Week 40 - And now, the end is near, and so I face, the final curtain.

Today was the recording session for our 'Fiasco' pieces.  Everybody did a smashing job, it was fun to see how much everybody has developed and grown over the last 10 months. Everybody has their own unique style of music and became better at it, really honed it.

It was a rush like I've never felt! Well, outside of the obvious moments, my wedding, the birth of my children. This was unique, it was special, a moment for me to shine for just me and the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears I've poured into the last 10 months. The orchestra sounded amazing! 

Everybody got 25 minutes on the stand with the orchestra. They'd play through the music twice and then between the composer, the booth and the musicians themselves, they'd discuss and work through whatever performance issues there were. They might rehearse a section 'on the stick' which means to conduct freely with the baton but without the click track. Most everybody got 2-4 full run-throughs after rehearsing. I was fortunate in that my piece didn't require much rehearsing and the orchestra was on point! I got 5 full takes. I've spent the better part of the evening loading all the audio files into a Logic session to do my final mix, which is due to the program director by Thursday afternoon.

There are moments in peoples lies that must seem existential. Moments where you surpass your corporeal existence and live a state of wonderment, how do humans achieve this? A star athlete crossing the finish line .10 of a second faster than anybody else to win the gold metal. An EMT that saves a child from an burning car, that kind of stuff. Today, I had my moment. By the third take the orchestra were really nailing it, there were moments where the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up they sounded so good. Then, at the biggest part of the piece with every single musician playing, the cathedral hall filled with the magnificent sound of a symphony orchestra playing music I composed, playing my spirit, I wept while I was conducting, I couldn't stop. It was the most emotionally vulnerable I have ever been, the most fulfilled! For a 30 second span of time I was one with everything! I don't know how else to explain it. 

I wish everybody could have that kind of experience. In all reality, there is a good chance that today is the only time I will ever have a professional orchestra playing music I composed, I hope it's not, but it could be. I'll never forget the sensation, the sound, the unity, so many individuals coming together in a way that only musicians can. It was breathtaking, memorable, beautiful.

Looking back at all my blog posts, the good, the bad and the ugly, it's a path I never dreamed I would get to travel. I laughed, cried, swore, and more than once wanted to just quit so I could sleep. 

The rest of the week is set aside for exit interviews. Basically a dissertation defense, we sit 1-1 with the director with scores and video files that contain all the important cues we recorded this year. Friday we set up for graduation, we rented out a theater in Seattle for the ceremony. On Saturday. there will be recordings of todays music playing in the lobby. We'll screen a few of the short films we scored this year. A placeholder diploma handoff and, that's it, 40 weeks comes to a close. 

Off into the world with you little bird, fly away, be free.

Week 39 - Finals

Took my conducting final exam today, feel pretty good about it. Tomorrow is my 'final' final exam, covering every topic from day 1. This, I'm worried about. I've had my noses in a book for 3 days now, I 'think' I know what I'm doing, I won't know for sure until tomorrow.

Monday is the big recording session! I'm totally stoked about the piece I've written. Two and 1/2 minutes for orchestra. Mostly a victory march with a love theme in the middle, I hope it's prophetic!

I am absolutely physically and emotionally drained, yet I feel a great sense of accomplishment.

In the days following the recording session there will be portfolio prep and my exit interview where I basically defend all of my compositions to the program director. I feel confident about the interview and the recording session, the final tomorrow is the only thing really weighing heavy on me. I'm hoping a decent night's sleep will help. 

Week 38 / Last from-home week (2 more to go)

Well, it's getting close.  I quickly knocked out my Advanced Mixing final and turned it in last Sunday (wasn't due until this Thursday) so I have no "homework" left.  Starting Monday I need to be in school for the last 2 weeks.

I have a conducting final and an exit exam in school next week and a recording session for my 4th and final film on Tuesday. My focus now is totally on my thesis, a 3-minute original piece composed and orchestrated for a 52-piece Symphonic Orchestra. The recording session for this project (which has lovingly been named 'Fiasco' by previous students) takes place at Bastyr College Chapel, on the other side of Lake Washington from Seattle. It's going to be a crazy full day. Each of the 9 students will get 30 minutes on the podium to sight read, rehearse and get as many takes as they can. Nine students = 4.5 hours, plus breaks for the musicians will turn it into a 6-hour ordeal, by far the longest yet. 

I'm definitely in a better place emotionally than I was when I wrote the last post (2 weeks ago). With all my other classwork completed I can focus solely on writing, and since this piece is not for a director, the only person I have to impress / please is myself! I have a new composition advisor for this cue, and I am attending the Director's offie hours every Tuesday and Thursday for additional feedback. 

