halloween music | MAGI DARA

How Our Monster Mash Was Made

Hardcore deadlines, angry children, and a wet forecast. No matter what happened there was too much energy a brewing not to get this Halloween special to all of you!

Monster Mash Music Video by DARA – Halloween 2014

Stop Motion Animation At It’s Finest

As you see below our bassist Kevin Huston put this together for us. Really getting down and dirty up late at night until seven in the morning some nights. Well mornings! Thank you Kevin. 🙂

Direct quote from Kevin:
“The pumpkin climbing was difficult, I tried a couple ways that didn’t work out like hiding staples around their legs and necks and poking them into the pumpkin but they ended up falling every time, which meant an hour of shooting was wasted and I had to start over. In the end I just used scotch tape and wrapped it so it was double-sided and stuck it to their stomachs and just stuck them right to the pumpkin, sometimes the simplest solution is the best option.

For the breakdancing, I superglued paper fasteners to the bottom of all the figures’ feet so they could stand on the uneven surface of the pumpkin without falling. They were long enough to give them support and balance in all sorts of positions. For the head spin, I flattened a small circle on the pumpkin and it was enough for him to balance, and the back handspring, I dug the hands into the floor of the pumpkin while he was upside down.”

Our monsters looked real pretty for the camera. :O

Sing It Baby!

When we had envisioned making this fun version of the Monster Mash, we really wanted to embody the song yet bring it to a more singable fashion. With all the views, comments, and feedback were getting. We feel we accomplished that!

Much love,
Benjamin Dara

Thanks For Sharing The Monster Mash Love

by squidhampton

beer, benjamin dara, cheetos, dara, dara music. ben dara, dracula, halloween, halloween music video, halloween video, launch, monster mash, music, music video, salt lake city, utah, video

What a whirlwind the past couple of days has been! We’ve been so crazy busy the last few weeks creating and promoting our Monster Mash video I almost lost track of why we made it in the first place. It all came clear again on the day of the launch when we saw the response it received. I really would like to express gratitude and thanks to everyone that has watched, liked, and shared this music video. The rest of the DARA team feels incredibly grateful as well. We are overwhelmed by the love that that you’ve given us.

The last few days we have been hunkered down in the office really doing all we can to make this video go viral. It’s not the glamorous rock star life most people imagine when they think of a musician. It’s been more akin to being in the command center overseeing a campaign. With cheeto stains on our fingers and a few bottles of beer in us, we’ve been pushing this video forward at all hours of the day and night. Needless to say it can be exhausting.

Thanks To Everyone Who’s Shared DARA’s Music

It has all been worth it though when we saw the response that we were getting from you, our fans, and the rest of the world too. We’ve been blown away by how helpful all of you have been getting out there and sharing our music. It’s you that make the long hours and hard work worth it. Thank you again to everyone that’s been showing us love. Together we can change the world for the better!

Sending love and gratitude on behalf of DARA,
Squid Hampton

Resurrecting The Monster Mash

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The Monster Mash Video drops today, and we’re all super excited for it. Though we had given ourselves more time than The Santa Baby Incident we were still on some pretty tight deadlines. In the end we rallied though and got it out in time for Halloween!

DARA Jumps Into A Halloween Music Video

It was a lot of fun creating a Halloween music video. From recording the song to filming the video there was a lot of stuff crammed into a week or two. It wasn’t long ago that The Monster Mash was nothing more than a fevered idea dreamed up by us in a band meeting. Now we’ve seen it progress into the video that with full blown choreography and animation.

The first thing we had to do was record the song. The day in the studio was one of the longest that we’ve ever had. 13 hours total to work on our album and record the Monster Mash. We really took a lot of time before we went in so we could operate at maximum efficiency. It was important that we had all of the sounds that we wanted to use to watermark the song lined up and ready to go. Along with preparing that, we also divied up the work load that we’d be doing while in the studio. Ben took the helm to work with our producer Joel Pack on the album, Kevin worked on the animation, and I did marketing research to help get the video out when it was all finished.

