It’s been an extreme pleasure crafting the musical signature for this excellent film by writer, producer, and director Kyle Prohaska. The soundtrack from the film should be available later on this year.

Previews of the music score for the feature film can be heard here, or listen to the cues with the player below.

This will be a two-part post, so let’s delve right in.

Ever thought about what it takes to become masterful at your craft? I’m sure you have, especially if you have made it your business of producing content for film and media. A twin to that question is which tools I need to achieve that goal.

In my over 25 years of creating and producing music, I have consistently come across a number of requirements that all need to be present to get somewhere with your craft (Note: This list is not exhaustive):

• Talent (or a gift – not everyone has it)
• Opportunity (unless you seek it out, it has to be present)
• Determination (main ingredient when obstacles appear)
• Tools (without which you won’t be able to create)
• Skill (ripens as you mature in your craft)

While I would love to delve into all of these, I mainly want to address the last two, Tools and Skill.

The Tools

We all know what a tool is, but sometimes it helps to have a second look at the definition: “A tool is a device that can be used to produce or achieve something, but that is not consumed in the process.” (Source: Wikipedia)

The use and type of tools is dictated by the item or end result we want to produce. Depending on the outcome, we also have to use the right kind of tools. This should be a clear concept. For example, it would make no sense to use a hammer where a screwdriver is needed, unless you want to intentionally do some damage.

Even within the classification of a certain tool (as in “screwdriver”) there are varied sizes and types for different uses. Ever tried to use a large Philips screwdriver on a gadget that required a tiny little one to open? (Bear with me, this is all going somewhere.)

In my world of composing for film and media, this means that I have to look for and use the right kind of tools. The selection of them is directly related to the content and quality I want to produce, and of course the intended use of that content. For example, if all I ever wanted to create is beautiful acoustic guitar music, a guitar of a certain quality would be a good idea to use.

The intended use of the content dictates the quality of the tool required for the job. Unless specifically asked for, we wouldn’t use a toy piano to reproduce Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (although that would make for an interesting choice.)

Point is that we have to think in terms of content, quality, and intended use when choosing the tools we use to create the content.

Unless produced by a real orchestra, a very practical example from the world of a composer would be the type of sample library to use for strings. Great music has been composed and produced with some of the more inexpensive sample libraries available. However, pushing the envelope and attempting to get close to the real thing, we have to consider using a premium orchestral library capable of producing the sound, texture, and articulations of a real orchestra, or at least come extremely close to it.

Skill, which we will discuss below, also weighs in on the end result. I have recently heard a fellow composer state that he is starting to hear great sounding, but poorly written music being published by some of the less experienced composers. This is due to a disproportionate use of quality sample libraries by those who are lacking skill in using them.

On the flip side though, a great composer may be able to produce really beautiful music even with a less expensive orchestral library, simply because the inferior tool is being used by a true master. However, even that master will only get so far with the tool. A quality tool will allow the master to produce superior results.

This translates into a requirement to match skills with the right tool. If all you ever want to produce is music for your own listening pleasure, then an inexpensive orchestral library (to stay with the example) will suffice. However, if your intent is to produce music for feature films and for the commercial world of media, then using your skills and the use of a quality orchestral library is imperative. This means that you will have to look for the best tools available. This is not meant to sound condescending or judgmental. It is simply an unwritten rule in the world of professional media.

To put it simply, don’t expect to get feature film gigs by continually producing your music with less than acceptable tools. Producers and directors are able to spot very quickly whether you have the tools and skills to produce results that match their quality requirements.

So, what does all that mean? Simply this: If you are serious about creating beautiful music not only for your own enjoyment, you will need to continually improve the collection of tools (instruments, sample libraries, recording equipment, etc.) you employ to produce that music. This also includes making upgrades and staying up-to-date with technology.

In this digital world of music, our tools are continually evolving. In my studio I have gadgets and electronic instruments, including sample libraries, I haven’t touched in months, because their sound quality has been surpassed by newer technology. Does that mean I won’t ever use them again? Absolutely not. Point is that we need to stay current with our tools.

Part II more specifically addresses some of the tools and where they may fit in.

The Skills

According to Wikipedia, “A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both.”

As already mentioned, skill in the grand scheme of producing music for media is married to the tools we use. Unless we use prepared audio (aka ‘loops’) in our creations, we will need to spend significant amounts of time and efforts at honing our skills. That just comes with the territory.

