Colin Aguiar: Transcript
Colin Aguiar:
The job of film scoring is very ... it's pretty hard. Firstly, just emotionally, when it comes to writing emotions, you have to be able to conjure any emotion and any degree of emotion, which is hard. So you might write a really nice piece of music, but let's say someone says, "We changed our minds. We don't think that ... in these two seconds, we really don't want sadness, we want melancholy." Then at the snap of a finger, you have to change that.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. Colin Aguiar is an award-winning Indian Canadian composer based in Los Angeles who specializes in film scoring. In this conversation, we talked about his youth, growing up across parts of India, the Middle East, Europe, and Canada, and studying the music of various cultures. Learning different instruments with a start on drums as a toddler, as well as his love for the music of Arvo Pärt and other great composers. Colin spoke about some of his mentors, including Mychael Danna. This episode with Colin is the first release of several film composers I've interviewed recently, and I find it fascinating how diverse their musical backgrounds are and what a challenging and little understood part of the music world this is.
During the episode, you'll hear some clips from Colin's compositions used with permission. Like all my episodes, this is available on your favorite podcast player as well as a video, and the transcript is linked as well to my website, leahroseman.com. Colin Aguiar, thanks so much for joining me today.
Colin Aguiar:
Thanks for having me, Leah. I'm really honored to be on this podcast. I've listened to some of your interviews and I love them.
Leah Roseman:
Thanks a lot. Yeah, I was just saying to you before we started recording that I will be interviewing a few film and television composers, but you're absolutely the first, and it's really great that we can talk about-
Colin Aguiar:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
A very unique corner of the music world, I would say.
Colin Aguiar:
I guess so, yeah, there's many corners and I guess this is one of them.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Colin Aguiar:
It's not unique to me. I wake up to it every day.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I don't always like to start with people's childhoods, but I think in your case, you had such an interesting upbringing musically, if we could just start to talk about your background and your family and the encouragement and inspiration you got from your dad.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, so my dad was a pop singer, and being in a band for so many years, you pick up instruments and you start to play them, guitars, drums, whatever it happens to be. So he was familiar with the drums, and so when I came around, I guess it was their idea to get this toy drum set and see if ... I mean, just as a toy. For some reason they noticed he's ... that I was taken to it or something. I don't have a perfect recollection of what happened when I was like two, but apparently, I was taken to it really well, and they started noticing, and it got to the point where they said, "Should we get him a real drum set?" And so they got me a real drum set when I was four, and we still have it today. I love that drum set a lot.
Yeah, I just started ... I guess I had natural rhythm back then. Not anymore. It's strange, I can't dance, but I've got natural rhythm, I assure you.
Leah Roseman:
That's funny. You say you can't dance because I-
Colin Aguiar:
Well, I don't dance. I refuse to dance. That's what it is.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I mean, most musicians I know don't dance at parties. It's not a thing.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I don't know if we're like extra self-conscious about rhythm or something, but that's kind of interesting actually.
Colin Aguiar:
And I've been around ballet dances. I know what it's supposed to look like. I'm not graceful, so I just stay out of that lane. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So you were four when you had a full size drum set, how did that even work?
Colin Aguiar:
You mean as in reaching for things?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Colin Aguiar:
It's hard to explain, but we had a stool, we still have the same stool and what's called drum throne, I guess. It was lowered to the lowest level and the snare was lowered to the lowest level, and the hi-hat was lowered to the lowest level, and everything was lowered to the lowest level. I'd also do these sets, my parents would get invited to a lot of weddings, and so they'd invite me on stage to do a set with a band or so like, five or six or seven. They'd lower everything so that I could do a set. The thing is, due to the size of a drum set, the tom-toms would be like this, and no one would really see me. I'd stare at people dancing through the tom-toms, but no one would really see me playing, so they'd just see sticks flying once in a while.
Leah Roseman:
So your uncle was in the band along with your dad?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, my uncle was in the band that my dad had, yeah and that's how I guess, he met my mom. So it was all in the band, I guess.
Leah Roseman:
And your parents, they ... maybe we can talk about their immigration story because it's kind of interesting.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, so my parents are from India originally, and so I guess there are a section of Indian people. It's pretty popular that people go outside of India, and primarily they'll earn a living and send money back to their families, and that's how I think it started for both parents individually, but they started to really enjoy the life outside of India, and I guess they just stayed. They went from India to Kuwait, they met in Kuwait and then, we still go back and forth to India every year. We immigrated to Canada, but before that, we'd do these stints, we do summers and stuff in either England or Amsterdam and then, to Canada. And then eventually, I went to the States, to LA. Yeah, I also studied in India for a period of time. I did some college there, and I did some high school there as well.
I had a lot of school changes. I had nine high school changes internationally. Yeah and as a kid, you question it a lot because it's like, everyone else gets to play with other kids in the summer, and it's like, why me? Why do I have to leave? That question is answered now, because in my work there does tend to arise the question of pulling off ethnic music authentically, and I find that ... yeah, all that time I was just accumulating this kind of degree in ethnomusicology, because you got to ... Ethnic music is full of nuances, and I was lucky enough to experience these nuances, firsthand.