Once we had the song we had a video to create for it. Chris hashed out a script while we were meeting with our manager Steve Phillips about the project. Then began brainstorming locations to shoot it. The script called for a few locations around town. Fergy and I scoped each spot and came up with the various shots we wanted for each scene. After we had the intel we needed we went on to conceive the choreography for the video.

Creating A Mash The World Can Love

Chris and Ben met that night to get the dance moves choreographed while Kevin worked on the animation. Neither of us being choreographers, began by researching other “mashes”. I saw that much of the movement could be visualized by monsters and pantomiming their movements.
“Once we started thinking of monsters it became easy,” Ben remarked. The dance went through a series of monsters. Zombie twice, mummy, vampire, zombie twice, mummy, werewolf. This video was moving along in the right direction.

The day we filmed the video we had 5 locations to hit. It had rained the night before and was threatening to rain that day as well. We warily did our makeup, donned our costumes, and left for the first location. The most complicated scene was at the Gilgal Sculpture Garden. We got the footage we needed and moved on to shoot the rest of the video.

The End Of A Successful Day

The last, and most fun location, was at Library Square. This is the scene that we were using some kids dressed as ghosts. You can read in more detail about all the fun we had in the Working With Kids blog. It was certainly a great end to a busy day though. Plus the weather held out and the sun was even shining!

It has been an eye opening experience to get this video made. Even more it has been so enlightening to learn everything we have about doing a music video for Halloween.
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Much love on behalf of DARA,
Benjamin Dara

Music Beyond The Notes

Back in the practice room. It had been almost a week since DARA had been in our space to play music. We have been so busy lately with creating our Halloween music video we have hardly had time to practice. But that did not mean we were at a stand still. Quite the opposite in fact. All of us were working long hours to create and market this new video. It really makes me realize how much more goes into being a successful musician beyond sheer musicianship.

There are many very good musicians that the world has never heard of. What do the greats have that the unknowns didn’t? One thing I see is the ability to do so much more than play your instrument. It takes being able to get your name and music out to people. In this day and age that means social media. Besides spending the week week producing the video we have been setting up strategies to get it into the public eye.

It’s amazing how many hours it takes to line up all the right elements to get the song and video out there. I’d be curious to see the legendary bands in their formative years. The untold stories of their publicity efforts. Being back in the practice space I’m grateful to be playing my instrument again. But especially so reflecting on all the other work it takes to reach a truly great level of musicianship.

Sending love on behalf of DARA,
Squid Hampton

Working With Kids

Kids can be a ton of fun. They have such joy and enthusiasm for life it’s hard not to smile when they are around. Assuming they’re in a good mood at least. When filming our Monster Mash music video we had a few scenes that had kids in them. The plan was to have them dress as ghosts and dance with us.

We had been warned by our friend, and a parent himself, to keep the stage direction to a minimum. “It can be tough to get kids to do anything.” So as we were writing the script we kept that in mind. Even still, we were wary of what may happen when it finally came time to shoot.

When we met up with C.J. and his family to film, the kids were ecstatic to be helping us with the video. Most of them were anyways. The youngest was feeling sick and did not want to wear the costume. After trying to convince him for quite some time it became clear what C.J. meant when he warned about getting kids to do something. Luckily the rest of them were in costume and excited to start filming.

The shots went pretty smoothly and turned out well. We got the bulk of the filming done relatively quickly. The kids broke for lunch while we worked on a few more shots. Even the little one who didn’t want to dress up seemed to enjoy just being there and watching all the weird things going on around him. After their lunch, the kids put their costumes back on and we got the last bit of footage we needed.

Everyone was glad to have been a part of the scene and we all celebrated a job well done. Watching the footage now, having the young ones in the video brings a joyful feel to the scenes. Although they can be a handful to manage, they did a great job, and made for a fun day.

Sending love on behalf of DARA,
Squid Hampton

35 Hour Weekend Of Music

As 1am rolled around on Columbus Day 2014 I left our videographers house in Utah and stepped into my car and headed home. Little did we know when DARA decided to do a Halloween song this year that it would turn into this!

Little kids as ghosts, choreographing dance moves, and a 14 hour day in the studio. Wow what a life!

All of us are extremely excited to be musicians on the forefront of a new movement inspired at every moment of the path. DARA is so much more to us than music. It’s the people we create with. It’s the times we have. Yes it’s the journey!

