On the road again...

After clearing the decks here in the homestead and the studio, things are somewhat settling down. There are still plenty of open action items, but now I can  shift gears a bit to work on the to-do list for LPHovercraft. Aside from the always-going sound design and general music making, there’s a ton of logistical work that needs to be done roughly in parallel to the creative. Well, I’ve been putting that off for a while and now it’s time to get that on track. And actually, it feels good to have some of those things either under way or out of the way. I’ll be wrapping up an agreement for digital distribution of the stereo mixes of my work, and have everything in place for using DTS format for rendering the surround mixes. With that kind of “housekeeping” under control it feels like more room has been made for the creative/fun part of the job – but in truth something else likely takes its place after too long. For now I’m enjoying the moment and trying my best to capture musical ideas as they come flooding in. Some I’ll keep, some I’ll change, and some I’ll toss away. It just feels good for “the spigot ” of ideas  to flow after a brief hiatus to focus on the “mundane” life and woodshed on keys a bit.

LPH placeholder logo

There’s also progress on the artwork/graphics front – for producing web site and album cover art for LPHovercraft. That’s another task that will take some time to completely bear fruit, but it’s good to have the ball rolling in that area, too. Marie Meier, the French rock-and-roll artist that I’ve hired for the intial phase of LPHovercraft’s public face, has been swamped with other commissions – which is certainly a good thing for her! We just had a meeting via email and our schedules will start to mesh in the next few weeks, so some focus will come to that part of the project. There’s nothing to show, yet – but as things develop I will do some visual “hinting” on the LPHovercraft web site as those works get closer to being production-ready. Also, Marie is consistent in sharing her in-progress works online, so there will be a steady diet of visual material along with some audio snippets on the LPH site as the songs mature and get closer to being ready “for the wild”.

Also, on a completely unrelated project – I just got a call from a friend on a small film project that seems like it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s a promo piece for a museum and theater here in California – and they’re also talking about cutting a longer version of the piece to circulate as a short film for the festival circuit. It has both spoof and straight-ahead music in it, and so far the schedule is a good fit. Like just about everything else – not much more I can say about it at the moment, but keep your eyes and ears peeled and I’ll update everyone as soon as I’m able.

And in the context of everything that happened to/around me on a professional and personal level, this year’s annual think time was especially welcome. I started my journey of reconciling the past 12 months by equating some of the negative events in 2009 to “objects” floating in a metaphorical toilet bowl – objects that simply wouldn’t flush until the end of the year. And while it was temporarily gratifying to find crude humor in personal catharsis, the more serious part of me kept reaching for context. Today it came together in the dime-store philosophy of perception as a personal choice. It has been stated in countless ways – people can’t always choose the events that occur in their lives, but it’s the subsequent choices they make in responding to those events that shape them as human beings. I realized that through all of the events, issues, challenges as well as the outright successes and failures I encountered over the past year, I have learned and have grown – a lot. (I know, bad grammar, so sue me) Many of my existing personal and professional relationships were profoundly transformed over the year. I realize now in hindsight that in almost every case, those changes were for the better. And likewise, many of the new relationships that developed have been positive and utterly worthwhile.

Along the way, I have also grappled with my own “is-ness”, for the lack of a better term. Well, check that – there is a better term, in fact there are several. The French call it raison d’etre, and Robert Heinlein did an admirable job of putting it in a sci-fi context with grok (which is the term I most often use). In my case it boils down to my relationship to the music I create – and in large part it’s self-resolving, but it has taken me to this point to realize that certain people understand and accept what I’m about as a composer and others simply don’t. It’s not a value judgment by any means – but it goes to where I plan to put my energy in the coming year. Previously I’ve too easily allowed people the luxury of pigeon-holing me as “the sound guy” or “the film score geek” or other monikers that are a small part of who I am. That’s going to change this coming year, or maybe it won’t for their part – but I’m certainly not going to accept that definition without a firm body of work to show that there’s more to me than their myopic assignment. The more important lesson for me out of all of this is that thinking/talking/writing about it is meaningless without action. Composers compose - and, well – I’m a composer. Toward the end of 2009 I added some cues to my demo reel that I’m quite proud of, but I’m definitely thinking and working on a larger scale than film and television projects would most likely allow. So this year will have a pronounced focus on creating music for its own sake, because that’s where I’m at home. Even when I’m suffering through a bout of writer’s block or struggling with a bleeding-edge technical issue, I’m seldom happier than when I’m in the studio. Spending the last week of 2009 away from it has proven that to me all over again. So I will be producing a great deal more music this year, whether or not those works are attached to film, television or new media projects is of marginal consequence from the perspective of my raison d’etre. And of course I have some specific ideas on how that will take shape in the coming year, but I’ll save the formal announcement for when the time is right.

Likewise, my 2010 will focus on finding and cultivating relationships with like-minded creatives, and as a consequence other points of contact will lie fallow for a while. This seems obvious as I type it – and maybe I’m a slow learner in certain areas – but it came to me as a somewhat profound realization that I’ve spent too much time around those that didn’t share enough of my goals and perspective. It’s like trying to shove a Venn diagram together in a way that doesn’t fit. A slim overlap is what it is – and you can’t force the set to converge more than is possible on its own accord. So I will be working on my own music projects while pursuing truly rewarding collaborations and reaching out to the larger composer community to find like-minded souls.

