I created this theme in the style of music used in classic spaghetti westerns from the 1960s, made famous by composers such as Ennio Marchione. To capture this vibe I used an instrument called the Fender BassVI, which is actually a guitar tuned down one octave lower than a normal guitar tuning. This instrument was a popular choice for getting this type of twangy barritone kind of tone. It was used on lots of film and TV soundtracks from the 60s as well as popular hits by groups such as The Beatles and the Beach Boys. You can hear this sound in the Beach Boys hit “Dance Dance Dance”, “I Get Around” as well as Frankie Valli & The Four Season’s hit “Sherry”. For this track I played the Bass VI as well as composing the orchestral arrangement and guitar accompaniment.
I wrote this song cue as a “dramedy” style theme to be used for scenes involving comedy, awkward first encounters, or quirky couples meeting each other for the first time. It could also be used as background music for product advertisements, or web videos. The music is supposed to convey the feeling of happiness, friendliness, simplicity, connection, and light-hearted conversation. I used pizzicato strings, oboe, bassoon, acoustic guitar, upright bass, and modern grooves to create this theme.
My father passed away recently. As a tribute to him it inspired me to record some solo guitar pieces that I’ve been working on over the past few months. The song “Keepsakes” was one that I just finished only a few days before he passed away. One of the things that I always liked about my Dad was his love and appreciation for music. He used to like it when I would play solo acoustic guitar for him at night before bed. He wouldn’t provide compliments very often (usually razzing me instead as it was his nature to tease), but I knew that he enjoyed it just the same – and it always made me want to try harder to play something that he would enjoy. I have him to thank for introducing me to Bluegrass, Hank Williams, Western Swing (Bob Wills), Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, and other great music.
This piece started as an idea I came up with on a 6-string bass guitar part for an ambient track I was working on. But the song took on a life of its own as I took the idea and developed it with orchestra and electronic sounds.
I wrote this song to capture the happy, energetic feeling of being outside under the sun. Several publishers were looking for happy music that would be suitable for use in TV shows and advertisements for children. I wanted to come up with something happy, and energetic. I used Guitar, Ukulele, an upright bass along with a more modern groove and synth parts to add more energy.
The Awakening is a thoughtful instrumental piece I wrote with guitar, strings, and synthesizer. The song started as a solo guitar piece after exploring a dropped tuning that I’d setup for teaching a guitar student to play the guitar part to the song “Yesterday” by the Beatles. I loved the way this guitar sounded in the dropped tuning and decided to write my own solo piece with it. I added strings, harp, and a synth part to fill out the song.
This song was inspired by the music genres known as “sneaky comedy” and “space-age pop” made popular in the 1960s by composers such as Henry Mancini and Juan Garcia Escivel. I love this type of music because its use of humor, surprise, and mysterious chords to create a playful atmosphere in sound. With this track I was trying to capture all of those elements that I love so much about this music.
This song was inspired by my many visits to Berlin, Germany over the years. This city has so much history, and stories to tell, many of them sad in nature. My time there left an impression on me and I’ve always felt the need to write a piece of music to capture the way this city made me feel.
I wrote this piece as par of a score for a short film (Invisible Me) about the neglect and isolation that children of drug addicts experience. This theme was meant to convey the feeling of loneliness and longing for the love of an absent parent consumed with drug addiction. The film was pitched for several film festivals but never released.
This is an electronica piece that I wrote for use as underscore for corporate videos, ads, or websites. This piece uses a combination of ethereal electronic instruments, pulsating rhythm, with electric and acoustic guitars to create a sound that gradually builds to a dramatic end.
I wrote this guitar instrumental after being inspired by the music of Harry Nilsson. I used my French-made Duponte Selmer-style guitar for the melody on this track to provide a more melancholy sound.
I wrote this song to try to capture the sound of early Chet Atkins instrumentals that I love so much. I’ve always loved this style of guitar playing and decided to write a song of my own to capture some of the elements of this style. I used my beloved Gretsch 6120 to record the main guitar part.
I wrote this song as a possible theme song for a reality TV show about a group of women friends who stir up a lot of drama from week-to-week, hence the title of the song. I combined elements 60s dance music along with more modern grooves to give it more pizzazz
One of the more challenging aspects of creating music for film projects is composing under tight deadlines. Several years ago, I attended a panel session about film and TV composing where one of the panelists was the composer for the TV show Survivor. He began his talk with the following bit of sage advice … “how many of you here are composers?”, at that point everyone raised their hands. Then he said “O.K., how many of you are writing at least 2 minutes of fully-produced, mixed, and mastered, original broadcast-quality music every single day?” At that point only one or two people still had their hands up, while the rest of us slowly brought our hands down. Then he said, “Those of you who still have your hands up are the real composers. To the rest of you, that’s the level you need to be at if you want to be a TV or film composer”.
His message was clear. If you want to get hired as a composer, you need to hone your skills so that you are able to create quality music consistently and quickly. You can only get there by doing it a lot!
