A Pleasant Surprise

Last Thursday I was invited to attend Flashback at California Adventure. Flashback was the Disney event I wrote music for the commercials for. I was given two tickets, so I went with a friend from work. The event was to raise money for one of the Charities Disney supports. The event was 4, 20 minute musicals put on by all the people who work at Disney. Some were Disney actors, but others were management, custodial, ride operators; basically anyone who wanted to be in them. The shows were of the utmost quality, but it had the feel of a talent show, because the audience was all Disney employees, so they were cheering and screaming for their friends on stage. The event raised $10,000 for a local children's charity so that was amazing too. Here's the cover to the program.

While looking through the program, I was reading the credits for the production team when I stumbled across something they didn't tell me about. Look near the bottom. 

I got my first real credit printed in something! It was a small thing, but a huge moment for me. I hope maybe someone at Disney liked the music and notices my name. 

So that was a really cool surprise. In other news, I started writing my final piece for the fellowship due April 1st. I'm writing my Epic genre song right now. It took me a long time to get it going, but I'm finally into it now so I hope if everything works out timing-wise I'll get it done in time. Not too long to go. Once I get it finished, I'll post all the tracks I'm submitting. Tune in soon for more news!

Meeting Chris Beck

Last Friday I got the opportunity to visit Chris Beck at his studio in Santa Monica. I was able to get in touch with him because we both received the Pete Carpenter Fellowship (though he got his a 'few' years before me). When I arrived I was greeted by his assistant accompanied by a lot of scary screaming coming from the back of the studio. I was given a tour of the place which was fantastic. In his studio is a live recording room, the server room and a full mixing suite. The server room contains all the sounds, along with 10 mac pros and maybe 8 to 10 mac minis networked together. Then I was brought to the screaming where I met Chris and his other assistant Leo engaged in a very serious game of foosball. I was introduced to Chris and we headed outside to talk. He wanted to hear a lot about my story and how I got here. I'll spare that part, as my whole story is written here in the blog. We also talked a lot about the composers we know. Chris has worked with many of the composers I have met so his insight into the world was very helpful.

Then it came down to business. In terms of what Chris needs, he said that he is actually overstaffed, but having us both be Pete Carpenters, he wanted to help me out. One thing he said would benefit me was to advertise at UCLA and USC and offer to write scores for student films. He said this won't pay the bills, but it will keep me writing, give me exposure, experience and if any of the student directors or producers gets a job in the industry, I'll already have a working relationship with them, so getting a scoring job is a possibility. Chris was in the process of contacting someone he went to school with many years ago who is doing a major film he wants to write for so he said it does pay off. It took Chris almost 10 years to really make it in the business, so I know I have my work cut out for me.

After that he recommended that I get in touch with Trevor Morris. Trevor does the music for The Borgias, and The Tudors and had just finished his first A list feature, Immortals. I did send him an email and he responded to me the next day. He said that I am a bit on the inexperienced side having not worked for another composer yet, but he said we should meet anyway. I'm hoping to set up a meeting soon and see what we can work out.

All in all it was an amazing day with Chris and I feel like I'm in the right place doing the right thing and just need to put in my dues and get ready for the long haul. More to come soon!

Adventure

Today I received an email from the guys I'm doing the Disney commercials for. They had just finished putting the video together for the second spot. Luckily, this one doesn't have any copy written material in it so I can post it here. This looks like a really cool event. Soon I'll be able to go backstage Disney and see the rehearsals before I write the final 2 spots, which I'm very excited about. here's a link to the website for the event, which currently has that video on it.

Flashback

As I mentioned last week, I decided to use the music from this commercial and extend it to 90 seconds for the 'adventure' genre submission for the fellowship. I have finally finished this piece today and I'm very happy with the result. I think this may be my favorite piece of mine I've written to date. It combines everything I have learned about mixing, balancing and composition I've been reading about recently. I feel it is also my most compositionally mature piece of music so far (there's still a lifetime's worth of things to learn). My music tends to be very sectional. What I mean by that is I write a musical segment and then switch gears to another. Sometimes that works great, but in the film world, music needs to be able to move and shift without the listener always knowing it. In this piece I tried to blend the different sections together better so that when there is a sudden shift, it really grabs you. I also tried moving my melody around in the middle of phrases so one instrument starts playing the line and trades it to another midway through. Overall I'm very excited to share this piece of music and I hope you all enjoy it. All that's left after this is the 'epic' piece and I'm almost ready to submit my work. Expect some more updates soon, and without further ado, my adventure piece:

Chris Beck

Chris Beck is a major composer in Hollywood these days. His credits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Hangover, Red, Percy Jackson and the Pink Panther to name a few. For a list of his credits, see here. Now why am I talking about him. So here's the story.

Chris Beck won the Pete Carpenter Fellowship a number of years ago. Turns out at the time, Mike Post was looking for an assistant and Chris was hired on the spot. He did so well in the position, he began to get recognized for his work and left to do his own compositions.

Sidetrack: To show you how small a world it is, when Chris left to begin his own work, Mike needed to fill the position for an assistant quickly. Robert Kral, the guy I met writing music for Scooby Doo last year, applied for the position and did not get it, but instead did get hired down the road by Chris Beck. Robert began writing music for Buffy and took over for Chris when Chris left to write other music and that's how Robert got established in the business. Incredible how all the composers are linked together somehow.

Anyway, back to Chris. When I did my fellowship last year, I heard a lot about Chris and even got to meet his assistant, Matt Janszen, who stopped in at Mike's Studio. Matt was also a Pete Carpenter winner, either 1 or 2 years before me. Matt spoke very highly of his time with Chris and he learned a lot from him.  Matt went on to win the fellowship I'm applying for this year and I don't know if he's still Chris' assistant due to his recent success. Last month, I was feeling a bit antsy not hearing from people and not having any new names to contact. Then I remembered that I never tried to seek out Chris. On a whim, I found the email of his studio and sent a very straightforward letter. I told them I had won the fellowship last year and that I was looking for work as an assistant composer. I said that seeing as how Chris had won some time ago, he may be in a good position to give me some direction. I sent the message and that was that. Today I heard back.

I was contacted by someone on Chris' staff. They said they wanted to meet next week. They want to show me around the studio and then I'll get to spend some time with Chris. I'm beside myself with excitement. I had seen pictures of his studio and it's beautiful, and having time to spend with someone who was in my position 10 years ago will really help put some perspective on what my path should look like. So my plan is to finish the song I'm working on now for the fellowship, and maybe remaster my original Pete Carpenter piece if I have time and get those ready for Chris. We'll see where this goes!

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.