I'm very pleased with what I am writing and am quite stoked to have 52 professional musicians play / record it. Knowing what I know now about the industry, the who's who and whatnot, I face the very real possibility this will be the only chance I ever have to play and record a piece of my music with such an amazing group of musicians. The industry is changing, most small productions want purely electronic scores (which I am happy to provide!), the days of the massive John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith scores / sessions are beginning to drift away. They will still happen, but they will be few, far between, and available to a very select few. The process of becoming one of those few involves living in LA which is something I am simply not willing to do. 

There are video games here in Seattle, independent film makers, documentary film makers, TV and the like all over the world now. I still have the symphonic world, marching band shows, and the licensing world can be lucrative if you hit it just right. 

Week 36ish - Was this really a good idea?

Hit an emotional wall today, hard! Have a director I just can't seem to make happy. My advanced mixing class is the emotional equivalent to having a root canal with no Novocain. Personal life is 'lifeing' all over me. We are at the absolute end of our financial rope and I have no real prospects of a music job come July 22nd. I've started looking for Instructional Design jobs, or quite frankly, anything at this point. I have enjoyed the program for the most part and at the risk of sounding conceited, have become pretty damn good at it. However, it is getting to be so emotionally taxing that if someone offered me the chance to go back and make this decision again, I would be very tempted to say no! 

What was I thinking? School by itself is hard. Marriage by itself is hard, add children and it's doubly so. Mid life, voluntarily leaving a high-paying career, moving, buying a house. All these things are stressful in and of themselves, why the fuck did I decide to do all of them at once? I don't sleep well, my diet is shit, I'm having chest pains, numb legs (maybe a heart attack?) 

I have days that I am so positive and hopeful, and days like today where I just want to die. For the most part the good days outnumber the bad, however, that ratio is rapidly beginning to reach 1:1.

This blog is cathartic and does help, but I am running out of strength to maintain. A month from tomorrow is my last day, I hope I make it.

Week 33 - I have a faint recollection of what sleep is

Where to start, it's been almost a month since my last post.

This week was a residency meaning I was at the school (except for Monday) each day.

Tuesday morning was a conducting review for Wednesday's recording session followed by a review on setting up the session files for the engineer using ProTools. It's difficult for me to comprehend / express the amount of 'stuff' I know that this time last year I didn't. 

Last year I would have fumbled through a ProTools session like a monkey doing a jigsaw puzzle. Now I prepare entire sessions that I bring on disc to the studio and the engineer plugs into his system and records my music. Then, I bring those recorded files back home and mix them, although not in ProTools this time, I prefer to use Logic for mixing.

Last year I used Logic for everything as it was the only program I knew how to use. Now I work with Logic, Protools, Digital Perform and Cubase, the four most commonly used software suites for the professional music creation community. 

Over the course of the last 3 weeks I was working concurrently on 3 separate films. 

1. "The Gateway Process"
• The oldest film was a X-Files homage (really a ripoff) where a young woman looks into the past to see Mars had trashed their planet at are planing to invade Earth for a new place to trash. I composed 2 cues for this film which was in post-production where I mixed down the recorded files into a single audio file.
• Instrumentation:
• Flute
• Trumpet
• Percussion
• Harp
• Piano
• Violin
• Cello 
• Synthesizer pre-recorded layer
• This was my first remote recording, you may remember in a previous post my 'issues' with the director who couldn't make up his mind.
• The music is all mixed and has been sent back to the director. He is supposed to return a full version of the film with the music in it and our names in the end credits. He has not done this, in fact, he's really being a dick about the whole thing.
2. "Well-Trimmed Grass"
• Second oldest film, quite good for a student submission. A story about an obsessed fan who kidnaps and murders his favorite online personality and his family. I composed 2 cues for this film.
• Instrumentation: One player on each.
• Flute
• Oboe
• Trumpet
• Violin 1
• Violin 2
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass
• Synthesizer pre-recorded layer
• The second remote recording session. The director was far more pleasant to work with. I just finished mixing the recorded files and sent them to the director this week.
3. "Jail Broken"
• Most recent film. Blade Runner ripoff. Seriously, even the film school students aren't writing anything original. We had a mandatory meeting Tuesday at 7:00 to book all our printed parts for the session. Since the last train from Seattle to Puyallup leaves at 6:30, I spent the night at a hotel in Seattle. I composed 3 cues for this film.
• Instrumentation:
• Flute
• Oboe
• Clarinet
• Bassoon
• French Horn (2 players)
• Trombone
• Violin 1
• Violin 2
• Viola
• Cello
• Bass
• This session was recorded live this Wednesday at Studio X in Seattle. I just got the recordings today and have to have final mixed files for 3 cues ready to go by Wednesday. It was my first time conducting live musicians since Cane. I am pleased with how well it went. I feel far more comfortable and confident in front of professional musicians now. I've conducted student and community groups in the past, but these are people who have put in their 10,000 hours and then some, it was intimidating at first.
• This was the first session where we worked with different orchestras. And by that I mean we start the day with the cues that require all of the musicians we hired (12). As soon as we reach cues that do not contain parts for a particular instrument, that person is sent home in order to save money. It's expensive to pay a union musician to sit in a chair and not play their instrument. We started the day with 12 musicians and ended with 6. This also introduced the concept of non-sequential cue recording. Of my 3 cues, only one was written for all 12 musicians, the other 2 were for 7 and 6 respectively, even though the first cue I recorded was the last in terms of it's place in the film. This is when you have to take a few minutes to explain to the musicians a bit about the emotional tone of the cue. Since they have never seen the movie and are playing cues out of sequence, it can be difficult to know what emotion is going on on screen.
4. "Homecoming"
• We just got assigned this film yesterday.  Zombie apocalypse movie but with a twist, American soldiers are brought back to life and end up voting the president who sent them to war out of office. Each student scores the same scene in this one. This is also the first 100% electronic score I've done. We can't use any live or acoustic instruments, in fact, we even have to design a few very specific sounds from scratch. No recording session for this one but a very rapid turnaround. My deliverable is a 2-minute cue using only electronic instruments, due June 10th. 
5. Film #4 TBD
• Not only writing for Homecoming, but we will be issued our fourth film this coming week as well. No idea what our choices are yet. Instrumentation has not been set but we do get 15 musicians this time, It will be recorded live July 9th
6. Fiasco
• This is essentially my thesis. A 3-minute cue for 52 musicians. There is no specific film for this, but the music has to sound 'cinematic'. This is for full symphonic orchestra and will be conducted by me at the final session on July 15th. The following Saturday I graduate! Well, that is after an final exit exam, conducting final, portfolio preparation and defending each cue I composed this year.

