at this time in his development as having a surprising ability to hear music and play it back immediately from memory, and would often compose innovative riffs through improvisation.
Though that school rejected him because of his poor notation skills, at Edmonton University he wrote and recorded music for campus theater productions, hosted a radio show, and played in a band.
He received a degree in psychology from the university; this influence was felt later in songs that dealt with body language and the computer-like ways children absorb information.
[citation needed] Originally commissioned for a Belgian ballet, Les Etapes mixed tape samples, electronics, soprano, and violin; the following year, he finished a musique concrète piece called "Lullaby for a Cat".
[3] Meanwhile, Haack wrote serious compositions as well, such as 1962's "Mass for Solo Piano", which Pandel performed at Carnegie Hall, and a song for Rocky Mountain House's 50th anniversary.
Though he had little formal training in electronics, he made synthesizers and modulators out of any gadgets and surplus parts he could find, including guitar effects pedals and battery-operated transistor radios.
This included scoring commercials for clients like Parker Brothers Games, Goodyear Tires, Kraft Cheese, and Lincoln Life Insurance; in the process, Haack won two awards for his work.
He also continued to promote electronic music on television, demonstrating his homemade device encased in a suitcase on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in 1968, where he sampled a song by the Rolling Stones entitled "Citadel".
Haack continued making children's albums as well, including 1972's Dance to the Music, 1974's Captain Entropy, and 1975's This Old Man, which featured science fiction versions of nursery rhymes and traditional songs.
He also released Funky Doodle and Ebenezer Electric (an electronic version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol) in 1976, but by the late 1970s, his prolific output slowed.
Though Bite is harsher than his other works, it features his innovative, educational touch: A thorough primer on electronics and synthesizers makes up a large portion of the liner notes, and Haack adds a new collaborator for this album, 13-year-old vocalist Ed Harvey.
Haack's failing health slowed Dimension 5's musical output in the early 1980s, but Nelson and Pandel kept the label alive by publishing songbooks, like Fun to Sing and The World's Best Funny Songs, and re-released selected older albums as cassettes which are still available today.
It features interviews with some of Haack's associates and collaborators such as Ted "Praxiteles" Pandel, Esther Nelson and Chris Kachulis as well as contemporary artists including Eels, Mouse On Mars, Money Mark, and Peanut Butter Wolf.