Leah Roseman:
So the part of India that your parents are from Goa, is more like Western music influenced.
Colin Aguiar:
India is by far, one of the most diverse populations. Even though we were in a part of the population ... a minority part of the population that was populated by Catholics, you partake in Hindu celebrations, you partake in Hindi language movies, you partake in Muslim celebrations as well. So, Bollywood was a part of that. It was just a part of ... it wasn't far removed by any chance. It was really a part of the vernacular. Bollywood movies just kind of enter your every day on a minute to minute basis. So yeah, Bollywood movies and at home, it was a lot of classical training, but yeah, both of those things together. When we lived in the Middle East, it was a lot of arab tradition as well. So all of that was spinning at the same time.
Leah Roseman:
I thought this would be an interesting point for the listeners, to hear some of your music, and I thought we could play the clip from the movie Fly, about an immigration story in which you incorporate Indian sounds with Irish sounds. So if you could talk to that clip that people are going to hear, that would be really good.
Colin Aguiar:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Fly was a really, really important movie for me. It was one of the first ones I did. It was a short film. It was so good, it went to the Toronto International Film Festival and was recognized by a lot of critics to also have ... garner critical attention. The reason why that movie was important is because it explored immigration or the displacement of immigrants in a foreign country. In a really poetic way, there was hardly any dialogue in that movie, and so a lot of responsibility fell on the music. The music kind of explained and verified facial expressions or the mood of the scene. It really was a pretty big driver in defining the narration of that movie for the audience.
So musically, it became the question of how are we going to express that since it has such a large voice? We went through a number of ideas with a director who I'm still friends with, we're still very close friends because that experience was so bonding, I would say. In that journey, what we discovered worked best would be an Indian ensemble. Sorry, I should preface by saying the story is about a boy in an Indian family and the boy ... he doesn't explicitly say this, but the boy is pretty much intrinsically Canadian. His way of thinking, the way his brain is wired is Canadian. In a way, symbolically, it's different from his parents. So to have that symbolic transition to the music, what it turned out to be was an Indian ensemble with a couple Celtic instruments in the center of it.
So the Celtic instruments would hold melody and would be ... the harmonic support would be handled by the Indian ensemble, and it was a very ... almost like a mirror effect in the ensemble as ... in both ensembles, the acting ensemble and the musical ensemble. It kind of worked. Also, I should say that both cultures, the Irish culture, which is one of the originating cultures in Canada and Indian music, have this pentatonic scale that ... or not entirely pentatonic, but there are some harmonies that overlap. In that way, there is this overlap between the son and the parents. So, it just was a really, really great way to mirror what was happening on screen.
Leah Roseman:
Thanks so much for sharing that.
Colin Aguiar:
Thanks, Leah.
Leah Roseman:
That's great. Another thing that might be good to talk about now is Torn From Her Arms.
Colin Aguiar:
Okay.
Leah Roseman:
Because that, in terms of the migration story, so that is very different music.
Colin Aguiar:
What this movie is about is family separation. A few years ago when migrant families would arrive at the US border, children were separated from their parents and then, through a breakdown of the system, were never reunited, and this traces the story of one mother-daughter family that were reunited, but through a lot of pain and a lot of fighting the system. So, this movie ... it's got an orchestral score in the first place, but the language of the orchestral score is mainly very ... it was inspired by one of my favorite composers, Arvo Pärt, this Estonian composer who based a lot of his work on scripture and on his adoration of his Christian faith, he's very dedicated to his Christian faith. The symbolism here is that there are things in the Christian Catholic faith that apply to the treatment of people, "Do unto others like you would have being done unto you."
So there was this really great overlap in philosophy that needed to be imparted on the story and rightly so, because the audience is also very Judeo-Christian.
Leah Roseman:
So I didn't have a chance to see this movie. So is the whole score similar to this string writing, or is this just part of it?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, the whole score is similar to it. Yeah, it's done in the rules set forth by Arvo Pärt for his harmonic structure.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful, and I'm curious about the use of synthesizers, and I know that sometimes you'll have an opportunity to score for live musicians, and sometimes you'll be using synthesized sounds depending on the project. Synthesized sounds have come a long way, in terms of the quality of the samples. So what is your experience of that in your time in the industry? Has it already changed or ...
Colin Aguiar:
Synthesize, well, I guess when you enter this topic, there's two groups of synthesized sound you could say. One is synthesized sound that is concerned just with synthesizers and electronic music and things that do not sound orchestral. Then, there's a group of synthesis where the aim is to produce something orchestral. So, yeah, the thing with this job is that technology is something you just can't escape. It's a very important factor and if ... there was a time when I wasn't that good at synthesis or electronic synthesis, and you just kind of learn it, if you don't have something, you just kind of try to acquire that knowledge. So yeah, you can't really pass, go without absorbing it.
Leah Roseman:
And before we leave it in the music from the Fly, the first excerpt we played, so was that all written out, were you working with musicians who are all music readers or just sometimes people learn by ear for scores, you know what I mean?
