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The Zen of Film Scoring: Always Change Your Pants Before Recording
With my work on the film score nearing completion, I am focusing most of my creative energies on getting it finished. I have many ideas for general creativity-themed blog posts in the near future, but until I can spend the required time writing them, I give you this film score-centric post to tide you over.
It turns out scoring a film requires developing some creative philosophies (the importance of which I detailed here), using some extremely advanced techniques (and by advanced I mean not particularly advanced, you see what I did there?) and making some interesting discoveries and observations along the way. Here are seven examples from my recent experience.
How (and Why) to Establish Your Creative Philosophy
Creativity and philosophy go hand-in-hand in crucial ways. In fact, you will have trouble making any worthwhile art without first understanding the philosophy behind it. Luckily, it's easy to achieve in a few simple steps.
The Snowman: A Guitar Reimagining
While I dislike the commercial compulsion to push the beginning of the Christmas season so far back it essentially starts on Halloween, I'm hoping this piece of music I'm sharing with you is obscure enough that it won't be conjuring any visions of sugarplum fairies in mid-November.
The Zen of Film Scoring: The Sonic Palette
During my first week of procrastinating/working very hard on the score for I Hate You, I was naturally a bit curious to learn more about the methods and techniques of established composers. Spending time pretending to pick up tips from the pros was an excellent way to avoid the fact that I was freaking out about how the hell I would successfully pull this shit off. One YouTube video wound up being a big inspiration, but not in the way I had initially imagined.
How to Organize Your Entire Creative (And Personal) Life in Three Steps
Juggling work, personal and creative lives can get complicated. After years of trying to make it happen, I finally figured out a system that's both simple and effective.
The Zen of Film Scoring: A Blank Canvas
I'm currently knee-deep in scoring a feature-length independent film. I think it's about time I started telling you alllll about it.
How To Use "Ironic" Properly: A Public Service Announcement
Irony is one of the most consistently misunderstood terms in the English language. I can't claim that I've always used the word properly myself in the past; in fact, I once had a friend call me out on misusing it in a Facebook comment. I then channeled the extreme pain I felt from that public grammar shaming into an intense study session to learn the true definition of irony.
6 Major Pitfalls for Guys to Avoid When Online Dating
They say you learn more from failing at something than from succeeding. If that’s the case, I’ve learned quite a bit about the online dating world over the years. Still, you’ve only really learned from your failures if you can adjust your actions to achieve some success, so a 100% failure rate doesn’t make you an expert so much as an idiot who refuses to take a hint. To that end, I’ve also had some success—more as time went on, in fact. So while I’m obviously not claiming that I’m the greatest online dating expert of all time, I can confidently say I have learned some useful and important truths when it comes to making it work.
You’re Doing It Wrong: Happiness
Ah, the pursuit if happiness, an American institution so beloved it’s scribbled on a little piece of our country’s history we call the Declaration of Independence. Surely a man from Philadelphia, the very town in which that historic document was signed, would never dare to criticize such a hallowed phrase.
Of course I would, because this is the Internet and I have the power to tell an adoring public my self-important opinions. I’m going to wield that power like crazy right now, because this one’s a doozy: happiness is a lie, and contentment is overrated.
How To Never Be Bored and Always Have Fun
Boredom is a part of life, you might say. You can’t have fun all the time. Sometimes things are slow and there’s nothing you can do about it. Being bored is an unfortunate but inevitable reality.
Except that isn’t exactly true. Boredom left unchecked often means we’re just not trying hard enough. In fact, I’d argue that boredom is not only good, it’s necessary.
4 Songs That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
Despite the contingent of hardcore fans who think I'm infallible, I am but a human being who puts his pants on two legs at a time and occasionally makes mistakes. For example, there have been several times where I've wildly misinterpreted the meaning of a song. It happens to the best of us.
How to Calculate the Exact Worth of Your Time: A Handy Guide
There’s an old adage that time is money, but this is America in the 21st century, so vague-ass statements like that don’t fly anymore. Everything needs to be super-specific now. You can’t just find out how many people are visiting your website, you need to know how long they spent there, what pictures they looked at and what their dog’s name is. No longer can we settle for simply equating time with money, we need to figure out exactly how much money every second of our time is worth so we can bill accordingly. The fact that I’m adding a superfluous sentence to this paragraph has probably slightly enraged someone reading it right now because it just took up a few seconds of their billable time.
How To Add Instant Energy to a Song: The Magic Beat
Years ago, I was listening to the radio when "Toxic" by Britney Spears came on. At the time I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about admitting I was into a Top 40 pop song, but with "Toxic" it was a different story—I loved it and felt no shame about that fact. There are many great things here: check out that funky-as-shit bass line, the chunky guitar part and how the chords in the chorus build tension with that chromatic descending progression the first time (forgive a few music theory terms here), then release with the incredibly satisfying flat-six-to-five the second time, for example.
But for me the infectiousness of "Toxic" comes down to one primary element, the backbone of the whole song: a rhythm I’ve come to call the Magic Beat.
You're Doing It Wrong: Manliness
I remember it like it was yesterday: The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” came on TV, I saw those ladies rocking out and said, matter-of-factly and with all the conviction a 7-year-old can have, “Girls can’t play guitar.” My mom and sister set me straight very quickly, but it’s indicative of something in men that starts in us extremely young and then gets so ingrained that it winds up feeling like an objective truth by the time we’re adults.
7 Very Good Reasons Why You Might Want to Get an Apple Watch
Full disclosure: I use some Apple products. I like my iPhone just fine, I’ve used iMacs as my primary computer for almost 15 years, and I have an ancient iPad that barely works and essentially serves as a museum piece showing what a status symbol used to look like all the way back in 2010. So my opinion might be slightly colored by my enjoyment of many Apple products.
The Blurred Lines of Music Lawsuits
I got into a much more intense conversation than I usually allow myself to get into on Facebook recently over the Marvin Gaye vs. Pharrell/Robin Thicke copyright infringement lawsuit. I had similar conversations about the Sam Smith vs. Tom Petty controversy as well as an incident involving Lady Gaga (more on that later).
I care about this stuff because one of these cases sets up a worrisome precedent for musicians everywhere. Here's my detailed take on all three.
15 Signs You're Overly-Addicted to Reading Online Lists
You clicked on this link.
Buzzfeed comes up in your browser’s suggested sites.
You click on “20 Things You Realize When You’re In Your Twenties” just in case there’s something you didn’t know you were supposed to be thinking at this age and you really don’t want to be the only not thinking it.
Say I Ain't Old
The other day I heard “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer on the radio twice. It’s a song that I never skip over when it comes on; I very distinctly remember getting the Blue Album as a kid—it was the first thing I bought after I upgraded to a boombox with a CD player in it.
That was 20 years ago. That figure by itself is crazy to me, only because I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since I was in sixth grade. But it got me to thinking about a much more interesting fact regarding the history of rock music.