The lesson is one you’ve probably hard before, but have you taken it to heart? Looking back at your creative process, is this how it goes?

The essential central message is that you should create without any restraint, editing, or self-criticism. Just get it all out of your system. Don’t rewrite, don’t judge, etc. Write, write some more, and then keep on writing until you have truly run out of things to say. At which point, step away and take a break. Only when you return with a fresh perspective do you dig in and find the gold while trashing the junk.

The two main points are:

1. Stream of consciousness creation.
2. Writing and editing as very separate phases.

Read the whole article, it’s worth it.

“I’m in my first year of music college at the moment and I’m just wondering did you ever try to get any intern or assistant positions during the Summers in-between or did you wait until you’d finished college?”

“The short answer is no, I would wait. In my case I didn’t get an assistant job until after I finished college and moved to LA, but that was mostly because I had to move to where the industry was first.

If you come upon an amazing opportunity, perhaps with a composer you admire, or someone who works on the kinds of projects you love, then absolutely go for it. But otherwise I would say don’t get ahead of yourself. You’re in school to learn, so take advantage of it. Practice your instrument, read 100 orchestration books, stay up all night analyzing the Rite of Spring. Devote yourself to music and developing your skills. The details of how to work in a studio can mostly be picked up in a matter of weeks, but the foundation of being a truly skilled and versatile composer takes years.

There is no prize for getting your career started too early, and you’re only going to be a teenager once. Travel, hang out with your friends, start a band. Professional life is great but there’s no reason to rush into it. I’m 28 now, with a mortgage and a family. I love it, but it’s definitely a different life than I had 10 years ago.

When I had just finished with school I had the amazing opportunity to meet Howard Shore over coffee and ask him questions. I was just about to move to LA and so of course I had all these big plans and wanted to know the right move for every situation. His advice to me was “slow down and be patient”. At the time it didn’t really sink in and I didn’t get it, but now I’m starting to understand.

In the past I spent more time thinking about the next step without paying enough attention to the one I was on. Obviously I consider goals and planning to be crucial, but as a guide not an obsession. In high school it was all about getting into Berklee, at Berklee it was all about becoming a film composer, when I was scoring short films it was all about getting my first feature, and so on. But really scoring short films should be all about doing a great job scoring short films. Scoring a feature should be all about doing a great job scoring that feature, not about how to leverage it for the next one. Being in college should be about getting the most out of it that you can, while you still can.

Making the most of the present moment is worth contemplation.”

One Year Ago

May 4th, 2011 - Lessons for a Composer’s Assistant
May 11th, 2011 - Using Music to Develop a Film’s Brand
May 18th, 2011 - Keep Them On the Edge of Their Seats
May 25th, 2011 - On Finding Your Voice as an Artist

Two Years Ago

May 4th, 2010 - Eden Espinosa
May 13th, 2010 - Music from ‘Skinning’

I’ve heard it said before that there are two primary methods of composing. Either you envision the entire piece in your mind before picking up the pencil (or mouse, more likely), or you noodle around with material until you settle on something you like.

In his book “A Composer’s World”, Paul Hindemith asserts the following:

“We all know the impression of a very heavy flash of lightning in the night. Within a second’s time we see a brad landscape, not only in its general outlines but with every detail. Although we could never describe each single component of the picure, we feel that not even the smallest leaf of grass escapes our attention. We experience a view, immensely comprehensible and at the same time immensely detailed, that we never could have under normal daylight conditions, and perhaps not during the night either, if our senses and nerves were not strained by the extraordinary suddenness of the event.

Compositions must be conceived the same way. If we cannot, in the flash of a single moment, see a composition in its absolute entirety, with every pertinent detail in its proper place, we are not genuine creators.“

Is this true for most of you out there? Do all professional composers envision a cue in a flash of lightning like this?

I have had success with both methods, and I haven’t really figured out which (if either) is a stronger approach.

For example on a recent project I had a cue very carefully planned out. I knew where each new section would begin, how it should build, and when it would end. But when the cue was finished, it wasn’t resonating with the director. For version two I tried a different approach; I let the video roll and just improvised on the piano. It required a but of polishing and finesse afterwards, but that improvisation ended up making up at least 80% of the final cue! Not to mention the fact that it only took the length of the scene to come up with, much less time than all the “planning”.