Colin Aguiar:
That's a good question. When I recorded all th Celtics stuff, it was mostly uilleann pipes. Actually, you know what, it was done quite a while ago. So I'm trying to recollect everything that I did for that score. So basically it's uilleann pipes and all this Indian stuff around it, and the uilleann pipes, I remember, I showed the session player, the music but it was way better to just do it by ear. He just found himself to be a lot more untethered and his performances were just better without reading anything. So, yeah, some musicians really love something extremely specific. Those are probably musicians that are trained to read and have certain expectation in their part, that directs every nuance of what they do in other people, it's a discussion, so yeah, it depends.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was just curious about that. This other clip, this beautiful variation you did on the El Salvadorian national anthem also relates ... it's not from the same movie of The Torn From Her Arms. It's a separate.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So I went and listened to the original anthem, of course, and how martial it was, and it was very interesting to hear that contrast.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So what inspired you to write this?
Colin Aguiar:
It was also inspired by these immigrants that were coming ... or migrants that were coming to the border. The thing about ... I would think maybe it fluctuates from country to country, but most people I think would have a pride in where they come from, and even if you don't have such a resounding pride in where you come from, at least there are things about where you grow up and where you live that you tend to love and get used to, and relationships you build. When someone leaves their country to go somewhere else, they're also leaving behind all those things that they love and that they're used to and their routine. Human beings don't always love change. They don't wake up every day looking for change. So it was inspired by the fact that a lot of these people have to mourn a lot of what they grew up with.
That's why that piece of music, unlike the original is more of a lament. It's more of mournful take on the original anthem. It's more of ... It says I'm missing you, as opposed to something else that's emoted in the anthem.
Leah Roseman:
Did you write the lyrics for that?
Colin Aguiar:
No, I borrowed that from the actual anthem as well, and it was performed by an El Salvadorian singer as well.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Beautiful singing.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Thank you. She's amazing.
Leah Roseman:
So maybe we could go back now. So we started talking about ... a little bit about your upbringing. I remember you had told me previously you had a very influential percussion teacher, drum teacher who exposed you to lots of cultures through music and you worked with for a long time.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. So this guy was a friend of my dad, who was another drummer on the scene, although a very, very good drummer, and he didn't purposely expose me to all these different cultures, but the thing is, while learning a number of other instruments, drums, drum set just happens to be an instrument where what you learn if you go to the jazz route is you learn rhythms, and all these rhythms come from different parts of the world. So when my teacher was telling me about these things, he'd tell me the origins or something like the beguine or the Rumba or the Cha-cha-cha or the tango and where these things come from, or Afro-Cuban rhythms or rhythms from Havana and stuff.
If you really look at it, each one of these beats or rhythms that I mentioned have a huge history. There's a huge cultural process that might have taken decades, if not, centuries to evolve to. They all have rhythms, other rhythms that they come from. They have the influence of other cultures sometimes. So it's a combination of things. There's always ... or in most cases, there's always a dance that comes with it. Just as a lot of these rhythms have grooves, which are not always on the beat, which are just sometimes a microsecond behind the beat or in front of the beat, those things, even though I'm putting them technically, all translate into gestures and mannerisms from the cultures that they come from. And those mannerisms are in the attitude that people exercise their daily life in those countries or in those parts of the world.
And so you can't help but think that, if I want to get this Argentinian rhythm correctly, maybe I should know a little bit about the people in Argentina and where why this beat is the way it is. So when you explore these things in maybe Northern Africa or Central Africa or South America or whatever you're trying to study and break down, you'll eventually understand or begin to understand some of these cultures and scratch the surface. So learning drums just so happens to be a real nice little world tour of the world in a way that studying, doing violin etudes or playing the guitar or learning Bach on the piano won't really exercise that muscle. It's the one instrument that will take you on that tour.
Leah Roseman:
As we are recording this now, you haven't heard my episode with Jazz drummer, Mike Essoudry, but it will be released soon. Yeah, it's all jazz drum set episode, and we talk about a lot of this stuff, and he plays a lot-
Colin Aguiar:
Did you see anything similar? Did he-
Leah Roseman:
People will listen to that. Anyway, for anyone interested in this topic, I'll just point them to that episode. 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 I bear 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 US or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode. Yeah, so I know you were really invested as a drummer, but I know you also played other instruments, but how much were you putting into drumming when you were a kid? How many on hours or how many years?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I would put in ... it was instituted at home, like five hours a day.
Leah Roseman:
What?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, two and a half hours would be normal, if I couldn't do five hours a day, but basically it was five hours a day. I don't really have much of a life outside of music, really.
Leah Roseman:
Your parents expect you to play drums that much, or you just got into that routine?
Colin Aguiar:
No, no. Both, I mean, if I didn't put in five hours a day, they'd be like, why haven't you put in five hours a day? Sometimes it would be split up. Sometimes it wouldn't always be five hours at a stretch. It'd be like two hours, two hours, two hours or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Five hours a day.
