I used to hear about John Williams writing cues on airplanes and it blew my mind. How could he possibly compose without an instrument in front of him? But when you actually just try it, you find out that it’s not only easier than it sounds, it has amazing benefits.

• Being away from the piano prevents you from noodling around, playing the same old songs and cliches you usually play, and forces you to get out of a rut.
• You become more focused on lines and forward momentum, rather than chords and the vertical dimension.
• You improve your ear training skills and make composing more about what’s in your head, as opposed to what you’re able to play with your fingers.

While researching this topic I found a fantastic post from Eric Whitacre. He hits on some of the same points I have, and goes into much further detail. It’s worth a read.

I’ll admit that I still need a piano for figuring out harmonies and interesting chord progressions. But for melodies, themes, and lines I’ve found that writing the old-school way is surprisingly beneficial.

In the interview I talk about the process director Mike Chance and I took scoring the film, as well as some of the conceptual and thematic ideas we came up with to identify the Arbiter.

Part I of the interview has been released and can be found on the Project Arbiter blog.

Below is an excerpt, but be sure to check out the full article here.

“Ryan Leach knows that library music is an important part of any working composer’s portfolio. “Already many networks have realized that they can get away with not paying composers directly for original music,” says Leach. “In my view you can either complain about the good old days and try to fight the system, or you can make the most of reality. I have a lot of music circulating through libraries and I’m always very grateful when that ASCAP check arrives.” Under the library model, composers often receive no upfront money but do get royalties through their PRO. No upfront licensing costs saves money for the networks.

Another trend Leach expects to see more is pre-scoring, recently made popular by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in the Social Network. “There are a lot of critics in the film music community that say this isn’t ‘the right way of doing things’,” says Leach. “For me this is another situation where old-school composers will complain that it isn’t pure, but the reality is more and more directors are going to follow David Fincher’s lead in the years to come. I’ve tried a semi pre-scoring method a few times already as an experiment, in which I wrote one or two cues before seeing the film, and have had great success with it.”

Despite the changing methods, Leach doesn’t believe the basic principles of music can be affected by technology. “Variation, development, proportion, balance, a singable melody, an emotionally resonant harmonic progression. These core ideas are the same whether you’re writing for string quartets or sine waves.”

Starting at the piano keeps him from getting distracted by all the toys inside Logic. “If it’s something melodic as opposed to textural, usually I’ll sit at a piano with pencil and paper,” says Leach. “Rarely do I sketch out more than melody and chords at this stage. Then I take it into Logic and flesh it out.” When writing for live players, Leach exports a midi file into Sibelius and cleans it up.”

The purpose is to force you to get something done you’ve been putting off by making the amount of time you have to spend on it too little to matter. Hate cleaning out the garage? Well you only have to do it for 10 minutes. Has “write a blog post” been sitting on your to-do list for over a week? Just spend 10 minutes on it, and you might even make more progress than you’d expect.

A way I’ve found this useful is for pumping out sketches and ideas for themes. I set up a timer for 5 sessions of 10+2, and then I set up a clean Logic session. After hitting go I start hunting for an idea, perhaps by playing around on the piano or by loading up a patch I’ve never used before.

After the 10 minutes are up I use the 2 minute pause to catch my breathe and load up a new session. Then it starts over and I work on a new theme. An hour later I have 5 fresh ideas that can be developed into cues, and usually they’re all useful.

10 minutes is just enough time to start coming up with some interesting ideas, but not enough time to overly self-edit or start writing a full piece of music.

I’ve always found it MUCH easier to “continue” writing than to “start” writing. This means that if I have a cue half done at the end of the day, chances are pretty good that it will be almost effortless to finish it up the next day. It’s coming up with new ideas that’s the hard part, but the procrastination dash is a great way to make that happen.

Check out Merlin’s posts here and here.

If I come across anything particularly post-worthy I might write something up here, otherwise you’re more likely to find me tweeting about it.

I recently stumbled upon a fun and simple web app called Workflowy that I’ve really enjoyed using for about a week, so I wanted to write up a quick post to share it. Workflowy is essentially an outlining program with the bare minimum of features. What makes it better than other outlining software I’ve used is how simple and intuitive it is. Working with it is impeccably easy and once I got started I was filling it up with notes and ideas very quickly.

