Dealing with Rejection
I recently encountered three separate cases of young composers dealing with rejection/criticism quite badly (in my humble opinion) and thought I’d share some thoughts on the issue of dealing with disappointment.
The Blog
Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
When working with directors, it’s not at all uncommon to get a very specific request regarding music like “can you just mute the trumpets” in a specific spot. Often the answer is yes, I can. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that doing so is what the director really wants, nor is it what we should do…
How to Approach Scoring a Horrible Project
It’s Halloween so I thought I’d have some fun and discuss a horrific topic we all deal with, especially early in our careers. How to score a horrible movie & deal with horrible situations…
Quick Tip: When to Address Changes Using Audio Instead of MIDI
It’s not uncommon to get last minute change requests when working on a score. Often these last minute changes come after you’ve already printed your audio stems. I found that some composers, especially young composers have a tendency to go back to the MIDI, do a rewrite and then re-print the audio. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but it’s quite time consuming and often isn’t necessary…
Forest Man
I saw a short documentary about a man they call Forest Man, who lives in a remote part of India, where he has been planting trees since the 1970s on the island of Majuli. The island loses land to erosion from annual river flooding and has been a barren wasteland. Yet through this man’s individual efforts, the island now has a forest larger than New York’s Central park!…
Quick Tip: Start Your Music at Bar 5
When writing music it seems perfectly natural to start at bar 1. But when writing music to picture, I prefer to have 4 empty bars at the beginning and start the music at bar 5 for a few reasons…
Quick Tip: Layering Existing Sounds to Create New Ones
Here’s what I do to quickly create unique sounds…
How to Talk About Music With Directors & Producers
Many directors and producers who work with me explain that they don’t really know music that well and that they struggle to discuss it. Some feel intimidated by it because they feel they don’t know musical terminology. Or worse, some know a little bit of music terminology, sometimes not really understanding the correct meaning of what they’re saying and misuse it…
A Brave New World
I see a lot of articles and social media threads about how music is being devalued and how due to technology and the way things are going it’s all but impossible to make it as an artist and how the quality of music is much worse than it used to be. I’d like to play devil’s advocate and offer an alternate point of view for discussion…
Shie Interviewed on WVIK Quad Cities NPR
Hear the podcast of Shie’s interview with Mindy Heusel of KVIK Quad Cities NPR from January 19, 2017 discussing my album Musical Fantasy.
Know When To Let Go
We spend hours, sometimes days or even longer creating music. Whether it’s writing a new cue for a film or TV show, a concert work or cutting a temp, we pour our heart & soul into the work. Often we consider our works like our children, we give birth to them. That passion is essential if you want to be great at what you do. Without it you’ll never make something truly spectacular. But sometimes an idea just isn’t […]
Good File Naming and Metadata Practices for Your Audio Tracks
When you send your audio files out into the world they’re completely out of your hands. So how do you make sure people know what they are and where they came from? Metadata. Metadata is information about a file that is embedded within that file. It’s where you store the track name, album name, artist name and so on. Not all file formats store metadata, and some only store limited metadata. mp3s, Apple’s m4a, and AIFF formats all store extensive […]