I took this advice to heart, and set out on a path over the next few years to challenge myself to write as often as I could. While I still can’t claim to be writing 2 minutes of music every single day with demands of a full-time day job, I did hold myself accountable to write more often and get better at writing in various genres (see the following link for various self-imposed projects along that journey my songwriting projects).
Recently I put my skills to the test by accepting the role of composer for a creative team who had entered a 48-hour film contest hosted by the IFP (Independent Filmmakers Project) in the Phoenix area. For this contest each team was presented with a basic list of requirements for their film (acceptable genres, a line that must be said in the movie, and one prop that must appear – in our case that was a red balloon). Then after a quick beer at a local micro-brewery launch event, each team was sent out with only 48-hours to write their script, create their storyboard, shoot all of their scenes, do all of the video editing , add the Foley track (sound effects), write and record the musical score, and deliver the finished film back to the panel of judges by the deadline.
The film team that I’d signed up with decided to do an action film. This meant that the film would need music from start to finish to highlight the on-screen action and suspense. Since our film was 5 minutes in length, this certainly fit the criteria of doing my 2 minutes of original broadcast-quality music every single day. If you’ve never tried this kind of writing exercise before, all I can tell you is that this is much harder than it seems. If you’re really honest about doing your best-quality work and holding yourself to a high standard, you will be working long and hard each day to get your 2.5 minutes of killer music wrapped up.
This was a very valuable learning experience as well as a chance to make connections with local film makers. Here are some of the important things I learned along the way:
Communicate with the producer often and understand his/her vision for the project!
By communicating often with the producer you can come to an understanding about the kind of sound you will need to deliver, as well as a timeline for anything that can help you in the composing process. Through my initial contact, I was able to get a storyboard for the film before any of the shooting began. This provided me with a way to get a head start on creating musical ideas for the opening theme, suspense theme, and closing music before I had any film to work with. Then I could focus on refining those initial ideas after getting the first video edits back from the production team, rather than waiting to write any music until seeing the first video edits. This saved hours of time since I didn’t see the first film edits until less than 24 hours before the deadline. There’s no way I could have finished my music if I’d not started when I did.
As you watch the film, try to understand how the music can provide the missing part of the narrative
As a film composer, you get to mess with the audience’s head, enjoy it! Your musical ideas, and the sounds you select, can have a huge impact on the way the audience interprets the on-screen drama. It’s your job to convey to the audience how they should “feel” about each scene. Oftentimes the scene is missing something to bring it to life, either because the visual or dialog doesn’t convey everything that is happening. Or, perhaps the actors aren’t delivering their lines in a convincing way to match the situation unfolding on screen (keep in mind that the actors aren’t hearing any background music or sound effects when they are trying to sound convincing in their scenes). As a composer, it’s your job to be that missing ingredient that tells the audience “something bad is about to happen”, “this guy is missing someone and feeling sad, even though his face doesn’t show it”, “help is on the way”, or “the shit is about to hit the fan!”. This is the funnest part of the process, figuring out that missing element and providing it to the audience with your score. When you get it right, its very gratifying! It also helps you to appreciate how important the musical underscore is for any film. To give you an example of just how important that is, watch this film clip that shows how various kinds of music can drastically change the way a scene is interpreted :
Know where to find your sounds quickly, and select your sound pallet early!
In creating your musical score you have to decide fairly early on what kind of “vibe” you will need to deliver for your scenes. Are you going for something that needs a big, lush, orchestral sound, a small intimate acoustic sound, or an industrial-techno synthetic sound? In my case, I was trying to create a feeling of suspense, uneasiness, and danger throughout the film. I had to know where to find these sounds to deliver this sort of vibe very quickly so that I could focus on creating the music. Before taking this project, I’d spent a lot of time going through my patches in various sound libraries I use, to categorize various presets according to kind of project I’d use it for. In one of my synth libraries, it allows me to put a list of keywords into each patch that I can search from later, such as “suspense pad”, “action hits”, “mysterious pad”, “twisted sound splashes”, “underwater documentary sounds”, “sad strings”, etc. This provided a convenient way for me to quickly go to my synth libraries and decide which sounds were going to be used in my pallet of sound to create my score for each scene. Getting that out of the way quickly saves hours of time of hunting and pecking my way through a huge amount of sound presets for every library I use. When you’re under a deadline you don’t have the luxury of time to be searching for the perfect sound. You have to know where to find those sounds quickly.
Here is the final version of the film that I scored for this contest. Although our team didn’t win the contest, I made a lot of filmmaker contacts in the local community and got a referral for another composing project as a result.
This is a re-orchestrated holiday version of my song “Give Me Park Avenue”. I created this version of the song to add more sparkle to enhance the holiday mood. I was going for that retro orchestral holiday instrumental sound that you might hear in TV ads or retail stores to put people in a festive mood. See my blog article about composing this song: Composing Christmas Instrumental Music(note: the photo on the right was taken in December 2010 in Berlin, Germany when I was there for a business trip)
