tag:jehadchoate.com,2005:/blogs/testLatest Musings2021-11-17T12:37:10-08:00Jehad Choatefalsetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/67985602021-11-17T12:37:10-08:002024-01-24T18:28:56-08:00In like Flint<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/f522a61aa147c0faa4053381161a322685b74507/original/img-6053.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />If you would have asked me six years ago if I would’ve visited Flint, Michigan, I would have probably quipped about the water, and moved on to the next big flashy city. That’s my ignorant-ass self consuming one too many news reports from the outside looking in. But, as my friend and (most times) boss penned the finishing touches to his first horror/noire feature, Half Dead Fred, he had already built relationships with people of Flint through previous engagements, and wanted to not only make something that hired locally but didn’t exploit the people in the process. Of course, your’s truly cannot deny a good adventure, especially knowing I would be housed with some of the finest crew members I’ve had the honor of sharing dick jokes with since transplanting to California, and being fed by the queen of Craft Services, while being paid to do what I do best. Needless to say, I was on a plane faster than you can “Overdraft Fee.” </p>
<p>Chad, Sarkis, and I landed in the Detroit airport after a short four and a half hour flight. Apparently everyone else felt cold, but I knew the extra pounds I put on during the shutdown would finally show its use and I maintained a warm temperature through all of the trip. As we drove for about an hour, we pondered what the folks were gonna be like, what the local food was gonna taste like, whether we would be able to pull off the plans we had… everything. When we arrived at our living quarters late at night, the Knob Hill bed and breakfast, we couldn’t help but be amazed at how big the house was. Our suites were themed by classic literature. I had Alice in Wonderland, Chad had Arabian Nights, and Sarkis had the Canterbury Tales. It felt a little like California, with local art displayed in every nook and cranny; suitable living conditions for a handful of artists. After some late night grub, we retired to our rooms.</p>
<p>Once we got what little rest we could. We accounted all of our equipment and had a small Barbecue at the house we would be doing much of the filming, owned by local arts advocates and all around great couple Joe Schipani and Philip Barnhart. Joe and Phillip were kind and accommodating to us the whole time we stayed in Flint, and were always happy to talk about everything to anyone. Some of the best conversations I had was in their backyard, swatting away bees, petting all the doggies and talking about our experiences and adventures. The BBQ was a great means for all the cast and crew to get to know each other, and I quickly learned that our locals were folks who have had roots in Flint for multiple generations. </p>
<p>I learned how Flint was a thriving city in its heyday when General Motors (GM) provided jobs and pensions for everyone. But when GM pulled out and started outsourcing to Mexico it hit the city hard, on top of that the water crisis was a result of politicians cutting corners and changing the water supply without protective regulations in place. What used to be a population of over 160,000 turned into a population of about 80,000 between sickness, poverty, and folks moving out to find work. Despite the hard times, the folks who dug their heels in, have gone to amazing lengths to cast a better light on the city. After all, if any place was only known for their tragedies then no one would have hope, or see progress. With the colorful murals commissioned by Joe, and the renovation of historic buildings and houses, you’d be surprised how beautiful the area is. Sure there is still crime and very real issues the city is addressing, but its not unlike other cities I've lived in as well. Not to mention, the abandoned sections make for amazing set pieces in film. Flint has a great deal to show, and the city looks great on camera. <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/2d1fd8d342ced34b109bb1b20cdc3681ac3f5ae7/original/tempimageqk49il.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>We got acquainted with the local bars and restaurants while we stayed for three weeks. We went to the market place where thanks to our marketing team gave even the behind the scenes folks such as myself a slice of celebrity life. People would come up to us and ask if we were the ones filming here, and ask to take a picture with us, and we weren’t even the talent. My assistant, Jerry, was a 68 year old badass, who would have long talks with me about his life in Flint. Every body loved the guy, he was built like Mr. Clean, and had more energy in his pinky than I did my whole spine. He saw participating in our film as an opportunity to learn how things went, so that he could start his own production company in Flint. Seeing as I was a professor of Audio tech for six years, I was happy to show the ropes on my end. In return, Jerry showed me around the area, and we talked about our favorite bands, while sharing jokes at equal raucous levels. I was certainly blessed with gaining such a friendship. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/1374c2f42a1397974e951fac3cdf1d76d424434b/original/tempimagecjatr3.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.png" class="size_l justify_center border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of work, too, and our director, Bron, had to put fire after fire as production moved along. Cars needed for two weeks straight up dying, people getting too rowdy before recording, atmospheric issues, he even had to dig a grave. I had money he’d at least crack once, but no… he was zen even though we knew he slept less than any of us. He still made sure we had fair hours, and we still manage to get as much footage as possible. On day one we also received the rest of the crew: Jordan (everything) and Zach (DP). <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/2d48be6969fba0ba186e87db908e970debd8e4e7/original/tempimagey9x8ep.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>The first six days were pretty incredible and from cast to crew we all had special moments and conversations that really helped us do the work. Jessica, on of our hardcore producers, kept us on track... even if I did break her futon. Joe our AD kept everyone pumped with Rick Flair-esque energy. The make up artists, Morgan and Alisa crushed it when it came to creating our ghost aesthetics. Seth (who acted and PA’d) was always available to get work done and still joke around with me and the others. Even our quirky-ass talent made magic as soon as we hit the record button.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/1a925e98761641204afd1ef8a9d61de04286bc40/original/tempimageddfr2k.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.png" class="size_m justify_center border_none" alt="" /><br> </p>
<p>Corin Nemec (Our Lead Actor) was always kind and funny, and had a million industry stories, and Jason London even serenaded me with a tune he wrote. Our ghosts haunted perfectly, and our supporting cast, Zack, Amy, Heidi, Mike, Anthony and so many others were just fantastic to work with. We were even blessed with bts photos by cryptic_filth, who’s perspectives and stories cracked me up because he was just as raw and to the point as some of my best friends back home. Kirk and Andy were always hard at work making all these crazy light fixtures. But the real MVP was Jordan, who jumped back and forth between acting and behind the scenes like a beast. </p>
<p>The second week hit us pretty hard, and we were feeling it in our sporadic sleep patterns. I kept falling asleep on a chair while rolling cable in my room, then waking up in a panic and falling on the ground. I am ok, except for the last one in the last week where i feel and hit my shoulder on the glass table. It still has a little pain in it. On our day off, we went to see the new Venom movie. Lisa kept us fed the whole time too, by always bringing the right amount of leftovers and snacks every day. </p>
<p>The days started to let up on our final week, with a lot of moments for us to organize and prepare for our shots back in Cali. We had been received well in all of our locations from the motel to the cemetery, with plenty of footage to celebrate. One thing’s for sure, I am super greatful to have been on this production on location of Flint. I learned a lot, I laughed a lot, and I made friends and colleagues that I will always be excited to cross paths with again some day. Principle shots have been completed for Half Dead Fred, and now the very lonely and nerve wracking post production work looms for me, Bron, and Jordan. But as we sift through all the footage to make a movie, we will always think fondly of our time in Flint, and will be excited to premiere it there next year.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/9b63e634aa104af0d2526d7e9c1b84496c2b2b52/original/img-5985.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/62492762020-10-06T01:02:36-07:002022-07-28T23:20:43-07:00The Memory Hoarder<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/a645b9dcad0fe821d4a41f8ffa650e58c70b8471/original/img-5440.jpeg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Eighty percent of my hand-written scores were destroyed in a flood at my parents’ house in Florida. It wasn’t a natural disaster or anything dramatic; just an old water heater that couldn’t take the pressure of performing after twenty years. My mother and sister tried their best to salvage what they could so I could assess what was needed to be kept and thrown out when I visited in December. But, as soon as I opened the box, the pungent scent of mildew overwhelmed my nose. The first thing was to trash the irredeemably mutilated pages. The ones that stuck together were easy. Then the ones where the ink of the staff lines blurred any ideas that existed before. Then the ones that stunk... figuratively and literally. A lot of my arrangements and preliminary ideas from my Berklee days were in there. The first couple semesters, I opted into writing my scores by hand because I did not want to waste time trying to figure out how to make everything look correct on a computer program. Hours upon hours, I would write with a Radioshack keyboard until my fingers were blistered; I would crawl out of my room an unkempt mess, stuff the pages into my bag and run to the train because it would be due in a couple hours. Then I would get graded. </p>
<p>“Great Ideas, watch your invisible barline!” </p>
<p>“Your drop 4 harmonization doesn’t work well here.” </p>
<p>“If an ensemble played this, it would be an absolute train wreck.” </p>
<p>Humble beginnings. But now the ink is faded. You can barely see how critically awful I was when I first started out. As I chucked those pages, I laughed to myself that now people will just have to accept that I was always perfect. </p>
<p>I also kept old sheet music that I analyzed and practiced there, too. Beethoven’s Fifth through Seventh... gone. Burt Bacharach’s What the World Needs Now is Love... wrinkled and stained by an absence of affection. The completely notated fiddle part of The Devil Went Down to Georgia... raptured. Michelle by Lenon and McCartney… swept away at sea. Bloated by the water, they were barely recognizable. Those weren’t my compositions, but they helped me learn to be better. Losing those hurt more than any of my pieces because I remember when and why I bought each of them. I remember trying my hardest to figure out how to play these songs. I remember tracing them to figure out how to make my handwriting more legible. I remember humming the parts and trying to write it out from memory, and using them as reference, only to realize I was way off. I also remember thinking my inaccuracies proved to be unique enough to utilize in other projects. I tried to gently unstick the pages, but they collapsed in my hands. As if Thanos snapped away half of my own history. </p>
<p>I suppose this is all a part of growing up. Compartmentalizing old memories in favor of new ones. It certainly felt cathartic. The more I threw away, the more I kept thinking about if this is how a creative type makes their way to the next brave idea. That is a hard pill to swallow for a guy like me. I am a storyteller fueled by nostalgia. It’s one thing to have an idea, but it’s another thing to watch that idea grow with you. Then see that idea has enough feathers to fly or fall on it’s own. It was not the music I was throwing away, but perhaps the old memories attached to them. I had to keep telling myself I never needed my third draft of pieces that I never really liked to begin with. I had to assure myself that majority of this stuff was just clutter and everything I needed was still in my head. I had to remember that some musical ideas just don’t age well. </p>
<p>The idiotic thing about this story is I haven’t even looked in those boxes in seven years. I didn’t even bother to take them with me when I moved to California. I just took solace in the thought that they were tangible somewhere. As long as I knew they existed even if they were worlds apart, then those stories live on, because I just wanted to believe that anything new I do has got to mean something with my personalized historical context. Is it possible to be a memory hoarder? Sure, the random things I picked up from every moment I’ve experienced might be good to test my threshold of relatability, and I could possibly be useful for a trivia night at a bar somewhere. But, I don’t think I will personally or professionally need to remember every word to lyrics I wrote about a girl I loved when I was a teenager. I am no longer that person. Besides the details were irrelevant. The feelings though... that is the key. I think I was more afraid of forgetting how I felt when I had that music. But why value a feeling from the past? Isn’t it just a wave of hormones to trigger your brain to survive what’s in front of you? That seems like a good excuse to use. It was my way of uploading these worked out puzzles so that no one in my immediate vicinity would ever have to struggle with understanding such complexities. Now, I sound heroic. The only problem with that is: there is no point to a life if someone spells everything out for you. You don’t do a person justice by giving them the world. Because it’s still your perspective and it neither cultivates nor validates their own. Then again... it is just my musical interpretations and influences. They weren’t meant to be excavated by uninformed eyes. When I looked at them, I saw the lady in the red dress in the Matrix when most people just saw a green waterfall of ones and zeros. I couldn’t help dancing between the thought of whether or not holding these old pieces were for reference or inspiration later or if I just wanted to store feelings I didn’t want to keep with me day to day. But that is beside the point because they are gone. </p>
<p>So what is the moral of this story? One man’s memories are another man’s trash? That every thing I ever needed has been with me all along? That quality ink and paper can survive even the toughest of floods? No... that’s not it. Maybe the things that defined the kind of person or writer you are eventually stop being so inspiring. But because they leave such an impression on you; you’d try to hold onto that memory and feed off it even though it’s an empty husk now. You can’t even recognize it anymore. They can’t grow with you. So you keep them preserved in a dark room until you are forced to reconcile your past with your present. Four giant trash bags later, I sifted through the pictures I took of the damaged and realized none of it would help me with what I am trying to do now. Deleted. Now, I am back to that square one mentality before I even made those papers. What inspires me to be a better writer? Who do I even write for? How do I make new memories with no structured baseline of influence? The same way I did it before: I just go with it. I will sweat through the details as they come, and learn from both my failures and successes. Maybe this time I’ll keep them in PDF format. If I learn anything from this whole palate cleanse, it will definitely be: change your water heater every ten years.</p>
<p><span class="font_small"><em>This entry is archived from my Facebook Page Notes 2.28.19.</em></span></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/62492772020-10-06T00:47:35-07:002023-12-10T08:42:54-08:00Medium-well<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/system/e9a526f4a46dd31c6cda067e9520c121e777fc03/original/pexels-photo-31119.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>I have a lot of friends who are not composers. But their listening skills are invaluable when I test out new ideas. They aren’t looking for a motivic nod to any predecessor, or if the form is a sonata, or even if I am using a romantic kind of style or something more atonal. They hear the big picture; which is something that can be lost while composers sweat the smallest details. Ask anyone who knows me and they will probably tell you about the endless times I’ve told them to step in my car and listen to four minutes of music while I eagerly watch as they react to it. The only problem with this sort of trial and error of the writing process is the listener’s expectations of orchestral music can meander because of their previous exposure to this particular brand of music. If the only time they’ve heard a french horn is from watching a Star Wars movie, there is a good chance that their thoughts on good orchestral music is instinctively thematic. Have you ever written a heroic piece and your friend says it sounds like it should be in a Zelda game or a mentor versed in concert music heavily scolds your blatant disregard for form when you are trying to write a cue? I've been there multiple times, and rather than argue what they should focus on in real time, I figure it would be beneficial to all parties to talk about the creative process in writing for specific kinds of projects; because how things are written depends heavily on the medium it will be displayed. Likewise, how things are experienced varies drastically because of this. We will explore three mainstream mediums of orchestral music that everyday people have been exposed to and what composers are focused on when they write in that vernacular. </p>
