Alright, so you probably figured out by now (if you didn't already know) that the project would be the telling of the Frankenstein myth with music. But the truth was, it was two nearly-aborted project ideas that ended up coming together into one.

First, I had to decide which version of the Frankenstein story I wanted to tell. In class, we dealt primarily with Kenneth Brannaugh's film adaptation of the actual novel. Seemed like a good way to go. However, my personal favorite version of the story was the Frank Whale by-way-of Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein. It would have been a lot of fun to have a go at a comic version of the story. Of course, what I learned from my experience with the vampire movie and the research that went into it was that the best way to treat the mythology is to create a new version of it. In thinking about musical storytelling and the concept of leitmotif, Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf jumped into my mind. It is remarkably clear musical storytelling, in part because the story it tells is so simple. It's a children's story, afterall.

A children's story version of Frankenstein? Why the hell not?

But I needed a hook. And for absolutely no reason at all, it came to me: robots.

I don't know what made me think of robots. I think it may have stemmed from the animation project I was working on for Geoff Marslett's class. I wanted a giant robot in it, but, like I had with Spore before, I started getting hung up in the grind of the project and, sadly, the robot had to be cut for logistical reasons. And so, the robot got transplanted into my Weird Science project. Or at least into the half-formed idea I had of it. It was one of many.

It was one night while I was up in the lab late working on the animation project that I idly started the doodles that became the storybook. I was still not sure what, if anything, I wanted to do with a children's Frankenstein story. The idea passed.

Later, I got to thinking about doing a music piece. I've done some music composition before. I don't know a whole lot about music theory. I compose the way you carve a statue of an elephant. How do you carve a statue of an elephant? You take a rock, and remove all the pieces that don't look like an elephant. When I'm composing, I don't know a diminished seventh from a minor sixth. I just put the notes where I think they sound like what I want them to sound like. I knew there were all sorts of tools available to me in the lab to let me make a pretty fancy elephant. And I knew I wanted to make a piece that had a very obviously synth sound. I wasn't sure what it would be, but the idea of robots sounded like a good idea.

And then it clicked.

My robot music could be the robot Frankenstein children's story.

And the rest, as they say, is history.