The iPhone made an
appearance (to Auto-Tune Joe Biden) in
episode #8.
The brothers
recently stepped
up to Logic Pro
9, from Logic
Express 8.
002 audio interface connected to Michael
Gregory’s Mac Pro. Once a track is finished,
it’s time to get silly. The videos are filmed
at Michael’s apartment, using a homemade
green screen. “The green screen is literally a
green sheet of fabric attached to the wall with
thumbtacks,” says Evan.
“Green thumbtacks,” Michael interjects.
“Writing lyrics, coming up with melodies,
producing the instrumental tracks, that’s a
blast,” Evan says. “But it’s also hilarious when
we’re doing the actual taping, participating in
a Congressional debate.” The parts are played
and sung by Evan, Michael, their brother
Andrew, and Evan’s wife, Sarah.
While the songs themselves are quite
polished, especially considering how much
is “sung” by news reporters and politicians,
the videos are intentionally crude and campy.
“Sometimes we’ll see a comment like, ‘He has
a taped-on mustache! That’s so tacky!’ But
from our end, that’s purposeful,” Michael says.
Michael combines the green-screen footage
with the original clips in Final Cut Pro, syncs
it up to the song, and posts it to You Tube,
where the videos receive hundreds of
thousands of hits.
One fan is T-Pain himself, the star of the
I Am T-Pain app for the iPhone, which lets
users Auto-Tune their own voices. T-Pain’s
label, Nappy Boy, and the app’s developers,
Smule and Antares, contacted the Gregorys
over the summer for help with beta-testing
and promotion. T-Pain even appeared in “
Auto-Tune the News #8.”
“You can really tell Antares and Smule put
hard work into it to get it right,” says Michael.
“The beta version was already solid, but they
spent a couple more months debugging it and
making it better. It’s going to be one of the
greatest time-wasters of our time.”
The quartet has even used the app
onstage. “We performed a few of the videos
by projecting them onto a screen, and we
“The democratization of Auto-Tuned pop singing
is a big development in our culture.”
The Angry Gorilla performing in front of the homemade green
screen.
re-rendered the video so that
all our own vocals were muted,”
Evan explains. “We sang our
parts live, and Michael actually
ran an iPhone through the
PA so he could use the I Am
T-Pain app. Andrew, Sarah, and
I were on a plain vocal mix, and
Michael was Auto-Tuned on
stage. It turned out pretty well.”
The brothers realize the key
to enjoying all this Auto-Tuning
is not to take it too seriously,
and they’re thrilled that the
iPhone lets any joker into the
club. “The democratization of
Auto-Tuned pop singing is a big
development in our culture,”
Evan deadpans. “It’s not just
Michael and me and Kenny
Chesney who can be Auto-Tuned. You can too.”
