Pics From Carnegie

Pics from my night at Carnegie!

Here we are on stage. From left to right, it's Meghan Asha (technology columnist), me (just some dude), Alex Rigopulos (created Guitar Hero and Rock Band), Melissa auf Der Maur (bassist for Hole, Smashing Pumpkins), Grandmaster Flash (founding father of hip hop) and Pete Wentz (bassist of Fall Out Boy).

And here we are before the concert, looking like a badass posse.

The evening was capped off with a demonstration of Rock Band: Beatles. Here you can see me channeling my inner Paul, playing a plastic Hofner bass. Now I can say I've 'played Carnegie'.

The afterparty. Here I am with Melissa auf Der Maur and Jimmy Zankel (he underwrote the event, and his family built Zankel Hall, one of the three concert spaces at Carnegie).

Photos by Craig Chesek.

Carnegie Hall Sent Me Flowers!

So classy.

Carnegie Hall, Baba Yetu Music Video, The Beatles, And Me

Well, I just had pretty much the most fun night of my entire life.

I got invited to speak on a panel at Carnegie Hall last night. The subject was video games and music--a topic that I know a little bit about. It was moderated by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, and the other panelists were Alex Rigopulos (CEO and founder of Harmonix), Grandmaster Flash (father of hip-hop), Melissa auf Der Maur (Smashing Pumpkins, Hole), and Meghan Asha (technology blogger and media personality). We had a fun, sometimes crass, and occasionally enlightening conversation about the video game industry, and the present and future of music.

I also got to debut the brand new music video of Baba Yetu to the sold-out crowd. The video is a collection of footage taken from the Civ games, and expertly cut together by director Brooke Hanson. It's terrific, and very moving--very much in the spirit of the Civilization games. I'll post it here soon.

And to cap off the panel, we did a live demonstration of Rock Band: Beatles for the audience. I played bass (and no, I did not play it left handed, like Paul did). Since I love Rock Band, and the Beatles are my favorite rock band, that made the evening complete. And besides, it's every musician's dream to play Carnegie Hall, right? Well, I finally did... granted, it was on a plastic bass with little colored buttons, but whatever.

I have to give thanks to the Carnegie organization for doing an amazing job of taking care of me, and handling every detail. It was just a first class experience from beginning to end.

I'll post pics later this week... and sometime next week, I'll also post the video!

More Composition Questions, Answered

Some more questions; this time from Morgan in Connecticut, a high school student interested in getting into film scoring.

When did you discover that this is what you wanted to do? And how did you develop that during your college experience? I am someone with a strong interest here but unwilling to commit to music school. Do you have any advice as to how I might pursue this interest?

I realized when I was roughly 17 or 18 that I composing was a strong suit for me, but I didn't actually commit to it until I went through a few majors in college, and ruled them out. My first two years of college, I really didn't dwell too much on what I would eventually be--just tried a few things out, like law (hated it) and architecture (couldn't draw). The whole time I was taking those classes, I was also studying composition. It was always present. Eventually I decided to apply to grad schools for it, and when I got accepted to the Royal College of Music, I decided 'this is it... I'm going for it now.'

I don't think you really need to commit to music school yet. Many a great musician got a fine liberal arts education first, before focusing on the music. Leonard Bernstein comes to mind; if I remember right, he went to Harvard first, before going to Curtis. So go ahead and go to a liberal arts school--I highly recommend it, in fact. Do a double major--music and something else--make yourself a well-rounded individual, and it will inform your music down the line. (E.g. all the work I do with setting ancient religious and secular texts comes from being an English major in addition to being a music major.)

I saw that part of your undergraduate education was at Stanford. Was there anything in particular that attracted you to that school? I am in the midst of the college search process right now and Stanford is one of the schools I am looking at (in addition to other liberal arts schools with strong music programs). Do you have any advice as far as what might be important for someone who is not applying to a conservatory or music school but rather a school with a strong music program? Is there something in particular that I might look for? I wish there were schools like these with film scoring programs!