Behind every successful piece of music or media you will find a master of his or her craft. This doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the occasional breakthrough of a natural talent or a prodigy. In general, you will find though that musicians and composers working in this industry are successful because they have worked very hard on developing their skills.

The study of music and the mastery of your toolset is an ongoing process and even though you can take a lifetime committed to it, it never seems like you will reach the end.

I also have a degree in mechanical engineering (don’t ask, long story). I do remember times developing my skills in the workshop, working with various metal forming and processing tools. It was hard and frustrating, often having to begin over until the use of a particular tool became second nature to me. Sound familiar?

Developing our musical skills as an artist takes a lifetime of dedication to study, without which you will have to rely on your natural talent. That talent alone may only take you so far. If you are among those of us who are not child prodigies, studying and improving your skills is the road you will need to travel.

Again, this is where determination makes its appearance. Don’t allow obstacles to pull you off that road if you are set on becoming successful at this. If you don’t have the opportunity to study music in college, then seek out other ways to improve your knowledge.

Part II will list a number of resources that will help you along the way.

The Master’s Hands

Ever asked yourself where your creativity comes from? I am not speaking of the crazy things we do as individuals to stir up our creative juices. I am speaking of the source, the origin of our creativity.

The answer to that question depends on a number of factors, but is essentially tied to your world view. I won’t bore you with mine, so if you feel you want to stop reading here, that will be perfectly alright.

Well, you obviously made it this far, so without further ado, here is my personal viewpoint:

I strongly believe that our creative abilities have been given to us by our Creator. In fact, the Bible speaks about us being created in God’s image. Being the Creator God that He is, it stands to reason that as His creation we would inherit, as it were, some of His creating abilities as well.

The ability to create something beautiful, or interesting, or even, shall we call it ‘unique’, all ties into this gift we have received from Him. From my perspective, whether you acknowledge this or not, all of this points back to the Grand Master.

As we are using this ability, we in essence become tools of the Grand Master, and a Master He is indeed. He is looking for tools He can use to continually birth new creations. When I compose, I am constantly aware of this creative source and with every cue I write, every musical phrase I work so hard on, my hope is always that I become an effective tool.

If you are into woodworking, you know that tools need to be sharpened to stay effective. They have to be in top shape, otherwise they may just cause more damage than good. Likewise, the challenge extends to me in acknowledging that there is more to creating music than the act itself and allowing Him to shape and sharpen me.

Being a tool in the Master’s hands is more fulfilling to me than anything else creatively in this world. Any determination to improve my skills, and in essence become a better communicator with my music, stems from this desire.

If you have made it reading through all this, then let me challenge you to seek out that source of creativity and tie into the river that flows so strongly from Him. Bathe in its beauty and let it wash over you as you become the Master’s tool.

Here is a commercial they created for the Wisconsin 4-H, which has just been released. It is targeted for web distribution, but would work equally well for TV broadcasting.

Below is the score only.

The challenge was to get close to a temp score they had chosen (without copying, of course). My personal goal was to surpass the quality of the temp score and create something unique that would be tailored to the scenes in the commercial. This in fact is what distinguishes the use of stock music from individually composed music.

For example, two points stuck out that we tried to hit. One is when the light bulb appears, which we start introducing a sort of magical feeling in the music that carries on and builds when the starry sky images show up.

Unless you find stock music that already contains these elements at the desired spots, an editor may have a tough time making everything seem smooth and seamless. Good editors can cut to just about any music. Add to that what originally composed music can bring to the table and your editor will love you.

This is a great redemptive story, but more significantly “Standing Firm” is a story about suffering, God’s purpose in it, and being joyful despite of it.

I am honored to be attached to this project and am looking forward to scoring this film and working together with director Kyle Prohaska, who has done an outstanding job on the film.

Below is the a trailer for the film, which is currently in post-production. For more information about the film, please have a look at the official movie site for “Standing Firm”, along with its production blog. You may also follow “Standing Firm” on Facebook.

I am delighted to have a chance to score the music for this film and I am looking forward to working with the director and producer, who themselves happen to be a father-son team.

For more information about the documentary, please check the film’s production blog and their Facebook page.

Update: Due to scheduling conflicts surrounding a family health situation I had to move into the role of executive music producer for the documentary and pass the scoring on to a fellow composer. I’ll give updates on the status as the project progresses.

Filmweavers is currently readying the release of the official website for the movie, which will include a new trailer containing themes from the film score.

