For the UO Composers Forum, I am going to write a 4-6 minute piece for an intermediate saxophone quartet. I've had about 3 weeks so far to work on it, but I have not even started it yet! I only have about 3 1/2 weeks left to write the piece, and I find it so intimidating to work under a time crunch that I feel terrified to even start it! This is something that I really need to transcend, because as a professional film composer I will probably always be in a time crunch. I've heard that film composers write an average of 3 minutes of music per day. I tend to write slowly, completing about 30 seconds to a minute of music on a good composing day. I think it will be a lot easier though with film scoring, because it really helps to have a video to compose music to. The most difficult thing I find as a composer of classical music is to develop a piece without any other information or context to work with. When something happens (or doesn't happen) in a film, you can just write in fitting audio (though hopefully unexpected audio for the audience), and before you know it you have a lot more music written than you think. When writing for a group of musicians without any context, it's like being part of the cast of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?", making up everything from the top of your head - except when writing music you can go back and change/edit everything you have written, which is what I spend most of my composing time actually doing.
Either way, I realize that I need to write this piece by week 8 of the term, so I better get started today! At least I have come up with quite a few melody ideas, and wrote them down. My plan is to use those ideas and spin them out into something with potential. I have found that one simple idea can lead to millions (cue Hans Zimmer's score cue from Inception entitled One Simple Idea).
I've been playing Final Fantasy IX in my spare time, and I am so tempted to start playing that again, considering I am at a cliff hanger in the game, really close to the switch to disk four (out of four), and I also have piano practicing to do (I've been slacking off too much) for my lesson today at 3:30.
This blog is really putting things into perspective, because I realize how much more I really need to give to my major. I spend a lot of my time relaxing, enjoying the feeling of not having to do anything, but for school there is a lot to do, even if school is just an illusion - it's an illusion that's worth it.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Film Scoring!
Well, last week my composition professor Dr. Rob Kyr began to show interest in helping me to become a film composer! A recent graduate of the UO, Jeff Tinsley, got into USC's film scoring program last year, and I have high aspirations to follow in his shoes, which means that I need to create a film scoring demo as amazing as his. This is not going to be an easy task - this is the main demo that got him into USC:
For that video "Raven", Jeff went through an incredible amount of work, time, and money after first just finding the video on the internet and taking out all of the sound. He re-scored all of the music, recorded all of the voice-overs, recorded all of the sound effects, the most impressive part is everything behind the scenes with editing work (a good 40+ hours of work), and amassing a full orchestra with a good recording engineer (15+ hours of preparation). Everything you hear in that video is Jeff's doing, along with people who helped him to realize his demo. I recently asked him via facebook about the process he went through for this project, and he gave me the most amazing guidelines, that I know I will be able to use to create something great :-)
Rob Kyr told me that since we don't have a studio at the UO for recording and editing, I will have to ask Jeff what he did, and learn from him. This may mean traveling to a film studio somewhere, or at least finding the people that can help me in this feat. I am both extremely excited for this, and terrified by the fact that I don't know how to do any of it! However, Rob Kyr's words last week made me realize that I am not alone, and that I really do have all the help I can possibly need - I just need to find the right contacts and ask for it. Jeff is the most influential of all my contacts, I can't thank him enough!
I'm planning to stay in school for another two years (only one for my degree, and the second as a community member), so that I can create the greatest portfolio and film scoring demo that I can before applying for grad school. As a perfectionist, I tend to compose music very slowly, because I spend most of the time going back and correcting or editing music that I have already written, rather than going straight to writing new music. I feel that the more time I spend on a piece, the better it will reflect my own sense of musicality. Because of this, I want to have as much time as possible to compile my portfolio before grad school applications.
For that video "Raven", Jeff went through an incredible amount of work, time, and money after first just finding the video on the internet and taking out all of the sound. He re-scored all of the music, recorded all of the voice-overs, recorded all of the sound effects, the most impressive part is everything behind the scenes with editing work (a good 40+ hours of work), and amassing a full orchestra with a good recording engineer (15+ hours of preparation). Everything you hear in that video is Jeff's doing, along with people who helped him to realize his demo. I recently asked him via facebook about the process he went through for this project, and he gave me the most amazing guidelines, that I know I will be able to use to create something great :-)
Rob Kyr told me that since we don't have a studio at the UO for recording and editing, I will have to ask Jeff what he did, and learn from him. This may mean traveling to a film studio somewhere, or at least finding the people that can help me in this feat. I am both extremely excited for this, and terrified by the fact that I don't know how to do any of it! However, Rob Kyr's words last week made me realize that I am not alone, and that I really do have all the help I can possibly need - I just need to find the right contacts and ask for it. Jeff is the most influential of all my contacts, I can't thank him enough!
I'm planning to stay in school for another two years (only one for my degree, and the second as a community member), so that I can create the greatest portfolio and film scoring demo that I can before applying for grad school. As a perfectionist, I tend to compose music very slowly, because I spend most of the time going back and correcting or editing music that I have already written, rather than going straight to writing new music. I feel that the more time I spend on a piece, the better it will reflect my own sense of musicality. Because of this, I want to have as much time as possible to compile my portfolio before grad school applications.
Very first blog!
Hi all!
I have never written a blog before, and that's because I don't really feel like there is much to say about my life, except that I have high aspirations for improving myself as a human being, and am majoring at the UO in music composition. I suppose I could write on here like a journal, and I might just do that. I'm starting this because a few friends have some pretty interesting blogs, and I think it might be fun to let the world know what's going on in my life, and if I don't have any readers then it might at least help me to put things into perspective, like a journal. I don't know how often I will update this blog, but this is a start! :-)
~ Michael
I have never written a blog before, and that's because I don't really feel like there is much to say about my life, except that I have high aspirations for improving myself as a human being, and am majoring at the UO in music composition. I suppose I could write on here like a journal, and I might just do that. I'm starting this because a few friends have some pretty interesting blogs, and I think it might be fun to let the world know what's going on in my life, and if I don't have any readers then it might at least help me to put things into perspective, like a journal. I don't know how often I will update this blog, but this is a start! :-)
~ Michael
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