Cartoons

But now they're called animations of course. And a friend of mine, Matt Reeve, recently asked me to write the music for one he was making to enter into a competition. The competition was organised by a company called Aniboom and called for a Sesame Street style animation.

We opted for a counting song and Matt managed two sequences to go with the same piece of music. One is called Ten Divers and the other is called Ten Cannonistas.

Clicking on either link takes you to the page where you can view that animation. If you can be bothered to vote then please do. It may help us to win, or at least remain in the top 100. Voting is a bit of a faff - you have to register - but it's election year (in the UK anyway) and you'll be glad of the practice.

I found writing a counting song surprisingly difficult, although once I got the hang of it they just kept coming. The problem was that songs move in multiples of 2, 4, 8 etc. whereas we tend to count in tens. I could have written a song that stopped at eight but, in all my years of watching pre-school TV, I didn't see any that didn't make it to ten. And somehow I don't think a composition in 5/4 would cut it with the under fives.

Well, actually I think under fives might go for a counting song in 5/4 but the judges, presumably adults, might disagree. Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of both the song and the sequences.