I wanted to go to Stanford simply because it was an exceptional school. I didn't even apply to music conservatories as an undergrad. I think that those types of schools are looking for well-rounded individuals. Obviously, all things being equal, you should go to the school with the best music program as well--but bear in mind that a lot of the growing that you'll do as a musician happens outside the classroom, and outside the major. My best experiences at Stanford were from being the music director of Talisman A Cappella and various musical theatre productions.

I have had this interest for a while, although I am not very good at it! Do you feel that some of the skills required to compose in general can be acquired, or are we born with the majority of them? While I play several instruments I am not an incredibly strong musician in any one of them. Do you feel that strength in a particular instrument contributes to strength in composition?

No one's good at it when they're first starting out, so don't worry about it. The important thing is to keep writing and writing... only by getting the bad music out of your system will you get to the good stuff. I play several instruments, and the truth is I'm TERRIBLE at them. The one skill that I would suggest that you get good at is ear training. I can listen to a piece of music and transcribe note-for-note what every instrument is playing. Every time I listen to a piece of music, I'm doing a mental transcription and analysis of it. That's a pretty useful skill, because it allows you to dissect anything you hear, and learn subconsciously from it.

Hope that helps!

Thoughts On Instrumentation

It dawned on me the other day about the importance of instrumentation to the promotion of music. Many times the instrumentation that you select for a song--whether it be solo piano, orchestral, or pop--will make your listener decide immediately whether they want to continue to listen to your music. Here's what I mean...

If you're flipping through radio stations, catch a quick ad on TV, or even stumble across a user's MySpace page on the internet, the first thing that you'll hear when a piece of music starts playing is its instrumentation. Even before you hear lyrics, even before you hear a melody, even before you can figure out how fast a piece of music is, you'll immediately identify what's playing it. You may not know the specifics--is that an oboe or English horn? Nylon string guitar or finger-picked acoustic?--but you'll immediately get a rough sense of what's producing the sounds that you hear. And based on that snap judgment, chances are you'll immediately know what genre of music it is, and based on your existing biases, make a decision whether you'll want to keep listening or not.

In this day and age, most music is stumbled upon--that is, you casually came across it in an iPod commercial, or an episode of Grey's Anatomy, or even a video game. So what if the choices that you make in instrumentation are SO powerful, and SO compelling, that the moment someone hears the combination of instruments that you use, they're compelled to keep listening? That would be a powerful tool.

There's not a lot of music out there with instrumentation this compelling, however. If you work within a specific genre, a lot of times your instrumental choices will be made for you--acoustic instruments for country, electronic for electronica, beats for hip hop, orchestra for classical, etc. So to find stuff like this, one probably has to turn to more crossover artists. To give you a few examples, the first time I heard Bjork was a revelation. The way she would mix delicate timbres like a music box with heavy electronic beats in 'Pagan Poetry' was inspired:

I was not a huge Sting fan, but the first ever single I bought of his was his duet with Cheb Mami on the song 'Desert Rose', which I first heard in a Jaguar commercial. The mix of commercial production with Arabic vocals grabbed my attention, and I went and bought the track:

Peter Gabriel's 'Passion' soundtrack was a huge inspiration for me. Talk about fusing world music elements with synths... Peter Gabriel rewrote the rule book on this one.

My friends the On Ensemble do great work like this as well--fusing traditional Japanese music with hip hop and electronica:

And let's not forget all the excellent African music/pop fusion that's been done out there, by the likes of Paul Simon in Graceland and Hans Zimmer for The Lion King, perhaps the music that 'Baba Yetu' gets compared to most often. (Personally, while I love Hans' music and admire him as a composer, I don't think Baba Yetu and The Lion King are really all that similar. Most people make the comparison because it's the closest cultural reference they have to anything that's an African choral hybrid, but neither of us were the first to fuse African choral music with orchestral writing, and hopefully neither of us will be the last.)