While working through the scoring project, it became apparent early on that relying on a traditional orchestral sound was not enough to give the film a unique musical signature. This meant that a number of sound libraries had to be utilized to push the score beyond the limits of a ’standard’ score. I am pleased with the outcome and can’t wait watching the film in its completed form.

Here is a screenshot of a typical setup for one of the cues in the film:

Scoring for 'The Penny'

It is truly an honor to be attached to this project, as the producers, crew, and cast of ‘The Penny’ have done a fine job bringing a great script to life. I am continually impressed with the production quality and am looking forward to adding musical life to the film.

Check in for updates here or on the Filmweaver’s production blog.

Here is a short but sweet visual taste of what’s to come in the new feature film from Filmweavers. Note that I have not composed the music for the teaser.

The Penny Teaser from Filmweavers LLC on Vimeo.

Scene from 'The Penny'

Common wisdom would dictate that you wait until the dust settles, reports of what works and what doesn’t are in, and developers of the various music and audio applications, plug-ins, and hardware drivers you use in your production environment are all up-to-date with their Snow Leopard compatibility. And with good reason: Any initial release of a major operating system could potentially cause major headaches if you are working on a deadline and the upgrade yields some unexpected results.

However, especially with the Mac OS X system there are some great ways to create a test environment based on your existing system, which you can play with before rolling out a new upgrade into your production environment.

Important: Before I dive into some of the details, let me emphatically state a disclaimer, that following these steps are solely meant as a guideline and you are essentially responsible for taking necessary precautions so as to not loose valuable data (have I mentioned the word ‘backup’ yet?) Don’t shout at me if your production system is spitting up green goo, or is making rude noises. You have been warned!

What’s Needed?
There are a couple of items you will need to follow this process:

• Either a separate hard disk (external or internal), or an unused partition in your Mac
• SuperDuper! system backup software

Instead of SuperDuper! you can use other backup software, but ensure that a complete backup of your main Mac drive yields a bootable copy.

If you are using a new hard disk for this process, or you are erasing an existing disk to create a new partition, make sure that in Disk Utility you use ‘Options…’ before you partition the new disk and choose ‘GUID Partition Table’ scheme. Otherwise the Snow Leopard installer complains that it can’t install on a non-GUID partition.

Making a Bootable Clone
You will need to create a bootable backup (clone) with SuperDuper!, which is straight forward and allows you to essentially create a clone of your main Mac OS disk. Using the ‘Backup – all files’ option will produce an identical and bootable copy of your Mac OS disk.

You will need to specify the ‘Copy’ disk (your Mac HD drive) and the ‘to’ disk, which is your separate drive, or your second unused partition. Note that this process will wipe out any previous data on the target drive, so make sure you use one that you can afford to loose the data.

SuperDuper! Mac Backup Tool

Booting From the Cloned Drive
The Mac OS X has the beautiful ability to boot from a drive other than your internal main disk. This means that you can easily boot from the cloned drive you just created with a mere switch in the Startup Disk preference pane. This you can find in the System Preferences in the System section. Simply select the cloned disk and click on ‘Restart’. Your Mac will reboot from the cloned disk.

Startup Disk Preference Pane

The Fun Part
Once your Mac reboots with the cloned disk as your OS disk, you are now ready to upgrade the OS to Snow Leopard. During the upgrade, make sure you select the correct disk to put the upgrade on, which should be your cloned disk.

When the upgrade finishes, you have a previous OS disk and the newly upgraded Snow Leopard system disk that you can switch back and forth with the Startup Disk preference pane. This essentially allows you to test your software and hardware for compatibility, while continuing production work from your original disk. Since you cloned your original drive, all the software, including hardware drivers, are present under Snow Leopard and you should be able to tell quickly whether you would run into any issues with the upgrade.

Once you have convinced yourself that all is well, you can simply just start up your Mac with the original OS disk and perform the upgrade on that disk as well. Done!

Let me stress again that I highly recommend having good backups available. Performing the cloned disk upgrade process should be straight forward, but don’t come running to me if you just happened to forget to make that all important backup and something does go wrong.

Enjoy Snow Leopard!

If you want to track issues that other composers have identified with Snow Leopard upgrades, you may want to follow SCOREcast’s blog comments.

Apple also posted a support article that lists known incompatible software, which is mored to a folder named ‘Incompatible Software’ if encountered. Follow the link for frequent updates to the list.

