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Deep Field Dreaming
Whenever I get a little lonely, or I start to feel like I’m not part of something important or great, I look at the Hubble deep field photograph and imagine myself flying through it...
New Composition Reel
I compiled a playlist featuring samples of some of my compositions. It features a variety of styles and genres I've tackled over the years. Some of these are your first chance to hear samples from the indie film score I spent much of last year composing. Some are from short films, commercials, web series, podcasts and other projects.
How To Discover Your Personal Philosophy in Three Steps
It’s become a bit of a running joke in a group of my friends: hang out with me long enough, especially if you add a few beers into the mix, and I quickly become philosophical. I can’t help it, really. I’ve always been bored to tears by small talk and am often guilty of jumping straight into the deep end of a conversation without letting it properly warm up. While I realize not everyone is like that, I’m occasionally surprised at how many people seem to live their life without any philosophical context. By that I mean a lot of folks seem to be going about their daily motions without thinking too deeply or asking questions about why they’re doing what they’re doing. Will this decision advance me toward my personal goals? Does that action truly align with my values? Will that next tequila shot make me puke in my Uber? (That answer is usually "yes.")
Clean Jimmy Sheen: A Danny Elfman-esque Score
My good friend Adam Hann-Byrd wrote and illustrated a children's book called Clean Jimmy Sheen, and I composed music for the 30-second teaser trailer he created for it. Take a look/listen and learn more about this imaginative story!
Shouting Into the Crowd
Sharing your creations online is kind of like shouting into a large, loud, busy crowd...
How To Be an Artist With a Day Job
There are fifty thousand articles online about turning your creative passion into a full-time career (that's an exact number I counted myself, so no need to check if it’s accurate). Many of said fifty thousand articles include very good advice. You should read them and maybe take what they say to heart. But there aren’t many articles tackling the far more common situation: being an artist and having a—*gulp*—day job.
The Zen of Film Scoring: Always Change Your Pants Before Recording
With my work on the film score nearing completion, I am focusing most of my creative energies on getting it finished. I have many ideas for general creativity-themed blog posts in the near future, but until I can spend the required time writing them, I give you this film score-centric post to tide you over.
It turns out scoring a film requires developing some creative philosophies (the importance of which I detailed here), using some extremely advanced techniques (and by advanced I mean not particularly advanced, you see what I did there?) and making some interesting discoveries and observations along the way. Here are seven examples from my recent experience.
How (and Why) to Establish Your Creative Philosophy
Creativity and philosophy go hand-in-hand in crucial ways. In fact, you will have trouble making any worthwhile art without first understanding the philosophy behind it. Luckily, it's easy to achieve in a few simple steps.
The Snowman: A Guitar Reimagining
While I dislike the commercial compulsion to push the beginning of the Christmas season so far back it essentially starts on Halloween, I'm hoping this piece of music I'm sharing with you is obscure enough that it won't be conjuring any visions of sugarplum fairies in mid-November.
The Zen of Film Scoring: The Sonic Palette
During my first week of procrastinating/working very hard on the score for I Hate You, I was naturally a bit curious to learn more about the methods and techniques of established composers. Spending time pretending to pick up tips from the pros was an excellent way to avoid the fact that I was freaking out about how the hell I would successfully pull this shit off. One YouTube video wound up being a big inspiration, but not in the way I had initially imagined.
How to Organize Your Entire Creative (And Personal) Life in Three Steps
Juggling work, personal and creative lives can get complicated. After years of trying to make it happen, I finally figured out a system that's both simple and effective.
The Zen of Film Scoring: A Blank Canvas
I'm currently knee-deep in scoring a feature-length independent film. I think it's about time I started telling you alllll about it.
How To Use "Ironic" Properly: A Public Service Announcement
Irony is one of the most consistently misunderstood terms in the English language. I can't claim that I've always used the word properly myself in the past; in fact, I once had a friend call me out on misusing it in a Facebook comment. I then channeled the extreme pain I felt from that public grammar shaming into an intense study session to learn the true definition of irony.
6 Major Pitfalls for Guys to Avoid When Online Dating
They say you learn more from failing at something than from succeeding. If that’s the case, I’ve learned quite a bit about the online dating world over the years. Still, you’ve only really learned from your failures if you can adjust your actions to achieve some success, so a 100% failure rate doesn’t make you an expert so much as an idiot who refuses to take a hint. To that end, I’ve also had some success—more as time went on, in fact. So while I’m obviously not claiming that I’m the greatest online dating expert of all time, I can confidently say I have learned some useful and important truths when it comes to making it work.
You’re Doing It Wrong: Happiness
Ah, the pursuit if happiness, an American institution so beloved it’s scribbled on a little piece of our country’s history we call the Declaration of Independence. Surely a man from Philadelphia, the very town in which that historic document was signed, would never dare to criticize such a hallowed phrase.
Of course I would, because this is the Internet and I have the power to tell an adoring public my self-important opinions. I’m going to wield that power like crazy right now, because this one’s a doozy: happiness is a lie, and contentment is overrated.
How To Never Be Bored and Always Have Fun
Boredom is a part of life, you might say. You can’t have fun all the time. Sometimes things are slow and there’s nothing you can do about it. Being bored is an unfortunate but inevitable reality.
Except that isn’t exactly true. Boredom left unchecked often means we’re just not trying hard enough. In fact, I’d argue that boredom is not only good, it’s necessary.
4 Songs That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
Despite the contingent of hardcore fans who think I'm infallible, I am but a human being who puts his pants on two legs at a time and occasionally makes mistakes. For example, there have been several times where I've wildly misinterpreted the meaning of a song. It happens to the best of us.
How to Calculate the Exact Worth of Your Time: A Handy Guide
There’s an old adage that time is money, but this is America in the 21st century, so vague-ass statements like that don’t fly anymore. Everything needs to be super-specific now. You can’t just find out how many people are visiting your website, you need to know how long they spent there, what pictures they looked at and what their dog’s name is. No longer can we settle for simply equating time with money, we need to figure out exactly how much money every second of our time is worth so we can bill accordingly. The fact that I’m adding a superfluous sentence to this paragraph has probably slightly enraged someone reading it right now because it just took up a few seconds of their billable time.