Leah Roseman:
Why do you think they were putting pressure for that much time? Were they worried about your success as a musician that you needed to be at the top of your game, or-
Colin Aguiar:
No, in the end, they don't really want me to be a musician, but I don't know. I have no idea. That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know to what end game that would've served them, but I don't know. I guess maybe they wanted me to be good at something and yeah, it's the only thing I'm good at, so that explains it. It's not like I hated it. I enjoyed it as well.
Leah Roseman:
When I know you played some other instruments, when did you find time to do that?
Colin Aguiar:
That was introduced along ... well, not along the same time, but as I grew up, there were just more instruments added, mostly piano and guitar, and then violin on my own, and yeah, it was part of practice, by the time piano and guitar was introduced, I had already had this profession scene at drums, so I could split my five hours into two hours in drums and three hours in everything else. So yeah, depending on what I needed to better at, I would just spend more time there.
Leah Roseman:
You started composing when you were fairly young as well?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, yeah. When I was like 10. I was doing arrangements and stuff. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So arrangements of songs you were hearing or what kind of-
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, the thing is that I found my piano lessons to be so boring. So, I'd be like ... I'd go to my teacher and I'd say, "Hey, could we do this pop song or something?" She'd say, "Well, if you can find the sheet music for it." And I couldn't find the sheet music for it, so I'd write the sheet music for it. That's kind of how a lot of arrangements started. Then, I would write the sheet music for pop song in a Latin rhythm, because of drums. So, that's how these arrangements would get started. Then, offshoot into composition and stuff.
Leah Roseman:
When you were in high school, you had started to write full length musical theaters, pieces for fun?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Well, it wasn't for fun. It was more like I got really serious about it, and I just enjoyed it. I really love musical theater. So yeah, it was something I really did with a huge passion.
Leah Roseman:
What I meant, when I said for fun Colin, I didn't mean to put it down. I meant, you were being asked to write something for a specific performance. It was-
Colin Aguiar:
I see. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No, I do it in the summers. No one asked me to do it. I did it because this is something I wanted to do, possibly. I was thinking about it after high school, so it became something, that became a priority for me.
Leah Roseman:
For those people listening to the podcast, it'd be nice to describe what I'm seeing here, and they can see the video later, you have three enormous screens behind you with your keyboard. Maybe you could talk about your gear and the necessary setup to do this kind of work.
Colin Aguiar:
Sure. Every composer is different. Every composer has a unique studio. For the most part, it's kind of the same. The reason I have screens is because I personally believe that the eye is faster than the hand, the arms. So if I can see things, if a number of windows are open and my eyes can dart from one screen to the next, it's much faster than my hands can do that, especially when you're using a mouse. A mouse is, if you really look at it, in the real world, if you're cooking with just one finger, it's going to take a long time, but you have five fingers and two hands and two eyes. So that's why cooking is so much faster than moving a mouse. So the philosophy of the screens is to be able to maximize what I can see, so I can move fast.
Leah Roseman:
I was wondering what you would have up on the separate screens then, when you're working?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. What's on the separate screens? I use a program called Logic, Logic Pro. It's made by the Apple Company, and they have something called the arranged page, or basically the work page where most of the work is done. I have that on my main screen. On the screen above, I usually have the film playing. On the two side screens, I usually have all my tools, the tools that enable me to see the length of notes or what it would look like on a printed piece, printed manuscript or allow me to affect the mix of the music as in ... if let's say the brass is now playing the melody and it needs to sound higher than the string section, and then if they recede into the harmony, they need to recede into the mix. So those are things that I'll manipulate on another screen.
These are all things that have to happen at the same time, as you can tell each of the one ... all these things that I mentioned happen, continually change on a second to second basis, and they continually need to be manipulated on a second to second basis. So I need to manage these fluctuations from second to second, and that's why I need to have them all in eye shot.
Leah Roseman:
So this short film, your score was widely claimed for, do you pronounce it, construct or construct?
Colin Aguiar:
Whichever one.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Colin Aguiar:
No one is really am.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I did watch it. Interesting use of the technology, but certainly the music made the film, in my opinion.
Colin Aguiar:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
So we can play the clip you've selected. This dubstep is used with this orchestral score.
Colin Aguiar:
I'd always been a fan of dubstep music. I go to dubstep concerts. I really admire the genre. It's a different discipline or synthesis that is very unique and is very admirable, all the things that they do in the genre. When this movie came along, it wasn't very hard to see that dubstep actually does sound like robots talking. So it was again, this really beautiful overlap.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, thanks for that clip and-
Colin Aguiar:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, maybe we could talk about one of your mentors, Mychael Danna, and how he helped you in the profession.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, Mychael. I’ve known Mychael for a long time. Yeah, I would say Mychael, in the beginning, he just was really nice, and he called me over to his place once after I talked to him and the first time, and he said, maybe you can play me some of your music, and I played him my music, and I didn't really know how much he would appreciate this, but in hindsight, I played him some Arab music that I'd written. I played him some Indian music, and I didn't know how much of an ethno music buff he was, but I think that immediately set some giant overlap between our two skill sets. Of course, the orchestral stuff. So yeah, it was definitely just two people that had common interests, that I had a lot of fun listening to the same music together.
Leah Roseman:
So you had assisted him on Life of Pi was one of the first projects?