The Kids Are Alright!

Earlier this year, Ms. Shannon Jones of Trinity Springs Middle School wrote me an email, and told me that her choir was learning Baba Yetu. This was followed by a bunch of emails from the students in the choir, asking me if I was going to come out and hear the performance! Unfortunately I couldn't make it out to Texas, but just for fun I put together a little video to say hi to the choir:

I think it went over well!

In any case, the choir sent me a DVD of the performance, which was much appreciated; most choirs don't even tell me they're performing my music--I just stumble across their performances on YouTube (even the big professional ones don't warn me in advance!). I'd honestly go to more of these performances if I could--especially the ones in Los Angeles.

At any rate, the kids of Trinity Springs did a GREAT job with the song. Hopefully someone over there will figure out how to post it to YouTube someday, but in the meantime, if any of the choir members from TSMS are reading this, BRAVO!!! :) You guys were a delight to watch, and you all sounded great--from the chorus, to the excellent soloist, to the orchestra. And great job putting it all together, Ms. Jones!

Hope you're all having a great summer vacation! :)

More Composition Questions, Answered

Mark, a student at the Berklee College of Music, had this question for me recently:

I've come to a point where I realize that I've somehow lost my intuition for music. I just was wondering if you've ever experienced a time in your career where you've thought that you couldn't write music anymore, because you had to absorb too much knowledge and transcribed too much soundtracks?

How do you find a balance between writing from the soul and technique? I do very hard to find my balance. When I look back in the earlier days I did compose only from the soul, now somehow I do the complete opposite.

It's a bit of a tough question. I can't say there was ever a time in my career when I thought I couldn't write any more music, but there are definitely times when I feel like I'm on fire and everything I turn out is gold, and times when I'm frustrated and grinding my gears. Everyone you talk to in any sort of creative art will tell you this happens all the time, though, and the best thing you can do is just try to work through it.

The most important thing is to always just keep writing music. The worst thing that can happen is for you to fall into some sort of creative slump, where you're prevented from writing music by the mere fear that what you write is going to be bad. This is how creative careers go down in flames--when you find yourself so intellectually stifled by your own frustrations that you can't bring yourself to start creating.

I've always said that you have to write a lot of bad music, before you start writing good music. It's almost like you have to get the bad stuff out of your system. I think that your college days will be particularly confusing because you're bombarded with expectations from your teachers and peers, and pulled in many different creative directions. You don't really have a voice yet--you're too young, frankly. You won't have a voice until well into your thirties, forties, or later. Don't sweat it, it will come.

As to your second question, I think one should ALWAYS write from the soul. Technique is certainly very important, but it should never be viewed as a replacement for writing from the soul--nor should it be seen as being in competition. Rather, it's something that should supplement what you do. I almost always write exclusively from the soul, and then apply technique and craft to honing the details. The broad swaths of a composition are written instinctually--things like fine tuning counterpoint, orchestrations, voicings, etc. can happen later, when you can take your time to bring the full bearing of your training on the small details, without fear of losing the big picture.

However, if at the moment you're composing based solely on technique, don't worry about it--it's what you SHOULD be doing. You're in school. You SHOULD be absorbing as much technique as you can, and be crafting technique-based music for the purpose of internalizing all the techniques you're learning. Do it for as long as you can bear it, and don't worry if you feel like you're losing your instinct. You're NOT losing your instinct--it's just taking a back seat for the moment, while you absorb different techniques that will serve well as tools in the future. Eventually you'll rediscover your instinct, develop a confidence in your own style, and start writing instinctually again. And on that day, since you've already put in the hours learning all the techniques and crafts, you'll find that they're useful tools in your toolbox--tools that you can whip out as needed, or put away when you don't feel like using them. Or better yet, they'll have subconsciously worked their way into your instinct, and the music you write will be both soulful AND technically sound.

So don't worry for now. Everything will be okay in the end, I promise. Hope that helps?