<p>Let us start with an easy one: film music. The film industry’s relationship with the music industry is a long and decorated one. It is an all around sensual experience by directly stimulating your eyes with stunning visuals, your ears with complementary music; while passively enhancing the experience with the smell of popcorn, the feel of a loved one nuzzled in your nook, and the taste of snack foods. Film music is created to support the visuals and enhance the story being told to the audience. Sweeping melodies and complex motions can be traded for simpler harmonies and effects so that the sonic qualities introduced do not distract the audience from the dialogue or the scene. Of course, this is respectfully different if the film is a musical, but we will talk about musicals another time. </p>
<p>The music in film is decided through a spotting session between the composer and the director (along with anyone else who oversees the music). They sit and watch the movie together and the director will usually point out where they want a musical element; usually with broad visual terms that the composer will have to interpret musically. Each of these musical sections are called cues. An effective cue may not even have a perceived musical quality to it; it could just be an instrumental effect. For instance, to depict a sense of hesitance or anxiety, a composer might write a long high-pitched tone in the violins with an unmeasured tremolo (rapidly playing the same note to the written duration). That might be one whole cue to itself. No melody. No style or form. Just this effect. A composer really gets to flex their musical prowess when they get to write a montage cue or develop a theme for the beginning or ending credits. But for the most part the music is sparse and speaks only to support what the director wants the audience to pay attention to on screen. </p>
<p>Of course when we look towards the big names of film composition, a generic listener will refer to those thematic parts in the beginning or end credits, or a scene’s cue worked so perfectly that it is forever etched into the mind of the viewer. John Williams used a technique that operatic composers like Wagner used to play with the anticipation and relief of the audience called the leitmotif. He wrote small motifs (musical ideas) for each character in Star Wars and would employ them in the cues that either had these characters or mentioned them. It would allow the audience to subconsciously relate a character to the scene. Say what you want about The Phantom Menace, but the music is brilliant at playing with the nostalgic elements of the original Star Wars trilogy while introducing new themes. Even if you did not have any of the dialogue and just the music with visuals, you are given a haunting suspicion that Anakin will turn into Vader, as well the tonal premonition that the phantom menace of the first prequel uses a series of musical references to the looming nefarious presence of a subject that will inevitably stage the major turmoil of the next movies. But, I say this knowing full well that most of my friends will say, “Dude, eff’ the prequels, but Duel of Fates is epic!” </p>
<p>There we have it. Exposure to thematic material overshadows the detailed cue work to a generic listener when they think of orchestral music. But make no mistake, sometimes you are doing things right when you are not singled out at all. The thematic material can be a hybrid of all the catchier parts of the cues, smushed together to deliver a listening experience sans visuals. That means the style, form, and orchestration will be limited to what was interpreted through the scenes they were used in. It's akin to a series of flashbacks without the visuals simulating the experiences you had from each scene without having to show you them all over again. Film music has this wonderful way of honing in on even the most diverse audience’s spectrum of synesthesia to add an enhancing filter to what they see. Because of its existence, people who wouldn’t normally be able to correlate a mood with a color, can imagine and even anticipate snare drums when they see a war sequence or a sweeping string orchestra when they see a lover they want to embrace. Therefore, if you choose to showcase your music to a generic audience, keep in mind that film cues or even thematic content are best criticized with the actual visual element present. </p>
<p>It is pretty funny that not even fifteen years ago, parents would scold kids that video games would melt our brains, make us violent, and distract us from our school work. Yet, gaming is a huge industry. The more advanced the technology gets in providing smooth, believable experiences to us with these applications; the more fascinating the music becomes. I would credit that the real reason I got into music in the first place was because of the music of the second and third Castlevania games on NES. Even for something as low fidelity as 16-bit synth sounds, the music stands the test of time. My older sister and I would play those games endlessly and marvel at how the music evoked our sense of heroism and reflectiveness. It was dynamic, exciting, and expressive; and like the origin stories of our favorite superheroes, people have been arranging their own takes on it for the last thirty years. I can imagine the folks the arranged the music for Symphony of the Night looking back at the old themes and thinking how metal it really sounds. The same goes for The Legend of Zelda, the Mario franchise, and certainly Final Fantasy. When the music was that good, even the developers couldn’t help but shine the spotlight with secret codes to help you unlock a listening experience. Streets of Rage was so proud of their sound design and music, I think the only reason I beat that game was to unlock the music and sound effects at the end. Don’t believe me? Try listening to “Evergreen” from Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and not feel anything. It’s beautiful. Let’s explore this experience a bit before we get back to the future. Thematic music would loop a minute’s worth of an idea for each level of a game until completion. Depending on the intensity of the challenge, a kid would be exposed to that same loop for hours and eventually the believability of even a chip tune with a 2D platform would manifest itself. You became Link or Trevor Belmont. Not only that, but in those games, musical effects were used primarily as sound effects. Think about getting that 1-up or fire-flower. Think about every time Link unsheathed his sword or Mario jumped. These effects were triggered by the player; and in that sense, the player controlled minor elements of the music. Of course, you don’t really think about that when you are six years old and trying to figure out where the damn silver arrows are so you can defeat Ganon (yeah, they had been silver before they were light, kids). Subconsciously, you were reinforcing these fantastic worlds by hitting a couple of buttons to physically be in it. Then there was Tetris… nothing made panic ensue faster than when the music sped up when you didn’t clear the stage properly. The music created a sense of urgency to trick you into thinking you had to rush through your block placement. But the speed of the game didn’t change when that happened, it only got faster when you ascended to higher levels. </p>
<p>Cut to 2018, and music’s role in games haven’t changed, but how it's done has created a brand of composers that not only know how to support the visuals and react to your choices but develop where the player sits in the middle of everything. Breath of the Wild uses your nostalgia to reinforce the game’s stress on remembering who you are. Arkham Knight took a small motif played before the Joker talked over the intercom in Arkham Asylum and exploded it into a deep theme that ties the Joker’s development in all four games. The point is, the music in modern games are just as important as the game mechanics because they speak to a player at a deep level, and because of that, composers are employing unique techniques in their writing to capitalize on this type of experience participation. Now, everything from distance music and aleatoric concepts to prepared pianos that would make even John Cage seem conservative are fair game. From chip-tunes to fully realized symphonic orchestras that can loop a minutes worth of a theme, to a metal band playing a completely asymmetrical form; the sky is the limit to how a composer can contribute to a game, as long as they have the time, patience, and skill to meet their deadlines. </p>
<p>Film music has the esteemed position of telling the story, but games actually involve the player. The listening experience of game music is highly active, almost like popping on headphones while you do an escape room; only where you go can dictate the timbre, speed, intensity and even the instrumentation you hear. So, listening to a game score without playing the game might be a jarring experience with so many repetitions or instrumental effects played sequentially. Unless you have cultivated a theme for the credits, it might not be very effective to have your everyday listener stay put and listen to music that they can’t interact with. Where a film composer may employ their skills to support the visuals and story of a static video, game composers will have contingencies depending on the mechanics and story of the game. But neither is superior to the other. They are just different, and they all still rely on huge chunks of the oldest form of compositional repertoire: concert music. </p>
<p>Concert composition is where it all started. Musicians with a scholarly background were forced to follow the greats when it comes to style, orchestration, and application. The rules are in our books, sighed by our mentors, and scrutinized upon all the time. The idea is, if you want to achieve an authentic sound, everything should work in the performance before tracking it for a recording. In other words in order to be original… try to sound like everyone else before you that succeeded. You need to have the right number of strings to balance out how many brass players you have! Otherwise, it will not sound balanced or blended! But in this brave new world, the perspective of authenticity is skewed. More people these days think the classics sound like Star Wars or Final Fantasy themes, and less like Bach, Mozart, Strauss, and Beethoven. We now have electronic applications to reinforce our sounds in real time, notation programs that can playback every part with human-like inflections, digital audio workstations that can place instruments, tune them, widen the stereo image, and change the room reflections of an entire orchestra. In addition to that, we listen to pop music differently than orchestral, but we still have separate (and still high) expectations to what it is supposed to sound like. The thing about so many advances in music creation technology is I don’t think there is anything blasphemous about writing with and for it. If Beethoven was introduced to MIDI, he would be breaking all the rules of what a traditional instrumentalist could do, and how a symphonic orchestra would sound. Don’t believe me? Look up Beethoven’s contributions to music that weren’t the music itself. He championed metronome markers and solidified our equal tempered tuning style that we use now. He made the basses play low enough to need a trigger (essentially starting the whole drop tuning idea for all you metal heads). Plus, look how happy he is with all those synthesizers in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure! The thing is, concert composers were making new bold techniques a reality so that it could get a rise out of people who sat and watched their concerts, and that included mutating the instruments that were available and redefining traditional landscapes. Their bold decisions honored the audience, and consistently raised the bar of what musicians should do. </p>
<p>But somewhere in time, the concert world got stagnant. There are only so many times you can listen to Beethoven’s 9th, before you figure out that this tune is more played out than some of the pop songs you hear on the radio. It is one thing to honor the classics, but it is another thing to be stuck in reverent nostalgia. Can you imagine Mozart even remotely coming up when his medium was dominated by only dead writers deified but never improved upon? Well… by today’s standards he would have probably been on a viral YouTube video when he started rocking out at age five. Then he would be dancing on Ellen, and sponsored on Instagram with the newest keyboards. But I don’t blame the musicians. The music of the old days (when really analyzed) is like reading stories about the Greek gods. As a writer, you are baffled by how someone could develop these ideas without being dipped into the river Styx, yet oddly comforted of how absolutely human and organic their techniques feel. But this is a niche market. Music students and professionals get it, but what about the thirty-two-year-old kid playing Pokémon Go in the neighborhood? Do they feel the same things I feel when I listen to Stravinsky? Listening to the Rite of Spring in 2018 is like listening to a lion roar at a zoo. Instinctually, there is enough scary sounds to make you a little puckered, but you are not going to riot or run because of it. You have been conditioned to expect the sound of a lion in a zoo and a healthy amount of dissonance with consonance in your music. So, with that kind of energy sucked out, what is an orchestra to do? They play what has worked for them for centuries. Meanwhile, concert composers find a majority of their income coming from the other mediums we discussed. </p>
<p>It’s funny. When film scoring started, it was concert composers who dominated the field, because they paid their dues and thought it would be a nice side hustle to their “real work.” But now these muppet babies are thriving. A concert composer relies on the philanthropy of his or her commissioners and has to suffer through the minimal exposure their music gets in favor of film and gamers. So, they teach, and scrutinize young artists, and create a feedback loop and echo chamber of the old ideologies, effectively becoming the next Statler and Waldorf. I bet Bach was critical to the new guys, too. You aren’t really an artist unless you take part in such cycles of abuse, right? Wrong! Even if they lay claim that they have effectively written the book or publicly set the bar of what you are trying to do; if they aren't even conservatively embracing new ideas then they aren't artists, they are automated factory workers. If a composer wants to thrive, they need to respect how the majority listens to music and make it work for the medium they want to write to. That is why some orchestras fight back with Pops shows, or playing an entire film sound track while screening a movie. In Seattle there is an orchestra dedicated to rock music. Grant it; it's still living in the ideological past, but it is a start for clawing your way out of nostalgia to do something different to get a rouse out of the butts in the seat. </p>
<p>I say this with plenty of bias. Working with an orchestra funded by the adoration of music and not real cash is romantic and tragic at the same time. It is kind of like watching Rent. You get amazed at the chemistry and relationships built-in the entire show, you make beautiful music, but then everyone dies or will die from AIDS at the end. Even ensembles made with best intentions of showcasing new music succumb to the need to play the hits. Or… they decide to hang out in the opposite side of the spectrum, and they try something out that even Yoko Ono would think is too much. I won’t discredit the creative types who set out to cleanse the musical palate with their interpretation of sound. I also made it a life goal to never confuse people into liking my music. But this is an ambiguous situation best left to another article. The whole point of this rant on modern concert music is that to effectively write for this audience, you need to keep your attention to the idea that what ever you do needs to engage the audience and bring fresh people (not academics and other professionals) in. I do not think there is a particular style or instrumentation that achieves that. Your burden as a concert writer isn’t how supportive your score is to a scene, or how well it leads a character to a treasure chest. It is naked and struggling to gain the attention of people who don’t want to leave their house, or be separated from their phone, and have become accustomed to disconnecting the listening experience of concert music to playing it on their HomePod while they eat dinner with their in-laws. How you come up with the ingredients for this magic sauce is anyone’s best guess, but it is not impossible. But then again, if you are writing concert music without the desire to connect to people at a reactionary and emotional level, while keeping them so engaged that they bring their friends to see you over and over, then you will be no better than the people who ignore you. </p>
