Adam Blau Transcript
Adam Blau:
First one is, just to keep writing and keep trying new things, to say yes to various projects, especially as you're just getting started. The people who you work with, even on some small shoestring budget, or no budget, project, down the road, will be working on something else. Or whether it's their own project or another one that they can recommend you for. The experience of working on projects where you have to wear all the hats instead of just being the composer where you have to produce and arrange and all of those kinds of things. That experience is invaluable.
Leah Roseman:
Hi. You're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. Adam Blau is a composer and songwriter based in Los Angeles, who's written the music for Netflix's "Dead to Me", the Academy Award nominated short, "My Year of Dicks", and many other projects, including, "You're the Worst" and "Brockmire". In this wide-ranging conversation, punctuated by music, used with permission, we talked about many things, including Adam's many musical influences growing up in New York City, his work for the Fred Rogers Institute and his reflections as a parent.
He has wonderful advice for composers interested in breaking into the film industry and shared some of his creative process with us. Adam is a warm and engaging musician with a real love for music across many genres. He shares how he pivoted from working as a performer in bands to composing full-time, and we explored many of his diverse projects. Like all my episodes, this is available as a podcast on your favorite podcast player, a video on YouTube and a transcript. Everything is linked in the description to my website, leahroseman.com. I've included detailed timestamps if you want to jump to the music or any specific topics. Hi, Adam. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Adam Blau:
Hi, Leah. It's great to meet you.
Leah Roseman:
So it was suggested that I interview you because you're the composer of the Netflix series "Dead To Me", at that point I hadn't heard of it, but I completely got hooked, and my husband and I, we watched all three seasons. We loved it.
Adam Blau:
Excellent. I'm so glad. Yeah. It was a blast to work on and I'm glad that you had the opportunity to see it.
Leah Roseman:
And the music, it's interesting for anybody who's seen the show because there's your music, which is mostly suspenseful and a lot of emotions, and then I assume you chose all the classic songs that are used, that's really the flavor.
Adam Blau:
The majority of those, actually, we worked with a fabulous music supervisor, Tricia Halloran, who worked to get all of those pieces licensed for the show. But a lot of that tonal, a lot of the music from the show, the general tone throughout was driven by the creator of the show, Liz Feldman, who is a fan of music from that era and thought it would be appropriate for this show. But there definitely was a lot of discussion about how to balance the tone of the songs that were used in the show and to use what would create an effective score and for what is ostensibly a comedy, how we would balance the tone of all of those different elements to create a musical universe for the show.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, okay. It's interesting because, I mean, it reduced your workload because they use the songs so much, right?
Adam Blau:
That is often the case, and I will say that as a composer, but also as somebody who does a lot of work with music editors and music supervisors, it is always a useful discussion to have to figure out whether a moment in a project should be a licensed song or whether it should be score or some combination of the two sometimes, and how best to balance that. And I am a big believer in if a moment calls for a song, use that song. And I think that within a given project, those different types of music can create such a different emotion and just a different tone for a scene. And similarly, I'm also of the mind that there are moments when silence can really just speak volumes as well. So figuring out when there should be music, what that music should be, how it should sit and if it should be processed in any unique way can create such a different vibe for a show. And I always enjoy being part of those discussions on each show.
Leah Roseman:
So was that plan to be three seasons at the beginning?
Adam Blau:
From the outset, I actually don't know if from episode one, if they were preparing for a three season arc. You never know in this day and age just how many seasons you're going to get. I know that after the first season when there definitely was a good audience generated around the show, that it was clear that we would at least get one and hopefully two more seasons. But what I will say is that going into the final season, we knew that it was going to be the final season of the show. So we were allowed to, not every show has that luxury of knowing that they're going to be able to end the story arc and tie all the emotional moments in a bow. And thankfully we did know that it was going to be the final season and were able to reach that closure.
Leah Roseman:
Do you know if Liz Feldman had heard other of your work that she was instrumental in hiring you?
Adam Blau:
She definitely had heard my work. We had worked together before on a number of projects. Actually, she was involved in one of my very first musical projects when I first moved to L.A. She was doing live comedy at the time, and she had a show that she had worked on with another person who I've worked with repeatedly, Pamela Ribon, and I knew Pam through my brother actually, and wrote a couple of songs for a stage show that they were doing. And met Liz then, and then had written music some years later for a short film she had written at AFI. And we'd kept in touch throughout the years and I know there was a process putting together music or figuring out the composer for "Dead to Me", and she ended up bringing me on at the end of the filming of that as they were heading into post-production. And so yeah, I think I wrote a couple of demo cues for a few seasons in that first episode and it went from there.
Leah Roseman:
Now, before we started recording today, we were just discussing what music we might be able to share with my audience. So can you explain, of course, you don't have the rights to share the music from the show.
Adam Blau:
Right. Yeah. So I would say most of the music that I write for television and film, it's created as a work for hire, which means that I'm basically a hired gun. I retain none of the ownership of the music itself. It belongs with the show and for legal reasons, it makes sense if they sell the show to another company or want to distribute it, it makes sense that the companies don't have to jump through hoops or relicense everything to be able to achieve that. If you look back at some shows from the 1970s or '80s or before where music was just used willy-nilly, a lot of times some of those shows will be unavailable for years as they go back and try and relicense some of the tracks or swap in tracks.
And the production companies have gotten smart about that and made it easier for themselves now. So I don't have the ability to have those tracks used in the show. In order to hear the music and its full glory, get a Netflix subscription and then watch it in context. But yeah, I do not have, unfortunately, the liberty to be able to share the original tracks, I guess on this podcast.
Leah Roseman:
But what you can share are sketches that you've done?
Adam Blau:
Yeah. Actually at the end of Dead to Me, I put together a piano suite of some of the themes from the show. And I am originally a piano player. I come from, my mother is a piano teacher, so there's something that is very special to me and unique to just have solo piano arrangements of some of the themes. I definitely grew up learning a lot of scores and music in that form, buying the sheet music at Sam Ash or what have you, and learning to play some of the scores that way. So I wanted to create a memento really for some of the staff on the show and for myself. And I created a piano arrangement of a lot of the themes and that those I, yes, I am happy to share.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. Thanks so much.
Adam Blau:
Sure.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. There's so many places I want to go. I did not know that your mother was a piano teacher and I'm fascinated. Did she teach you?