As of next week I am composing cues for three films concurrently. 

And now I'm exhausted.  Gonna be so busy the next time I post might be after graduation. 

Week 30 - I think?

Wow!  It's getting so busy, I can't believe  I haven't updated things in a month. Good news is the first film, the one I was jabbering on about in the last post, the one with the director suffering from decision making impairment, well, that's done, recorded and in the books. Since last post, I've scored another film, my files were sent out to remote musicians on Sunday, and we got another film yesterday. Three weeks per film is what I can expect from here on out. This time were are going back to live studio recordings here in Seattle, no more remote stuff. Each time the number of available musicians grows. Cane had 3, The Gateway Process (the first remote-recorded film) had 7. Jailbroken (the remote-recorded one we just got) allows for 12. 

I have also started my final graduate project. Three minutes of original music written and orchestrated for 52 musicians, a full freakin' orchestra! There is no film associated with this one, I can write whatever I want as long as it sounds 'theatrical', I don't have to time my music to a film which is a relief. The recording session for the final isn't until July 15th, which is good as I will need all that time. 

The number of classes we have each week is dwindling as we require more and more time for scoring films. My next in-person residency if May 27-31 with a recording session that Wednesday. After the residency, I'll be down to just 2 classes per week, the rest of the time is independent study and meeting time with my composition advisors. 

I'm exhausted, but I feel like I've hit a groove. There is a ton of work, but it's steady and reasonable. Emotionally I've been on an upswing and holding steady. Graduation is only 74 days away. EEK! 

Week 25 - The Sleep of Kings

The great director debacle has come to an end. It took 3 weeks, but it is resolved. After 10 revisions and many sleepless nights, the director finally approved my cues. Did he arrive at the decision of his own volition? 

Not really. 

As the deadline drew nearer, I became increasingly agitated and embarrassed at the situation, not only was I the only class member who didn't have an approved cue, the entire scoring project was delayed a week so I could figure out how to make this guy happy. With 3 days left to the new deadline, I met with the incoming school program director and told her of my frustration. I asked her if they ever had a student not get a cue approved for a film. She replied that yes, it happens more frequently than you might think. I told her I felt that I have gone above and beyond reasonable expectations. 

When my own material failed to enthrall the director, I sought feedback from others on my team who have cues approved by the director. After much discussion, we concluded that my music matched theirs, is well written and supports the onscreen action / emotion as well as any of theirs, our team of three had created a unified sound for this film (Which is actually quite good, it's very similar to episodes of the X-Files). 

I met with both the outgoing school director, (program founder, respected 40-year veteran of the film score industry, and amazing mentor) as well as another trusted composition advisor who both felt there was nothing more that could really be done to improve the way the music supports the scene. To alter it anymore not only risks producing a sub-par cue, but also betrayed my original musical ideal. He told me to move ahead without receiving approval from the film director, but to write him an email explaining the deadline was rapidly approaching and I had no alternative but to start the next step of the process for his cues. 

Within 2 hours the film director had replied, apologized for taking so long to make up his mind, approved my cues as is, and is now excited about the next steps. 

I slept very soundly last night thank you.