I hope everyone had a great Easter. This was my first holiday away from everyone I know so it was a little rough, but I decided to use all that time to write a new piece of music just for myself; something I haven't been able to do in quite a while.
Art in general, whether it be painting, music or dance is a highly emotional medium. Works of art seem to take on a life and meaning of their own when the artist puts the powerful emotions they're feeling into that piece of art. I wanted to do that with this piece. This weekend I was feeling some powerful emotions, namely sadness, love and hope. Rather than sit with those emotions, I wanted to pour them into this piece of music, and this work is the result. I recorded a 30 second sketch late Friday night and the piece was done by sunday evening. It felt really good to slave away at some music again. I hope you can hear the emotions I threw into it. This piece is entitled 'Goodbye'.
Goodbye
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Monday, April 9, 2012
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Soundscapes
This week I was asked to write some music for a 15 second Bailey's Creamer commercial. The commercial is a very visual experience displaying the blending of the creamer with the coffee. So for this commercial, the agency wanted more of a soundscape. A soundscape is a piece of music that blurs the line between music and sound effects. The agency didn't want to go full out soundscape, but wanted a very textural piece of music with only a hint of melody. Some could have a rhythm attached to it, but they were looking for a very clean and modern sound. I've never done a soundscape or anything close to one, so I was excited for the opportunity to try it out.
I used a plugin for Logic called Sculpture. It's a synth engine that lets you build your own sounds. The interface is very visual based so you can see what you're doing to the sound, hence the name.
This would also be one of the first times I've used synths since the dreaded hip-hop main title I did for Mike Post. This one was actually fun, as I was able to blend synths with traditional sounds for a unique feel. I did 5 versions of this commercial and I think I may want to incorporate some electronic elements into future projects now. I hope you enjoy these.
Baileys 1
Baileys 2
Baileys 3
Baileys 4
Baileys 5
I used a plugin for Logic called Sculpture. It's a synth engine that lets you build your own sounds. The interface is very visual based so you can see what you're doing to the sound, hence the name.
This would also be one of the first times I've used synths since the dreaded hip-hop main title I did for Mike Post. This one was actually fun, as I was able to blend synths with traditional sounds for a unique feel. I did 5 versions of this commercial and I think I may want to incorporate some electronic elements into future projects now. I hope you enjoy these.
Baileys 1
Baileys 2
Baileys 3
Baileys 4
Baileys 5
Sunday, March 25, 2012
An Exercise in Revisions
Last week I was asked to do two spots for Progressive (the auto insurance, not the soup). Both feature that girl Flo. The first had a retro, 60s-esque feel and the other, they wanted a 'Whistle While you Work' vibe to it. I got working. I had a lot of fun on the spots, especially the 60s one because that's a style I wouldn't normally write on my own. Here are those pieces of music.
Ode to Flo 1
Business 1
So I sent those pieces in and a little later I got a response back. They really liked the pieces, but the agency wanted a more French or Italian vibe to it, so they wanted instruments that reflected that and the tracks modified. This was the challenge. At first I was worried because I only had that night to fix them and because I wrote what I heard in my head, I couldn't hear them written another way. I thought I would just have to write two new pieces of music, because these couldn't be modified.
But then I remembered the film scoring book I read, and this is a common thing that composers have to get over. Sometimes the director needs things to be different for a piece of music, even if the composer thinks it sounds perfect. I took this as an opportunity, and rather than write new songs, I would figure out how to modify these into what they wanted. And I'm actually really happy with the results. I feel it's something I wouldn't have come up with on my own.
Ode to Flo 2
Business 2
Regardless of what happens to these tracks, I'm happy with the experience of having to push myself out of my comfort zone.
Ode to Flo 1
Business 1
So I sent those pieces in and a little later I got a response back. They really liked the pieces, but the agency wanted a more French or Italian vibe to it, so they wanted instruments that reflected that and the tracks modified. This was the challenge. At first I was worried because I only had that night to fix them and because I wrote what I heard in my head, I couldn't hear them written another way. I thought I would just have to write two new pieces of music, because these couldn't be modified.
But then I remembered the film scoring book I read, and this is a common thing that composers have to get over. Sometimes the director needs things to be different for a piece of music, even if the composer thinks it sounds perfect. I took this as an opportunity, and rather than write new songs, I would figure out how to modify these into what they wanted. And I'm actually really happy with the results. I feel it's something I wouldn't have come up with on my own.
Ode to Flo 2
Business 2
Regardless of what happens to these tracks, I'm happy with the experience of having to push myself out of my comfort zone.
Monday, March 19, 2012
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!
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!
Monday, March 12, 2012
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!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
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!
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!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
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:
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:
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