<p>Think carefully of how you craft your notes and know your people. Your listeners should have an expanded repertoire if you think they can offer criticism constructively. Don't expect to hear workable advice on your concert music if your friends only know about film or game music. Likewise, don't expect progress if your friends don't know about those other mediums. If you need music to better understand what a director is trying to do, then be as clear as possible, and show your music with the film. If it is meant to inspire active participation from your listener, then have them demo something as you play the music. If its meant to physically bring people to a place and sit them down to pay attention, then write something stunning. Most importantly, when you lure one of your non-musical friends into your car, lock all the doors, and suffer them eight minutes of making a marimba sound like a violin, and a violin sound like a kazoo; prepare them by finding out if their ears are attenuated to that kind of discernment. Other wise, your avant-guard master piece that is meant to make people vomit rainbows in a concert hall, might seem ineffective to the person thinking that you are writing the next Zelda theme.</p>
<p><span class="font_small"><em>This entry was archived from my Facebook Page 1.11.19.</em></span></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/62492782020-10-06T00:44:59-07:002022-07-18T08:19:19-07:00Write Like You'll Die Tomorrow<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/system/f06ab3360240d5660d5d9e706a54de8b9352d923/original/d-xyw57npuw.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>The best advice I ever got from a composition teacher was, “Write like you will be dead tomorrow.” </p>
<p>A macabre thing, no doubt, but what he meant was make sure that your score contained all the necessary stuff to inform your players and conductor on what to do to best realize your vision when you can’t be there. How short does the staccato need to be? Sul G? Field drums or concert snares? Only the writer really knows the tone they want. This poses a fascinating dilemma on how much control you want over your music. </p>
<p>The easy answer is: it depends on what your medium is. If you are writing for film or games (unless the cue calls for interpretation), you pretty much have to run a tight ship. That is because you are charged with the responsibility of the sonic integrity and tone of another’s vision. Every frame matters. If you are writing for concert performance, where your music is solely featured and not a part of some larger entity, then you might be able to let go of the leash a bit and let that music grow on its own. But how do you know? How do you trust the performer’s interpretation to do your idea justice? Unless you work with the same ensemble over and over, then you don’t really know. You need to build your repertoire, but at the same time beggars can’t be choosers, so you’ll work with anyone just to see this idea swimming behind your eyes come to fruition, and your biggest fear is: what if it sucks? What if the end result is pure tepid garbage that you’ve collected on to the remains of a slain tree for the last few months, only to have critics consider it tabloid-sized toilet paper? If it sucks, is it because of you, or is it the ensemble? No… maybe it's the studio or venue. Maybe the streaming distributor compressed the files the wrong way. SOMEONE MUST BE BLAMED! </p>
<p>I had another teacher from my Berklee days that used to say garbage in, garbage out. Where a song is only as good as its writer, who’s only as good as its performer, who’s only as good as its producer, who’s only as good as its marketing, and so forth. Perhaps it's our ego that thinks that it has to be a solitary element, or an entity responsible for the many glorious car crashes in our profession. What if everything is great, but it just doesn’t work? It's not impossible, and I’m sure a lot of you can examine your love-lives in this fashion. You can have the perfect writing, an A-list group, a studio that the Beatle’s farted in, a bazillion followers, and it can still go awry. Sometimes it is as simple as the details you include don’t speak in the same dialect as the performers. Maybe the performers are amazing in their particular playing style, but what you request is inconsistent to their successes. The studio might be fantastic at churning out the heaviest face-melting metal, but can’t quite get the mix of your string quartet. What if I told you, everyone is to blame? </p>
<p>Everyone has a role to play, and with the benefit of the doubt, is great at the work they do. So, K.Y.P. (Know your people). If you have the esteemed luck of being able to take them out for beers or coffee, that’s all well and good. But if they are operating on the other side of the world, at least read up on them. Listen to their recordings, follow their patterns and trends, and then decide if you are going to write for them, or if they are going to play for you. A pops orchestra is not going to interpret music the same way as the philharmonic that solely gets down to dead legends. Rick Rubin might have produced some of the most successful albums of all time, but can he bring out the best in your Mongolian Throat-Singing/Didgeridoo duet? On second thought… he might. </p>
<p>For those of you that hire talent strictly for the reputation, you need to ask yourself how these folks got the reputation to begin with. Contrary to popular belief, there is no one that turns everything they touch into gold. They, like many of us, heard there is gold in them thar’ hills, and was savvy enough to find a lucrative spot, and sift through less filth to find it. The gold was always there, though. Having a mindset that someone with a history of some degree of success can and will polish a turd for you, won’t necessarily work, if they can only see the turd. So know your people, see if your values align and make things happen where they can. If it doesn’t work, have a contingency plan to make it work. We can all relish in the fact that there is no end to hungry musicians with something to prove that will take on your vision. I know, because I am one. </p>
<p>This actually brings it all back to the composer. When you are toiling away at your next <em>Messiah</em>, dig deeply into yourself, and really exploit what you value in the piece while being aware of what you don’t. This will determine if you have a graduate level thesis and analysis on your front matter or if the conductor/director will actually have to do work <em>for a change</em>. Show-off your musical prowess by confidently depicting that your idea is good while you hold the puppet strings, or regardless of if the ensemble makes many changes to the details. Then execute the idea. The worst thing you can possibly do is nothing. If you are still alive while your music is being premiered, then the second worst thing you can possibly do is not learn from the experience. Ask questions. Take feedback. Keep calm and write on. If you stumble upon a small degree of success but the audience and performers have a completely left-field interpretation of what you were trying to explain, then do a bit of soul searching, cash the check and try again. The third worst thing you can do is be trite with your breath of work and think the music you are on at this moment is the last thing you will ever have to say. Write like you will die tomorrow, but for Bach’s sake… keep living.</p>
<p><span class="font_small"><em>This blog entry was archived from my Facebook Page 12.29.18.</em></span></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/64305492020-09-10T15:52:36-07:002022-05-16T04:57:05-07:00Part II: Changing The Programming of Racially Biased Orchestras<p>Following my <a contents="last piece advocating the changing of the narrative behind classical music" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://jehadchoate.com/blogs/test/posts/changing-the-narrative-of-classical-music" target="_blank">last piece advocating the changing of the narrative behind classical music</a>, I would like to address the practitioners of classical music -- the orchestras. My main concerns are with how they program music and how they interact with composers. Popular, big-time, orchestras have the wherewithal to embrace new (non-Eurocentric) music. However, it is often the low-level orchestras that do breach the barrier of old, antiquated, practices.Though it is certainly a possibility that I might not be seeing the bigger picture and that my observations and experiences of these issues are simply blips in my career as a composer, I will continue to highlight these concerns. I welcome any establishment to retort my points and offer me the hope that there are far more opportunities for an emerging composer of color to be exposed to. This entry discusses how some orchestras accept music submissions, the problematic aspects of their programs used to introduce new composers, and the inherent or structural biases they create and reinforce for both the common listener and music professional in this process. </p>
<p>I’ve contacted major orchestras before. Some of them boast programming new compositions, but it is far and few that really showcase a style that stretches beyond Eurocentric qualities. A few months ago, I sent an e-mail to the LA Philharmonic, and to say how low the bar is for my quality in rejections, I was satisfied with actually getting any response at all. I asked them how they go about getting new music. The response was along the lines of something an A&R rep would say for a major record label: </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;"><strong>“We do not accept unsolicited materials.” </strong></h3>
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<p>This means that in order for you to get the music you’ve worked on to be heard by institutions that have the capability of exposing it to a large audience, it needs to be approved by an <em>artist and repertoire</em> representative, who receive demos upon demos every day from all walks of life. If they come across something that they believe will be a hit, then they recommend it to a director or producer and that person makes a deal with the artist to provide an avenue for that music to be heard. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Problem One: “Who You Know” </h3>
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<p>Because A&R reps get so much music, it is virtually impossible to sift through all of it. As a result, they solicit the advice and recommendations from representatives of artists who have good reputations of recommending quality work. Consequently, success in this business unravels into “who you know” as opposed to producing quality music. If you have an A&R rep who talks to an agent of an artist who meets the expectations of statistical hit-makers, then new stuff can be virtually ignored in favor of possibly sub-par musicians with exceptional representation. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Problem Two: New Music is Risky </h3>
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<p>Orchestra revenue comes from filling the seats, and playing the same hits is a safe bet. On one hand, patrons enjoy listening to the compositions they are familiar with and musicians don’t have to work so hard learning a new piece. The conundrum, however, is that a concert composer cannot attain a reputation without landing performances, but they can’t land performances without attaining a reputation. It is a snake eating its own tail, and it puts emerging composers in a troublesome position of trying to gain reputation through other measures. Aside from finding work through the back door by working adjacent to an orchestra such as volunteering as an usher, tearing tickets, and writing program notes, there are supposed to be other opportunities in place to help emerging composers get their foot in the door. But this presents more problems. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Problem Three: Youth Programs </h3>
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<p>The status quo of Eurocentric music is being taught at an early age. Youth programs are fantastic learning opportunities for kids. However, the composition diversity issues can be traced back to these programs. Young composers are being brought in to have masterclasses which still teach Eurocentric music as the only acceptable music for this setting. They are being curated into making the music that the orchestra or band leader, or even the board members want to hear, which is already a biased listening experience towards Eurocentric music,or what they presume will be guaranteed hits. Since I am a season composer with a Master's degree, these kid programs don’t apply to me, right? Wrong. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Problem Four: The Residencies </h3>
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<p>These are the same concepts as the youth programs but for an older crowd. Some residencies require you to still be in college (that way a composer can not be paid for their work, because they are “gifted” with more learning experience in credit, and the honor of being told in person what they should do to get orchestras to play their music). Other residencies will age you out by thirty. There are rarely any fresh composers with graduate degrees under the age of 30. Also, at this point, they have already been developing a style to articulate their influences and culture that it's not so much an opportunity to be heard as much as it is a suppression for new music when put into a position to be a student again. Don’t get me wrong, if you love your craft, then you will be a life-long student, but all philosophical pleasantries aside, a professional composer needs a fighting chance to be the best version of themselves, not a shining example of what an already biased system expects. Can you imagine Strauss never getting the chance to do Tone Poems? Or Beethoven being told that his work would not be premiered because his expectations were unrealistic to the ensemble? So why can’t anyone’s philharmonic orchestra program Afrocentric music? Why does the bill always have 75% to 100% old dead white male composers? Is it cause these establishments find new stylistic endeavors so risky that they do not want to risk low attendance? </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Possible Solutions</h3>
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<p>A lot of these are non-profits who also gain grants to put on these shows and pay their artists. That alone should inspire an unbridled desire for risk. The orchestra, much like the local band/dj, is a staple of their community. They should reflect the people around it, by playing what the people are up to. If it's garbage, then hey, that shouldn’t just be a reflection of the orchestra, but the real learning opportunity for the composer. If they are onto something, then that is when brave new styles emerge. There is no coincidence that we haven’t had a new “era” of symphonic compositions since avant-garde. There is a reason why kids today know only Mozart and Beethoven, along with Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, as if concert and film composition can be put into the same category. It starts with changing the narrative of what classical music is with our kids and our colleges. It perpetuates by embracing emerging composers with unique backgrounds and styles instead of rebranding them into the same tired narrative. Hopefully, it doesn’t stop there and orchestral programs change and evolve with a society that changes with it. </p>
<p>There are countless independent composers out there trying their damndest to break through to an audience. The hardest part for all of us is sequestering funds to actually get these pieces performed. The orchestras are supposed to provide these opportunities but we have had to find alternate ways to play our stuff. Composers have taken to investing their very limited funds into sample libraries to record as realistic as possible mock-ups of their writings. Rather than have a legitimate premiere, a lot of us will produce these mock-ups as recordings for streaming and downloads. These present two new problems for the composer. The reliance on technology has created music that can be virtually unplayable by human beings. The listening experience these writings were made to accomplish do not have the same impact as the concert experience. </p>
<p>The feel of a performance is everything. Take the band KISS. Aside from their cartoonish marketing, the musicians and the music they have made over the decades are nothing short of remarkable. But they exist for the show. When they were signed to record their first album, they had many problems recording in isolation. The songs didn’t have the same gusto that they did when it was melting your face live. They ended up recording their first album live, and it worked so well that it solidified not only their showmanship but also musicianship. The same could be said for Metallica. A band in their infancy, produced metal so heavy, it would make the needle skip off the record. When a concert composer is put in a position of only putting out mock-ups, not only are they cheated from the very human experience of limitations, but they are also cheated from the experience of chemistry and interpretation from the performers. You can mess with velocities all day, buy the best convolution reverbs, and virtual instruments with a 1,000 round robins, miked inside and out, sampled to the smallest resolution. It still does not compare to the personality and considerations of a living and real ensemble. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that is the only way to get your music performed. There are remote orchestras in Europe willing to take a pay cut to send you recordings of their performances of your music. Musiversal is one of those companies. This is outsourcing at its finest, and still poses a problem of raising funds versus fostering a musical community at all. Even as a cheaper alternative, you are still looking at a couple hundred dollars per three minutes of written music, which equates to about twelve minutes of studio time. Now imagine all of that money going outside of the country, going back into your community. Imagine a premiere of your community’s composers building a sound specific to you. Imagine being excited to know what these mad scientists of sound could come up with because they answer to you? All of this could happen, if orchestras showed more inclusion, musically. </p>
