Interview With Mike Post

I was doing a bit of reminiscing today about my time with Mike Post last year. It was this time a year ago that I was in that studio writing music for Law and Order, and sometimes I need to stop and remember that I was there and what a great experience I had with some of the best people in the industry. I was hunting around youtube and found this great interview with Mike where he speaks about his experience writing music and how lucky he feels to be where he is. Just felt like this is worth sharing. Enjoy!

The Long Overdue Music Update

Things have been both busy and stagnant over the last couple weeks. Here's an overview of the projects I'm working on. First up I was asked to write some music for Mattel. They were developing the toys for the new PIXAR Brave film. They were looking for up-beat Scottish sounding music. Unfortunately the final music was given to someone else, but I got a few good tracks out of it and the guys I worked for liked it so much, they really fought for my tracks to win. In the end it all comes down to a matter of taste by the people who made the commercial, but here they are.

Brave Track 1


Brave Track 2


Brave Track 3


After that, I met a couple of guys through work who do some video work for Disney. Every year, Disney puts on a musical for all its employees and donates the proceeds to a charity. The musical event is coming up soon and the commercials for the ticket sales are due. I was asked to write the music for these commercials. The commercials won't be shown on TV, but they will be shown to all Disney employees internally. That's over 8000 people so it's a big opportunity and a lot of exposure for me. There will be 4 commercials total and I have been given the first 2. I can only post the music right now, but I'm told that I'll get the videos with all the copywritten material removed that I can post soon. The first commercial is supposed to build anticipation for the event and the music should help the feeling along and give the feel of 'It's Happening Again Soon'.

Disney Anticipation Music


The second commercial is for the event itself and needed to be fast-paced, very Disney adventure sounding music. All the music is supposed to tie together, so you'll notice the intro to this one is the same as the first, only much faster and with full orchestra rather than piano. This one was a lot of fun to write and I'm considering making a full piece out of it just for fun. Hope you like it.

Disney Adventure Music


Now for some new stuff. I moved out to California to realize my dream of becoming a film composer. That hasn't happened yet. I'm not complaining or anything, but I'm young, determined and impatient so I want to move things along. The things I need are exposure and connections. I have quite a few connections and I'm sure given enough time, one of them will pan out, but more can't hurt. Also a bit more exposure will also help. The Pete Carpenter Fellowship through BMI has gotten a foot in the door for me, but it's time for the other foot. ASCAP, another music representation agency is also holding a fellowship that I wish to apply for. This one is quite different and equally exciting than the Pete Carpenter.   This one is the ASCAP Film and TV scoring workshop. 12 winners are selected each year to spend 4 weeks in LA and meet with film composers, agents and sound engineers and get an original piece of theirs recorded and produced by a live orchestra and sound team. It sounds like an amazing opportunity and I have to apply for it. The requirements are for you to submit 5 pieces of music. 2 of them are wild cards. They can be anything you want less than 3 minutes in length. The other 3 must be 90 seconds or less and from a list of 5 possible genres. Those genres are Romantic Comedy, Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Epic and Main Title. I've decided to do the romantic comedy, adventure and epic and pray for the best. The deadline is April 1st, so it's time to get started. I just finished my first 90 second piece and it was the romantic comedy. I'm extremely happy with how this one came out.  My girlfriend Lauren bought me a book that had proved invaluable called the Mixing Engineers Handbook.

This book has tips on mixing and getting the most out of your mix. The biggest thing I've learned (so far) is the idea of putting each instrument in its own 'space' in terms of frequency. What that means is a piano can be played high or low, so if it's playing high, you cut the low out of the sound and increase the high frequencies so there's room for the bass instruments to play. You do the same for all your instruments. You accentuate the frequency range its playing in and remove the ones its not. This makes all your instruments sound clear, even when a full orchestra is playing. I'm still learning but I used this technique for the romantic comedy piece and I can hear the difference right away. Combine that with what I learned from Tim Jones, and I'm starting to get a very realistic sounding mix.

Romantic Comedy


So that's what I'm working on right now. I've got a couple other things in the wings, but this is keeping me busy for now. So I've got 2 months to write 4 more pieces for this new fellowship. Until then I'm still hoping to hear back from the composers I've contacted. I'll be sure to post more of these pieces as I write them. Bye for now!