Adam Blau:
She started me out, I think when I was very young, three, four. I should say, she taught in the house. And so it basically was the soundtrack of my childhood for me and my siblings. We would come home from school and we'd be doing homework, and in the next room I'd be hearing Clementi Sonatinas and Hanon, and all of any number of things, and I mean for hours upon hours on end. And so it's just ingrained there back in my head. And she was a single parent as well. So oftentimes we'd be having dinner, my siblings and I just ourselves, and it would still be playing in the background. Because it was just such a constant, it never was grating, it was just there. And so she started me, started teaching me when I was probably in some formal way when I was three or four, but there were pianos in the house.
So even as a younger than that, we were going up and playing a piano and getting familiar with the keys and all of that. By the time I would say five or six, I think she quickly realized that she didn't want to have to be both a parent and a teacher to me in that regard. And thankfully, we lived in this weird little neighborhood where both our next door neighbor and our across the street neighbor were also piano teachers. So it was easy enough to just go next door and have Mrs. Gomlek, who lived next door to me teach me from there. And then from there, I moved on to a teacher that focused in jazz specifically. I took lessons as I was getting older that focused on that end of things. And from there I moved to a classical piano teacher, and then I got very lazy about practicing. So by the time I was in high school, I was mostly playing in bands and using those building blocks to further along from there.
Leah Roseman:
When did you start writing music?
Adam Blau:
So as part of my piano lessons, even very early on when I was six or seven, there was always a drive to create. And so even if it was a basic thing, my piano teacher next door would say, "Why don't you take a melody?" And it was in a very formal way, write a melody and then come up with harmonies underneath it. And so I got the basic building blocks there, but I would say most of the bands that I was in high school and up to college, I guess were cover bands more than anything else. I went also to a music summer camp, and I think that's probably where I've got my first real taste at writing anything of what I'd call substance, anything that would be considered more than just a basic exercise. The camp that I was at used and Center for the Performing Arts on Long Island, wonderful arts camp, it has programs in all different disciplines, jazz choir, instrumental ballet.
After I was a camper there, I ended up working in the theater department as an accompanist and a music director. And some of the directors of the shows would have the students create an original show. So one year we did a whole show on urban legends, and one year we did a whole show on, I mean, it got more and more ridiculous. It was summer camp with 12 and 13 year-olds, so they would be trapped in a mall and there were horror things going on, but they would always incorporate songs into them. And a couple of shows in particular, we would generate songs, they would come up with ideas and then I would go back and create actual original theatrical songs for them.
And I'm still friends with some of those people who were campers and other staff to this day. And we still will quote some of these songs. They exist in 1980, '90, really crummy recordings that somebody had a handheld recorder. But we definitely like to listen to them and quote them. And I would say those are some of the earlier examples of songs and music that I had written.
Leah Roseman:
It's funny how our strongest friendships are often from that time in our life because we had time to hang, you know?
Adam Blau:
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and what's fun for me is that to this day, some of those people who I worked with then are still my collaborators. Rachel Axler was a camper with me there. She's gone on to write for any number of things. And we've worked together and just over the last couple of years have written songs for projects that have been on television. And Jordana Williams, formerly Jordana Davis was another friend there, and she now runs a podcast company and I'm writing music for her shows there. And so they are both personal and artistic friendships as well. And I think a lot of that is driven by, we figured it out together or started figuring it out together and have evolved together. And you develop a shorthand in terms of the artistic process. There's less pussy floating around at the beginning and more just diving into, "All right. What are we going to do now? What will we create now?"
And I think there's something great about that. Your inhibitions are down, your filters are down a little bit, and you create something. And you're free to critique each other a little bit, "See, that's not working so well," or, "Why don't we try a different tack?" In a way that might give you pause with somebody you haven't worked with before. I found that with Liz too on Dead To Me, because we had worked together, it was easy to develop a little bit of a shorthand. By the time we were deeper into the show, there would be moments where we would try to figure out what a piece of music should be. She'd look at me and simply say, "You know what to do with this," and I'd say, "Yeah. I got this." And it just definitely facilitated the ease of the process.
Leah Roseman:
Speaking of early projects, I noticed in the 1990s you were involved with Village Harmony?
Adam Blau:
So that's actually not me, that was my wife was involved with Village Harmony.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, okay.
Adam Blau:
But I have come to know Village Harmony through my wife who, well, yeah, she lived in Vermont. And you're familiar with Village Harmony? This is something you know?
Leah Roseman:
Only because a previous guest of mine, Polina Shepherd, will be teaching there the summer. And I saw it on your SoundCloud account, and I made the association.
Adam Blau:
No, of course. Yeah, no, the reason it was there, my wife is an educator now, but she still sings, she sings in choirs here in Los Angeles. But yeah, she grew up with a Village Harmony, and she was just back there. They had a big reunion. Their founder Larry recently passed away. And so they had a tribute to him and a lot of the recordings that they, she had older recordings, and I posted it for them. But yeah, I will say that through my wife and through Village Harmony have come to know so many different new styles of music. My wife introduced me to some of the Bulgarian folk songs and the Sacred Harp, the shape note singing that they do.
And as somebody who tries to, I'm such a fan of music of so many different styles, I think there's definitely a forensics aspect to me to really enjoy hearing a new style of music, to get to know it, see what makes it tick and dissect it a bit. And I've really enjoyed going down that road with some of these other musical styles that I might not otherwise have been exposed to. So no, I love listening to the Village Harmony tracks as well. And I'm excited that my wife, Rebecca Russell is her name, is still so intimately involved with the group as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It seems like a really great organization. And it's international now. They have these camps, it's adults with people of different ages, right?
Adam Blau:
That's right. Yeah. And I guess they have different programs and it has grown. When she was in the group, she likes to talk about it. It was relatively small, but they even then were pretty broad reaching. She ended up going when she was a high school student, spending a long time in Ukraine with host families there and touring around and learning music from the region. So even though it was a relatively smaller ensemble that was flying by the seat of their pants, I know they have definitely structured themselves a little more now and have brought in people from all ages. And I don't want to speak too much about the details of it because I don't want to get them wrong, but by all means, it is a fabulous musical organization, and I know it has brought my wife a lot of joy throughout the years.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So growing up in New York City, were there memorable concerts or experiences you had musically?
Adam Blau:
Absolutely. So I grew up just outside the city, but we were constantly taking the train into the city. We had a very musical household growing up. In addition to just the piano lessons, there was constantly music playing. Whenever we would have family gatherings, my grandfather would take out the guitar and people would gather around playing instruments, singing old standards and filthy limericks and the kinds of things that stick with you as a kid. And so there was just a constant joyous, boisterous musical experience growing up. And that definitely extended to concerts and Broadway plays of all stripes. And I would say to her credit, my mother definitely is, well, she's very passionate about music to this very day. And so there was this natural excitement, "We're going to go to this concert now," or, "Well, let's go see a show."
