Reimagining the wonderful world of Tim Burton

As a Halloween gig in college, we were asked to write music inspired by poems created by Tim Burton. We were placed into our bands and set out with a few different poems to work from. Our group consisted of two guitars and vocalist. My friend Emily and I were the guitarists and Emma was the singer. The poems we decided to choose were: Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, Roy the Toxic Boy and Robot Boy. The poems are all very strange and disturbing. Even though they are children's poems, I wouldn't have thought a kid would enjoy something as gruesome as these. However, that is Tim Burton's style.

Going back to our college gig, Emily and I, at first, found it difficult to get any inspiration for the type of music we would write. As we were so used to working with drummers, now we had to perhaps create drum tracks and rhythms to create depth in our compositions. In the end, we decided against drum tracks and create a more 'chilled out' vibe with our pieces; acoustic style if you will. Both Emily and I love adding reverb to our guitar tones, so this affected how our music was written. At first, we were struggling to find inspiration on how to write something inspired by Tim Burton and were struggling to find an interesting melody or chord progression. We went back and forth on so many ideas, but because both of us are perfectionist nothing sounded right! It wasn't until a couple, maybe three weeks, later that Emily came back to the practice room with some amazing chord/rhythm patterns! They were perfect! I just had to add some lead licks and we would have a show!! It didn't take me long to figure something out for the lead parts and I believe I found melodies which worked well over the rhythm sections. We were finally ready for the performance!!

There were three bands who were performing before us, which meant our band was the headliner. There was another acoustic band like ours and the other two were more rock and upbeat. The band before us were really good and I still feel like they should've headlined the gig to finish the concert with an upbeat attitude. However, the response we got after our set was amazing. Everyone loved our sound and really enjoyed our performance. I told the band they should've headlined but they said no because it was nice to have a 'chilled out' vibe to end it. For me, it was one of my favourite performances I had the opportunity to do in college. Our songs went really well and the guitars sounded amazing. Emma interacted well with the audience and the audience were engaged the whole time. I would definitely go back and do that show again!

Check out two of our songs here!!!

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