The Secret Disney Project

It's time to reveal what I've been working on over the last month! During the summer, I had my amazing phone call with Greg Smith. In that call, he asked me if I had any experience writing music with lyrics. I told him very little, and he let me know that a lot of what he does at Disney involves music with lyrics. After that phone call I knew I wanted to show him that I could write a Disney-styled song, like one that you would see in the films. The problem was where to begin.

Luckily Lauren's dad, Paul had a solution. Paul is an amazing painter and dabbles a bit in music. He had written the lyrics for a song almost a decade ago called Suddenly Uncertain and asked me if I would write it into a song. Originally he wanted it to be a pop song, but pop is something I have no skills in writing, and it's not something I particularly want to do. When I read the lyrics, I noticed that the words really loaned themselves to be the setting for a Disney love song about a girl who is having feelings for a guy who she thought was not an option and realizes she actually loves him. So the song began.

Step one was taking what Paul had already written and putting it to music. He had a basic melody in mind, so I tried to stick to that as best I could. I loaded my instruments and wrote a verse for the music (which ended up being the third verse in the final song).

Over time we made tweaks to the lyrics to make it sound more Disney-like and discovered that in order for the song to really come into its own, it needed a make part, so the song was to be a duet. We modified the lyrics again and the song really took shape. Over the next weeks I would score the instrumentals and tweak the lyrics until I was happy. Then I realized there was something I hadn't planned on. Who was going to sing for me?

I don't know any singers in California, and even if I did, where would I record them? As I pondered this, I wanted to share my project with a couple of my close friends, Ryan and Nicole, who are both huge Disney fans. Then I realized, they're both singers! I asked them if they wanted to help and they were more than happy to. But the problem was they were in Connecticut and I wasn't. But then I remembered Jeremy Taylor. He was my high school band/music technology teacher and good friend of mine. A couple years ago, the high school was renovated and a state of the art recording studio was installed. I emailed him and he agreed to do the recording. I was so excited that this was finally coming together.

After a couple weeks of planning, printed sheet music and practicing, we had a recording day in mind. Ryan and Nicole had used their computer microphones to send me temporary recordings so I could get them ready for the day. On the real day of recording, Jeremy Skyped me in so that I could direct the recording session. He also patched their mics and the instrument track into Skype so I could listen on earphones exactly what they were singing and then coach them in real time. It was a really amazing session that I could be a part of. The recording session went so well and I couldn't be happier.

Over the last week I mixed everything together and balanced the music and vocals and came up with my final product. I played it for Paul and he was so excited to see a song he thought up 10 years ago come to life. Now I have this Disney song to send to Greg and see if this opens some doors. I'm so proud of all the work that went into this project from everyone and I am excited to finally show this to all of you! I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

And here is the version without vocals if you would like to listen to what the orchestra is doing underneath.

Something for the Holidays

Happy Holidays everyone! To all my friends and family on the east coast, I'll be missing you this Christmas. To everyone else, I hope your holiday season is an amazing one. Here's a little something just for you. I hope you enjoy. This is a lesser known song called 'Come Buy My Nice Fresh Ivy'. If you listen carefully, you may hear a touch of 'Carol of the Bells' and 'The Holly and the Ivy'. Vocals by Lauren Martin.

New Commercials and a Fan Film

I've been on a bit of a hiatus lately. I recently got a job at the Apple Store to make ends meet until something happens with the music. It's such an amazing place to work. Apple really takes care of its employees and it's filled with people just like me. So many of my co-workers are in the film, TV or music industry and are in the same place I am, so we all have that in common. Many of them know I do music and I am already in the process of collaborating on a few of their projects. I'm very excited to see where that leads.

This week ended up being an unexpectedly busy week for music. I was asked to write for an Ace Hardware and a McDonalds commercial. I hope I get picked for one of those. So far none of my tracks have been picked for the recent commercials. It's such a competitive field. I'm sure that once I get my first, I'll know what sells and I can do a better job of writing what they want to hear.

I also was asked to write a sample track for a small production company doing a fan film on Harry Potter. They're looking for someone who can replicate the feel of John Williams. No one can ever come close to the real thing, but I had never tried to replicate his sound, so I was eager for the challenge. I did a small test track today and feel pretty good about this as a first draft. Have a listen!

Other than that, my secret Disney project takes a huge leap forward next sunday, so in a week or two, I will be able to reveal the project to you all. I know you haven't heard from me lately, but keep on tuning in. Things will be happening very soon!