Colin Aguiar:
No, the first project that came through the studio was the tail end of an angry movie called The Ice Storm. Then was The Sweet Hereafter. Then, came a movie that not too many people know about, it's called Regeneration, or they might have changed the title. It's a really beautiful World War I movie. Yeah, so it was a few projects between then and Life of Pi. So that was when we both lived in Toronto. Then, he moved to LA and then, I moved to LA and then, we did Life of Pi. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. So in terms of your apprenticeship in the business and learning about all the different jobs as a role of a composer, maybe you could talk to some of that, your opportunity to write filler and how you're able to learn from a master like Mychael and so on.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I've worked for actually six different composers, and I would say the thing about film music is that everyone ... firstly, I mean, most people think of music as being very simple and they think of film music as being even simpler than popular music. In fact, the job of film scoring is pretty hard, mainly because what you're doing is ... firstly, just emotionally when it comes to writing emotions, you have to be able to conjure any emotion, any degree of emotion, which is hard. So if you have jealousy, how do you ... happy and sad is pretty black and white, but how do you emote jealousy or envy or what are the different ranges of happiness, melancholy. You might write a really nice piece of music, but let's say someone says, we changed our minds.
We don't think that ... in these two seconds, we really don't want sadness, we want melancholy. Then, at the snap of a finger, you have to change that. Changing things on a dime is what makes film composition, which has to be done on a schedule, different from music, that has the luxury of no deadline or very distant deadlines. In addition to that is the fact that that it's a very technological field. The technology over the years from when I trained with these six composers has changed, used to have racks and racks of synthesizers and tape machines. Now, you have a single computer or you have a pro tools machine. So these things ... and also, there's the thing of your endurance or your work ethic, which is very different from any other field, whether in music or not.
The mentality of always being in service of your team, working with a team. All of these things are things that doesn't really occur to you when you think of film music. These are things that I acquired from working with all these people that I still carry today, and I think it can't be undersold because I use these tools every second of every day.
Leah Roseman:
When you say these tools, you mean, what you're just talking about, the technology or you mean personal tools to be able to transmit emotion, these very specific emotions in music?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, both. For example, my impression was that for a piece of classical music, if you're writing a symphony or something, you do have a deadline, but you might have, I don't know, months or a year to do 15, 20 minutes of music. Over here, in film music, you might have to do like 85 minutes of music in three weeks. So what does your body go through, if you're not really ... if you have to work a ton of hours, what is your frame of thought? How do you always remain receptive to changes on a team or your outlook to working hard is not the same as when you have the luxury of time? I would say that these are some invaluable things that are passed on, I think in these apprenticeships. It's not a typical job, so you need someone to tell you what typical is, and it's far from a common day understanding of typical.
Leah Roseman:
So was it a shock for you when you started working in the business, just how hard you have to work, how many hours you have to put in?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, worked for an amazing composer, Lou Natale was the first composer I ever worked for. Most people won't know Lou, but Lou was a Canadian composer who was originally American and he worked his ass off. We were doing commercials and we'd worked until sometimes four or 5:00 in the morning. I was young at that time, and Lou would be ... and I remember working at 4:00 in the morning, and we still had ways to go before the presentation to the ad agency. I would say, "Lou, it's 4:00 in the morning." He'd saying, "Oh, Colin, that really does suck. Hey, you know what you should do, you should just go out and walk around the block and come back." And that was amazing, he said that because typically at any job, you don't work at 4:00 in the morning.
That is exactly what you have to do when you're on a deadline. Just walk it off and come back and make your deadline.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Do you think the discipline you learned as a young person practicing that many hours, must have helped you in terms of that aspect?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, you're very right. There is that carry forwarding of that attitude. The one thing I think of a lot is the kind of sacrifice because, and social sacrifice. All the time I was practicing as a musician, as a kid growing up, it would be with other kids playing in the background outside my home, and I never got to do that. Now, there'll be fireworks going off for New Year's or whatever it is, or there'll be some cars honking because a team won or something like that. I don't get to partake in that, or I don't get holidays or weekends off or anything like that. So yeah, it is a pleasure to do this job, but sometimes the way the world turns and all the celebrations that keep happening, sometimes in your face, and it's good to have the practice of being immune to that kind of stuff.
Leah Roseman:
Do you miss playing music, having the opportunity just to jam?
Colin Aguiar:
Once in a while ... but I'd say my satisfaction, my spiritual satisfaction comes from writing music. So I find it kind of fulfilling. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It might be interesting to share ... you wrote a Palindrome but it said Palindrome nine on the clip. Did you write many of them or was it just the name of-
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, growing up I would write Palindromes.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Colin Aguiar:
Just for the fun of it, just for the exercise, but yeah, this one, Palindrome, I wrote for Construct. This one has the added difficulty of not just being played backwards the same, but I reversed the audio, so once the whole thing is recorded, played forward and backwards on paper, then the whole audio is reversed. So if you take the full piece on a hole and reverse it, it'll sound exactly the same.
Leah Roseman:
So Colin you say good values, you mean more complex or more artistic?