So as a young child, I'm from New York, so it's obligatory, I went to my first Billy Joel concert at age six, or we would go see the Manhattan Transfer, the jazz group at Westbury Music Fair. Also, I was probably six or seven at that time when we were constantly going in to see plays and musicals. And I think all of them definitely formed this musical sensibility and palette that even to this day, I think part of the reason why I'm so drawn to the work that I'm doing is because it does cull from so many different styles and so many different media and art forms that it is a delightful mishmash of things, and they mix and intertwine. And so I think that full collection of experiences growing up was incredibly formative. I should also say my school system growing up had a fabulous music department.
And I would say, not just for me, but for so many of my classmates who have gone onto musical careers, it was absolutely formative for them. I definitely need to shout out my high school choir director, Larry Holdridge, was just amazing and really I would say helped shape the way that I produce recording sessions or vocal sessions to this day. It just so well organized, but with a smile, but making sure things stay on track, and it just really helped hone what I'm doing. He helped hone what I'm doing today. So I would say those were definitely incredibly rewarding. And as I say, formative experiences for me.
Leah Roseman:
You went to Yale and you were directing musical theater there?
Adam Blau:
So yes, I went to Yale, and this was at a time when their music department was definitely more academic based. It was a lot of Schenkerian analysis and a lot of sort of theory based. And by that time I definitely was more interested in the practical and theatrical, and at that point I was more into the comedy end of things as well. And so while I had started out as a music major, it quickly became clear that the formal music program at that time was maybe not best suited for my interests. Thankfully, there were also some fabulous classes in terms of the detailed analysis of jazz standards. We sort of like with Alan Fort actually went into the, we would analyze the songs of Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern, and we really got to dissect them and actually try to create our own standards in the styles of those songs.
And those were definitely the classes that I was drawn to. But the department as a whole was, as I say, a little more traditionally academic. I should also say that in recent years, they definitely have changed that there's a lot more sort of practical hands-on production is my understanding at least. However, the extracurricular community at Yale was booming in terms of musical opportunities. And I dove in. There is at the time, and there's probably more now, but there was an absurd 16 separate collegiate acapella groups on campus, like full size, each one with 20 or more people or so. And not to mention the Glee Club and the Russian choir and tons of instrumental ensembles and lots of different opportunities for theater as well. And so yes, I would music direct and play productions from "The Wiz" to "City of Angels" to "Once on This Island", "Anyone can Whistle", and also some experimental productions as well.
Live comedy shows that needed somebody to improvise accompaniment in the background. And that actually that is, I feel like is the thing that probably most informed what I'm doing today to be able to watch a scene, see where it's going in real time, and just be able to improvise something underneath what the actors and performers are doing quickly, efficiently, and that highlights what they're doing without stepping on their toes. I feel like it definitely it's a lot of what I draw on today, doing what I do as a composer. But so yeah, I definitely try to take as full advantage of those things as I could. I just came back this weekend from a reunion, for one of the musical groups that I was in. And much like we were talking about before, those people remained some of my best friends to this day. We were made music together, we laughed together. This one particular group was also half music, half comedy. So we just have a rollicking good time together and remain friends to this day.
Leah Roseman:
Was your foray into jazz kind of brief? Because you mentioned when you were a teenager.
Adam Blau:
In terms of formal training, I probably took piano lessons, jazz piano lessons for a couple of years, but it was a constant presence. And I feel like so much of jazz is listening and figuring out and just listening and listening to hear what people are doing. And from my early years, I mean, we would have Lambert Hendricks and Ross, there were Count Basie, a lot of the big band music playing in our house just in the background. There was always something playing. And I loved being able to dissect those harmonies, certainly to what was playing on the radio, just so different and unique. And to be able to, as a growing piano player, sit and figure out the flat nine, 13, or whatever it is to figure out these different chords and say like, "Oh, this is what this is," and then to be able to incorporate it.
So while I took those lessons for a couple of years throughout the years, I would have a few one-off or I would do a stint of a month worth of lessons with a jazz arranger, or I would have the opportunity both through my mother and my stepfather who was a teacher at Hofstra, my stepfather's Herb Deutsch. He was one of the people who created the Moog synthesizer. And I think through those people in those connections, I was able to be able to have these conversations and have access to arrangers and really learn what I could at various times. So I wouldn't say it was a long formal process, but anytime there was an opportunity, I would really enjoy digging into some of those opportunities in later years. Oh, I was also in jazz groups at school, I should say, in our great music department.
And so we'd be in the state jazz band and things like that. And I also took jazz at that same summer camp that I mentioned before when I was a camper as well. And there is nothing like playing in a big band. And really just seeing how those arrangements work, both from a piano point of view and then how the piano fits into the larger whole. I was a saxophone player as well growing up in the school band. So I got approached it from a couple of different angles, and I'm so drawn to that style of arranging, and anytime I can incorporate that in things I do now, I absolutely love it. When I was assisting, I assisted a composer, Chris Beck out here. He's gone on to do things like Frozen and the Hangover and things like big projects, but he had done a film, a Robin Williams film called "License to Wed", he had scored.
While I was assisting him, and I had the opportunity to create a bunch of swingle singers style music that was set for a full orchestra, jazz ensemble and singers, including some actual swingle singers. And I got to arrange it, and it was just heaven for me. This delightful, whimsical, just really full on three minute piece for a full. It's the closing credits of the film if you want to skip ahead and see it. But just to be able to incorporate some of the jazz into what I do, it definitely is something that's dear to my heart.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I think I did come across that when I was researching you. And I'm curious, you mentioned you were assisting him, so did you grow up in that Hollywood apprenticeship system for composers?
Adam Blau:
So I wouldn't say I grew up in it. I was a late starter compared with some of the other composers who are working today. I had been living in New York and had been doing some theater and temp jobs and playing in bands, and started trying to do some of that myself and was playing out. And I quickly came to realize that I definitely was tired of sleeping on hotel room floors and driving in a van to play a show for an hour at 2:00 in the morning. And I was looking for a bit of a career shift at that point and ended up moving out to L.A. probably closer to when I was about 30 and trying to get my feet wet at that point. And at a time when a lot of the budding composers will be, they'll come from USC right out of college and come right from that system.
