SaskMusic

Rob Bryanton, film composer

Categories: Songwriters/Composers

Genres: Classical, Pop, Sound Art

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Description

Rob has been a part of the Saskatchewan film industry since its infancy. He was music director/performer/theme composer on a regional 1974 CBC-TV series called “Easy Chair”, produced at CBC’s studios in Moose Jaw. He was audio post supervisor/band leader/theme composer on the 1984-1987 CBC network series “Country West”, which featured performers such as k.d. lang, Shirley Eikhard, Ronnie Hawkins, Shari Ulrich, Spirit of the West, Murray McLauchlan, Valdy, Ian Tyson, and many more. During that period he also composed the songs and supervised the mix for over 100 different pieces for “Sesame Street”, and its Canadian version “Sesame Park”. Rob was the in-house composer and sound designer for dozens of productions at Regina’s Globe Theatre from 1981 to 1996. This includes a number of musicals for which Rob composed the songs, including “The High School Show”, “The Good Life”, “Mandarin Oranges”, and “Resuscitation of a Dying Mouse”; as well as “Prairie Wind”, which was presented before Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh during their 1987 visit to Saskatchewan. Visitors to the Sask Pavilion at Expo86 would have heard the musical “The Big Story” (with songs by Rob), presented multiple times a day by a talented cast of young Saskatchewan performers. He composed the music and songs for the 1988-1990 CTV series “Puttnam’s Prairie Emporium”. And in 1989, Rob joined forces with composer Jim Folk as Audio Image, creating the music, audio, and final mix for such ground-breaking Saskatchewan productions as “The Great Electrical Revolution”, “Eli’s Lesson”, and “Guitarman”. In 1995 they formed Talking Dog Studios, with Rob as President. During the following decades Talking Dog grew to become one of Canada’s largest audio post facilities, running ProTools in 14 studios and suites throughout the building, and creating the sound and music for dozens of feature films and hundreds of television episodes, including all five seasons of “Incredible Story Studio” and all six seasons of CTV’s hugely successful series “Corner Gas”.

Rob began his career as a songwriter, and in his teen years performed with different groups of friends a number of times at the Regina Guild of Folk Music, including a live concert of Rob’s songs broadcast by CBC Radio. In 1975, out at Collienwood Studios in Esterhazy, Rob co-produced the album “Prairie Grass, Prairie Sky” featuring a number of Saskatchewan songwriters, including Rob, Connie Kaldor, Geoffrey Ursell, Bob Evans, and Glenn Koudelka. Rob’s cult classic a capella song “Moose Jaw Woman” first appeared on that album.

As a composer, Rob has written music in a wide variety of styles, from classical to atonal sound design, always embracing the latest technology. His 1983 pop/rock album “Rob Bryanton – Alcohol and Other Drugs” received airplay on local radio stations, remarkable since it was recorded on two 4-track Tascam Portastudios. Nowadays Rob continues to compose for his own enjoyment using the latest virtual instruments. Some of that music can be found on his youtube channel “10thdim”, which is currently at almost 21 million views.

In the last few years Rob has been the sound designer/sound editor/foley recordist/re-recording mixer on such theatrical films as “Dangerous” (Scott Eastwood and Mel Gibson), “Cagefighter” (Gina Gershon, Chuck Liddell), “A Score to Settle” (Nicolas Cage, Benjamin Bratt), “Daughter of the Wolf” (Gina Carano, Richard Dreyfuss), “A.R.C.H.I.E” and “A.R.C.H.I.E. 2” (Michael J. Fox), “Distorted” (John Cusack, Christina Ricci), “The Humanity Bureau” (Nicolas Cage), “The Recall” (Wesley Snipes), and most recently "Die Alone" (Carrie-Anne Moss). Rob was also sound editor/re-recording mixer on the Saskatoon reality television series “Paramedics: Emergency Response”, which ran for seven seasons. He composed the music and mixed the documentary film "I Ploughed the Sacred Soil", which was awarded "Best Long Form Film" at the recent Saskatchewan Independent Film Awards.

Rob is a past president of SMPIA, and the founding vice-president of SRIA (which became SaskMusic). He gratefully acknowledges the financial participation of Creative Saskatchewan in these more recent prod...

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