I'm Not Dead!

Hey everyone. Just writing in to let you all know that I'm not dead. Things have been awfully slow in the last few weeks so there hasn't been a lot to report. Little things have happened here and there, but I'm beginning to feel the need to be doing something. So I'll give you a few little updates until something actually happens.

Firstly, as a continuation of my last post, the song I was previewing has been completed, entitled 'Quest for Asia'. I am very pleased with the new sound and am excited to start getting feedback on it. I'm trying a new way of sharing my music on this blog, so if anyone can't play the files, please let me know and I'll switch back to the old way of doing things.

Next, after a bit of a lull, I got a new commercial to score for Google. This one tells a bit of an uplifting story and they were looking for more traditional instruments, so this one really appealed to me. Here's the music I came up with.

The interesting thing that happened recently is that I received an email out of the blue from Robert Kral. Robert is the one I met during the fellowship working on the Scooby Doo cartoons. He asked me if I had made it to California okay, and was interested in getting more music of mine sent to him. I had already given him a CD of some of my stuff when I met with him. I can't help but wonder why he wants to hear more of my work if he's not looking for help. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but this is certainly a promising lead. 

I am also currently working on a Disney-themed project that I can't speak too much about right now. It's a personal project, but I have hopes that it may open a few doors for me. This project has both instrumental and vocal sections, so it will definitely be an exciting one. I'll keep you updated once things take a bit more shape. 

Finally, I've been here for 2 months now, and I'm at that point where I simply need something to do. I've started looking for any kind of work in the area just to keep me busy and give me a little spending cash until one of these composer leads pays off. I'm confident by all the feedback I've been getting that it's only a matter of time now, so the idea of temporary work doesn't seem so bad. Hopefully I'll have some good news for you all soon. 

Tim Jones, Prefaders, Multipressors and Greg Smith

So as the title suggests, I once again have quite a bit to talk about. Last week I had my first interview with Tim Jones, who was one of the composers who responded to my emails about needing an assistant. I took a drive out to Pasadena to meet Tim at his studio. He greeted me at the door and right away I was comfortable. Tim is such a genuinely nice and good-hearted person. I met his assistants and it was easy to see that they all had a great working relationship. Tim had described to me on the phone that his scoring rig was wildly complicated, but to be honest, I was not entirely prepared for what I was about to see. Tim has something like 8 to 10 Mac Pros networked together, plus a couple PCs and a storage array wired over two rooms, upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs, Tim's workstation consists of gear both old and new, including a synth rack, real instruments, a mixing board, an old tape machine for making his mixes sound real, among many other things. Tim described it as he's never satisfied with his rig so he's adding to it faster than he can organize, but without a doubt, Tim's music is fantastic, and the quality of his sound is spectacular. I spent most of the afternoon there and we talked music and gear and just had a good conversation.

In the end it became clear that Tim was looking more for a computer technician rather than a musician. He was so polite in telling me and was perfectly honest that he could tell I wouldn't be happy in the position. When I thought about it, he was right. He could tell I wanted to write music, and that's just not what he needed then. But he asked if I had any music for him to listen to, so we went up again to his station and he listened to my music. He listened and wanted to know the timeline of my work and said he could hear me improving from piece to piece which was good to hear. He asked if I would mind some creative criticism, which course I wanted. People always seem afraid to give tips on how to make your art better that I never get any help from people in his position. I was so grateful to get some from him. And it was like he was in my head. He said first I needed to work on 'instrument placement'. What he means is that even in stereo, you can have control not just over whether an instrument sounds like it's coming from the right or left, but how far forward or back it is 'on stage' in your mix. You do this with a reverb channel and prefaders.

Things are about to get technical so feel free so skip over this.

I'm used to putting reverb on each one of my instruments individually, but Tim tells me that makes for an uneven sound. To combat this, you add a reverb channel to your mixing strip, and you use the Sends on your mixer to route to that reverb channel. You then send each instrument track to that one channel. This way is sounds like all the instruments are in the same room. That's only half the battle. Then what you do is send that signal using a Prefader. Normally the fader on your mixer controls the volume of that track. Setting it to a Prefader allows you to route that volume out through the Send BEFORE it gets to the normal outputs. In this case, I'm sending it out through my reverb track. Now that fader essentially lets me place that sound forward or back by sending more or less volume to the reverb. It sounds complicated, and I'll be honest that I don't completely understand it all myself yet, but it works and it sounds amazing. The difference is night and day. I'm using Space Designer from Apple for my reverb impulses and they have some great effects in there.