I was honored when Cory Taylor (http://www.coryalantaylor.com) asked me to create the score for an animated film he planned to produce for the contest. I liked the story of AMP, a little robot on a quest to gain freedom from his power chord, which gave him life, but also kept him confined. I thought it would be fun creating a score for an animation, something I hadn’t done before.

AMP Model

Off to a Good Start
While the contest rules allowed the preparation of certain elements of the short film prior to the contest, the actual rendering and assembly of the film had to be conducted during the 36-hour contest. Cory had prepared a rough storyboard with slides so we could work on the timing of the score. This was important since animated films tend to depend heavily on the timing of musical elements of the film and I didn’t just want to create a simple piano score, or anything else for that matter that would be relatively easy to pull off during the 36 hours.

I had asked Cory to put the storyboard slides into a QuickTime movie that I could use to roughly sketch out the score, something I hoped would help in fully producing the orchestration during the contest.

A scene sketch from AMP

Prior to the contest we initially discussed some of the feel the score should have and I had a fairly good understanding of what I thought the score should sound like. It had to be somewhat light, but not silly. With two weeks to go before the contest, I went to work.

Disaster Strikes
Everything looked really good, especially some of the test renders (still images) from Cory and his team. Little did anyone know that when the day of the contest had arrived disaster struck in the form of computer crashes. It was clear very early on into the 36 hours that time would work against us and the decision was made to drop out of the contest.

AMP with texture applied

The Aftermath
With Cory’s permission, I thought that it may be educational to post a progression of how the score developed through the revisions. Keep in mind that nothing you hear in the film clips below represents a finished score. It was to be finished during the 36-hour contest. All comments are those that were made during the sketching of the score.

There are some interesting cues to point out. One would be the intro change-up when AMP wakes up from a dramatic ‘Oh no!’ feel to a ‘Yeah, my battery!’ expression musically. You can hear this introduced in Revision 5. Working with storyboards is fantastic, as you get a general idea where something is going. However, communication is still king, as I wrongly interpreted AMP waking up and kicking the battery by accident was perceived by him as something dreadful. It wasn’t until Cory, the director, explained that AMP was really happy to see the battery there and that it was to be the focus of the score in that cue. So, we changed it up.

AMP in a render test

Because of the unfinished nature of the film, the score was never finished either. However, I will make it available (sans the rotating fan sound effect that can be heard from time to time) under a Creative Commons license so anyone interested to use it can do so freely, as long as credit is given.

I will post again when I have it ready in a releasable state. Until then, enjoy watching the progression in the film clips. Tip: Use the ‘Large Version’ links to read the text comments Cory put into the storyboard.

AMP in a fully rendered scene, including texture

AMP animation test - Click to Play

Working Title: AMP
Date: 03/30/09
Revision: 1

Comments: This is the initial version with an early concept of the beginning cue.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 01

Large Version

Working Title: AMP
Date: 04/03/09
Revision: 2

Comments: We now have about a minute done. I put a more comedic segment in, which is going to be repeated when Amp tries to grab the battery with the clamps. When we repeat the theme, we’re going to change it up a bit though, so it evolves.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 02

Large Version

Working Title: AMP
Date: 04/04/09
Revision: 3

Comments: So, we’re repeating the comedic theme and changed it up. Going into the changed up theme, I added a bit of a brooding mood. Amp is mad and is walking back to the chest, kind of like a death march. He’s going to get this battery back, if it kills him. He declared war.

I also have the beginning pieces for the first fly-bot appearance. I’m keeping it a bit mysterious. We don’t know exactly what’s about to happen.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 03

Large Version

Working Title: AMP
Date: 04/04/09
Revision: 4

Comments: A bit of the score, including the dramatic ‘declaring war on the battery’ theme.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 04

Large Version

Working Title: AMP
Date: 04/05/09
Revision: 5

Comments: Reworked the intro section. A warm wash type sound is introduced when Amp wakes up and sees the battery. Also made other small enhancements to create a better flow between the segments.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 05

Large Version

Working Title: AMP
Date: 04/10/09
Revision: 6

Comments: Reworked the intro section. A warm wash type sound is introduced when Amp wakes up and sees the battery. Also made other small enhancements to create a better flow between the segments.

Amp Storyboard Score Draft 06

Large Version

Richard Davis teaches at the Berklee College of Music and at this presentation addresses the basic process and timelines, MIDI mockups, temp tracks, and a requirement for the composer not only to be a musician, but step into the mind frame of a filmmaker as well in order to understand the needs and process of telling the story through the score.