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My Job’s Most Important Skill

The most important skill in my job is listening, though perhaps not the way you may be thinking if you know me. I run an independent audio production studio called Freshmade Music, so I rely on my ears for my job. What I’m referring to here is listening to what other humans are saying. I’m talking about communication; really understanding what my clients and potential clients are looking for, where we can bounce ideas back and forth so that not only do I understand what they’re saying – and here’s the kicker – they trust me. Because if you’re in a business relationship of any kind, and you’re really listening and understanding what your role is, and you’re able to deliver and excel effectively in your role, you begin to gain trust. This is especially important fast-paced environments, like the industries I work on, when I’m creating music for advertising, apps, games and TV.

I’ll explain more. But first we have to talk about burritos. My daughter really likes burritos, so we order them to-go from her favorite taqueria once a week. She really likes what she likes, but she really doesn’t like what she doesn’t like. Who doesn’t? I don’t blame her.  When she wasn’t really old enough to place her own order, I’d order for her. Sometimes I would place our order too quickly while trying to keep the rest of my family’s order together in my head and screw up her order. I’d either forget to specify which kind of beans she wanted, or forget to tell the restaurant that she wanted the regular size, not the smaller kids size, because she likes to eat half today and save the other half for another meal. How would the taqueria know that? They wouldn’t! There were times when she got the wrong order, and she would get upset. Mean Daddy. (As I said, it was my fault – at least like 90% of the time). Where was the error? Was this a bad burrito? No. Was this suddenly a bad restaurant? No. This was quite simply a communication breakdown. I didn’t stop and take the appropriate amount of time that I needed to place the order correctly, thus she didn’t receive what she wanted.

Here’s another example, this one from my work experience. When I was just starting out, a client explained the germ of an idea to me. At this early point, I was so excited! I immediately committed my first error when I assumed that the most important thing I could do was to prove to them that I could read their mind and show them how great my music was. Good intention, but wrong decision. What I didn’t understand in this early project, is that I failed to slow down and take in enough information to even begin producing music that the client might like. I should have asked more questions about genre, music function, target audience, instrumentation, and more. This in turn would have sparked a more in-depth conversation with my client. But no, I just started creating music that I thought was perfect, and thought that the client would just love it. Well… that early experience was eye-opening. I couldn’t believe that my client didn’t like the cool music I put together! But I quickly realized, the music was fine; it just wasn’t the right music. More importantly, I hadn’t taken time to communicate with my client, so we weren’t really collaborating yet. I didn’t have any buy-in.

It took me a few more projects to realize that if you have full buy-in from them team you’re working with, especially in a creative industry like mine, you’re much more likely to stay on the team for more iterations and to see the project through to its end. Luckily my client was patient and stuck with me. My first draft wasn’t for naught – this track led to a very productive conversation with the client and she allowed me to submit more music that was much closer to what we both thought would work, and after a few tweaks my final music was approved.

Do you have any tips or experiences you’d like to share? Please share them with me at  info@freshmademusic.com.

Jerome Rossen is a composer, songwriter, producer and professional musician. For 15 years, Jerome has created music for advertising, apps, kid’s video games and has placed his music in major TV shows like Gordon Ramsey’s “The F-Word” and “The Bachelor”. Jerome also creates the music for the Happy Tree Friends, a very funny (though very violent) cartoon for adults and mature kids, with a huge cult following. He runs Freshmade Music, an independent audio studio. You can learn more at www.freshmademusic.com.

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National Anthems – A Patriotic Convergence of Music and Politics

Here’s a cool segment on National Anthems – a patriotic convergence of music and politics…

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/07/24/role-of-national-anthems

Whatever feeling you have for the national anthem of your particular country, it’s certain that for most folks, these songs have meaning – sometimes a great deal. These anthems can symbolize hope or nostalgia, or in some cases a dark emotion when citizens disagree with the authority figures in power.

 

 

 

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Faders – Career Ideas: 5 Tips for Creative People Who Excel at Multiple Things

Over the last few years I’ve attended a couple audio and music industry conferences where I’ve participated in panels discussing careers and networking. Here is a question that has come up a few times…

Allen (who’s name I have changed) asks: “I’m a musician, engineer, producer, sound designer and songwriter. I’ve had a job assisting an engineer for a couple years, but I’m not sure I want to keep doing it. I think it might take a couple more years until I’m sitting in the engineer chair, but I don’t know if I want to wait that long. I think I may want to do something that feels more creative. What should I do? How can I do all of those things?”