Space designer gives you great control over what the space sounds like that you're putting your instruments in.

Then Tim asked me if I've ever wanted to get more punch out of my sound and if things seem to just sound flat? I'm still a novice at mixing and mastering (the process of making the music sound good on all speakers) and is something I've struggled with for a long time and no one could really help me with, so I was so excited for him to help me with this. Normally all I ever do to my music is compress it. Music (especially orchestral music) has loud parts and quiet parts. Imagine looking at a mountain range over the horizon.

The loud parts are the peaks and the quiet parts are the valleys. Well you can only raise the volume to a certain point before your speakers start to crackle because they can't go any louder. It's called clipping. When you increase the volume, it raises everything, including the parts that are already loud. When you compress something, you are essentially lowering the loud stuff, and raising the quiet stuff, making more of a plateau.

The problem with this is you can lose a lot of what makes music great. The swells from quiet to loud aren't as pronounced and everything just feels...well, flat. I never knew how to fix this. Tim told me the trick was to use a multipressor.

A multipressor is a compressor, but for individual parts of your song. If you want to make the bass more punchy, you can target only low frequencies, or only mids or highs. After my meeting I went home and tried these things out and I couldn't believe the difference in how my music sounded. In one afternoon my sound had made a quantum leap. I immediately starting writing a new song to test out these new tricks. It's a work in progress and stops suddenly in the middle as I'm still writing, but I want to show you the difference. First will be the song with reverb, prefaders and multipressing. Then will be the song with those changes not included so you can hear the difference. Take a listen!

Now if you listen to the version without all the effects added, you will here how flat and digital it all sounds. It's amazing what these three simple tricks can do to a mix.

So even though I did not get this job with Tim, there was definitely a reason for my meeting him. It may in fact be because of him that I do get my next job.

The rest of that week was very quiet but last monday I was able to get my talk with Greg Smith, who does extensive work for Disney. What I thought was going to be a very short conversation due to his schedule ended up being close to two hours, and could be one of the most important phone calls I've ever had.

Greg and I were supposed to talk a couple week ago but he was so busy he had to reschedule. I was expecting him to only have a few minutes to talk but that was not the case. First he wanted to hear my story, so I told him about the limited music opportunities in CT and the fellowship, and then the choice to move here and what I've been doing. He was very impressed with what I've gotten done and said that I'm doing so much, especially for my age. He gave me advice on business and marketing myself, and explained to me how far attitude can take you, and he said I didn't have to worry about it. He told me that sometimes when people call him, he get's off the phone and says to himself that they won't get far, mostly because of their attitude. He said that he remembered that when he had to reschedule with me two weeks ago I responded by saying that I didn't want to inconvenience him so whenever was a good time for him. he said that meant a lot to him and that's what people look for. 

Greg had much the same story as me. He grew up in a small town in Ohio where there was little music to do. He moved to New York to start doing commercials and wasn't entirely happy with it, so he came to CA and got his start so he could relate to my story. He thinks I'm making the right choices right now and just need to be persistent and patient. He started asking me about my skills and if I can orchestrate, or write songs, or if I had dealt with live players before. He said that it seems I have a lot more experience than most people in my position because of the Fellowship and the projects I've taken on. He wanted me to send him some of my music to listen to and see how he can help after listening to it. I told him I would. Then he told me something that he didn't have to and I'm wondering why he did. He told me not to feel like he was hanging a carrot over my head, but that he's getting to the age where he can't pull all-nighters anymore, and he may in the near future be looking for someone to help him out. Needless to say that got me very excited. So we ended it there and he said he wanted to talk again after he got my music. That night I sent it his way so we'll see what comes of that.

I emailed Adam Berry this week like he asked. I haven't heard back yet, so I'm going to give it a week and email him again. He is my last lead, so I may have to look for a job in the meantime until I have another one. That's fine with me as it was always a possibility. But maybe this is the way it's supposed to happen. Maybe I'm supposed to not find anything at the moment because the thing I'm meant to find isn't ready yet. So now it's back to waiting for a little while, but I'm okay with that. I know that when something comes up, I'll be ready and waiting to jump on it right away.