<p>I think the last solution to help change the narrative of classical music falls under the category of competition. There are many “call-for-scores” competition out there. But the judging of these opportunities needs to be more transparent. You can have rules. It can be a specific length, or instrumentation. You can even have sanctions on participation if someone has won before or has a personal relationship with the institution or judges. But if a non-profit organization puts out such a competition for the masses, and needs entry fees to facilitate quality judging, then they need to have their judgement be completely transparent. There needs to be tangible evidence of why the judges had preference or reservations about our music. If it seems impossible, then by all means limit entries, but composers need to know how people are listening to their music so they can get better. These things are always a shot in dark for me. All stylish endeavors aside, I can maneuver a sandboxed approach to composition pretty well. I’ve done enough film scores to follow rules and express enough empathy to the scenes to write the appropriate underscore. I am also well-versed in commissions. If someone wants to pay me to write something for them, I have the decency to listen to what their needs are, to create the best product I can. These competitions don’t communicate anything. How am I supposed to know that the judges have a broad enough ear to know the difference between my styles? Can they discern microtonal pitches well enough to judge a piece inspired by Indian music, or will they just regard the performance as out of tune? Will they regard my two dotted eighth notes in succession of each other to be a nuanced to Latin music writing, or will they consider it a folly in the invisible bar line principle? Can they tell that I’ve written a great Afrocentric piece of music, or consider it poorly crafted Eurocentric music? Do I even know the judges? Do they even have a legit body of work that allows them to judge mine? I don’t know. None of us do, unless we have an in on the establishments that run these competitions and if that is the case... then it's like being invited to a party just to be ignored. </p>
<p>The film scoring competitions are just as confusing. I, like so many of my colleagues, participated in the Spitfire Westworld competitions a couple months back. It was pretty cut and dry on what rules you follow: don’t alter the original audio or video, do something that respects the scene but is still unique enough to stand out. The winner ended up altering some of the dialog audio, and doing chip-tune. Albeit, it stood out, but it caused such an uproar amongst composers because the rules were bent, and the winning composer was already established (though being emerging or established was not part of the criteria). I went into the competition not expecting much, because like film festivals, a lot of getting in requires knowing people involved. I was just happy I could put on my reel amongst all the short films something at pro level. Other folks... not so much and reasonably so. They didn’t know what they could and could not do, and that affected what they wrote. </p>
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<p>So, I challenge the establishments who put these competitions out to really think twice about accepting a million scores, and not giving the professional courtesy to participants by explaining what works and what doesn’t. It's not like they can’t control the rules of engagement, it's that they don’t have the consideration to provide a quality experience that echoes how their community deserves to be treated. </p>
<p>If the orchestras aren’t accepting new music by listening to their surrounding communities of color, encouraging stylistic change in their programming to engage with new audiences, or hosting competitions that allow fresh blood into the mix by increasing transparency and sticking to clear rules, I again ask, where is the fighting chance for new music? That is probably why you haven’t had the urge to go to a symphonic concert in a while unless they are playing your favorite film score, game score, or popular music. They are out of touch with their community and an out-of-touch establishment uses their archaic successes to implement biases that no longer speak to society. That makes it a business of nostalgia and not a center of cultural influence and we all know what a platform based on nostalgia will get us. It is imperative that we change the narrative of classical music because that will allow the newer generations to acknowledge the existence of other cultures that have done more for the listening experiences of today’s audience than the traditional aspects have in a hundred years. It is important that orchestras acknowledge other cultural styles and new music to improve society and progress symphonic evolutions. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Magnum Cope-us</h3>
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<p>It is not to say that we should close shop on all the old favorites or deny the importance of Eurocentric music. You just need to know that classical isn’t just them. It is an amalgamation of cultural influence, and has already laid stake in popular music. It has turned the symphonic orchestra into a class of listeners and excludes the communities they were built to serve, and the cultures they were made to embrace. But the ratio of new music to old music needs to change. You can have a piece of DeBussy, and Coltrane, and then a couple new composers flexing their new styles. You can program a theme evocative to the music being listened to and not just the composer themselves. It’s not about just hiring POC musicians, though it’s a good step -- it's about accepting POC music. There is no point in posting your refreshingly new principle players, with their beautiful black or brown skin, if they are still perpetuating the same practices that have broken this system to begin with. During this pandemic, I had enough time to write out what could possibly be my magnum opus: an approximately fifteen minute full symphonic orchestra score called "The Suite of a Thousand Faces." I explore in this piece Joseph Campbell's concept of the hero's journey as a collection of tone poems with a twist: the hero is completely aware of his preordained pattern. Using stylistic flexes, the hero tries to break from tradition, but wonders if it is even worth it or heroic for that matter. Usually, I would go through the motions: create an elaborate mock-up, copyright, and post it to stream. But this music deserves more. I feel it in my soul. Right now concert halls are weakened by the mass shutdowns. Right now, they are posting black squares because a small part of them are now starting to wake up to the racial biases they have baked into their own institutions. Right now, even white artists are calling out the BS of the only acceptable art in the last three centuries came from old dead white guys from Europe. This is the perfect moment for real change. The piece I wrote deserves to be actually premiered. It doesn't deserve to be MIDI, It deserves to be in a semi-laminated booklet, listed in sans-serif font, with my goofy face next to it. All pandemic comments aside, I know right now we can only have streamed concerts. But if and when society gains enough immunity to open up the theaters and concert venues... we need a change of programming. We need to show all the wonderful, magical, unique things we are capable of doing as a species when stuck to our own devices. Mozart didn't get me through Covid-19, I did. Let me play for you how I coped in hopes that it can help you find the sliver of optimism that kept me going when the crippling loneliness, fear, and hopelessness tried to get the best of me. </p>
<p>I know as a POC composer, people will say I am typing this while grinding my teeth on sour grapes, and to a degree I am... I have been groomed from a young age to be a professional composer, to use my unique voice and background to help contribute to society and broaden culture. Hire me then fire me, I am okay with that. But at least show me how you listen, so that I can be better the next time. Don’t just burn all my money in gear and education, just to see my application to work as a novelty. If I can be better, so can you. And if you think I am the only one with such grievances, desperate to find the missing puzzle piece to establish my career, you are still not listening.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>#composerlife #blackmusicmatters #newmusic #orchestralbias #POCcomposer</p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/63932942020-07-25T17:46:14-07:002022-06-01T01:59:24-07:00Part I: Changing the Narrative of Classical Music<p>Shortly after the beginning of the protests against police brutality, many institutions tried to show their solidarity with the <strong>POC </strong>(person of color) community by posting black squares on their social media, or saying pretty much the same thing their competition says to portray progressive qualities. I, like many of my POC constituents, took that as a nice gesture at face value. But, if you really want to prove you stand with us against institutional bias, actions speak louder than words. There are many institutions that need attention: from banking to the voting booths, but I am going to talk about what I have first-hand experience with as a composer: the orchestras and media. Every orchestra and musical institution that posted a black square needs to take a step back and look at how they program music. Every “call-for-scores” competition needs to take a step back and examine how they judge the music they get. Every educational institution needs to see that even with the best intentions, they’ve still become pawns in a racially biased system. Once they see that, they need to cut those ties that bind them and fix it. </p>
<p>I had the esteemed pleasure of being part of a large conversation about diversity in the orchestral world facilitated by the <strong>Kaleidoscope</strong> orchestra, where they allowed musicians of color to speak their mind and grievances about the state of our musical lives. It was a beautiful conversation where everyone had a turn to say what they needed to uninterrupted. Composers, students, educators, and directors from all over the world got to tell their stories and expose the biases plaguing music as a whole. It's because of this conversation that even I learned how certain aspects of the industry are built to repress an art that needs inclusion and diversity to allow a society to flourish and grow. Things that even though I’ve been exposed to in abundance, have never registered as a seemingly benign form of racial inequality. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/ff8907992b9744473d3ed2831b2cab4315b32d63/original/8828aab7-9d86-4e1e-968d-4f43b3ecfa05.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />In these next series of blogs, I hope to expose these elements, and start a conversation that will help allow new, culturally significant music to be played by orchestras. I can't say that I am an expert in every field regarding classical music or how these institutions function, but I hope to learn a great deal of the motivations behind them, and welcome a quality of conversation that lead to a better understanding of all sides of these matters. As a virtual nobody on the scene, with an overabundance of education and disappointing experiences, it's not easy to start a conversation like this, because it will rub some folks the wrong way. But moving to a direction of the right side of history is never easy and I hope it does. I hope the clap-backs are magnificent so I can be wrong in my interpretation of this facet of the business. Until then, I see that there is an ever-growing problem in the classical music world, and it starts with how we are educated, and how classical music has become a centerpiece in the delegitimization of Afro-centric music in a global society. </p>
<p>Right now, I am speaking to your everyday music-lover. The kind of person who has enough interest in music to buy merchandise or go to concerts. The kind of person who fearlessly hits shuffle on their musical library because they don’t have a million unfinished demos to sneak their way into the soundtrack of your life. I am speaking to you, music-lover. What do you think classical music is? When is the last time you were jonesing for an orchestral concert? Who are your favorite composers? When is the last time that kind of music got you up off your feet, increased your heart rate, and spoke directly to your soul? Has it ever? To the untrained ear, classical music can be regarded as any form of symphonic or orchestral music. To one with minimal development, it is known as a collection of old, dead composers that have been played for the last four centuries. That’s where I was while doing my undergraduate degree, and that’s when a mentor took me to the side and told me I was wrong because classical music was based on different stylistic eras. He told me, “Haydn and Mozart... those are classical... Bach is actually Baroque... Beethoven... that is Romantic.” </p>
<p>It wasn’t until later on in my life that I would realize that such an argument in semantics would only prove to be fruitful for a specific niche of people. People who engage in music recreationally had that generic definition of classical music. People in academia have a different vibe based on all the music history classes they are encouraged to follow. The dictionary has so many different ideas of what “classical” means that it is no wonder we can’t agree upon it. Even as a writer, I have to choose a generic genre of pop or classical, when registering new music to my performing rights organization. Tucked in the middle of these definitions, is what I truly believe describes it: <a contents="classical is regarded as representing an exemplary standard; traditional and long-established in form or style.&nbsp;" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/classical" target="_blank">classical is regarded as representing an exemplary standard; traditional and long-established in form or style. </a></p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">KNOW YOUR MUSIC </h3>
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<p>Up until now, the listener will mostly consider classical music’s point of origin to be Eurocentric, but music is a reflection of culture and society. Anything with cultural significance tended to have the “folk” label. But classical music in its <em>heyday</em> represented the people. Composers were hired to write everything from royal processions to music for a small intimate dinner setting. You know, when it was just called <em>music</em>. But now, we generally associate the creation and performance of classical music as fancy and beyond our own humbled musings. We forget that there is so much more to history than just what happened in Europe. Africa has a history. China has a history. The United States has a history. Where humans dwelled, there is a history. Who’s to say that there is not African classical music, or Indian classical music? As a born and raised citizen of the United States of America, <em>Jazz</em> (which is a hybridized adaptation of Afrocentric music) should be considered classical. Seeing as it is a hundred years old, and has influenced every modern genre of popular music, why wouldn’t we consider it a point of origin in notoriety for the United States? What makes Eurocentric music more important to orchestras than Afrocentric music when everything we love about today’s music (by which we engage physically, emotionally, and financially) embraces Afrocentric music adapted to cultural evolution. Why is there is constant split between Popular Music and Classical Music? It has to do with a convoluted school of thought that if music has been recorded tangibly then that makes its influence real. </p>
<p>I should preface that I am not using the term <em>folk music</em> as a genre for this, because folk implies music of the people, and all music is from the people. That being said: African classical music has an oral tradition. It exists. Rhythms and melodic structures were passed down generationally by ear and performance without the necessity of parchment. The syncopation in percussive patterns are so unique and engaging enough that it has transcended time to be a pivotal part of our favorite musical genres. But unless the orchestras are preceded by a <em>POPS </em>label. They stay segregated from programs most of the time. How does an audience even remotely engage with institutions that should be the center of the community, when they (the institutions) don’t embrace the Afro-centric musical elements that most of the community enjoys on a day to day basis? It isn’t even a question of sacred versus secular, because even sacred music has tied in <em>rhythm and blues</em> along with <em>rock and roll</em> over time. It’s not a question of instrumentation, or ensemble size, because even Slipknot was a chamber ensemble all on its own (even if that chamber was probably a dungeon). It can’t be distribution, because <em>classical music</em> have taken up all modern mediums that popular music have over the years from record to streaming. Why isn’t Afro-centric classical music a part of the the orchestral program regularly, when it has influenced and is treasured by everyone? </p>