So it definitely was something that I came too late, and Chris, before Chris, there was another composer, John Swihart, who I did some work for. He scored "How I Met Your Mother" and a lot of TV things as well, one of the sweetest people ever, such a good guy. And he helped me get my footing a little bit in L.A. and I learned a lot from him. And then from there, I moved on to Chris's studio, and it definitely was a discussion when I started working for him, that he's like, "You're not as wet behind the ears," as some of the people who have started working for me. And I guess there's both positives and negatives to that, because I had real jobs and was writing music and doing things, which meant that I maybe was less, in theory, less inclined to deal with some of the grunt work and the long hours and the grueling schedule that is necessary for a composer assistant.
Especially at the time his studio was, it was just the two of us. As many composers do have a, he now has a big staff under him to work with him. But at the time it was a relatively small operation. So I'd be doing everything from preparing tracks for recording sessions to sitting in on spotting sessions, some writing as well, but also going to get a sandwich for lunch for the director and that kind of thing. But really, there was nothing like it, it was bootcamp and I learned so much, and it's just so informative about the different roles that are present in creating music for film and television from the music editor, the music supervisor, the sound mixer. And to see how they operate and all interconnect. So from the logistical standpoint, and to see how the files are managed to be most efficient when trying to keep track of what can be hundreds of pieces of music on multiple projects at various stages of creation and how they relate to different versions of video.
So I just learned so much while I was there. And also from an artistic standpoint, because of the size of the studio at that point, I was privy to everything. So I would sit in on those discussions with directors where they would have the discussion, "Well, if we need to land this comedic moment in a scene, do we hit the final beat when the laugh happens? Do we let the laugh happen and then punctuate it afterwards?" So just the different ways of approaching a given moment on screen, things that might not have naturally occurred to me, it opened my eyes to the types of questions that could and should be asked. And honestly, the politics of how to do that when you're dealing with certain people on a film or dealing with multiple cooks of producers and directors, all having differing opinions, how to diplomatically handle that. So I really learned a tremendous amount while I was with Chris, and it definitely was a big education in the few years that I was there.
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking it might be interesting to talk about your podcast from 2017, Rarefied Air, which I love.
Adam Blau:
Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah. So this is a podcast that focuses on production library music, which for those who may not know is you might just commonly call it stock music as you have stock photography or stock video. So over the years, for many years now, at this point, I've done work with a company that has gone through various iterations. They're now called Formosa Music. They're a music editorial company. And just to reach where we're going to give a little bit of background, music editors have many jobs on a film or television show. From figuring out what the temp score will be, what the overall vibe of the music of the film will be to dealing with a lot of the logistics. I'm not a music editor myself, I work with the music editors to help recommend music for various projects.
So if our music editors are starting out on a film that is, I don't know, a western in space, but that has a medieval flair to it, I don't know, I'd watch that movie. To figure out what preexisting scores might be suitable for that moment to help establish the tone and the pacing, which will ultimately be replaced by an original score. So I'll consult with the music editors as they're starting a film. I have a big collection of film scores dating back almost a hundred years at this point. A lot of unreleased materials that they will use to basically sculpt placeholder scores. It's a lot of work that effectively will never get heard, but definitely creates the fingerprint on what the tone will be. So one of the things that I will do at this company is recommend music that falls in that gap between stuff that's not really worth it to have the composer create or to license a song.
So maybe there's a song at a party in the background that's almost inaudible. Maybe it's in a different style of music than the composer on the film is used to writing. But also they don't want to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars licensing a Rolling Stones song. So since the beginning of television and film, there have existed these libraries that have been created of music that can be licensed relatively inexpensively, that can be cleared very easily. There's not a million license holders, and that sounds more or less in that ilk of the style you're looking for. And some of these companies have truly been around for decades. KPM, which is now owned by APM, and De Wolfe music have long histories.
And so in my work at this company, when I would go to find some of these tracks for our editors, I'd find myself maybe... I remember a couple of project in particular where there was a call for authentic sounding music from the 1970s or the 1980s maybe for a corporate industrial video, or there was a sitcom playing in the background of a scene, and they would need music of that ilk. And these libraries have them because they, at the time, were generating music for television shows at that time in the '60s and '70s, and not necessarily for a given project. But they would get a bunch of musicians in the studio and arrange them in a relatively short amount of time and generate this music that was not meant to be heard in itself, but meant to just accompany whatever was going on the screen at the time.
But the musicians who were creating these were fabulous. The arrangers were amazing and went on to do, a lot of them worked on other bigger projects, and they would do this as a side gig. And so as I would research these tracks and try and find things for our editors, I'd find myself just creating playlists for myself because they were so much fun to listen to. And it became clear to me that when I was doing this, there was not as big an outlet for people who wanted to listen to these. And so I would start compiling them, and I ultimately ended up reaching out to several of these libraries and approached them with the idea of, "What if we were to just create a podcast that highlighted a lot of these songs?" And I'm a big fan, I should say also of the radio station, WFMU, which is a New Jersey based radio station that has a lot of eclectic music programming.
And it seemed like in my mind, I was creating a show for them, even if this was a podcast, I wanted it to be more of a thing that would last and not be ephemeral, like a radio show. So I approached a lot of several of the music libraries and some of them bit, and some of them saw the benefit of that and reviewing it as an advertisement for their libraries. I would focus on some of the tracks that they would have, point them back to the library and talk a little bit about the history of some of these tracks and where they may have been used. And yeah, it definitely was a full-on passion project for me. The nature of what it is meant also in our agreement that I couldn't have any advertising or generate income because most of the time when these tracks are used, they're licensed. And it's not like I was going to individually license and pay for these tracks to highlight and bring it back to them. This was just me putting it together, no staff, no nothing.
And so after a while, it became the thing where I let it be for the moment. I still every once in a while want to go back to it, but it's been long enough now that I think I would need to re-up the deals. But yeah, there's just such great music with fabulous musicians and other arrangers who've gone on to amazing things. And I should say also about this, the production library music that's featured on the show, I would say in the last decade and change, a lot of producers, a lot of hip hop producers have discovered this wealth of amazing music and have used it for samples or placement in commercials and various other contexts. And so some of these tracks have been popping up in a lot of great places. Beyonce has used them as tracks as some of her songs.
And so it's been fun seeing this, I don't want to call it a renaissance, but people are paying more attention to these old vintage tracks that were buried for years. And I think in a lot of ways kind of frowned upon a little bit. People view stock music even now as disposable music in some way that it's wallpaper music or background music, but some of it is just so interesting and or unique or of that era. And I absolutely just love to listen to it.