Colin Aguiar:
Well, what I mean by that is that they have found better ways to build a building for it not to collapse, or the stairs have given ways to escalate as in elevators. There's better ways of doing things in medicine. So every generation builds on something that the previous generation has, and it occurs to me that there's so much discovery. There's everything from microtonality to Palindromes to variations on themes. There's so much in terms of composition that previous generations have challenged themselves with. So, it just is logical that you would ... to acknowledge that and try to continue in that tradition. I don't know, for me ... I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, it's almost like a responsibility, but especially since I hold those composers in such higher regard.
I just love them so much that, yeah, my admiration kind of gives away to maybe advancing the pattern, maybe, if I can put it that way.
Leah Roseman:
So someone like Bach wrote Palindromes. So the fact that you did take piano lessons for years, you were able to play Bach and access that music in a different way than just listening.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, and listening is as much of complex exercise as performing as well when it comes to Bach, but yeah, things like that, the genius of that guy to come up with inventive mathematical ... it's not just Bach. It's Heitor Villa-Lobos or it's Arvo Pärt or it's John Taverner, it's all of these composers, Mychael Danna. It's John Williams. It's any one of these really admirable composers that there's so much to learn from, Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, all the very, very astute, knowledgeable composers that developed some great techniques.
Leah Roseman:
How much composition did you study formally?
Colin Aguiar:
Formally, almost ... well, I studied with an Estonian composer. His name was Dr. Roman Toi. He was a great composer, and one thing he's known for is choral work. Maybe that's where my admiration for Arvo Pärt comes in, because Arvo Pärt and Dr. Roman Toi were both Estonian composers, and I was introduced to this really rich tradition coming from Estonia and Eastern Europe. I would say Dr. Toi is the one person that helped me understand harmony in a different way. Yeah, and I will say with ... also, working with these other composers like Lou, for example, was brought up in a jazz tradition. He grew up setting jazz harmony, but I will say all of these different composers, they kind of are all swimming in their ... at some point. I give them all credit because there's not a day that I skip invoking some memory of them at some point.
So it might not have been extremely formal, but it was kind of ... I regard it as a la carte education. There's something I realize I don't have, I'll just go grab it.
Leah Roseman:
Do you want to speak to some of your other mentors?
Colin Aguiar:
Well, I worked for so many of these people. I worked for Lou Natale in Canada. I worked for John Welsman, another amazing, truly amazing composer. I worked a little bit for Glenn Morley to a certain extent. Then in the States, I worked for Mychael Danna, a friend, Robert Duncan, Christopher Young, the great Christopher Young, whose music is so full of detail and nuance and great orchestration. Beyond that, every day, I would say every free day that I get that I'm not writing, I'm studying some composer. If it's not ... recently, it's been Strauss, but it can be Bartók, it can be the harmonies of George Gershwin. It could be the melodic or cordial writing of Irving Berlin or Cole Porter. It can be Gilbert and Sullivan. It just goes, Tōru Takemitsu.
Composers whose names I don't know but yeah, John Williams for orchestration. It can be any number of things, but the thing is that all of these things are being used at the same time. It's all in a month's work, I would think, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
You had mentioned to me before that in your mesh with your soundscape, you're always hearing a score, it's like there's an internal radio, that's different than most people. I think a lot of us have earworms or we might have something in our mind that we were just listening to are playing, but for you, it's more integral and more realized than that.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. I don't know what this is. I don't know what this is. Maybe I'm crazy. I don't ... but I don't know what this is. I constantly have music going in my head, no matter how loud or softly, but it's always going. So I'll step onto a street or I'll step in the car, and there's always a soundtrack. It's always a soundtrack thing. It's just automatic.
Leah Roseman:
When you're listening to music that doesn't drown out the music you're listening to, that'll set that aside.
Colin Aguiar:
When I'm listening to music, the music is being ... listening to it as individual parts. All the orchestration is stretched out, and I'm listening to compression or equalization or mix issues or compositional analysis, so stuff like that.
Leah Roseman:
Are you able to easily remember chord progressions?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
How about, are you able to take dictation quite easily, if you hear a score, can you write it down?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So that stuff just comes very naturally to you?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Or was that training? I guess that's where I'm getting at.
Colin Aguiar:
No, it's a part of this craziness. It's part of this affliction. Yeah, it's just ... I was always able to memorize something. It's kind of like a conversation. You know what I think, I think when it happens from ... when you're two, it becomes a language, maybe. So when other people ... maybe this is it, when you're thinking in a language, you're thinking about what to say, maybe I have a language going on, and maybe I'm thinking in that language of, it happens to be music. So I don't really have an explanation for it, but maybe it's my emotional language that's constantly going.
Leah Roseman:
I know you've gotten interested in many different styles of music over the years. When I was researching, one thing that came up that I was interested in was Kathakali because that's a style I wasn't familiar with, so then I was watching videos of this very interesting dance, and I was curious because also at a certain point, you were very interested in opera and musical theater, and as a film and television composer, we're dealing with characters and often, certain motives for characters. So how does that relate to those types of music?
