And Now We Play The Waiting Game

So all the work and hopes have come to this point. I have finished and submitted my application to the ASCAP Workshop for this year. 5 pieces, and nearly 11 minutes of music among varying styles. Here they are in one place for your listening pleasure.

1.) Romantic Comedy: I like my music to tell a story, so I wanted to do the same with this, rather than write 90 seconds of the straight and obvious romantic comedy feel. There are a lot of other emotions that go into a movie like that to make it work. So this story starts out with the traditional comedic and upbeat music, followed by love and sadness, then reunion and love.

Romantic Comedy



2.) Action/Adventure: Adventure pieces come in many different flavors. Some cues are used in gritty shoot 'em up movies and others in swashbuckling pirate films. I want to be a composer for family oriented music like the Disney/PIXAR films, so I wanted to showcase that side of my writing, so I chose the Disney style of adventure music. This is one of my favorite pieces.

Action/Adventure



3.) Epic: This is another one of those subjective genres. Epic could mean emotionally heavy, or glorious like when you see the alien ship rise out of the ocean in the Abyss. Or it could mean ultimate action and danger like in 300. For this piece, I chose to go the danger route because it's a style of music that would contrast best with my other, lighter pieces and show my varying styles of composition.

Epic



Wild Cards
These could be anything that I wanted under 3 minutes that show off my compositional skills. The first I wanted to showcase was the piece I wrote that won me the fellowship last year. But that piece wasn't aging well. The music was fine, but the way it was put together was starting to fall apart. I wanted to remaster it using the skills I have developed between writing that piece and now. I found the original file, relinked all the instruments back to it, re-recorded, mixed and mastered it. I feel it revitalizes the piece, and I'm still very happy with the sound.

Wild Card 1



For the last Wild Card I wanted to use the Quest for Asia song I had written over the summer. The problem was that it was 30 seconds too long to meet the 3 minute requirement. It needed some editing. I felt this would be a good learning experience. In the real world of film scoring, if the director doesn't like on of your cues, you need to edit it, even if you as the composer feel it's perfect. I love Quest for Asia and I wouldn't change it, but I took the axe to it and picked it away. Certain sections I sped up a bit to shave a couple seconds, and others I had to remove a few measures here and there to make it fit. The result still preserves the feel and experience I was going for, so I'm still very happy with this piece.

Wild Card 2



So here they are. I hope you enjoy them, and come May I'll know one way or another if I've been selected. This is an extremely competitive workshop so I'm not anticipating getting in right away. I have hear of people have to try to a few years running to get in, so I'm just happy to have the chance now. More news to come!