My answer… yes and maybe! My favorite analogy is that of a mixing board with faders. In Allen’s case, there are 5 things that he wants to do – and let’s assume he does them all well. First things first – we need to take a step back and recognize that he’s done something well enough to convince someone else to pay him to be an engineering assistant, and presumably he’s paying his bills with a job, that is at least related to what he wants to do. Good job, Allen!

With our fader analogy, we’re going to assign each of the things Allen wants to do to a fader. Our goal is to bring up all the faders, and make it sound good. Sometimes Allen might bring a few faders up and leave a few down. It’s possible that he never has them all up at the same time. Right now, you could say that the engineering “fader” is mostly all the way up, and all the others are down – but as Allen has expressed, this is not exactly what he wants to do.

Would it be possible for Allen to bring the producing fader up a bit? Can Allen focus more on producing during the evening and weekends, while he keeps his current job? Does he have after-hours access to the studio? Can he bring artists or other projects in during these times?

What about some of Allen’s other interests? Does he have buddies that he’s in a band with, and can he bring them into the studio? Does he have friends making records elsewhere? Do any of them need songs or musicians? That could cover being a musician, engineer, producer and songwriter.

While Allen might be impatient to make a career switch, we should recognize that his experience as an engineer will be an asset to any other project he enters into. Also, it’s important to note, that since Allen is already otherwise making his living, it’s not essential that he make money from these other activities right away. It’s more important to build his network, credits and track record. For example, it would likely be better for Allen to have produced, engineered and mixed three of his friends bands – and for those to sound awesome, then for him to hold out for too much money and not have produced anyone, thus not having anything for prospective clients to check out.

Which is not to say that Allen should work totally for free (ever!), even for friends. In this era of KickStarter and PledgeMusic, it’s possible for a band to raise some amount of money. Perhaps someone in the band can trade you for professional services like helping to put together a website or helping with PR.

While you may not share Allen’s specific skill set, hopefully you can see what I mean with the fader analogy. I have many creative friends who do quite a few different things really well. Some have decided to focus on one career path and then switch somewhere along the line; others have figured out a way to be more multi-disciplined. Please let me know if you have any comments or have an ideas that have worked for you.

Here are my 5 Tips for Creative People Who Excel at Multiple Things:
1. Pay your rent. You need to be able to cover living expenses, food, etc. If this means taking a day job – do it. For the vast majority of us, we’re much more functional creative humans if we don’t have to worry about day-to-day expenses and where we’re going to sleep at night. Also, make sure you have a solid plan of how to push your creative self forward if it ends up being on the evenings and weekends. Taking care of yourself first isn’t an original idea; it’s basically taken from “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”. To learn more about that, check out: http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

2. Become a master. Start with one skill that you’re already good at and try to master it. Get help from someone who already does this better than you, whether it’s a formal teacher, a mentor or some learning materials.

3. Choose wisely. There are lots of parts of the recording, audio and music industries that don’t pay the bills, and they can be extremely competitive. Some of these areas feel like a lottery (in fact your chances might be better in some lotteries!). If there is a specific area of the industry that you’re serious about pursuing, make sure you are realistic about your chances, and make alternate plans in case your dream doesn’t bring money in, or doesn’t bring in money right away.

4. Plan for the long game. If you’re planning to be a full-time creative person, especially if you’re living in an expensive creative city, I recommend start with 2 years of living expenses and assuming that you will earn $0 from your creative work.

5. Be flexible. Sometimes a job in your industry that ends up bringing you financial gain or recognition is not the area that you set out to work in. If you end up with a specialty, don’t fight it!

Jerome Rossen is a composer, songwriter and audio producer. He’s also an educator, engineer, writer and professional musician! He usually has only one of his faders all the way up! He is best known as the composer for the Happy Tree Friends. Since 2005, Jerome has scored the music for this animated Internet sensation, recognized as the most-viewed web series of all time, with over 2 billion video views. You can learn more about him at www.freshmademusic.com.

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Film Scoring: Breaking Down Chase Scenes

In my first tip for Pyramind I give a few tips on writing music for chase scenes in films. I analyze music in a chase scene from The Bourne Supremacy and break down the composition techniques utilized in the music.