<p>African music spread all throughout the world because of the slave trade. In the midst of horror, this art was appropriated and adapted to the Eurocentric musical culture brought by colonists of the States. It was exposed to the indigenous people in shared bondage in the Caribbean islands. To an extent, it was appropriated before it even had a chance to develop a formal writing and just like slaves, the music’s history was erased and generalized. It’s stylistic remnants embedded into a western notation style and placed into a class all on its own to distinguish Eurocentric from Afrocentric. Though, in spite of forced assimilation, it still prevails. There are still rhythms and melodies passed on amongst the newer generations of Africans. In the Caribbean, it turned <em>mento</em> into <em>ska</em> which then brought <em>reggae</em>. On the mainland, <em>jazz</em> brought <em>rhythm and blues</em>, which brought <em>rock and roll</em> and <em>hip hop</em>. Even kids today, who find their religious experiences in <em>trap</em>, and <em>metal</em>, owe their treasured sonic moments to African music. So, how is it not considered classical? Does it need a powdered wig atop a frustrated artist to achieve legitimacy? Does it need an exact date for an already exhausted music appreciation student to memorize? Does it need a white affluent audience to be considered dignified? </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">SEGREGATION IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS </h3>
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<p>Acknowledging these elements shouldn’t be hard right? Wrong. The academic world has its own inherent biases that segregate music all the time. When I was an undergrad at Berklee College of Music, we’d say we had our own way of doing things, but realistically it was a<em> jazz</em> school and only required us to have a handful of <em>traditional </em>classes depending on our degree. Our analysis and history used <em>jazz</em> as a point of origin, while we developed our skills to popular music. When I was working on my Masters, there was no separation of school of thoughts because it only focused on one: <em>traditional</em> (Eurocentric). Sure, we had <em>jazz</em> classes, but no embedded <em>jazz</em> curriculum. Even in grade school, we had symphonic band class, and jazz band as an after school activity. </p>
<p>Though it was never truly expressed in words, we pretty much knew our jazz harmony class centered around black music, while our “traditional” harmony class centered around white music. I remember when I interviewed for my Master’s degree, the dean told me I was not going to fit in because of my background. I told him I was in a unique position because I have been all kinds of musicians throughout my life: I wasn’t a jazz kid when I went to Berklee, and I wasn’t a trad kid coming into these programs. I didn’t fit anywhere, so that allowed me to adapt to everywhere. But is assimilation really the answer?</p>
<p>Because of the segregation of academic applications of music, we have reoccurring problems with modern composers, orchestras, and the overall listening experience. New music hails from influence, culture, life experiences, available instrumentation, and school of thought. Composers come from all walks of life. It's these unique experiences that influence the kind of music that we write. My parents are Caribbean, hailing from <strong>St. Thomas (USVI)</strong> and <strong>Trinidad and Tobago</strong>. The music (<em>calypso/soca</em>) created, performed, and celebrated on these islands are Afro-centric by origin. My hometown is <strong>Orlando, Florida</strong>. Here, I was blessed to have friends whose backgrounds stem from <strong>Puerto Rico</strong>, <strong>Cuba</strong>, the <strong>Dominican Republic</strong>, <strong>St. Lucia</strong>, <strong>Haiti</strong>, <strong>Jamaica</strong>, and other beautiful islands their parents migrated from. Their music is also Afro-centric by origin. It is actually amazing how similar the rhythms and melodic structures are between <em>Latin music</em> and <em>calypso</em>, because they come from the same place, and have just been adapted to the society of their respective islands and languages. Even the lyricism of calypsonians examined society, courted passionate affairs, and challenged establishments with a free-style diction reminiscent of some of the finest <em>hip-hop</em> writers. Also in Orlando, there was a prolific <em>ska </em>(third wave), <em>punk</em>, <em>metal</em>, and <em>rap</em> scene. All of these came into play while I learned the value of Mozart, Bach, Holst, Debussy, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and so forth. Popular music was also absorbing all of these styles and putting out an amalgamation of magnificent sonic couture, which were both manufactured and influenced by the phenomenal Quincy Jones, George Clinton, The Beatles, James Brown, and Prince (to say the least). With all these things considered, it only seemed natural that my musical style would be as aesthetically mixed as I am. Yet, trying to achieve a premiere in orchestras, even those that boast their reverence for new music, proved to be futile when they show preference of nostalgia over progress. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">FILM MUSIC IS NOT CONCERT MUSIC </h3>
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<p>Orchestral composers are now permeating the general public through mediums that speak directly to consumers in film and games. But, the style in which these pieces of music are written are not the same as concert pieces because they are created to support the medium. I can’t tell you how many times an action-adventure piece I’ve written has automatically been written off as something that should be in a <em>Zelda</em> game or film when I expose it to a generic listener. But, those concert pieces are energetic and meant to keep people in their seats without visual stimulation. When I score for film, I am supporting a story that’s already been put infront of their faces. Most of the composers that are making a regular living wage (or at least trying to) find themselves relying on mock-ups because the orchestral resources available are highly expensive and only focus on the traditional (Eurocentric) music they are known for. Realistically, a composer should have more than enough opportunities to get their music premiered by their local orchestras (without having to pay to play), but new music is not nearly embraced as much as those <em>old-dead-classics</em>, and since those <em>old-dead-classics</em> have been linked to a genre that shows bias to melanin-deficient music, composers who write differently aren’t considered part of the program. It will take a change in conversation from the people they generate income from to say, “Hey, this orchestra should try this new composer out, because they are utilizing the resources of this orchestra to make music that represents me.” </p>
<p><em>Maybe not as wordy...</em></p>
<p>It is not to say that there aren’t an abundance of unique composers that have mastered not only Afro-centric applications to orchestral and operatic music but other mediums. They are just not getting the stylistic recognition they deserve because either they are bound to the parameters of a film, or they are being drowned out by the likes of Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, and John Williams. Don’t get me wrong: they are brilliant, influential composers (certainly worthy of some iteration of classical nomenclature), who have had to fight their way into the mainstream in order to deliver our music to a crowd that would otherwise have never paid attention to orchestras because of their (orchestras) archaic practices. The only problem is, just like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven... they are household names. When people think orchestral music, they think film composition, and when they think film composition, they can only recall these three white names. Film music is not concert music, though you can use film music in a concert, and concert music in a film. Williams, Elfman, and Zimmer are not the only composers out there, and it is not a white man’s game. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">CHANGING THE NARRATIVE </h3>
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<p>What I am trying to say, is that you, music lover, have the power to get refreshingly new music in those auditoriums that you jog past while listening to favorite modern playlist. You can do it by changing the narrative of what classical music is, and letting those who control these places know that the same enthusiasm you show to popular music can manifest into the orchestral world if they embrace programs beyond a traditional Eurocentric school of thought. Just as you would find out about a new punk band, your local composers are paying their dues as well. They have been trying to open for bigger name acts, even if those acts have been dead for centuries. They are competing in a genre that they have been placed in against their better judgement because of their instrumentation, that doesn’t even embrace the kind of music style they make. It starts with making sure you know that all classical music is not orchestral music, and not all orchestral music is classical. It goes further by recognizing that classical music is not from a specific country of origin because many countries have classics and that music doesn’t have to follow the same rules to become notable. While the auditoriums gather their bearings (and funding) for concert seasons post <em>Covid-19</em>, now is the time to demand new music more than ever, and not just new versions of old writings. As a composer, I want to be the first of me, not the next of them. The music I identify with and excel at is not your standard idea of <em>classical</em> or orchestral music. It should be, though. New music (not just mine), with styles that combine cultural experiences with eclectic styles should be what the listening world should seek. It should break boundaries and bring people together. It should be able to achieve the classical ideology, and inspire the next generations of writers to continue the never-ending conversation of what music means. We can’t do this if we compartmentalize styles by origin and instrumentation, and show preference solely to brands that history forced us to be accustomed to. Real change will occur when your music (orchestral or not) is something that represents a standard in exemplary form and style. Real change will occur when new music is acknowledged by its merit and not by its tradition. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>My next blog will address the problematic relationship of the orchestras and composers, and how the business has been polluted by the wrong kind of biases. Stay tuned.</strong></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/58530722020-03-10T09:56:03-07:002022-05-19T07:45:25-07:00Are my Music Degrees Worth It?<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/b1bf7aa2d740d55ebeef8cac8f94e524412a5c34/original/img-6726.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>I am a film composer. I am a sound engineer, producer, and performer. I am a foley artist and a music supervisor when I need to be. I have managed to snag gigs both passion and paid in all of these fields in the last couple years... and no one has asked for my resume. It was my understanding that my academic history coupled with my people-driven experiences would take me to worlds far and wide. Upon landing in Southern California, I’ve learned a greater lesson: <b>no one gives a damn about your college degree</b>. Well... <em>some</em> people do, but they aren't interested in your thesis, or how many traditional harmony classes you took. When it comes to the entertainment industry, most people only care that you can do what you say you can do, and that someone can vouch for your character and professionalism. Seeing as I was a college professor for six years, I often wondered if I was part of a problematic system where kids pay their way to be exposed to learning opportunities they would have never been able to access before, only to face the consequences of not getting a shot at their career because they had to meet the requirements of program directors and deans instead of hiring professionals. I was doing my graduate degree while teaching at a local Florida community college and the experiences were jaw-dropping. In my final years as a teacher, I had a better handle on what we needed to do to make the learning experience more efficient for the students, but I grew increasingly disenfranchised by the way the academic community conditioned their musicians as a whole. One university churned out magnificent composers and performers, while another would lure instrumentalists with great promises to fill their bands, as opposed to providing opportunity for their students; neither would have recording as curriculum. One institution had upgraded their gear to provide a state-of-the-art recording studio experience, but had no composers, and they underutilized performers. Upon deaf ears, I would voice that we needed a sort of consortium between the colleges to inspire a real world experience for musicians. It was my only disappointing aspect as a teacher, and a Floridian musician who loved and still loves his hometown. </p>
<p>I would get the same excuses: “We tried to talk to those guys, but they didn’t play well,” or, “There is no amount of budget that could support this.” The interesting thing is: there was a private college that still called upon performers from two other colleges to fill out their orchestra. My understanding is if that college could pull this off, then there has to be a cooperative means of exploiting the strengths of all the other entertainment-based departments around town to achieve projects. If the University I obtained my graduate degree from has a strong composition program, the composition students could write their goodies, then find musicians from any of the other colleges to play it, then assign their recordings to other students in a production-based program of another college. Keeping this within academia would also protect the workers outside of it. I cannot tell you how many “job offers” pop up from bigger studios that offer internships but only to college students, establishing that the work they offer must be paid in college credits. There are two ways to look at that: A college student gets the opportunity to gain real world experience and networking in their field, or a post graduate with all the established knowledge needed to get the work done efficiently being denied a job opportunity in favor of free/deductible child labor that can be easily exploited to do other jobs for the “experience” as opposed to a paycheck. If we keep the collaborative efforts within the college scheme of things, with paid internships available post graduation, I think it would build a better art community, maintain job statuses for the post grads, and at the same time still demand the right kind of work ethic needed to make a student become a professional. </p>
<p>To this day, I always found that there was this disconnect between opportunity versus curriculum, and for a long time I just felt like I didn’t achieve enough to proudly seek the work I had been ready to do for all my life. It wasn’t a confidence thing, because I have no trouble talking about how wonderful I am at any point in time. I think it has to do with the communities I’ve belonged to who boast (with minimal experience in my field) quality experiences, while dictating what new students should learn because they themselves could not afford the gear nor get the work they thought they desired. The expectations were skewed at best, and marketed in a way that generalized opportunity when it should have been more focused. So how do we fix this disconnect? Curriculum makers need to be approached much like playlist curators. Their application is more eco-sociological than music-knowledge-based. Deans and department chairs need to be re-evaluated in where they actually stand in the industry and either placed appropriately or demoted in favor for the greater learning experience. If you have a Dean that is only known for playing symphonic kazoo in charge of an entire department of music, with branches focused in composition, technology, performance, business, etc. Then he would most likely be useful as a chair in the Kazoo department. Actually, I would go so far as to encourage vetting on the experiences some chairs actually claim to have. They may have only mastered the "it's who you know" aspect of the industry and nothing else. It is not to say that a professional musician, with a strong educational background, and professional experience in many facets of the same industry (that is also savvy with academic structure and budgeting) are a dime a dozen, but maybe if the presidents of these colleges really paid attention to who they have now and why they are not getting the results they usually fluff about on review sites, they could save that next grant for more tech that they don’t have qualified people to operate or teach, and invite the right kind of person to get the job done, with a logical and (dare I say) fulfilling paycheck. </p>
<p><em>But what do I know... I graduated from these places. </em></p>
<p>Don't get me wrong. I cannot be more proud of the people I’ve met and the faculty AND students I’ve learned from. I just think the entertainment sector in academia is broken. I think the teachers are paid too small and the students pay too much to be anything more than disenfranchised with an industry they really haven’t experienced at all. Ask a composition student about writing techniques, or something as absurd as <em>Schenkerian analysis</em> and they could hold a conversation between grunts of annoyance. Ask them how much they think their services are worth and you might as well stamp “Tacet” on their foreheads. It is one thing to know how to write, but if you are a college student (undergrad or grad) you should know the answers to these questions: </p>
<p><strong>Do I know where to find any musician or band, and do I know how to correctly pay them for their work? </strong></p>
<p><strong>What are all the available avenues for me to generate income for my compositions? </strong></p>
<p><strong>How much am I worth? What should my invoices be like? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Am I willing or able to work out of my scope in order to get to the music part? In other words, am I able to sound design, record (broadcast quality), and work well within a pre/post production team? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Do I need a union? </strong></p>