Leah Roseman:
And speaking of podcasts, because you mentioned earlier, I know you've written music for some scripted podcasts.
Adam Blau:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And is the timeline, is it the same time crunch or is it a little more forgiving compared to TV?
Adam Blau:
In the few podcasts that I've worked on... You're saying the same time crunch as working on a television schedule?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Adam Blau:
It is definitely more forgiving, at least in the ones that I've worked on. First of all, you're not dealing with syncing to video, which definitely creates a whole layer of feedback and trying to navigate things as the editorial, as the cuts change, maybe I'll write a piece of music for a video and then they'll reedit the scene after it's written. And so everything shifts and needs to either be rerecorded or reconceived. It definitely simplifies things in that regard. And also because it is an audio medium, at least on the ones that I've worked on, there's not the mentality that every single moment needs to be scored. The group that I've written for has tended to, they come from a theater background of straight plays, non-musical plays, and they liked the scenes to exist in that form with highlighting really only the key parts or transitions.
And so it is definitely a less of a crunch when writing music for podcasts. And in television, you're beholden to so many other aspects of the production that if the filming and the editing get delayed, music comes at the very, very end of the process. So if all of those other things get squeezed towards the final deadline, the final deadline doesn't get changed, but it just makes the window for writing and producing music that much smaller. So I've had to, there was one season of a show that I worked on that wanted me to score two half hour long episodes over the course of three days, which seemed very impossible. We managed to stretch that out to a week, but we got it done. And I will say sometimes it's helpful to have those parameters to know that there's a final deadline and then you're going to be done with it. So whatever can get done by then is what gets done by then. It's a very different approach from creating music for music's sake, because it's part of a larger project.
It's not like when I'm writing music for television or film, it's always one facet of someone else's vision. I'm giving my voice to it and I'm creating, and obviously adding part of me to that project, but ultimately, I'm not the final decision maker on these projects. And so it's a lot of trying to slot that in. And so trying to navigate all of that in a very short amount of time can be challenging, but it's one that I really enjoy doing and that I thrive on. But yeah, podcasts, to go back to your original question, podcasts are definitely a little more relaxed in my experience.
Leah Roseman:
It's always such a pleasure for me when I'm researching guests to, of course, discover a new music, but also side things of people have written books. And in your case, I also checked out some of your shorter projects like that amazing coming of age animation, "My Year of Dicks".
Adam Blau:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Excellent. So good.
Adam Blau:
Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah. No, it's very exciting. At least when we are recording this, we're between, it was just nominated for Best Animated Short for the Oscars as well. So we're now recording this between when it was nominated and the actual ceremony. So who knows what will happen, but it was such a pleasure to work on actually. So that film was created by Pamela Ribon, who was the screenwriter for "Moana" and the "Wreck-It Ralph" sequel. She has a lot of experience with Disney and an animation, but she is also, I know we mentioned earlier in the podcast that one of my first jobs out here was writing music for a stage play, and she was the other person who created that stage play. So I've worked with her throughout the years as well. And it was such a pleasure to work on this.
This was one of her first fully independent, she conceived it, animations, and it really hit all of the notes that we've been talking about in this podcast. It graphs from so many different genres musically and visually. So the film is a coming of age story about a girl in Texas in the 1990s, and her, I'll keep things simple and say her romantic exploits as a teenager, and we enter her mind through a series of letters that she has written. It's in a variety of segments, and each segment has a different tone to it, and it's different animation style, even though it is a little fluid in its animation style, there's a focus in each one. So one might be a monster movie or a 1960s French art film or an anime. And so it was really fun and exciting for me to go down the path of each of those and to figure out how to transition from one style of music into the other while trying to make it all seem like a cohesive hole as well.
And again, having worked with Pam in the past and getting to work anew with the film's animator and director Sara Gunnarsdóttir, a wonderful Icelandic animator. It was really great to dive into the specifics of that and really get a sense of all those genres while keeping the emotional core of the film as well. It's a very sweet and very funny, I think, and at times a little cringey, you wince a little bit for poor 15 year old Pam in over the course of this film. And we've been obviously delighted by the response that it's gotten in the last several months as well, and excited that more people are getting to see this very beautiful and fun project that we got to work on.
Leah Roseman:
This might be a good place to talk about another, you said you might be able to supply us with the samples you'll provide to a new project. You'll say, "Well, this is an idea of what I can do." So it's not music that you've written specifically for a project, but something you'd be free to release.
Adam Blau:
So if I'm understanding correctly, when I am starting out on a new project, it's always a discussion with the creative team and with myself. What is this going to sound like? What is the sound palette of this project going to be? And I'm a big fan of getting as much information as I can on a new project. So I'd love to read scripts in advance. I'd love to see any visuals as well, even if it's as simple as concept artwork, excuse me, or an animatic of the animation, for example. Ideally, I can see some actual footage of a scene that has been filmed because there's nothing like seeing the pacing and the performances to inform what a show should feel and sound like overall. And then what I'll usually do is we'll often, the industry being what it is, we need to factor in the time and the budget as well, because if I can't have a full orchestra play or hire a certain number of musicians, then I need to scale back and plan accordingly.
So the other thing that I like to do is do a bit of musical sound design for the project just for myself. And so what I'll often do is hit record and start recording any number of things depending on the scope of the project and what it entails. So sometimes I'll sit down with a modular synth or software sound manipulation software or record a guitar and then tweak that any number of ways. And then I'll play for half hour or an hour or five minute, wherever the journey takes me. It'll be late at night, my family's asleep, I'll hit record and I'll see where it goes. So I have hours on upon hours of basically these long form improvisations, explorations, I don't know what you'd call them, and I'll try and gear them if can, if I'm working on a particular project to things in that ilk.
They don't always go in that direction, but I'll just keep going because you never know what you're going to want or need for another project down the road. And it's fun to do, I think. And if I'm between projects, I'll still do this and maybe find a new piece of gear or use something in a different way that I've never used it before. And I found that this is useful because when I'm working on a, let's say a television project, the schedule is so condensed and so compressed that I find it useful to have this toolkit of sounds that I can draw on original, unique sounds that can be easily chopped up or layered in or used as inspiration or the start of a new track. And this happens quite frequently. I'll go back and I'll not only create something anew, but I'll go back through my library. I have it pretty well tagged and cataloged, so I have a sense of what is in each one, and I'll poke through.