Here’s their introduction video:

There are a lot of ways I’ve found that it can be used:

• Lists to keep track of things. Such as gear to buy, people who owe me payment, things to do
• Contact sheets
• Spotting notes
• As an easily searchable journal
• Brainstorming new projects
• Taking notes while on a phone call
• Outlining articles, tutorials and blog posts, such as this one.

All of that sounds pretty basic and I’m sure it isn’t blowing your mind, and you’re probably wondering what the big deal is. The point is that it’s so simple to use that you can have everything you could ever need to write down in one place, and have it incredibly organized, without it taking up your entire day just to keep it together.

Anyway, I’m having fun playing around with Workflowy. Let me know if you check it out and what you think.

Logic – The center of my studio is Logic and I do 95% of my work with it. Even though some people argue that recording sessions would be better off in Pro Tools, I am so fluid with Logic that it just makes sense to use the fastest tool available. I’ve been using Logic since around version 7, before that it was Digital Performer which is what they taught when I went to Berklee (and still do I think).

Sibelius – My favorite notation software is Sibelius by a mile. Like DP, I learned and used Finale at Berklee. But after trying out Sibelius a few years ago I never looked back. It is so much easier to use than Finale, it’s unbelievable. Everything just works the way it’s supposed to. I used to spend hours and ours with parts in Finale making sure things didn’t overlap. Sibelius has a simple rule – things can’t overlap! God that saves so much time!

Pro Tools – I have Pro Tools 9 available and ready just in case, because sometimes people I collaborate with prefer to use it. I rarely use it, although occasionally I create playback sessions for feature films with Pro Tools. Also, depending on the project, I will use Pro Tools as a video host.

Melodyne – Melodyne is a brilliant piece of software. It’s like autotune on steroids. Not only can you tune whatever you throw into it (yes, even multiple notes at once like a guitar chord), but you can rearrange the pitches as well to create entirely new melodies if you want. Sometimes I feed a loop or sampled solo into Melodyne and then customize it, changing the pitches around so I keep the inflection but create my own solo instead.

Zebra – One of my favorite third party synths, Zebra is just packed with fun electronic sounds.

Komplete – If you’re a film composer, Komplete is a no brainer. It has everything you could possibly need when starting out. I use some of the orchestral instruments that come with Kontakt, especially the harp and occasionally the brass and percussion.

LA Scoring Strings – My favorite string samples, I especially love the easy to use glissandos and slides which I way overuse!

Soundiron Emotional Piano – Formerly Tonehammer. I really like the soft timbre of this piano, for me it’s very cinematic. I tend to like duller and murkier sounds in general so maybe this is just particularly suited to my tastes.

Soundiron Requiem – My current go-to choir, I don’t use it a ton but it does a nice job.

Stormdrum – The cliche industry standard for big epic drums, but they work.

Wallander Instruments – These are what I’m currently using for woodwinds and brass, but to be honest I tend not to use those orchestral timbres very much. I think I’m still looking for a better collection, and would love to hear what other people like.

I scored the beautiful feature film Two Shadows from writer/director Greg Cahill.

I wrote original music for a commercial for the MTV Video Music Awards.

I wrote music for many short films, including:

• Project Arbiter with Michael Chance
• Fire City with Brian Lubocki and Michael Hayes
• Pixelated Mindwarp Mario Adventure! with D. Ryan Reeb
• Patricide with Kevin Huang
• Nuts for Pizza with Dave Andrade
• Bride on Sale with Hendrik de Smet

The medical animation company Viscira had me score some of their recent projects. Thanks to Hagop Kaneboughazian, creator of Ara’s Flight, for the introduction!

With the creative and talented guys at inthegroove I wrote a large collection of cues for the Discovery Channel series Hoarding: Buried Alive.

The official Disney Princess website added Rapunzel to its roster of princesses, and thus I wrote an orchestral arrangement of Alan Menken’s “When Will My Life Begin” for her page.

I wrote several tutorials for Audiotuts, continuing the Altered Chord series I began in 2010:

• Getting to Know Altered Chords Part 3: Altered VI
• Getting to Know Altered Chords Part 4: Altered III
• Getting to Know Altered Chords Part 5: Altered VII

I wrote original string quartet and string orchestra arrangements for many songwriters and artists via the company I run with my beautiful wife, Lydia Veilleux, at Short Order Strings.

And I played bass for Michael Teoli and Joe Fria’s epic gothic horror rock musical CarnEvil!

Here’s to a prolific and creative 2012!