I get asked all the time if it is a good idea to go to college for music and composition. In this vlog, I try to answer the question.
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Hey! I’m currently in the Music college at my Uni! I just finished my 3rd year as a Classical Music Performace major, but as a transfer from a local community college, I’m basically starting over with a lot of my classes. It pushes my graduation year back about 2 years which isn’t ideal but I’m planning on adding a Music Theory major on top and a minor in German Language, considering I have to take almost all of those credits for the Theory major as it is. I just finished Music Theory IV which concentrated on post-tonal and 20th century music and I literally fell in love with the minimalist and impressionist music in a way I hadn’t from just listening to it; I had fallen in love with the theory behind everything. This theory course had a lot of assignments where we were composing based on set theory and 20th century techniques, where my professor had told me that I should look into taking composition classes and to really go for it, as he thought I had talent. So here I am. The composition major at my college would add another year to my degree and I just couldn’t afford that and the Theory major only has a couple composition classes, being one lesson in composition and one in orchestration.
How did you become a film composer and how did you first realize that you wanted to compose??
I’ll try to quickly answer the 2nd question, and then the first – how did I first realize that I wanted to compose?
I sort of fell into the practice first by having to compose a jazz solo over “In the Mood” which I was playing with a small group for a talent show when I was in high school. I was also given a program from a friend at that time, called IT Tracker (a DOS program), which allowed me to start writing out music on the computer and hearing it played back. From there I just started experimenting. Around the age of 16 I started to see composition as a reality in my future, and went to music school, but after a year and a half of frustrations with the music department, switched to history. (This whole story is covered in my 3 parts podcast series on Mastery by the way).
Following college, I joined the Army, and spent 7 years doing that, but as my time there came to an end, I realized that I wanted to go back in to composition.
In 2011, I started Art of Composing, so I could blog about what I was learning, and eventually teach, because I could see that earning a living as a composer is precarious and almost all great composers have had to teach students to supplement their income.
2. How I became a film composer.
After leaving the Army, I moved back to California and attended the UCLA Extension film scoring program. They taught me the technical side of scoring, and also allowed me to get connected with student film makers. I scored several short films, before I was able to land a job scoring a soap opera, for which I’ve scored two seasons (32 episodes total).
I was displaced because of the Woolsey fire, and I am still not back home yet, so I’ve had to put scoring to the side to deal with all the consequences of that (construction, lost momentum, lost studio… some depression).
Right now, I am just re-evaluating goals, blogging more, and actually putting a focus on my students, as I am working on coming up with clearer outcome measures and how to test them to ensure what I teach is actually making a difference.
Now for you, and scoring, there is so much content being made, you can find things to score, but finding people to pay you to score is a different thing. It has more to do with the relationships you end up building. By far, the people that have had the most success have really made connecting with film makers a priority. For me, scoring has become just a part of my desire to compose. For instance, I am currently on the board for a children’s choir, and am working towards a more well-rounded career with concert work.
In a sense, I have the same love for theory, but in reality, it’s a love for understanding music on a deeper level, not just the surface. I think that is why I could never have been a performance major, and if I had realized that I could have articulated it to my teachers at the time.
I can’t give great career advice, but at this point, who really can. I don’t know much about getting jobs in the academic world, as I’ve never had any there. I can say that if you start creating now, it will in some way pay off in the future. For instance my blog has given me many opportunities to connect with students, authors, other composers, software creators, theorists… basically just about anyone I can think of that would in some way be connected to music… which is just about everyone.
Stuff that you put your heart into will never expire, even if the style changes.