I've had projects where I've shared that with, or certain tracks with a producer where I'll have them listen to, "Does anything stick out at you as something that might be a useful sound or something we can draw upon?" And so yeah, I put together, I mean, the sounds are all over the place and varied, and some of them are unlistenable on their own, but they're simple building blocks. None of them, I would say exist as songs on their own, but they're just elements that I will use to help create a project. And yeah, I put together a short montage of some of them just so that you and your listeners might get a sense of what those elements are that I would layer into a project and maybe put any number of things, strings or guitar or piano or mix it into the background subtly behind just the sound design. So it just depends on the context, but I have fun creating them, and it's something I enjoy doing in my spare time when I'm not actively working on a project.
Leah Roseman:
Thanks so much for sharing that, Adam.
Adam Blau:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Hi. Just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs are there as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 U.S. or two Euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
Now, you did a crazy project many years ago, the 24 Hour Musical Theater Challenge.
Adam Blau:
Yeah. Not that many years ago at this point.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Adam Blau:
I think it was just a year or two ago at this point.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Adam Blau:
Yeah. I had so much fun working on this. So I mentioned one of my former camp friends, Rachel Axler, she's gone on, she's written for "Veep" and "The Daily Show", and "Mulaney", and so many things. One of the funniest people that I know, and we've collaborated a few times specifically with songwriting over the years, I think we both... She, I think was actually in one of the original productions maybe that we did original songs for at that summer camp. But yeah, we remain friends to this day. And she had gotten involved in this organization, I think it started out as 24 Hour Plays. And the concept is they get writers, and for the musical version it's writers and composers, and you meet at 9:00 at night and you're assigned a group.
There are a number of actors there. Each of the actors goes through and says what their various strengths are. They sing 16 bars from a song, so you get a sense of their voice and they say something they've always wanted to do on stage. Maybe I want a die a dramatic death, whatever it might be, something that they've always had a desire to do on stage. I want to play it. Maybe they're used to playing the good person in a film and they want to be the bad guy, that kind of thing. And then they bring a prop and a costume piece, and you meet for an hour or so and get to know the performers. You meet your collaborators and then you break, and then the writers get going. And so in this case, Rachel and I basically stayed up until 6:00 in the morning and wrote a 15, 20 minute long musical, it's not full length, but basically something cohesive.
And then at 6:00 AM we turn it over to the directors. They have brought in directors as well. And I should say there was probably, I think there were four or five when I did this, four or five different groups. And they then work with the actors and they have a full band and music director, and then you all reconvene and they put it up on stage. And then by the time you get to 8:00 or 9:00 the next night, it's being performed in front of a crowd off book. And it definitely was a big adventure and something that I really enjoyed working on. I think I thrive under those short term deadlines and see, "Okay. What can we get done in this amount of time that will entertain people that's maybe a little bit funny? That is simple enough that people can learn it and be off book, but still be engaging."
And also then allow factors in what all of these people wanted to do on stage, incorporate some of these props. So there's definitely an improv comedy aspect to it. And it was just an incredibly fun experience. I know they do both, or they do a monologue version of it, I guess, where the writer and actor do perform monologues. There's a play version of it, a non-musical play version, and then there's this musical version as well. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a lot of fun.
Leah Roseman:
So was this in L.A.?
Adam Blau:
They've done it in New York, but yes, this one was in L.A. just a year or two ago. I think this might have been the first one that they did in L.A., although, don't quote me on that.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Adam Blau:
I might be wrong about that. But because it was L.A., well, and in New York too, just the talent pool is amazing. We some fabulous actors and writers and directors who are working on major shows. So I think even the people who you're not directly working with, it's a fun, friendly audience and you get to meet the other people who are going through this absurd process with you and cheer each other on. And of course, things derail at various points, but that's part of the fun. And everybody understands that it's a forgiving audience. They know it. It's not like people go into this without knowing the parameters of the logistics of how it was all set up. So it was just a tremendously fun thing to do and just a really positive experience overall.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, wonderful. Yeah. I've made an assumption that you've done it a while ago because in your bio it just mentioned this project and it seemed like advanced summer camp, but actually that it's neat. It brings you back to your roots of you going and just creating.
Adam Blau:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to doing it, this was my first time doing it just in the last couple years. And it absolutely felt like I was in summer camp as well. And at a time, if I'm working on a busy project, I've got a family. There are a lot of those logistics to work out 24 hours, this is something I can handle. Well, plus another 24 hours of recovering after it's all done and getting a little bit of sleep. But yeah, it was a doable thing and it definitely felt like I was a kid again in a lot of ways, just putting together a show to put on a fun show just for the sake of doing that.
Leah Roseman:
So speaking of kids, you wrote these really fun jingles for puppets, you worked for the Fred Rogers Institute.
Adam Blau:
So there's actually those are two, yes, I did work for the Fred Rogers Institute, formerly called the Fred Rogers Center. The puppets were actually a separate thing, I can tell you about both of those. When I was an early career fellow with them, which means I applied to... They were looking to generate content for very young children, kids age zero to five, and they really didn't know what specifically they wanted to do. They hired a bunch of us, or they brought several of us on five or six I think at the time. And we had many brainstorming sessions at St. Vincent College back over by Pittsburgh where Fred Rogers is based. And we were brought on to figure out, I think actually at the time it originally started out as internet based content for children. And so there we were talking about apps and games and other types of things that might be beneficial for families and caregivers of young children.
And at the time, my wife was pregnant with my older son. So it definitely also was something that was very dear and close to my heart. And I worked on several projects for them, one of which started out originally as it was conceived as an app to help foster routines in the lives of young children and families and their caregivers. So researchers have found that having some set schedule is very beneficial to the emotional, social emotional development of young children. And so if you wake up and have meals and get dressed and read and eat, or take a bath at similar times throughout the day, then it can help foster those habits and give children a sense of security and help in their development. So I think the project that you're maybe referring to was originally in an app form where you would set alarms and the alarms would trigger at a particular time.
Now is get dressed time, now is a time to eat. And it would play these songs as reminders and ones that the idea is that the kids would be very, they would enjoy the songs and it would help motivate them in a way that a buzz or a parent saying, "We got to do this now," or whatever. That's clear. You now get a sense of what my parenting skills are like. But so it would help foster those routines in the lives of children. And so they were originally tied to the app, but we then pulled the songs as well and just compiled them together. They're two minutes long, max, each of them. But we tried to also include maybe routines that people might not normally think of. So there's one on there that is just taking a moment in your day to tell how you love each other and the different way what you love about each other.
