced the music for a documentary feature that follows adventurers Ramona and Herbert Schwarz on a motorcycle journey spanning large parts of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The legs of this journey were planned on a day-to-day basis, leaving the two guided only by the advice and recommendations of local people. The tour, totalling 5,789 kilometres, ran down the Mekong through exotic villages and mysterious jungles, past bizarre mountain formations and powerful waterfalls, and across a 1,000-kilometres pass road.

Directed by Wolfgang Danner, the 50-minute documentary provides vivid and authentic insights into the street life in urban Thailand, the vast majesty of the tropical mountain landscapes, the stunning architecture of Asian places of worship, and the cordiality of the people the two meet on their journey. The music that I’ve written for the documentary blends traditional elements of Indonesian gamelan music with more modern, upbeat styles.

The film was released in January 2011 on a two-DVD set, which includes lots of bonus material. It can be purchased worldwide at Touratech retail stores or from their Webshop.