<p><strong>How do I get the most out of my Performing Rights Organization? Do I know what a PRO does? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Do I know how to properly secure my copyrights, and do I know how to legally work with other people’s copyrights? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Do I know how a cue sheet works? Do I know how to create my own contracts or understand other contracts? </strong></p>
<p><strong>How do I promote my music for consumption, what are the benefits and drawbacks to social media usage, online aggregators, and streaming playlist curators? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Do I know what medium my music is to be played with (Streaming, live, CD’s, Television, Big Screen) and do I know how my music should be mastered for each medium? </strong></p>
<p><strong>If someone approaches me to license my work, how do I train my nose to smell bullshit? </strong></p>
<p><strong>How do I talk to clients, peers, band mates, managers, directors, music supervisors, and people who don’t know music but want to give you money? </strong></p>
<p><strong>What is a 1099 form? How do musicians do taxes? </strong></p>
<p><strong>To LLC or not? </strong></p>
<p><strong>Do I start a tutorial class when I finally give up on my dreams or when my dreams give up on me? </strong></p>
<p>Oh there are more questions, but how many of your composition program classes even remotely talk about this? If you give a damn about your career, or you made the crazy choice of making your music your primary source of income, then these things creep up on you and you have to remember you are a business owner. If you are lucky, then you can hire someone to take care of the details, but realistically, You could wake up with minor low-paying favor-based gigs, a bunch of bills, in tax season, with an e-mail from Ukraine asking to license one of your songs on <em>Soundcloud</em> that you forgot to register with a PRO, and not know what to do. The smartest thing I did was join a bunch of groups that bring people going through these same things together in one boat. Social and professional clubs are meant to do that. You know what else should do it? College. But college doesn't fulfill its true potential when it's treating entertainers the same as other focuses.</p>
<p>Do I think college is a waste of money? Yes and No. Please understand that I am speaking solely to the entertainment folks. I can’t make the same case for other departments like Medical or Law. I’d like to think that those areas give you a more traditional perspective of college, and it works. But music is different. There are scores of people who made a successful life of music without a lick of formal education. So why should music schools and departments be held in the same regard as our traditional brethren? The answer is: it shouldn’t. We are very different breeds of people. I don't rant about my undergrad school the way I do about these other schools, because it is a music school; and even if my tenure there lacked in some places, it made up in a fundamental part of my evolution as a musician. Even if it fell into the economic tropes of other establishments, it at least knew its people. It was a school by musicians, for musicians. Other institutions tend to be spread too thin to care unless a particular avenue generates income. But, I do look at being a professional musician much like being the character Billy Quizboy from <em>The Venture Brothers</em>. He is a brilliant mind, and gets called in (many times) to perform secret surgery on big figures in the show's vast and rich world. The only problem is: he never finished school, nor does he have a license to practice medicine. But, he is regarded as one of the best surgeons in the world, though criticized for adhering to codes and ethics of being a doctor while no one believes he is, until they need him. Musicians are like that. They will be called in for their tone, skill, work ethic, and efficiency, but they still get jabbed for either having just an art degree or not having one at all, and that is ludicrous. It exploits our dedication to a particular craft that everyone loves, has access to do, yet not everyone has the patience or dedication to make a lifestyle and/or career. <strong>It is an uphill battle trying to convince clientele to even pay for our work, let alone pay for it fairly.</strong> The point is: we need to relieve ourselves of traditional thought when mixing musicianship with formal education. </p>
<p>College has a specific point: to learn things. It has a wonderfully unique way of giving a person access to concentrated information pertaining to their career interests. It provides mentors that have been around that kind of world a few times, and provide that information in a digestible way. In that process, it exposes you to a wide variety of people with different visions, backgrounds, and lifestyles. That is phenomenal. But... it does not guarantee you a job. The institutions by themselves can and have spun statistical information to make it seem like the collegiate journey cleanly hits all the spawn points in a person’s life. It doesn't. Even institutions that started out with best intentions get wrapped up in the influence of special interest funding on curricular necessities. When it can't achieve its mission statement, they use the hook of talking points to get kids and their parents' wallets in.</p>
<p>"78% of students that graduate from this Clown College get a job right after college."</p>
<p><em>They don't tell you that job isn't in their field, or its in teaching intro level classes of the same degree program.</em></p>
<p>"Super important person graduated from here!" </p>
<p><em>Yeah, but some schools consider you an alumni if you do one semester there and drop out. *cough* John Mayer *cough*</em></p>
<p><em>Learn the skills you need to face the businesses of tomorrow! </em></p>
<p><em>...With the inventory of yesterday, the books of decades ago, and the school of thought from fifty years ago. </em></p>
<p>Meanwhile, they are soaking in all those student loans that kids can't erase with bankruptcy, that will follow them more than even a mortgage. That is another broken system. My argument is: if college is meant to teach you your trade, while exposing you to other thoughts, then it should expend its efforts to giving the students the most accurate and beneficial experience that prepares them to not only think for themselves but make what they have work in a competitive world. </p>
<p>I looked at college differently through the years. When I was in community college, I didn't know if I even wanted to be in school anymore. But it was good to work towards something while I figured things out. It was exponentially cheaper to do than state and I am grateful to all the connections and lessons I learned there. When I decided to go to Berklee, I knew that it would be a big investment, and I also knew how useful a Bachelor's in Music was going to be in "the real world." But, at that point in my life, I realized that music <em>was</em> my real world. It was my vocation. I also knew that there was only so much I was going to understand and learn in my hometown, and I needed to gamble the financial well-being of my adult life to think outside of the elaborate bubble I created for myself and the people around me. I didn't expect a job afterwards, but I did hope for it while immersed. I did have a touch of cynicism, laced with entitlement at first, but I remembered why I decided to go to Boston. I just wanted an experience I would have never got if I stayed home. I got it. Was it worth +100K in student loans? If you have a more conventional job... then you'd probably think not. But, as a musician who would have invested that money in newer gear to hide any musical inconsistencies while barely learning anything new in the process, it was the best investment I've ever made. Because gear will come and go, along with youthful tropes, but I have a solid foundation on where I stand in the musical world. Berklee didn't owe me a job, it sold me the fresh perspective I desperately needed and all transactions were final. Graduate school was weird, too. When I decided to do it, I wanted to see what was going on outside the Berklee Bubble I now had. Ironically, the best way to pop that bubble was to come back home. I had to relearn a different highlight of my musicianship while being in a program that focused more on traditional performance composition. It was smaller, and pretty much the opposite of what I was conditioned to do and think while in Berklee. I remember when I interviewed to get in, the dean told me I would never fit in. I laughed in his face and said, "I don't fit in anywhere, so I adapt for everywhere. I wasn't scholarly when I went to community college. I wasn't a jazz kid when I went to Berklee and I certainly am not a traditional type for this program, but I've never been afraid of getting my proverbial hands dirty."</p>
<p>I don't blame my failures on my schools, but I don't attribute my successes to them, also. We got what we needed out of each other and moved on to other things, like two ships passing in the night. Being a Berklee alumni has different reactions from different people depending on where you end up in the world. Back home, it is met with prestige and honor. In LA, it plays out more like an AA meeting. Hi, I'm Jehad, I graduated CWP in 2011, and it's been <em>this many</em> years since I've worked in my intended field. There's a lot more of us here than we realize adapting to the skills we've built in the most fascinating places. A PA here, a make-up artist there, a financial advisor around the block, and kindergarten teacher two towns down; we seek the work that we can do efficiently enough to have time to do what we want to do. Some of us lucked out and got a mechanical license of a beat they churned out to appear on a PBS show. Others kept true to the performance life, sometimes hitting two clubs a night, worn down by working twice as hard for half as much. The fascinating thing about any of us is that when called to be the musicians we know we are, it's easy to grab the nearest instrument and flex like we were back <em>on the beach in front of the 150 building</em>. More often then not, people don't ask us to play our degrees, they want to know what we are capable of doing at that moment. That's the key: we became so professional, we react musically. So we always need to be ready to flex. </p>
<p>Now I am involved in a world where if I don't take the opportunity to flex everywhere I go, then it becomes a difference between making rent and not. Some displays are better than others, but I have to stay present. Some would find that to be the counter-intuitive idea of working after graduation, but I appreciate it more with every crumb I get. True, a lot of us got into music with the idea that we would take solace in the instruments we use to express our feelings, and not look at them as one of those little red notification stickers you get from unopened e-mails. Practicing for juries and auditions put strain on us. The rejection of being just straight up ignored hurts our pride. It's stressful, nerve-wrecking, and my sleep habits are as bad as my nutrition, but I still have faith that I will find balance in all of this. All of my degrees have never been pieces of paper that get reduced to a solitary line at the bottom of my CV. No, they are living, breathing documents that are constantly put into practice, and always mark a paradigm shift in my maturity as an artist. They do not make me better or more qualified than the next composer... I do. I found the opportunities baked into the experiences, the evaluations, and the people I crossed paths, but college gave me the space to look. No one has the same experiences in their educational journey, just like in life in general. We define our values, and some times we share those values with other people, most times... it's just for you. Even the ranting I had earlier about needing more connectivity and attention between institutions is just me airing out my concerns dredged up by the values I've placed on my interpretation of music education. I would have never had these thoughts, if I didn't experience them or a lack of them. So, ask me again if it was worth it.</p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/58722302019-10-04T11:38:11-07:002022-05-19T07:26:05-07:00Sound Guy Story: Russian Roulette<p style="text-align: center;"><a contents="" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07YNZ66Q1/ref=cm_sw_em_r_pv_wb_xFjsEdcOxZiar" target="_blank"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/e19127905b0d02355f33e46ae9b75e4c765e6874/original/28876329-2af7-434f-abd6-22a2669034cf.jpeg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></a></p>
<p>A couple months ago, I had the unique opportunity to work on a horror short with a simple premise that would rely heavily on sound production. Usually, I would tell you the story of how I learned how to use a vocoder for creature sounds, or the fun things I did while capturing pre-production sound. But that can be a video, or something more entertainment-based. This is a story of a very different nature. One could even construe this as a suspense story baked into the suspense story we were trying to make. Submitted for the approval of the midday society, I bring you the tale of <i>Russian roulette</i>. </p>
<p>Preproduction for this film short was relatively easy. We had a small crew of: Bron (Writer/Director), Myself (Sound), Mark (DP), Lisa (PA/Catering), Chris (Lighting), and two actors: Sarkis and Victoria. We've all worked together on previous projects and hold a strong respect for each other and our crafts. My job was super easy, because I already captured all the important sounds needed, and I knew my main focus was dialogue which was less than 10% of the film. We obtained a location in Huntington Beach, and it was a production that started midday (so I could sleep in). It would seem as though the planets aligned, and the movie gods provided us a bountiful harvest of good tidings for a smooth and relatively painless production. We were wrong.</p>
<p>As soon as we arrived at the set location there was a Russian lady there, probably mid-fifties, with a particularly cold disposition. We were told that the location would be available to us without interference from any other party. So, not only were we surprised, but a set of rules had also been placed upon us upon meeting this lady. The first thing she said was "I thought you would only be here until Seven." Our director explained to her that we agreed on using this place for the night. Begrudgingly she accepted those terms, but told us we couldn't wear shoes while we were in the house. As someone who is used to taking off shoes when entering a home, that is no big deal except: we all would be holding sizable equipment and without the shock support of a good shoe, the next day back-pains and foot-pains were inevitable. But we agreed upon it. But then it hit us... who the hell was this lady? With much probing, we find out she is related to the person who owned the house whom we made the initial deal. He was some kind of rocket scientist and was supposed to not be there. She was staying there temporarily. That part would have been good to know from the beginning, but we tried to coexist regardless. </p>
<p>We did the bedroom scenes, which worked out well, because she stayed in the living room. Also, we lucked out with all the pre-production sound I did ahead of time because the lady insisted upon watching her Russian soap operas at loud levels. That's ok, it wouldn't phase me until we did the dialogue, so we kept on with the production. While nailing our timing for the most part, it was time for dinner and then we would film all the living room scenes, along with the small amount of dialogue on the outside. At this point, she tells us that she is cooking a duck. <i>Cool...</i> Then she proceeds to tell us that she is cooking the duck because she is having a small get-together with friends at Nine, which it was already about eight o'clock. After the back and forth, she agrees to keep her friends on the outer part of the house, so we can finish filming. The pressure was turned up to get all of our shots. We finish our food, and try to get things going again. Her friends show up, and its just two older Russian guys. Who don't say anything, but were pretty cordial to us in passing. </p>
<p>The duck must've been great, because these three folks decide to get a level of drunk that I haven't seen since leaving Orlando. I'm talking: every time someone would go outside to dump something in the trash, there would be another empty bottle between the three of them. They were getting a bit rowdy, but nothing too crazy that we couldn't handle. We manage to finish the indoor scenes, and then it was time to do the dialogue. Like I said in a previous post, this is where the time can get lost. Between fireworks being set off (it was around fourth of July), passing cars, and other sounds, the Russians took their party up a notch. Actually, it sounded like arguments, but we weren't sure since none of us spoke Russian and the language kind of sounds like an argument even if you are saying the most delightful things. We had to go back in numerous times to politely ask them to keep it down while we capture the dialogue. Despite the speed bumps, we got what we needed. But, that's when things got crazier.</p>
<p>At a point while Bron and Mark were trying to get some B-roll, I was assigned to get some wild takes of Victoria saying things, just so I had more sound to play with. We were pretty isolated in the front porch, but not even a second after I hit record, the (now very inebriated) Russian lady comes out, she looks like she was crying, and then says:</p>
<p><strong>Drunk Russian Lady:</strong> You... Your number... give it to me. (If you read that like the terminator, you wouldn’t be far from simulating the experience)</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> (looks at Victoria) me?</p>