Colin Aguiar:
Kathakali is a dance that happens ... the dance tradition of South India, but the thing is that it's no different from acquiring that knowledge in what's happening in Kabuki theater or what's happening in theater in Central Africa, or the evolution of Dell'arte in Italy, or how theater evolves in the courts in England. So I think just kind of the knowledge of all these different offshoots in history just kind of play into everything else. There might be a character that has a certain bent towards any one of these things, and when you identify this character trait, or when you identify a certain nod that a script has to a certain social movement or point in history, it becomes even richer to imbue those scenes with something from that era or something from that geography. So yeah, just constantly studying the stuff sometimes just comes to your rescue.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Colin Aguiar:
So I just keep studying. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Well, just in terms of the formulas that would be used in Kathakali to represent certain narrative things or emotions, and I know the opera composers have done the same thing, I guess that's what I was getting at, just the technique of using music in that way for dramatic purposes.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing in ballet as well. It's not that different. The EDMs are different, but it's the same principle and the same thing and the same techniques in ballet or in Wagner are just replicated in some way in film music. It's just the duplication of ... or not duplication, but an intelligent way of paralleling emotion or reflecting the subtext. So yeah, it's kind of like the same principles, but maybe updated or done in a different way, but the same principles.
Leah Roseman:
So Colin, do directors and producers give composers a lot of direction in terms of how much scoring they want, if they want ... like a John Williams movie tends to have music almost the entire way through, and then, some styles are more spare. I guess that's what I'm getting at.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, and this is where it's all really collaborative. We really talk about what kind of a movie this is going to be, whether it's going to be with wall to wall ... they call it wall to wall music, or whether it's going to be sparse. This is definitely a conversation that goes two ways. With most directors. I'll definitely listen to everything and then, my idea is also listen to ... sometimes we agree to lean more to one side or the other. It really depends on the project. To answer your question, some movies do deserve treatment where it's more quiet and others where it's not so quiet. Even John Williams has some movies where it's not cooperative with music that much. Born in the 4th of July and may maybe Catch Me If You Can, isn't wall to wall music such like Indiana Jones, for example or Jurassic Park. So yeah, there are variance.
Leah Roseman:
It's not often, but I ... sometimes it's the right feel when there's music that somebody turns on the radio and it's not like a song you know, but it's written for the ... you know what I mean, but it's incorporated. So there's a reason why there's music playing, like when that technique is used. Do you get decision fatigue in terms of having to make so many decisions every day, creatively? Do you get tired of just having-
Colin Aguiar:
No.
Leah Roseman:
No. Okay.
Colin Aguiar:
No. The reason being is because sometimes on another level, the job is all decision making. That's the art of decision making. It's the art of a standing between the horns of a dilemma and knowing all the different possibilities, having the most widest, richest spectrum of possibilities, and then analyzing the pros and cons of each one, going with the best one and doing it in a record amount of time. The thing is that each decision ... each quandary is very different from the last one. So it's challenging, and that challenge keeps me engaged, so I like decisions. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So the time flow, is music one of the last things that's added before the final edits?
Colin Aguiar:
It depends on the people making the movie. Some people are starting to involve me a lot earlier now, and that's very welcome, but very often, yeah, you're sprinting to the project because you're one of the last people.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so are you at liberty to say what your project is right now or not?
Colin Aguiar:
I'm a little superstitious.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. That's fine.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, no, I hope it'll be a nice little project, a nice little documentary. We're figuring out some of the logistical things right now. Yeah, I think it'll be a very spiritually satisfying journey by the end of it. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. So are a lot of the projects you're doing sort of fairly long, are you on something for six months or ...
Colin Aguiar:
This one, I will be, but it runs the gamut. Some projects need something done in a matter of weeks. Other projects will sometimes need three or four months, which is really welcome. You get to think things out, so both are just fine.
Leah Roseman:
So I'm curious, you haven't dipped your toe in the podcast music world, which is a whole thing now.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I mean, I would to. I listen to some podcasts almost daily, and it'll be great to contribute to them, but the podcast stream or track is completely different. Apparently you write a whole bunch of things and hope that they get used or something like that. It's not really on a project by project basis. It's more of a library, what they call a library basis. So it perplexes me, but yeah, that'd be awesome if I did something for a podcast.
Leah Roseman:
So this Sprite commercial, you had submitted another clip, so that was using a beatboxer. So how did you direct the ... it wasn't done with synthesizer, right? It was a live human, beatboxer?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Really. I found someone ... in the world of commercial that's even faster than film and TV. You get literally a day maybe to do something like that. So I found a beatboxer. He lived with his mom on the other side of town. I picked him up and I got in my place, and it was mostly me telling him the rhythm that I had in mind, and I kind of verbalized it for him and he duplicated it and he had a bunch of other ideas, and yeah, it kind of came together that way. Yeah, that was an interesting scenario. It was a scenario where I was completely broke and I didn't have any money to do this, and the owner of this jingle house called me and said, "Hey, do you want to take a stab at this?" There were at least 14 other options, and mine got picked. So yeah, it couldn't have come a moment later because I have really needed the money back then.
Leah Roseman:
One thing we didn't talk about that could be interesting is that some of the traditions in the film industry to use guide tracks, where they use a famous symphony or for another ... is that still done quite a bit?