OverClocked Remix Interview

A number of months ago I did an interview for the game music remix community OverClocked Remix that's finally been published. Check it out!

Interview

Open Forum: Becoming A Composer Pt. 3

Here's the follow up to Danny K's follow question:

I forgot to ask about good harmonies/counterpoint though, so it'd be great if you could talk about that as well in the next post! Listening to Baba Yetu...

As for the harmony question, again, I think you really just have to listen to what you think is good music, and take note of what chord progressions that they use. My own music tends to keep it very simple (although I can get rather complex at times if necessary, like the instrumental buildup section in Baba Yetu when I start on a C-major and end on a C#-minor). The bulk of popular music uses just a handful of chords: I, V, IV, ii, vi, bVI, bVII, etc. (if you don't know what these letters mean, don't worry... unless you're planning on becoming a composer. In which case, if you don't know what these mean, you'd better do your homework.)

I would say, though, that for many composers, harmonic progression is not dictated separately from melody. The way I think is that I come up with melodies AND the harmonies behind them simultaneously. It's not like I say 'Here's a chord progression that I want to write a melody around.' I think it almost HAS to be done simultaneously because most of the time when you choose to write a certain note in a melody, it comes with a contextual harmonic implication as well--that is, it's a high note that wants to resolve, or wants to be stable, etc. After all, a note is given the bulk of its meaning based on the harmonic context it sits in.

I will say one thing, though; you can't write a melody that stays too comfortably within the principal notes of a chord (the one, three and five) without sounding banal and forgettable. I often move to suspended 4ths, 7ths, and 9ths, and then resolve back. Since you're a fan of Baba Yetu, give the main melody a listen and you'll see what I mean. Pay attention to when I land on notes that are part of the chord, and when I don't, both in terms of which bars they're in, and which beats on the bars. And then pay attention to the way I resolve them.

As for counterpoint, if you have any specific questions, please do ask!

Open Forum: Becoming A Composer Pt. 2

Here's Danny K's second question about composing:

Also, is it true that most modern composers, despite having a background in theory, have largely abandoned the idea of harmonic progressions and such similiar 'classical' concepts? That's what my friend (who got a full ride to Oberlin) told me, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Should I be sitting here wondering what the chord progression in my given movement should be and what cadence I should end it with, or is it normal to just have a keyboard next to me as I compose and punch out chords to see what sounds best as I work?

Yes, it's true, but not quite in the way I think you're imagining.

Modern music in the 20th-century got very avant-garde; and the idea of any harmony at all was poo-poo'd upon as being very antiquated and dated. It was partially a response to the fact that music in the 19th-century had gotten so overly romantic, that 20th-century composers wanted to break as far away from that as possible. Here's an example that I randomly picked off YouTube:

All through the 20th-century, composers were often derided if they wrote music that was too harmonic, sentimental, or generally tuneful. However, while the classical establishment strayed from tonality, the popular establishment (and that includes composers working in film and musical theatre) stayed very tonal, and very romantic. And since public taste has always been for the tuneful, classical music saw its audience shrink to the point that even die-hard classical music fans had a hard time listening to the music of the day, and would prefer just to hear the same old 18th and 19th-century works.

So all of this is to say that, yes, it's perfectly acceptable to write music these days that doesn't follow conventional chord progressions--and in fact, that doesn't use chords at all. HOWEVER, that isn't to say that you shouldn't take the craft of chord progressions seriously. I think that if you're going to make up your mind and be a harmonic, tonal composer (and that's what almost every single film or video game composer is), you should make up your mind to do it well.

But that said, using your ear to determine what chord comes next is a perfectly valid way of coming up with chord progressions. Don't worry about classical issues of voice-leading and such. Just write what sounds good and natural to you.

I'll get to your other question about 'good harmonies/counterpoint' next. If you have any other questions, just ask!