<p><strong>DRL: </strong>Yes! When you are ready for <em>all this</em>, I'll be inside. (She points to her body in a salacious way, but also looks like she's about to pass out in the process)</p>
<p>She then goes back inside, and Victoria laughs at me for a solid minute. </p>
<p><strong>Victoria:</strong> Well are you gonna give her your number?</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> No way... it seems like a proposition, but there are two other dudes in there... they are probably gonna get me alone and tie my nuts to a car-battery and play Russian roulette. </p>
<p>We shrug it off. The director and DP go inside, and I decide to have a cigarette in the front of the house. As I blew smoke signals to aliens, Thinking about life.. and such, Mark comes rushing out.</p>
<p><strong>Mark:</strong> Dude, make sure your shit is packed up, we gotta get the fuck out of here.</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> What happened? I swear I didn't give my number or anything...</p>
<p><strong>Mark:</strong> What? I dunno, someone is saying they got punched, and something about a Russian mafia, screw this, we gotta go.</p>
<p>So I put out my smoke, and casually walk back in there to see our PA and Director having an intense conversation with the Russians. As that goes on, we are just pulling all of our bags to the front lawn. One of the Russian dudes walks out quietly passing us, and Bron gets back. Apparently, the Russians got so drunk, that an argument happened, and one of the guys might have punched the lady that wanted to do me. She wanted our cameraman to take a picture of one the guys. Then erratically went between asking us to call the cops to asking us to NOT call the cops. She said she wanted the photo as evidence, because she was probably going to die that night, because one of the guys was in the Russian mafia. So we are counting heads, and we realize that Lisa is still in the house trying to mediate the lady. At that point, Bron and I go back in, just incase (and they were my ride out there) and the Russian dude comes back because he had a bag that he left there. We sneak over to Lisa and tell her to just walk away from this, but she is so kind to people, she felt obligated to stick around and make sure things were okay. </p>
<p><strong>Lisa:</strong> What am I supposed to do? I feel roped into all of this.</p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> I am pretty sure they are drunk enough to not even remember you are here. Just wait for an argument and say bye, and let's get the hell outta dodge.</p>
<p>Sure enough, there was another Russian-laden spat, and Lisa just says "Goodnight" and we all ran to the car to get the hell out of there. </p>
<p>As we met traffic on the 405 (Just after midnight), we were making jokes in light of it. Hoping that the Russian mafia and hitman thing was just the exaggeration of a drunk lonely lady. I told them I got propositioned and we laughed about me taking one for the team as a peace-offering. Then we half-jokingly lamented over the fact that if that lady did get murdered by her mafia boyfriend then we have all of our DNA all over the place. But the next day, there were no murders, and we laughed about still managing to get all of our shots in, despite all that transpired.</p>
<p>So, what is the moral of the story? Probably nothing... we are filmmakers. We deal with ambiguity often. If you are exceptional at your role whether it be sound, directing, acting, or assisting, then even the most problematic moments can still work. We were a good team. We had good preparation for the actual task, and we executed it without being executed ourselves. If we learned anything at all, it would probably be: make sure you vet your set thoroughly before production day. You might end up in a bastardized version of a cut scene from <i>Black Ops I</i>. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Bad Vibes</strong> is a short horror film written and directed by Bron Theron. It is currently available to view on the BingeHorror App and Amazon. We were also nominated for "Best Atmosphere" in the 2019 Independent Horror Movie Awards.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/9e9f3b997dd876f84695d3557e192c731fca8099/original/ihma-2019-nominee-best-atmosphere.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/58530572019-08-24T11:49:37-07:002023-12-10T08:45:04-08:00Classi-fried<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/b1bf7aa2d740d55ebeef8cac8f94e524412a5c34/original/img-6726.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" />The hardest part about “coming up” in your industry is trying to find skill-specific work that is beneficial to both yourself and the people who hire you. Realistically, you are not going to find the ideal career in the daily job-posting e-mails that somehow always seem to get what you actually do wrong. Com-po-ser! Not <em>Compositer</em>!! No... I don’t want to teach <em>English </em>composition! It drives you crazy. Creatives know that in order to get anything done, you have to network like all the other “real” jobs. But for those of us with a basis of formality under our unconventional career choice, there is a sort of confusion that follows things like Linkedin and Resumes, when the reality is: as creative as we can be in our lane, we go about trying to get gigs in the most <span style="color:null;">uninspiring</span> fashion. We waste time trying to play by the rules that other uninspired paths take to gain balance, then we waste more time reading blog articles written by people who think they have all the answers even though they just decided to try to make ad revenue over royalties with listicles of all the things they’ve done wrong thus far (Can I get ad revenue now?). Then, we feel discouraged by the education system that soaked us up like a bright yellow sponge and squeezed us out like an old used moldy mop. All the while, we don’t have time to do what we initially thought was our one thing that we knew we could do better than most. Maybe I’m just regurgitating the wine I’ve made from sour grape after sour grape, or maybe the patterns have become clearer with age. Though, I seldom believe there is a cookie-cut means to get what you want out of life, I now know some of the things I’ve done wrong, and I hope that the people freaking out about the future can benefit from these stories. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Devil's in the Details</h3>
<p>I was at a networking meeting a while back, and I met a fairly well-off composer who decided to imbue me with a few nuggets of wisdom. Here is an abridged version of our conversation: </p>
<p><strong>Seasoned Composer:</strong> What do you do? </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> I am a composer. </p>
<p><strong>SC:</strong> What kind? </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Film Composer. </p>
<p><strong>SC:</strong> What kind? </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Orchestral? </p>
<p><strong>SC:</strong> Wrong answer. </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> What!? </p>
<p>Then, he proceeds to sigh and scold me for not knowing exactly who I am in this mix. Like I need another existential crisis... I had the same moment happen to me in an undergrad counterpoint class. I ended up using a lot of 6th chords in a piece and my teacher pretty much told me in the middle of class that I clearly don’t know what to feel since I was being “harmonically aloof.” Take that, ex-girlfriends who used to call me sensitive! Haha! I’m dead inside! Wait... That can’t be good. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">They'll Put A Chameleon Anywhere</h3>
<p>I had another moment where I met an assistant to a huge film composer. We got drinks and I picked his brain, then he asked me what I can do: </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Well I have a Bachelors in contemporary writing and production. A Masters in composition. I taught audio tech for about six years, interned and worked in studios, wrote songs for multiple bands and ensembles, did music journalism... </p>
<p><strong>Assistant Composer: </strong>Whoa... there’s your problem. You can do everything, but that doesn’t send the right message to people because they won’t connect you with the thing you want to do, they’ll put a chameleon anywhere. What do you want to be known for? </p>
<p><strong>Me:</strong> Composition </p>
<p><strong>AC:</strong> What kind? </p>
<p><strong>Me: </strong>The kind that pays the bills. </p>
<p><em>(We both laugh as we cry a little on the inside) <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/6443798aa767b30e5caf98eb4d7bb14268075caa/original/d2e336ec-e33d-4f5d-a014-26c9fa9049a8.jpeg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpeg" class="size_m justify_right border_" /></em></p>
<p>He had a point, as well as a job, which I was jealous of. I want to tell you I heeded his warnings, but I didn’t. Because a brother needs to eat. But a brother doesn’t want to compromise the point of his moving all the way to the other side of the country. So, I sought out local film groups, fell back on the kind of work that I could do in passing: Sound editing and operations, and snuck in a nugget of music here and there since. Here’s the thing about that. When you start seeing a little bit of money trickle in, it is very easy to stay in that spot for a long time. It’s what the French call <em>Le Compromise</em>. But even when your wallet is half-thanking you for feeding it crumbs, and your body is castigating and hugging you for having the health insurance needed to function as something more than a half-played JENGA board, you feel empty. You feel this looming shadow of wasted potential. So, what do you do? Where is the compromise? Truthfully, most composers (and general musicians, actually) have a day job. They teach. They do real estate. They dog walk. Then they write when they can while trying to not let life get in the way. But herein lies MY problem: I can easily do that. I can jump back into hotels, be a professor again, whatever the case... but the schedule of a composer is not the same as a schedule for a performer. You can take gigs at night and still have the semblance of a normal life during the day. When the phone rings for a composer, it's always a bad time, and your always needing the paycheck, and it's a scurrying motion to get things done to not only maintain a good relationship but also stay mildly interesting.</p>
<p>A week for me can look like this: </p>
<p><strong>Monday:</strong> No Calls</p>
<p><strong>Tuesday:</strong> No Calls</p>
<p><strong>Wednesday:</strong> crying myself to sleep over unpaid bills. No Calls</p>
<p><strong>Thursday-Friday:</strong> "Hey we need you to write the underscore for this, we need it tomorrow. Write all night, fall asleep on table, get coffee and work while drinking coffee, think about what I need to finish on the walk back, mercilessly sync my notes, and then make a broadcast worthy mockup, send it in before the clock strikes twelve. Get told that my work needs tweaking/or it gets accepted and then I get told my hard work can't be paid in full. </p>
<p><strong>Saturday:</strong> No Calls</p>
<p>Its hard to have a normal life when you are on-call at any moment. But writing music IS life to me. No doubt, every odd job I've ever had has contributed to the kind of person I am. But I always attribute it to how it has and will make me a better composer. </p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Finding Music Everywhere</h3>
<p>Before Berklee, I was a snot-nosed kid working on two Associate degrees at a local community college. I was forced to take a few history courses, and lamented about how irrelevant topics like: Martin Luther's fight with Catholic Indulgences, or Roman battle strategies, or endless articles on who painters and sculptors were. We barely covered anything on music. I had a teacher who took special interest in me and told me that my problem was that I couldn't find music in everything I was poised to learn about, and if I just opened my mind a bit, it would help in the long run. He then would side-bar me from time to time and ask what song could describe certain historical events and characters we were covering. Then he told me to write music that could best describe how a person reading about said historical things could relate to it. I didn't know it then, but he was pretty much telling me how to be a commercial composer without any music lessons. He was encouraging me to find music in visuals, empathize with those that read and wrote history, and gain a scholarly perspective that could contribute to society for the better. This seems a little out of the subject, but the reason this story is important is because even when I compromise my composition skills in favor of cash as a sound operator/ editor, I am still always whispering my top skills to my peers, who eventually take a chance on me from that angle. When I do dialogue scrubbing, I am always looking at the best way to showcase the human voice with presence and character for the next vocal project I have to write. When I do sound design, I flex my musicality with things that are anything but musical. The foley studio is my orchestral pit. The shot list is my score. My cues are physically manifested into on-axis boom pickup. Then when the job is done, and I have enough cash for rent, I take what I learn, and make something more different than the last thing musically. The only thing about doing that is I can end up scoring a writing gig while balancing sound mixing and sound operations, and I have to push myself extra hard to not let my other jobs take away from the experience of writing the music. I'm not going to lie, it is hit or miss a lot of the time.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Practicing What You Preach</h3>
<p>When I first moved to California. I panicked. I thought I had to be traditional and seek out my market through job apps like <em>Indeed</em> and <em>Glassdoor</em>. It should've been easy considering my experience and education spoke for itself, right? Wrong! I spent the better part of every day writing cover letters, and tweaking resumes to no sort of response. It bothered me. But, then I got into a habit of writing a short piece of music every time I got rejected. I stopped holding the schools I went to accountable for my lack of work because I realized that is not what they are meant to do. They are meant to teach you what you need to know so you don't look like an asshole in your career choice. Though they have networking boards, they don't owe you anything except knowledge. They don't even owe you a passing grade. You owe it to yourself. Grant it, tuition could be cheaper as a result, but the prestige of a college coat of arms allows you to get a smirk here and there when in the right place, at the right time. I stopped robotically using the job apps, and opted for any moment that I could meet with people in the flesh. I'll cover my thoughts of music school for another time. But thinking outside the score has allowed me to engage with more people than anticipated. I've spoken my mind on scripts, camera shots, business dealings, and acting performances, and I've always come from an honest and direct place. Most importantly, I've managed to adapt my musical skills to my guttural instincts when approached about things that are out of my scope. If I don't hear music in your log line, then we got a problem. If I don't see a cadence to your performance, perfect authentic or not, we have a problem. This is where I tell you I am super successful because of it. But I'm not. I barely make rent, and I am consistently trying to pull attention in a place that has already been stretched thin. But, I am more self-aware of my skills and motivations than I've ever been before. It's good to know one's value and be able to use it in a unique way. It's also good to know I've been right about myself since I was a kid. I always said I was going to be a professional musician. I always said I would move to California. Now, like a mantra, I keep telling myself that these certainties I've always had will lead me to the kind of balance needed to sustain myself, and hopefully a family one day.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">Be The Cable</h3>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/66ec27be3d457b6e631301590c22f5bac068d101/original/b194e48a-72e7-4afe-a691-75300abb9d71.jpeg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpeg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />The job apps don't know your value. You do. While you waste time scratching your head about how to list out your performances and freelance work on a profile made for any other occupation but yours, or wondering why your primary instrument is unable to be selected in a list of skills, you could be putting yourself out there. You've spent this crazy amount of time trying to entertain strangers with your art, and you are good at it. Now, spin it, and make those strangers know your value and skill. I can't promise you will be successful, nor do I know your current state. I can't speak for your experience. You might be living the dream. Then again, you might be living the dream deferred. I can say that if you are lucky enough to know where your skills are best used and have been trying to pursue it but feel a little exhausted, uninspired, or just stagnant, that you aren't alone. If you are stuck in a rut, find the music you want to make in all the things you do (even if music isn't your thing, read between those lines). Remember, that you are a composer of life. You get to balance tension with release. You get to play with harmony and dissonance. Some parts of you sound better as a solo, while others are better <em>Tutti</em>.</p>