Colin Aguiar:
Well, it's done for a number of reasons. The first reason it's done is because when they're editing a movie, they need to understand the flow of the scene. They need ... So basically they need rhythm underneath each cut. Without rhythm, it can seem discombobulated, it can seem very uncoordinated. That's not something that audiences are very used to. So when you put a track of music underneath and edit, you suddenly know where to put each cut, but what'll happen is that everyone's working on a team, and there's many members of the team that have to look at those cuts, and many people can kind of start to fall in love or create an expectation of what the end result will be. End result meaning with music. That may include very close to that temp track.
So, that can create a pressure on the composer, but not necessarily ... there are now this idea of this expectation and what they call temp love is now pretty popular. So I think people now are ... filmmakers now more vigilant of that. When I get film now, I usually don't get a temp track with it. So filmmakers now are kind of wise to this pitfall.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, that's interesting.
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Yeah, especially when the ... the recording that you use on a temp track, that recording, you just don't know the circumstances. Maybe that composer had four months to write something and the new composer doesn't have that time, or maybe they had vastly more money and a big music team of orchestrators and maybe the composer for your film, doesn't really have that, a luxury. So those parameters have to be kind of acknowledged, the difference, which you won't really know. So yeah, filmmakers these days, I think are more attuned to the fact that to treat their composer within the parameters they're operating in.
Leah Roseman:
That's more respectful too, right?
Colin Aguiar:
More practical. Yeah, as well. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Do you think you've ... well, had you stayed in Canada, I mean we still have a pretty robust film industry in Toronto, do you think you would've still have had a lot of opportunities, or was your move to LA really created a lot more opportunities for you?
Colin Aguiar:
Both are great. LA just has a lot more happening as opposed to Canada. In Canada, a lot of what we do is based on government funding. In the States, it's a lot more open-ended, but there's opportunities in everywhere. There's just more opportunities in the states, and it fluctuates as well. The opportunities in the states during the recession go down and who knows, policies can change and we're getting a lot of streaming services now in Canada that are setting up headquarters there. So you really just don't know. We're in a state of flux right now.
Leah Roseman:
During the first part of the pandemic with the lockdowns, did you have projects canceled? Was there a lot of uncertainty in your business?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah. Yeah. I had projects canceled and there weren't ... things weren't happening because in order to make a movie, you had to gather in big groups, in big numbers and in close proximity. So you just couldn't make a movie. There were a number of trials, I remember reading the papers in the trades, there'd be movies attempting to film and someone would get COVID and they'd be shut down again, and if you will look at it, COVID protocols represented another expense on the film production. So they had to spend money there, and each time you shut down and revamp, that's another expense as well. So yeah, I'm glad we're out of it right now, but that was a dark time. I'm sure.
Leah Roseman:
You had extra time in your hands. Did you do creative things or was it just really hard?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, I did some creative things. I did this one choral piece called Hymn For Our Times. It was using a footage of LA that I found, and yeah, there's always something to do and that a to-do list is a bottomless pit of to-dos.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I listened to Hymn for Our Times. It's really beautiful.
Colin Aguiar:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
And your father was ill at the time as well, when you wrote that?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, my dad was ill. He was passing away at that time.
Leah Roseman:
Were you able to spend time with him because you were able to be back in Toronto or-
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, yeah. I went back to Canada and I spent time with him. Yeah, these part of life, I guess.
Leah Roseman:
Was he happy that you had pursued film composition as a job?
Colin Aguiar:
Yeah, he was to a certain extent. I mean, I have Indian parents, so the direction of thought is always towards something where there's a predictable paycheck every two weeks or a month or whatever. Either way, my dad put this trade in my hand more or less. Yeah, I think it's my purpose, so it's my vocation.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's a beautiful vocation. Thanks so much for sharing your-
Colin Aguiar:
So is yours.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your experience today, Colin, it was really interesting.
Colin Aguiar:
Thank you, Leah. I'm completely aware that I'm just a small composer in Toronto and LA and I don't claim to be an expert in anything, but I just know my own experience and hopefully I really know those authentically, and that's the bounds of my knowledge really.
Leah Roseman:
Well, it's an ongoing process, but I mean, you have your voice and I think what you're doing is so magical to-
Colin Aguiar:
Well, Thanks.
Leah Roseman:
To convert. I can't even express it in words. I mean, music does it so much better.
Colin Aguiar:
Well, thank you so much, Leah. Thank you for the reverence you give composers and musicians and music. Yeah, I think it comes from you being a professional musician as well. This is something I think people that ... people I generally interview musicians or in the music musical arena, are missing because there's this insight into music or the thinking of a composer that a lot of people only look at it recreationally and from time to time, but not in depth. So your insight, your approach to it, your understanding of it, definitely shows these questions are always on point. I watch your other interviews as well, and it brings out certain things from the people you're talking to that I don't think other interviews bring out. So, I'm very honored to be one of the people you've interviewed, so thank you, Leah.
Leah Roseman:
Thanks Colin. Okay. 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. Have a great week.