Open Forum: Becoming A Composer Pt. 1

I recently got an email from a young, intrepid high schooler named Danny K., who asked me a few questions about pursuing an education and career in creating music. So rather than just respond to him via email, I asked him if he would mind if I answered his questions on my blog, just in case other people might find my answers informative or useful. I'll probably break up my response into two separate blog posts, so check back in a few days. So with that in mind, here we go:

I was wondering if you have any tips on composing, how to make memorable melodies, themes, orchestration, etc. just really awesome tips that I could utilize to make better sounding pieces...

The most important thing, I think, is to learn how to use your ears. Listen to as much music that you think is memorable, highly melodic, catchy, etc. and really pay attention to how they construct things. For example, what's the overall shape of the melody? Does it repeat? Where does it repeat? When it repeats, does anything change, or does it stay the same?

I was lucky in that I was born with a good ear. When I hear a piece of music, I can pretty much write down for you most everything that happens in that piece. And so in fact, when I hear music, what I'm actually doing is creating a mental transcription of it in my head. I think that's what helped me learn to write good melodies. Over the course of my lifetime, I've transcribed in my head thousands and thousands of melodies. And after you do that, you pretty much intuitively know what makes a good tune.

Professor Tin!

Hah. Not really.

But these days I'm getting plenty of opportunities to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: teaching.

Tonight I spent an hour at the UCLA Extension Program chatting with students about scoring commercials (and also throwing in various tidbits about films, games, and my album as well).

Next week I return to UCLA to speak at Dr. Ali Jihad Racy's graduate seminar on ethnomusicology. I'll be talking about Calling All Dawns and discussing different philosophies and approaches to using ethnic instrumentation in commercial music. I definitely have my own opinions on this matter.

And finally, next Friday my director friend Jon Goldman is hosting a private 'lecture series' for all of his friends. It's a pretty fun idea, actually; we're all taking turns spending an hour talking about a subject we know well. Since we're a pretty diverse group, the topics covered range from emotion-coding to Fashion Week to an exposé on Scientology. My lecture is entitled 'How To Conduct An Orchestra,' and I'll be making everyone air-conduct an excerpt from Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' ('The Dance Of The Knights,' if anyone is interested.)

And speaking of Romeo And Juliet, it's pretty much my favorite ballet, and it's coming to LA on February 13th at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills. The St. Petersburg Ballet is performing it....I can't vouch for their quality, but it's never a bad thing to let Russian dancers do a Russian composer's work. (I've seen the ballet three times, and the one that blew me away was the Kirov Ballet performing at the Royal Opera House in London. I'm madly in love with the principal who danced Juliet.)

Abbey Road Pt. 1

Dear blog readers,

Today I had the privilege of recording my debut album in one of the holiest of places in the music industry: Abbey Road Studios.

It's 1:30 AM (my typical blogging time), and despite having been working for about 16 hours today, and having only gotten four hours of sleep the night before, I'm still wide awake. People have been asking me if I was "excited"--and the truth is, I was a little too busy to be excited, and so I never really reached any point where I was blown away by what was happening....even up through the moment when I first heard the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra start to play my music. The best way to describe my mood all day, and indeed, the reason why I'm still up right now, is that for the entire day I was extremely, incredibly FOCUSED.

I literally can't wait to dig into the recording files that I left the studio with, and start editing and mixing them. I may even post a sneak preview or two of some of the tracks in time. But for now, I thought I'd start by sharing a few pictures.

My first day back in London I paid a visit to my old alma mater, the Royal College of Music, to do a little guest lecture to the composition students about what life is like in Hollywood, the game industry, the commercial industry, and as an independent recording artist making his first album. It was a very enjoyable day--I always love to teach and lecture, and was thrilled at the opportunity to do it at the RCM.

Then the next few days were spent alone in my little academic suite that I rented at my old dorm, preparing for the session. There was a bit of a last minute panic with the parts preparation, and so I really didn't get a chance to go out and have any fun in London. But ultimately all the preparatory work paid off, and Monday night, before the session, we were able to load into the studio.

That's when the fun really began....and for that, I'll wait until my next post.