We all really are blessed. Feel that love, take it in. DARA is here to stay baby!

Yours truly,
Benjamin Dara

The Santa Baby Incident

DARA‘s been able to breath a little easier after the busy month of September. We only have one studio date lined up for October so far, but it will be a long one. Most of it will be editing, mixing, and tweaking the first half of the album. With Halloween coming up though, we’ve decided to set aside a few hours to record a spooky song to release in the spirit of the holiday. It reminds me of the now infamous Santa Baby incident. It all started around Christmas time last year…

DARA’S MUSICAL CHRISTMAS

The holidays were fast approaching and DARA was feeling festive. During one of our practices we began talking about our favorite things about Christmas.
“I like all the food,” I said.
“I like giving gifts,” said Dave (our bassist at the time).
“I love how beautiful the snow makes the landscape,” Jasie chimed in.
“The friends and family coming together is what I like best,” said Ben.

We took a moment to reflect on the season that was upon us and were filled with those warm fuzzy feelings. One thing that unified us in our love of Christmas was the music. Though it may get a little out of hand with department stores and restaurants playing it everywhere you go, the music still resonated with us and brought us together.

We began to throw around the idea of doing some DARA Christmas music. How much fun it would be to get into the spirit of the season. But what song? After a lot of research and debate we decided upon Santa Baby. The plan was to make a light hearted and maybe a bit goofy version of the song. I didn’t think there would be much trouble with it on my end. Lay down a light swing beat on my electronic kit through Audition or whatever program we had and then everyone else could just play on top of that. How wrong I was.

“Why don’t you play piano for this?” asked Ben
“Because I’m not a pianist?” I said with only the slightest bit of snark in my voice.
“You play piano, c’mon, it’ll be great!” Ben obviously had more faith in my piano abilities than I did.
“Mmmmmmm…. I’ll see what I can do,” and with that we parted ways.

After a long night of trial and error (and part of the morning too) I had come up with a piano part that I thought would work for the song. It was the piano equivalent of a drum loop, but that’s all the song needed. Even still, my fingers would have liked more than the few days we had until Christmas to play the part fluently. I posted a video for the band to see the structure and come up with parts from there. This cover was moving forward, though be it shakily.

THE DAY OF RECORDING

That night we met a Ben’s house. The plan was to run my my piano and Dave’s bass directly into the computer. Once the rhythm tracks were done Ben had borrowed a condenser mic to record Jasie’s violin and his vocals. It sounded good in theory, but theory rarely describes reality.

I may have a bit of a perfectionist streak when it comes to music. Which is great in most situations, but with the time crunch we had and me on a less familiar instrument, it translated into a lot of false starts.
“You know, with the magic of recording you could just play one hand at a time,” suggested Dave. I would have none of that. By the time I had gotten a usable track down we were already running behind schedule and tensions were starting to build.

Dave was nice enough to leave a family function he had going on to record his part. He got his track done in a hurry and left shortly after. Our videographer Ferg arrived just in time to get a clip of Dave playing. At this point tensions were getting high and the Santa hats we all wore hid the ire that bubbled below the surface.

As we continued to track parts and film the “music video” simultaneously we began to realize we may have bitten off more than we could chew. Ferg was fighting a cold and the rest of us were hurting from a long stressful day. Merry Christmas eh? But we rallied and got all the parts tracked and video shot. The next step was up to Ben to get everything mixed. The next day when I saw him, the bags under his eyes told me he had gotten the mix done, albeit by sacrificing any and all sleep.

Ferg got the video edited and we sat down to watch what we had created. It was a mish mosh of clips from recording the day before with what could be described as a “unique” take on the song. But we had banded together and gotten the video done in time for Christmas. We were all proud of that. With lessons learned we went home to celebrate with our families. A stressful, but merry Christmas.

WITH LESSONS LEARNED AND MORE TO COME

Now we’ve learned from “the Santa Baby incident” DARA has set aside a bit more time to record a legitimate music video for Halloween. Seeing it shape up I’m beginning to get more and more excited about it. Keep an eye out, something wicked this way comes!

Sending love on behalf of DARA music,
Squid Hampton