Composing with Paper and Pencil

Posted on February 22, 2012 by ryan Tweet

Believe it or not, I think that one of the best ways to compose is with paper and pencil. Away from a computer, away from a piano, away from any distractions. Just me, a sheet of staff paper, a good pencil, and my imagination.

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. Keep reading…

Interview on The Project Arbiter Blog

Posted on February 15, 2012 by ryan Tweet

I recently did an interview with David Bettencourt, Co-Producer of the epic short film Project Arbiter. The film is getting ready to mix at Skywalker Sound and will be premiering this spring!

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.

Interview on Music Composer Blog

Posted on February 8, 2012 by ryan Tweet

John Presley was kind enough to interview me for his excellent site http://musiccomposerblog.com/

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

Rigor Tortoise

Posted on February 1, 2012 by ryan Tweet

The clever gentleman at Rigor Tortoise have been using my music on many of their recent comedy shorts. Check out their website for some of the latest and greatest, including some of the highlights below: Keep reading…

Using The Procrastination Dash for Composing

Posted on January 25, 2012 by ryan Tweet

There is a great post by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders about the “Procrastination Dash”. The technique is that you do 10 minutes of work, take 2 minutes to rest. Do this 5 times and you’ve worked for an hour.

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. Keep reading…

NAMM 2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 by ryan Tweet

This week I’m at NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants conference in Anaheim. It’s a great chance to geek out and see all the new music related toys coming to market soon. Of course I’m particularly interested in software and virtual instruments. The last time I went to NAMM was in 2007, so I’ll be interested to see how/if it’s changed.

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.

Workflowy

Posted on January 11, 2012 by ryan Tweet

As a freelancer and owner of my own business, time is one of my most important resources. The more time I can focus on writing music, the better. But unfortunately there are tons of day-to-day operations to keep things running that need to be done. As a result, I am always very interested in ways to be more productive and efficient, and I imagine that many people who read my blog are as well.

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.

Feature on the Sibelius Blog

Posted on January 6, 2012 by ryan Tweet

Thanks to a recent post I wrote in which I mentioned how I love Sibelius, Daniel Spreadbury wrote up a nice article on me for the Sibelius Blog. Thanks Daniel, and here’s to more music!

Software and Virtual Instruments in my Studio

Posted on January 4, 2012 by ryan Tweet

I am often asked by composers that are just starting out about the software and virtual instruments I use, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a simple list and briefly discuss the basic elements that I use on regular basis. Keep reading…

2011: The Year In Review

Posted on December 28, 2011 by ryan Tweet

2011 was a busy and productive year! To cap it off I thought I’d write a summary of some of the highlight projects I got to work on this past 12 months.

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:

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!

Composing is Decision Making

Posted on December 7, 2011 by ryan Tweet

When you boil it down to the bare elements, the act of composing is basically about making decisions. Do you repeat that last section or do something different? Do you put this line on clarinet or trumpet? Should this chord resolve as expected or not? And so on.

Every aspect of writing music is a decision. Thus it follows that the better you are at making decisions, the better you will be at writing music. Keep reading…

Five Years

Posted on November 23, 2011 by ryan Tweet

As 2011 winds down, I’m coming towards the end of my sixth year living in Los Angeles and working as a professional composer. Since crossing the five-year mark earlier this year, I notice that people who describe this as a “five-year town” actually have it about right. It took about five years to reach a point where I was able to find that composing work was coming in steadily and consistently. Keep reading…

The Filmmaker’s Guide to Giving Feedback on Music

Posted on November 8, 2011 by ryan Tweet

A common question I get form directors is “How do you like to talk about notes and feedback on your music?”. So I wrote a free pdf e-book for directors, producers and anyone who works with composers and musicians on their projects.

Fill out the form below to get your free copy of the 18 page e-book, The Filmmaker’s Guide to Giving Feedback on Music:

For many filmmaker’s, working with a composer is a difficult and uncertain process. Many times they know exactly what they want, but because they are not musical themselves they don’t know how to describe their vision. Or conversely if they are musicians, they may not know how to communicate effectively with the composer. This can result in long revision processes that seem to go nowhere, and even anxiety and a lack of confidence that the music is ever going to be right.

What filmmaker’s need is a way to effectively communicate with their composer in a way that is both results based and diplomatic, and that’s where this guide comes in.

The ideas and suggestions in this guide include:

• What language to use when talking about music.
• Why the story is the most important thing to discuss.
• When temp music is helpful and when it’s not.
• What to do when the direction of the music just isn’t working.

Towards a New Theory of Music

Posted on November 2, 2011 by ryan Tweet

In my opinion, “music theory” is a misnomer. Music theory courses and books are really referring to a theory of Western harmony of the last 300 years, not a theory of music itself. Music theory is more of a history and analysis tool than a means for understanding how to create music. Keep reading…

Aaron Dignan: How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work

Posted on October 26, 2011 by ryan Tweet

I recently watched an interesting video on the99percent.com (an amazing site if you’ve never been to it):

Aaron Dignan: How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work

As always, it has me wondering how the concept could be applied to film composers. How do you turn composing, marketing, and business operations into a game?

I’ll be reading Aaron’s book soon and will write a follow-up post if I have any insights on the topic. In the meantime, please check out the video and share your comments and ideas.

Artisanship vs. Artistry

Posted on October 19, 2011 by ryan Tweet

If you want to maintain any sense of sanity as a working composer, it’s important that you have the right perspective on your craft. Becoming too emotionally involved with your work can be disastrous for your career and your mental health.

In my opinion, film composers are much more like artisans than artists. I expect that comment may get some people riled up, but bear with me. Keep reading…

Teleportation Doesn’t Exist (On Growing Organically)

Posted on October 5, 2011 by ryan Tweet

An aspect of my writing that I’ve always considered a weakness is a heavy reliance on ostinatos and repeating patterns. I think this probably comes from being raised on pop/rock music with a constant and steady beat, and a general tendency towards minimalism. I just happen to be obsessed with hpnotizing repeating figures.

I’ve always thought of this as a weakness because I tend to have a hard time writing without an ostinato; my writing brain just doesn’t seem to work like that. And this makes me concerned that my writing is always turning out the same, that I’m not ever writing anything new because I’m always writing in the same way. But lately I’m beginning to rephrase how I approach this aspect of my writing. Instead of a weakness, perhaps it’s simply an unavoidable characteristic of my style. And even more importantly, knowing how I tend to write my best means that if I want the writing to flow, that’s the way I should be writing. Keep reading…

“What do I do next?”

Posted on September 28, 2011 by ryan Tweet

An aspect of composition that I’m currently fascinated with is development. How do you turn a simple idea into an entire piece? Coming up with new ideas is relatively easy. But once you have an idea, what do you do with it?

It sounds like a pretty basic question, and too elementary for a professional composer to be pondering. But in many ways “what do I do next?” summarizes the entire craft of composing music. Keep reading…

On Keeping the Aspects of Composing Isolated

Posted on September 21, 2011 by ryan Tweet

According to Walter Piston, from his iconic orchestration book, “The true art of orchestration is inseparable from the creative act of composing music.” Although I understand his meaning, from a practical working aspect I have to disagree.

Perhaps one of the hardest lessons for me to remember and adhere to is this: the more I separate the different aspects of scoring, the better the final result will be. Keep reading…

Deane Ogden: What Directors Want from Their Composers

Posted on September 14, 2011 by ryan Tweet

Composer Deane Ogden has written two remarkable posts that I thought were too good not to share. He asked two groups of studio and independent directors a series of multiple choice questions about their preferences, feelings and thoughts regarding hiring and working with composers. Keep reading…