So to the composers out there I want to know: What do you think, and how do you work? Have you had greater success with careful preparation or carefree improvisation?

Please leave your comments below and lets open up the conversation!

CineBrass is my new favorite brass library and in the tutorial I discuss the many options available for making CineBrass suit your workflow.

Check out the full tutorial here!

For one thing, in 64-bit mode Logic doesn’t let you bounce to quicktime, which is very frustrating for creating demos. But it can also be tedious to set up the video for every single cue, especially if the cut is still flexible and you’re receiving new versions. You risk having the wrong version of video in different Logic sessions, and overall are just making things complex.

To make things easier, I run a single Pro Tools session as the video host. Using MTC/MMC I set Pro Tools to slave to Logic. I have the dialogue and temp music tracks set up in Pro Tools and routed to separate inputs on my Mackie Big Knob, which allows me to turn them on or off with the push of a button.

Once a cue is ready to go, I bounce it out of Logic and import the audio file into Pro Tools, where I can mix it with dialogue and then export to quicktime. The result is also one long session with all of my cues, including older versions.

This is amazingly useful for a playback session. For example if the director stops by to see what’s new, rather than wait for every Logic session to load for each new cue you just play back everything in the Pro Tools session.

A simple idea that takes a little bit of initial set up, but once you have it up and running it makes larger projects go much smoother.

After years of enduring his father’s cold discipline, a son decides to rid his father by poisoning him. But, just as soon as his plan starts to take effect, the son begins to see his father for the first time as a human being.

Director – Kevin Huang
Producer(s) – Adam Bonsib
Editor – Mowgli Jones
Cinematographer – James Herron & Tim Wu

Here is a sneak peek of the score, the cue from the end titles:

The film is written and directed by Albert M. Chan, starring Albert M. Chan, Jason Fenton, Mary Niederkorn, Kerri Patterson, and produced by Albert M. Chan, Richard Possemato, Aaron Howland, Seth Howland

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make on Shark Tank is a lack of preparation. It is also one of the easiest things to get right! But time and again, people stumble over their vision for the business, get confused about their sales figures, and just flat out don’t know how many functions of their business are actually performing.

When you go into a meeting with a director, you had better be prepared. Here are some ideas on what to prepare for a meeting:

• Learn as much about the project as you can. Did they send you a script? Read it and take notes. Does the film have a website? A Facebook page? Read the blog to get an understanding of what production was like, how much sweat and labor has already gone into the production, and what kind of work ethic they expect from their crew.
• Learn as much about the filmmakers as you can. What are their past projects? What type of films do they seem to like working on? Do you have any mutual connections? Read their bio, maybe you both happen to be from the same small town back East which would make for a great ice breaker.
• Know your numbers. Are you planning on pitching a full orchestral score? Do you know how much that will cost, even if just an estimate? How about scheduling? Can you give them a solid estimate of how much time the scoring process will take?
• Know the genre. If you’re going in for a meeting on a romantic comedy, make sure you actually can talk about some romantic comedies. Research the iconic scores in the genre, and brush up on some of the latest releases. When the director says “I want something that sounds like Drive,” you had better know what that means.
]]> http://ryanleach.com/2012/04/lessons-for-a-composer-from-shark-tank-part-two/feed/ 0 http://ryanleach.com/2012/04/offbeat-ostinatos-for-forward-momentum/ http://ryanleach.com/2012/04/offbeat-ostinatos-for-forward-momentum/#comments Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:00:01 +0000 ryan http://ryanleach.com/?p=2050 Continue reading →]]> While listening to James Newton Howard’s score to Hunger Games, my ear caught a short section in the track Katniss Afoot that reminded me of a simple but useful technique.

At about 1:19 the violins play a repeating ostinato pattern that rests on beats 1 and 3. By starting the pattern on the “and” of beats 1 and 3, the rhythm gives a sense of constantly pushing forward.



A simple technique, but worth remember if your rhythm doesn’t seem to have enough forward drive.

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