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West Coast Songwriters Conference

General’s Quarter’s, Fort Mason
San Francisco, California

September 26 & 27

For more information:
https://www.facebook.com/events/705182576279828/
http://www.westcoastsongwriters.org/conference

I’ll be moderating 2 events at this year’s West Coast Songwriter’s conference.

The first is a speed-networking event with the guests and attendees of the event. This should be a fun and chaotic way to meet and network with tons of folks in a short period of time.

The second is a panel “Streaming Unraveled”. We’re discussing where the music industry is in regards to streaming and distributing music. We’re going to showcase some of the the powerful tools that artists and songwriters can use to get their music out, reach their crowd, and get onto the path of making some money.

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Five Tips To Help You Reach Deadline Zen

Deadlines: Inspiration or Impediment?

As a creative professional, I rely on deadlines as motivation and inspiration. Sometimes they can be a bright shimmer of heavenly light, beaming angelically from the end of the day Friday. Other times, they are a hot, scary, stress-inducing firebrand, pushing you to sprint, not walk; a motivational kick in the… pants! Either way, since deadlines are inevitable, I’ve come to see them as a tool.

“I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines, nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation.” – Harry Shearer

DSC_0385Some Context
I’m a composer for TV, video games and cartoons. I generally deliver a finished music file that gets placed immediately into project. If it’s a TV show, it may be broadcast the day after I deliver my file. If it’s a video game, it will immediately get implemented into the game, and entered into an extensive testing process. In both of these cases, my deadlines matter – someone is waiting for me to finish my part, so the project can move forward to next step. There is both carrot and stick associated to this; I often get paid at deadline milestones, but I’m also generally concerned (afraid?) about my deadline, as I don’t want to be the source of a bottleneck.

Five Tips to Deadline Zen
I’ve put together a handful of tips that I use to keep my work on schedule. While you may not find any of these exactly revolutionary, I find it helpful to be reminded of these ideas from time to time.

1) Break down the large project into little bits. Take one first step. Make sure you understand the big picture. If you’ve had a conversation with your client or collaborator, and you know where you’re going, then you’re ready to break the work into a smaller piece, and get cracking.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

2) Make sure you’re organized. When you’re working quickly, you can’t take time to fix your process. If you find this to be an issue, take time to work through this in the future when you don’t have a deadline.

I notice when I work really fast, I can be very creative, but I have a higher likelihood of letting small details slide, and a higher likelihood of being paranoid about whether that small details might slide! If you’re organized, these small details can have a better chance of falling into place.

“The thing that would most improve my life is 27 hours in a day. I could meet all my deadlines.” – Yoko Ono

3) Choose the right people to work with. Beware of the “Toxic Collaborator”! There are folks who think they only thrive on tight deadlines, those who never meet deadlines and those who just unfortunately aren’t very organized. There is a high likelihood that you might come across these people as colleagues, team members or clients, and sometimes you just don’t have a choice. (It’s possible that you are one of these people. It’s OK! You’re working on that, right?) It’s best to know the situation up front, so you can be prepared. It may be helpful to plan ahead by putting some extra organizational tools into place or setting some internal deadlines that occur prior to the client deliverable. Sometimes these folks are very creative, and you really don’t want to stifle that creativity, but you do need to effectively manage the project so that everything happens when it needs to.

4) Know what you’re getting into. “Is it always like this?” I like to put my deadlines into perspective. There are whole industries that have built-in, always crazy, run-around-like-a-chicken-with-your-head-cut-off deadlines like nightly TV shows, technology products and the stock market. Handling these sorts of deadlines is often the whole point of the job. If you can thrive under this sort of pressure, that’s awesome – just make sure you know what you’re getting into.

5) Plan ahead. I love being involved in planning meetings at the beginning of a project, when creative, administrative and scheduling expectations are set out. This can be a great opportunity to have some input into what’s possible in regards to timing. This is the time to get the deadlines right. I prefer building in small milestones, so my clients are incrementally checking my work as we go, instead of one big reveal at the end. For instance, it can often be better to devise four small deadlines (and perhaps incremental payments associated to that) rather than one big deadline.

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams

If any of these tips are interesting to you, try implementing them one at a time, if you’re aren’t already working this way. As you get back to work, I hope you’re able to reach maximum deadline Zen!

Do you have any experiences or other tips that you’d like to share about deadlines? I’d love to hear from you at info@freshmademusic.com.