<p>The goal is: to be as creative in what you do day to day as you are when you put on the cape and cowl of the musician. This allows you to treat every conversation you have with a stranger about music to be a networking event. This makes a frivolous social media post into a marketing ploy of your brand. It makes every show you've binged on <em>Netflix</em> and every match you played on <em>Smash Brothers</em> research and development. You just need to hear the music. </p>
<p>When I taught <em>Intro to Audio Tech</em> class, I had to train people on how to properly roll cables. The over-under technique is a standard for all techs. Before I would show them the steps, I would always tell them that no matter how knotted the cables seemed, they want to be rolled properly. One end will always want to curl in the way to make it easy to exist. I'd tell them to think of it like their own lives. Nobody ever starts off wanting to be disorganized and tied in endless time-consuming knots. No... you want balance. Be the cable. You make a wrong turn, and the cable will won't pay out right, but its not useless (yet), it just takes time to get back into a state of usefulness. </p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/58530712019-08-13T18:28:31-07:002022-05-27T08:04:26-07:00REAL Sound Operating<p>I have been a boom operator in a handful of projects since I moved to California. It’s the most physical form of expression as a sound guy in film, and it allows you the opportunity to meet great people and learn from all the great folks behind the cameras. When you’ve worked in a studio doing sound editing and composition, you work within a very controlled setting. In a studio, you reinforce the acoustics, you position the microphones, and ensure the tech is fully functional for the tasks at hand. The only real wild card is the performers, who pay by the hour to ensure a creative and/or accurate representation of their music. In sound editing and composition, you are even more static as a result of sitting in a room for hours at a time trying to harness broadcast-ready sounds. But on set, there are so many things that can and will go wrong, that you have to be alert, mobile, and sensitive to any of the potential speed bumps the sound editors could have when playing around with the work you capture. The hours are long. Your arms will feel like jello. Your feet will feel like a pile of broken glass held together by a leather bag... but by the end of the day, you truly feel like you were part of the moments the story aims to create. <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/047c15278bc3b34fc22fbbd03be17c3b8f16c7b1/original/56900900-10156283168982452-8156127553480818688-n.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>I have been working on a comedy series for the better part of the year as a boom operator and sound editor. There are only two settings, both in-doors, and it is formatted to be more like a documentary style, influenced by the likes of <em>The Office</em>. The place we film is a community center that allows us to film on only Sundays between the hours of 9AM to 5PM. The show is supported by a multitude of very funny actors and actresses, who bring their A-game every time they are called to perform. Majority of our production issues fall upon the acoustics and atmospheric interference from the community around us. So... me. </p>
<p>The community center theater section where we shoot our wide shots and where the bulk of the stories reside, is very tall with a smooth cement floor with just as smooth walls. So, you can guess that everything is highly reflective. If I were in the studio then I would have something to dissipate all the reflections, and use a nice close directional microphone to get some sweet proximity effect. However, we are actually filming scenes, and the setting is important. It is also important to recognize that we couldn't attach the boom to the camera because it picks up all the mechanical sounds of the camera, including the manual focus flip which would get heavy use with many turn-arounds. </p>
<hr><p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_large"><strong>A Lav-less relationship</strong></span></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/a95292efa7970722334169dcc351f3c065976854/original/52825976-10156189398712452-5506459973997035520-n.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />I am sure some of you would be poised to recommend a nice lavaliere microphone taped to the sternum of the folks talking. And at one point I did consider it, however our production team was bare minimum: Camera and Sound guy. Our DP/director also wanted to maximize productivity while keeping the supporting crew at an essential minimum. He wanted to make sure that what we captured sound and the shots all in one place, so that he could chop it up, and then send me the sound file to balance, mix, and edit. So, that meant no field recorder, direct connection to the camera, and a lot of moving around to the minimal limits of how far my headphones and microphone cables would allow me. Also, I hate lavaliere microphones. Say what you want about them, but I have yet to find one that I don’t eventually replace with a boom take. If a manufacturer of lavaliere microphone reads this and wants to prove me wrong, I would be happy to test anything anyone sends me, and will honorably concede my biases if proven wrong, but so far, they are garbage to me. Besides, a good shotgun microphone will accurately capture the angle and depth of its subject. Since I am working with a single camera, tangled with the cameraman, there is a natural element to this that one can appreciate. </p>
<p>However another issue with the room falls in the location. Though it is a big place, the walls are rather thin. It is located in the center of a park and neighborhood where children play, and the homeless loiter. Not to mention every plane and motorcyclist in Long Beach feel it necessary to ride around that area regularly. These atmospheric disturbances are nine-times-out-of-ten the reason why we spend a lot of time on each episode. These are not situations that you can easily remove from the takes, and the frequencies cut right through the mids in a way that can’t be EQ’d while someone has a monologue. Also the shot and sound have to be on point at the same time, because everything is smushed together. That is why you have to have a strong production partnership. The camera man and I are constantly communicating. If I hear one disturbance, it will more than likely need to be a cut. But, since I am also the sound editor, I also know the threshold of my own abilities to discern between allowable and irreconcilable problems. Though I absolutely loathe the idea of fixing things in post, sometimes you need to cut your losses and accept what happens and make a mental note of how to fix it later. If a car rolls through the neighborhood or a kid skateboards close-by, the actors will still perform, the director will look at me, and if I make a crazy face, they know when to cut. This takes me back to my days in the bands when we would jam out on stage and we had special gestures and looks we would give each other to continue a phrase or end it. </p>
<hr><p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_large"><strong>De Noise is De Problem</strong></span></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/f65ff0301024755c2d9824d6b972d6b06d223317/original/57015669-10156283025417452-2776024417820475392-n.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" />Air, hiss, and rumble come with the territory, but those are easily fixable when rinsed thoroughly with a restorative de-noising plugin. I played around with the <strong>Era-D</strong> and <strong>Isotope RX</strong>. I can’t ultimately say its a fix for all, but after a couple passes, it does make things sound cleaner. De-reverb hasn’t been too great to me. If you try to use such a plugin with a subject that has lots of room tone, they end up sounding extremely hollow. Same thing can happen with the de-noising plugins, and you can run the risk of artifacts being introduced. Its a rarity for me, but that is usually a result of proper mic placement. Depth is a matter of taste. There are a handful of reputable de-reverb plugins, but ultimately it depends on the shot. If it is a wide angle, I will most likely leave in the reflections because the space is captured on film. If everything sounded up close, then it wouldn’t fit right with what people are seeing on screen, and that would take them out of the moment. Right, <em>Dark Knight Rises</em>? So I am eyeballing exactly where my mic needs to be to minimize the level of reflective capture while keeping a strong focus on the subjects at hand, while trying my best to stay out of the shot. That can and has become a conflict of interest between myself and the camera man, but every good relationship has some compromise in it, and that means one or both of us contorting our bodies in a weird position to give each other space while doing our best to get the shot we intend. Sometimes I cheat it with the actors, where I will place my boom through a crowd and have the actors hold it to make the shot work while cheating the audience into thinking they have a nice close response even when I am not there. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr><p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_large"><strong>Nothing's As It Memes</strong></span></p>
<p>When I work on albums, I try to use reference albums so I know how I want my mixes and tones to be. Realistically, when I decide to do the sound editing, my reference television shows would be more documentary-based, like <em>The Office</em>. However, the sound guys/gals on these award winning shows have either never posted their techniques or it is unbelievably hard to find when the Google search of "The Office Production" vary between websites on staplers and legit 90% of the memes on the internet. So, the musician in me falls back on my ear-training and dictation skills, except instead of intervallic relationships in music, I am trying to recreate mixing and miking techniques through tonal associations. It would be an absolute honor to talk shop with one of these talented folks and see how they handle everything, that way if we get to do a second season, I can arm myself with the tools necessary to be even more efficient. Everyone has their style, and some are more successful than others. All are valid as long as you get the job done. But until then, I am happy to share my experiences in the hopes that someone out there doing something similar to me, can build from it and render fantastic results. </p>
<hr><p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/374666/68ea00d0da3529e370c542c8fcfd0b145bac5167/original/61780415-10156428633603358-5907573360681811968-o.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Real Acting</strong> is in the distribution ether, and will soon be available to stream on Amazon. </p>
<p> </p>Jehad Choatetag:jehadchoate.com,2005:Post/58442302019-08-05T16:10:00-07:002023-12-10T09:25:01-08:00The First Year is the Hardest<p>All of my friends who have built a foundation in Southern California have pretty much sang the same song to me. It has only been eleven months, and aside from the glorious amounts of rejection I’ve received occupationally in the beginning, I have become more self-aware than I have been in almost a decade. But, its not that I lived in a perpetual state of blissful ignorance while in Orlando. I just dedicated my energy to one focus at a time. </p>
<p>In 2011, I moved back to my hometown of Orlando, after living in Boston for a bit. After I graduated Berklee, I was already in a weird disposition. I knew I had a $100k+ student loan debt looming over me, my parents were retiring; I didn’t feel equipped to face the world I coveted, and time just seemed to stop. I felt like I just ended a long-term relationship with my music career because prior to the schooling I felt like everything I did (my guitar playing, my songwriting, etc.) was at this high caliber until I witnessed better people than I, and I turned inwards. The hardest part was how supportive my loved ones have been, because I’d spent the first half of my life thinking I deserved it, and this portion feeling kind of useless. Then as the years passed quickly, all the people I comfortably played music with, moved on with their lives to become something else, and the people who still played wanted my advice more than my abilities. I still kept my nose down and wrote, but I felt like I had dug myself into a hole that I would probably never come out of.</p>
<p>The first year back was hard. I took on a job at a hotel, because I had a background in front desk work, and despite my absolute adoration for the people I worked with; my heart was never in it. But sometimes we need familiarity to make life’s transitions feel less jarring. Six months into working at that hotel, I still felt off. I thought: maybe I just need school in my life. I graduated Berklee early, mainly because I tested out of a bunch of classes and was doing obscene amounts of approved credit hours just so I could learn as much as possible. I think the highest I got to was about 24 hours in a semester, while still writing for the paper, and playing with a band. So, I applied to the University of Central Florida’s master program. I got in, and started juggling graduate school with hotel work. But I still felt empty. That is when some of my former teachers at the local community college contacted me and told me I would be a perfect fit as an adjunct professor. I interviewed and I got in. I worked the hotel for three final months, taught my first class, and took a tedious research and bibliography class. I then spent a year or so just focusing on my degree and teaching, but the money was not very good, and especially when Sallie Mae kept knocking on my door to happily take most of my paycheck, I was put into a position of needing to sell some of my worldly possessions just to stay afloat. </p>
<p>My best friend worked at a high profile retail store and nudged me to start working there to supplement my income. That was the best decision I could have made at that point in my life, because that place not only got me financially balanced, but paid for my masters, and had some of the finest human beings I’ve ever met. I spent three and a half years there, graduated with my degree, put out an album, worked on some short films and jingles, taught some of the most promising students, and bonded better with my childhood friends. Yet, I still felt empty. It is these moments when you question your own sanity. I kept wondering if I was just an insatiable person, or I just didn’t find the right kind of sustenance yet. Seven years had passed since I came home, and all I could muster up in my mind was that I was in a perpetual state of feeling everything and nothing at all. </p>
<p>My current roommate, and long time friend, had already moved out to SoCal for years, and was really coming up in his own way. He kept telling me I was in a prime position to do some good, but I needed to act on it. After much convincing on his behalf and a series of disappointments on my side of the world, I decided to move. I have been terrified ever since. See, the weird thing about moving to Boston was I knew I wasn’t going to stay there once I met my goals. The weirder thing about returning to Orlando was I knew I wasn’t going to stay there once I figured my life out. The weirdest part about Los Angeles is even though my short term goals are to make money with all the skills I have acquired as a musician, I am learning how to be my truest self in the process. I don’t know if it is the location, or the fact that I am thirty-two, but in my life-long quest to make things happen, this is the first time I have not had the need of being detached. I had developed a strong ability of being both highly connected and emotionally detached for some time, but this LA version of me has stirred the pot. </p>
<p>I’ve been keeping a journal since I was six or eight years old, documenting every new sensation or experience I have ever had because I couldn’t trust my memories. At an early age, I knew I had to write about what mattered with the best communication skills I could muster up, and then years later I would explicate the moments and why this was the best word I could use to describe a person, place, or thing. I would juxtapose how I remembered the moment, to see why my wild imagination emphasized some things over others. The thing is: I didn’t keep a journal of my time in Boston. I was having too much fun expressing my thoughts publicly, and I ended working as a journalist anyways. Save the occasional blog on Facebook, I haven’t been keeping up with my journal here either. No doubt, I have plenty stories and experiences to write about, but I’ve gathered that I don’t journal when I fully embrace living in the moment. I don’t second guess my feelings, thoughts, or relationships. I know what needs to be done, and I do it. I don’t label or define everything like I used to, because I just accept how things fall in and out of place and react appropriately. </p>
<p>Sure, the first few months living here were hard. But, we all experience growing pains. I am not some happy shiny person. I still get home sick. I still get frustrated. I still experience my crippling bouts of loneliness mixed with the irrational desire to push people away. That is just a part of me. But my work ethic, networking skills, musical abilities, unstoppable ability to tell a story, and overall disarming charm are also a part of me. Every friend I’ve ever made is also a part of me. Every song that is in my repertoire is in me, too. Even with the strength of my mother, and the courage of my father as honorable badges placed upon my heart, I get rejected all the time, but I also get referred all the time now, too. I will never say the grass is greener on the other side. It’s the same no matter where you go, but we do what we can with what we have. What do I have right now? I have skill and value, love and wisdom, heart and soul... and all the music in the world in my corner. Here’s to the next year, California. Let’s see if we can turn it up a notch.</p>Jehad Choate