That’s a recurring theme as I start the new year. It’s not about abandoning the past and starting a new future – it’s about taking the hard-won lessons and putting them together with the ideas that I’ve always held true, and applying them to new and meaningful context. That’s when I had my aha moment – when I found that the events of the recent past and the prospects of 2010 attained a kind of personal equilibrium. So in a way I’m really grateful for 2009, because without it the coming year wouldn’t have the same potential and purpose. And I suppose that’s what everyone does this time of year – but again – in certain areas I’m a slow learner, and this feels new and refreshing to me.

I’m not about making wild declarations, proclamations or resolutions. But I’ll say now with some confidence that – for my part – there are going to be many new, different and exciting things about 2010. Stay tuned…

And if I eat a sprout

You gotta eat a sprout

You gotta suffer too…

However, every once in a while you’ll find that exception to the rule. Even in the cut-throat world of the film music biz, there are a few kind souls that feel confident enough to put all of their cards on the table. Deane Ogden is one of those people. He was one of the first composers that I met after moving to Los Angeles. I was surprised by how candid he was about *all* sides of the business, and how forthright he was about his own perceptions and experience. With his easy-going demeanor and open-book approach (to nearly everything), it can be easy to overlook that he’s not only a talented composer but also a world class drummer/percussionist. I would even call him a prodigy if there weren’t so many pejorative connotations associated with the term. It’s been several years (and a handful of successful collaborations between us) since then, and in that time Deane has scaled up to publish his own audio blog about the art, craft and business of music for film. The “Scorecast” podcast on iTunes (and Gcast) gained a worldwide following. And now has recruited a team of like-minded souls (myself included) to join in on writing a blog to have frank discussions about the myriad aspects of working in the film, television, and new media business as a musician today. Scorecastonline has quickly developed into a highly valuable resource for budding composers (and I’d imagine that a few seasoned vets can get something from it as well).

The reason why I’m publishing this blog entry now is that there’s a particular article that Deane published on the site recently that has really put hits the nail on the head. Deane covers the “verboten” territory of what to do when there’s no gig in the queue. That topic seems to be a really radioactive subject, like the 800 pound gorilla in the room that most groups of composers are loathe to discuss. It’s articles like that (and the online discussions that follow) which makes it so rewarding to know and work with guys like Deane as well as the rest of the Scorecast crew. They’re all guys that relish the “keep it real” vibe, and makes it a lot of fun to work with them.

I’ve learned a lot by hanging out with Deane, and continue to pick things up along the way. Anyone that’s interested in seeing “a day in the life” of a film composer, the Scorecastonline blog is a great place to start. I’m proud to be a part of it.

The red cave on St. Patrick's Day

I’m still working on some updates to my Tango console – re-programming the Edit Panels for the new software model they just released. It’s a bit of a slog to program 10 panels of key commands in a 10X10 grid (plus all of the hardware buttons makes for more than 1300 locations to set – YIKES!) but at the end of the day it will be well worth it. Once it’s done I’ll also be able to export my settings so that other Tango users can import what they need to use for their own setup (and save them the trouble that I went through).

Later today I *should* be starting a new project – if it’s ready for me. If not, there’s plenty of other stuff to do – some menial like the task described above, and some more creative – including laying the groundwork for an album project that will both return me to my roots and push forward in an intersting new creative direction. I can’t share too much about now but hope to have the deal in place soon so that I can talk about it publicly. Until then, lots to do! Have a happy and safe holiday!

I was, in a word, gobsmacked. Aside from the fact that I was stunned at the incredible visuals, there’s so much more to this classic film than meets the eye. Even though there were some extraordinarily long sequences of dialog-free footage, the places where there was some form of discourse, there was hardly a word wasted. While not exactly Shakespearean blank verse, there was sometimes a poetic quality to it – simultaneously high-minded and yet seemingly realistic. Though I can’t imagine how they would have spoken to each other, the eloquence matched the way I hope they might have spoken to each other.

“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me it is merely good manners. You may judge which is more reliable.”
– Prince Feisal (played by Sir Alec Guinness)

And I was somewhat surprised that it felt like a four-hour movie. In most cases films that stretch things out is seen as not such a good thing. When I’m working on a film there’s usually a concerted effort to do things that make a long segment seem shorter (I use the Schillinger phrase “compressing psychological time”). But in this case, it almost seems like they tried to make it seem longer than the actual run time – an epic that was not shying away from being, well – epic. I really, really liked the seemingly conscientious effort at patient story telling – not something we see in film that often today.

The thing that was a disappointment to me was the music mix – which seemed like it had not been updated along with the quality of the visuals. It’s a gorgeous score – excerpts of which I’ve performed live many times throughout my previous life as a concert musician. So I was a bit disheartened when the swell of music came up in parts that forced me to dive for the remote to turn the volume down. The tinniness of the music struck me as not unlike the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. Yikes. If they re-mastered the music when they restored the film, they must have used a mis-calibrated dub stage or someone with burned-out ears,  or both.

One last thing – I was amazed at how many quoted scenes I saw in this film. I suppose that I shouldn’t be so surprised, since it’s such a classic. But there were several times where I was sucked out of the scene because I was saying to myself, “Hey, I’ve seen that shot in ‘The English Patient’” and what-have-you. It’s obvious that a lot of directors have “tipped their hat” to this film over the years, I just hadn’t realized the extent of it (and it’s worthiness for the accolades) until now.

After the credits started to roll, I told Julie that this was the first time I’ve ever been humbled by a movie. I’ve walked away from classic films happy, angry, dissapointed, amazed, saddened, and sometimes fully buzzed. But this was a singlar experience. It’s hard enough for me to truly enjoy any film, but now I think Julie’s going to be giving up on trying to get me to sit through the current tide of two-hour blab-fests, especially now that I’ve been fully spoiled by “Lawrence of Arabia”.