Jerome Rossen is a composer, songwriter and professional musician.  He is best known as the composer for the Happy Tree Friends. Since 2005, Jerome has scored the music for this animated Internet sensation, recognized as the most-viewed web series of all time, with over 2 billion video views. He has delivered his music on or ahead of his deadlines for the last 15 years. You can learn more about him at www.freshmademusic.com.

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Country and Western

blues brothers
“ELWOOD: What kind of music do you usually have here?
CLAIRE: Oh, we have both kinds — country and western.”
– The Blues Brothers, 1980 written by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis

I like all kinds of music including, country, western, pop, jazz, classical, and world – the list goes on. I listen to lots of music too that I may or may not like; largely pop music if my kids are in the car. Maybe I should be more totalitarian about their listening habits and play more Miles Davis, Mozart and Motown? In any case, whenever I’m listening to anything, I don’t really turn off my music analyzer muscle, and this was the case when Kelly Clarkson’s “Heartbeat Song”  was on the radio yesterday. I’m not prepared to make an argument for whether it’s good or bad – that’s for you to decide – but I can tell you my opinion; one of the musical reasons why this song has become popular. And I’m also going to reference A-ha’s “Take On Me” .

To me, the biggest reason why “Heartbeat Song” is popular is because of the way the beat changes between a fast, frenetic feel during the verse, and a slow, epic beat during the chorus. I think dramatic changes like this one are very compelling to pop music listeners. I think listeners generally find music interesting anytime there is a part of a song that “kicks in” or where there is a smooth feel-change that feels natural, and gets your attention; that makes you want to dance or dance in a different way than the section of the song before it.

During the verse, the words bounce along like it’s bubblegum pop, although in this case, the music is actually playing against the words. Whereas the words show worry, concern and stress, the beat just keeps moving along.

“Pins and needles on my tongue,
Anticipating what’s to come”

The drums during these verses are very simple, with the kick on 1 and 3, the snare on 2 and 4 – the drums are hitting every quarter note here. There is a rhythm part played by a guitar or synth – or maybe doubled that is playing 8th notes. The verse has a very quick, driving feel. The pre-chorus has an interesting transitional feel to it. It’s a broken beat that forecasts some of the drama to come, but it doesn’t get too epic.

Then we get to the chorus. The beat here is in ½ time, as compared to the verse. If this section were experienced by itself, this could be the climax of a ballad. The feel here is very epic – Clarkson is singing in a higher part of her register, and the words are meant to be… heartfelt.

“This is my hearbeat song and I’m gonna play it, been song long, I forgot how to turn it up up up up all night long….”

Which brings me to A-ha’s “Take On Me”. This song employs this same technique in the chorus, just in a smaller dose.

In the beginning of the song, the whole feel is quite fast, again bouncing along. The chorus has the same feel, and momentum moves forward until you get to the line
“I’ll be gone….” For these 4 bars, there is a brief respite of ½ time, right before singer A-ha singer Morten Harket sing’s his falsetto high note. In the music video, it’s the moment when the animated hand breaks the third wall and motions for our blond protagonist to enter into comic book world. This all doesn’t happen as a coincidence… To me, this is one of the attractions of the song and even provides one of the reasons why this was a breakout hit for A-ha in 1985.

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“In Motion” – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: A Theoretical, Musical and Structual Analysis

I’ve done a quick analysis of “In Motion” by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from the Social Network Soundtrack. You can hear the tracks here:

In Motion

– There is some interesting rhythmic variety in the bass line, starting at bar 3, where they use  the 3 note pattern over the 4 beat grid. It creates this built-in syncopation, then the rhythmic  figure continues over the bar line into bar 4.

– In the recording they use some interesting double-time (16th note) rhythmic elements, based on the pentatonic scale. They use this double-time tool back and forth.

– Everything changes when the melody comes in. We can call the piece in D Dorian, since the bass line establishes the key – but then the melody comes in on the major 3rd of D! We can consider that a borrowed note, a great use of dissonance to throw the track off kilter a little bit.

– The melody going up a whole tone keeps it relatively unstable, even though it ends up on the major 3rd of F, a note in the scale.

– The chords of the whole track could be considered just D minor. The other chords are just sort of passing notes to get us back to D.

– The sound and production are essential elements to this track.

– Notice how they’re able to keep interest through the track: The build, then the middle, spacey section, then the reprise.