So one of the songs is, Tell Me What You Love About Me, I'll Tell You What I Love About You. Or to say what you're thankful for at a given time of the day, or how you maybe take some time to read, that kind of thing. And we got some fabulous performers on there, some of whom I had worked with before and some of whom I had not. Maiya Sykes, who is a fabulous performer, she's on The Voice. She's somebody who I had sung with in college as well, and so knew her skills and she was totally game to participate. Rena Callahan, just a lot of people I had worked with before and whose voices I loved, and it was a very small scale project, but it's so special to me, especially because over the course of that project, my son was born as well and it definitely was...
I went from having it be just conceptual thing to something that I could absolutely see the benefit of in real life and the fact that my wife sings on some of those songs as well. And so it's just very special that while she was pregnant with our child to sing some of those songs that are just very special and geared towards young children, but are very meaningful to me. The puppet one was actually leading up to the 2020 census. We worked with a fabulous puppet making studio called Swazzle Studios. And this was a project that was spearheaded by Mary Faber and Benari Poulten, great performers in and of themselves, and they wanted to try to generate, to help foster participation in the U.S. Census in 2020. This is at a time when there was a lot of concern that maybe people would not participate as actively in the census for a number of reasons and in certain communities as well.
We wanted to create basically an independently produced PSA that would help... It was geared towards kids so that they would understand and maybe approach, help their parents understand the importance of it as families would talk and so on and so forth. And so Rachel Axler, who I've now mentioned a few times over the course of this podcast, we wrote a song with Mary and Benari and just a rollicking little diddly about the census. And we ended up putting together this video directed by Katie Locke O'Brien, fabulous TV director, and got Ed Helms from The Office to perform as one of the voices of the puppets and put it out there.
We did a Spanish language version that was put out into various school systems and just to stress the importance of that participation as well. I had this fabulous thing happen where my son was in school and had one of his teachers play this PSA having no idea what the connection was that I had worked on it. And so my son raised his hand and says, "My dad wrote that," and they didn't believe him briefly. So it definitely a rewarding experience working on that as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's super cute, I saw it. But I really thought the other things like the Everyday Grooves that there was also a puppet thing, but maybe I saw something on YouTube.
Adam Blau:
There were some animations that were involved in the app, maybe that's part of it as well. And I had done some other things for the Fred Rogers Center at the time. I don't know, I can't remember if they were... I don't think there were puppets at that time, but I love working with puppets. That was a lot of fun. We got to go to the set and on the other one and we brought the kids and we met some of the puppets and yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it just reminds me, I've interviewed a couple of people who've written puppet operas or puppet musical theaters. It's such an interesting...
Adam Blau:
I want to hear more about that. I'll have to ask you when we're done, which episodes those are.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'll send you some links.
Adam Blau:
Okay, please, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And now the song, Tell Me What You Love About Me from the Everyday Grooves project. The Fred Rogers Institute does wonderful work and I'm grateful to them for giving me permission to use this song as part of this specific podcast. (singing) So are you still singing or playing music?
Adam Blau:
I'm not regular. I sing when I have to and actually there exists just a certain subset of people have demo recordings of me singing songs for them to learn. So I'll sing when I have to or I'll fill in backing vocals on things. A lot of the projects that I'll do have songs integrated throughout their runs, and so I'll do a lot of demo recordings for people. I worked on a television show called "You're The Worst" on FX, which on its face was a very bawdy raunchy comedy, but actually went into... It is one of my favorite projects that I've worked on. It really addresses a lot of very serious topics throughout the course of the show. It goes into clinical depression and PTSD, and it's a very special personal show to me for me. And working with that show's creator Stephen Faulk. He's a very sort of musical person.
And so we worked together to create a musical world in that show. Everything from, there were some hip-hop artists who were characters in the show. There were arcs in that show where they had Eurovision, a of fake Eurovision contest in that show. And it ran the gamut. There's way more than that, but I had to create a lot of demo songs for that, that were then subsequently recorded either by their performers or other performers played them. But there definitely exist versions of me doing all of those singing in falsetto or basically getting do or pitch shifted so that I can let people know what it is. But I don't as regularly perform vocally as much anymore.
And I'm for the most part okay with that, while I love performing for small groups of people, I'm definitely the one will have a group of people who will be at the piano leading a sing along among friends or that kind of thing, hearkening back to memories of my childhood basically. I think I'm trying to recreate that those fun times from my youth. But yeah, I'm always more... I think I've found a groove where I'm very comfortable being the person behind the person performing. I would so much, I think I'm in my sweet spot trying to make other people sound good and whether as the musical portion of their project or letting them perform a song. And I'm happy to play and arrange and be behind them, and I'm happy to have be the spotlight behind the spotlight at that point is where I'm quite comfortable.
Leah Roseman:
How have you and your wife navigated a musical education for your kids?
Adam Blau:
That's a great question. It's tricky. As I mentioned, I grew up in a musical household and my wife did more or less as well. Her family, while they're not musicians, there was constantly music playing in her house as well, and it's very important to her. But it also is the kind of thing where I don't want to feel like I'm forcing it on my children. There's definitely the sense of they're... I have two children. I have an older son, younger daughter, and they're their own people and they have their own interests. But certainly there's constantly music in our house, not just from my work, but will listen to it and play and have little dance parties and whatever it may be. We'll listen to music in the car. And again, all different kinds just because our interests really run the gamut. We'll take them to concerts. But I think we really did at least want to present those as opportunities if it's something that they would latch onto.
And so my son, when he was younger, we started piano lessons for him. I showed him some of the basics and he was drawn to it and would play. And he has since moved from piano to violin, his focus is on violin. And my daughter is, she's younger, she's about to turn eight, my son is now 12. And my daughter is currently taking piano lessons and dance. And both of them are very involved in local youth theater groups here. And every single time a new opportunity comes up or if we want to see if they want to re-up with the theater group, there's always a sense of like, "If you don't want to do it, that's okay. If it's something that you want to focus on something else," but each time they seem to want to re-up with that. And so I think there's a sense of gentle encouragement, but without wanting to have it be a pressure filled thing, it was never a pressure filled thing for me.
I definitely went through my phase when I was younger of, "Well, this is what my mom does, this is what other people in my family are doing." I would rebel against it, at least in my own head. But I quickly came to realize, certainly once I was at college and beyond, this is something that I enjoy doing and I'm decent enough at it that I should at least give it a go. And if I can eke out a living working in this field, then great. So my son especially is now reaching a point in middle and he's going into high school and beyond where I think he'll have more opportunities to broaden his focuses and will see where he goes with that. But there's at least the groundwork there. They know how to read music, like things that will at least help them down the road should they choose to incorporate music into their lives in whatever capacity they want to.
Leah Roseman:
So do you act as a mentor in your industry with younger composers coming up who are maybe working for you?
Adam Blau:
So I have in the past, I would say that a lot of the productions that I've worked on in the last few years have been small enough scale that if I do need help, I absolutely will bring them on. But there are absolutely folks, I'm always open to budding composers talking to me. I'm constantly meeting with people to talk through ideas and strategies and how to buy their break into the industry. Somebody wants to buy me a cup of coffee, I'll gladly talk their ear off to no end. And there are others who have taken a broader or a little more involved discussions with who have, they'll send me tracks and I'll work with them and offer them feedback, that kind of thing. A lot of times they're people that I know or have worked with, some of the people that are currently were in the different music groups that I was involved with, either at schools or otherwise, will reach out through either alumni organizations or friends of friends.
And I'm truly always happy to talk to people about whatever they might want to know. If there's some bit of guidance I can offer them, I'm always happy to do so. I think for me, I look back to when I was trying to break into various facets of the industry, and I had some people who taught me so much, John Swihart, Chris Beck. And even beyond them, some of the other music editors that I've worked with, Fernand Bos or Casey Stone, who's a sound mixer for as a music editor. And I would learn so much from them just about the logistics of things. That is truly the way that I learned anything about this industry.
And so if I can then pass that forward and share it with other people, then I'm more than happy to. I have a lot of educators in my family and I think that it's just the importance of being able to talk to people and learn. And I'm constantly trying to learn more about my own craft. I will reach out to people constantly even now to learn about various production techniques or different styles of music. So I feel like if there's this flow of information and sharing of this knowledge, then it can only further all of us along.
Leah Roseman:
Is there advice you tend to give to these younger composers?
Adam Blau:
For people who want to write for film or television, I would say there are a few things, yes, that I tend to gravitate towards. The first one is a pretty common one, just to keep writing and keep trying new things. Say yes to various projects, especially as you're just getting started. The people who you work with, even on some small shoestring budget or no budget project down the road will be working on something else, whether it's their own project or another one that they can recommend you for. The experience of working on projects where you have to wear all the hats instead of just being the composer where you have to produce and arrange and all of those kinds of things, that experience is invaluable. And it gives you a sense of what all of the other people will be doing down the road so you can coordinate with the various other roles better.
And it gives you a sense to try and fail and learn for what's working and what's not working. To learn how to talk to a director or how to learn to get a sense of what a director or producer wants, especially if they don't know how to speak in musical terms. So to start working on a project where the director's like, "I don't know what this needs, but I want it to make me sad." Or if they say, maybe they'll say, "I don't want any woodwinds on this project," and then you have to get a sense like, "What does that mean to them?" To try to interpret that. Do they really mean they don't want any woodwinds? Do they mean they just don't want... Maybe they equate an oboe with the sound of woodwinds, but if you want to layer in a bass clarinet with a low string line, that's fine.
So really just trying to use that time to talk with, to experiment and try things out. The other piece of advice I will always give is to try to develop as thick a skin as possible and remain as... Basically don't get attached or don't be precious about the music that you write. Because there have been so many times where I may write a piece of music that I think is perfect and fabulous and really just the absolute best piece of music for a given moment. And I'll turn it in and I'll say, "Hand it to the director on a silver platter," and say, "Here you go." And then they'll listen to it and they'll go, "Eh," and they'll throw it on the cutting room floor, the proverbial cutting room floor. And because it is, again, in those contexts, it's not my artistic vision for the project as a whole.
It's what the someone else's vision is, and I need to sort of best in those moments. And this is not across the board and it's not for every project, but in those moments, it is their vision and to be able to figure out how I can best facilitate that vision. And so again, schedules being what they are, you got to dust off your knees and then get back on the horse and try a different approach and figure out what might work in those scenarios. The advantage then, at that point being that I now have amassed a fairly sizable collection of music that I've written for things that hasn't gotten used. And so I've had the opportunity to reuse them in various other projects. We talked about those gaps in a project where maybe it's not original score or maybe it's not a licensed song, but so I have some music that I've written for some show a while back that might serve perfectly as the background bar track or whatever it might be.
And I'll be able to offer that up to them as another option that they can get relatively inexpensively just as opposed to going to one of those other avenues. And I absolutely will dig in and reuse some of those tracks for other projects that had not gotten used in the past. So I would say those are, I think the biggies develop as thick a skin as possible, and I should also say keep learning both musical techniques, but also the technology. Knowing that established composers who want to bring on assistants, it's critical to them that they be able to immediately slide in and know how to use the software, know how to use the plug-ins or the virtual instruments. I've spoken with some folks who are traditional pencil and paper composers, which is phenomenal, but it is also, in addition to that, if you're going to start to work to get a job in the film or television industry, so much of it is almost entirely based on in computers these days.
Just for ease of getting things from one place to another know how to export something from a sequencer into as a mini file to be able to import it into a notation program. Learn all of the different programs, learn Finale and Sibelius, learn Cubase and Pro Tools and Logic and Digital Performer, whatever it might be. The more you know of those, the more easy it will be to be flexible in the work that you are doing and to get to a place where you are useful in that community to be able to work on a very tight schedule and be as efficient as you can be within those parameters. YouTube is great for that. I am constantly watching YouTube videos about various production techniques even now, and it's always fascinating to me to see other people's workflows and to see how they organize things. And there's things are more accessible now than they have ever been.
You can find really very successful, established composers and producers. Online Junkie XL, the prominent composer, breaks down his full instrumental palette and goes into deep dives on some of the huge film cues that he does. So he'll break down an eight-minute long cue from a film that he's worked on, and you can see the different layers. He'll talk about how he's constructed it. I'm even now a huge fan of watching anything like that because if it's something that can help streamline my own workflow and just, again, just be a forensic analyst of how something was created is just so invaluable to me.
Leah Roseman:
This all sounds like fabulous advice. Thanks for that.
Adam Blau:
Sure. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for speaking with me today. It was just fascinating and inspiring.
Adam Blau:
Thank you, Leah. I really appreciate the very thoughtful questions, and thanks so much for taking the time. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this season three, with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian and getting access to unique perks, the link is in the description. Have a great week.
