James Olszewski's Blog

A Change in Direction

James — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:22:00 GMT

I've been doing some thinking lately about what's important to me. After thinking about my music and what I want my life to look like, I've made a decision to change direction in my music career. I've had a great time working on original music for CD projects, but I've decided to make scoring music for media my primary focus. I enjoy the freedom that composing whatever I want gives me, and putting it on a CD, but my higher passion- not to mention career opportunities- lie with writing music for films, TV, video games, and other media. Even more to the point, eliminating CD projects will free me up to me a better "family man", which really is my number one priority.

So I'm canceling my Shelter CD project. So far, I've completed one track for the CD, "A Mighty Fortress". I have two other tracks in progress, both of which will remain incomplete. One of the two, "Be Still My Soul", I'll post soon to ReverbNation (which will also show up on jamesolszewski.com), as it's "complete enough".

Going forward, I'll pursue scoring projects, and I'll continue to post clips of what I'm working on. If you enjoy my music, I'll continue to post new pieces as I can. I'll also update my blog on what projects I'm working on.

Someday circumstances may allow me to put out CDs again, but I'm not going to worry about whether that will happen or not. Until then, keep an eye (or an ear) open for new tracks and news on jamesolszewski.com!

'Shelter' on hold through September

James — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Just wanted to write a quick note to mention that I'm pausing my work on Shelter through September, to give me time to work on the Apple project. I plan to pick it up again in early October, but I'm also staying open to the fact that there may be some last work that hangs over into October. So we'll see.

I've started on the third track of Shelter, and it's coming along. It's actually complete in my head; I just need to get it all officially written and orchestrated! I also confirmed recently that Fourmata has been practicing "Be Still My Soul", so hopefully we'll get a chance to record it sometime late in the year.

So, it's not looking too great for a late 2009 - early 2010 CD release. I'll just keep hammering away on it and we'll all see what happens!

Top Secret Project!

James — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:52:00 GMT

I haven't written on my own blog in a while, but as you probably know, I'm all over Facebook and Twitter. Mostly I use Facebook and Twitter for my everyday updates, but occasionally I'll come back to my own blog for Big Things.

And this is one of those things.

I've been given the opportunity to work with an amazingly talented film composer, and a good friend / mentor, Deane Ogden, on a new project for Apple. I can't say much about it, but I can say I'm incredibly excited about it. In fact, part of the reason I can't say much about it is I don't really know too much yet! Regardless, I'm so psyched about it I've found myself just writing random short pieces of music- "stems"- just to get my mind going. At this point, I have no idea if any of these stems will be used for this or any other project, but you never know. I tend to write stuff, put it away, and pull it out when needed. I have stems I wrote back in high school that I've never used; who knows, maybe I'll pull those out!

Here's a little more information about the project on Deane's web site. As of this writing, it was in an update titled "If I TOLD YA, I'd have to KILL YA..."

First Film Project

James — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:41:00 GMT

A week or two ago a filmmaker contacted me inquiring about composing some music for a film he's working on. After talking to him some, I sent him a few ideas I came up with for the project, and long story short, he liked them. So I'm now officially on the project! This is my first film scoring project, so I'm very excited about it. It's a good "first project" because I'm actually one of three composers on the film. The film is a documentary, and is in three sections; I get to write for the third section. The segment is about 20 minutes long, and it looks like I'll be writing about 15 minutes of music. The scary part is I have only a little over a week to pull it off!

Conundrum

James — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:03:00 GMT

"Be Still My Soul" is coming along nicely, but there's a hitch.

Part of my process when I'm starting a new piece is to hit Record on my workstation, and just improv a bit on the theme rattling around in my head. Sometimes this isn't necessary if the piece is fully developed in my head, but for this piece I just had the theme, a conception of the feel I wanted, and a little of the chord structure. Well, I've ended up with two treatments I really like. This has happened before, and I've just combined them into a single motif or used them for different parts of the composition. This time, I like both of them enough that I don't want to change them by combining them, and their styles are just different enough that it would probably end up sounding bad if I put them in a single composition.

I smell bonus track.

Next.... "Be Still My Soul"

James — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:38:00 GMT

On Wednesday night I made few final tweaks on "A Mighty Fortress", then posted it to my ReverbNation page. Sure, the CD is still a long way off, but I wanted to put up something since it's been a little while. This particular composition took quite some time to complete! A bunch of other things combined to delay me more than I anticipated, but I'm hoping everything will get back on track with the CD now that life has settled down a little again.

So, as I said, Wednesday night I posted "A Mighty Fortress"; last night I started my next piece, a new arrangement of the hymn "Be Still My Soul". I had started out thinking of this as an acapella piece; I mentioned in a previous post I'm talking to the acapella group Fourmata to see if they would like to record it. Last night helped me develop the idea further. At the moment it's sounding more like it could end up with piano, maybe some light strings (more likely not though, or if so, a small ensemble), and a solo violin or viola- all of this behind the featured vocal part. I have to make sure Fourmata won't object to doing a piece with instrumentation, though; I'll cross that bridge soon. But anyway, the composition is already progressing much faster than I anticipated. I have a pretty good sketch of the piece recorded already, about three minutes worth, and I already have the piece's "roadmap" worked out. All that in about 30 minutes. I love when that happens!

Spring Break and Composing Don't Mix

James — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:23:00 GMT

This week is Spring Break for my daughter, and we've done a few fun things. I wasn't able to take off a ton of time at work, but we did manage to get to Sea World in San Antonio one day this week.

The downside of Spring Break is I haven't been able to get much music done this week! Generally I do my work in the evenings after the girl is settled down in bed; this week we've been letting her stay up late, so I've not been able to do nearly as much as I wanted to. Still, I've finished actually composing "A Mighty Fortress", finally settling on an ending I like (it does end on a unison note), and all that remains is to finish orchestrating, followed by a bunch of "secret sauce" stuff I do to take the piece from 90% to 100% complete.

I had originally hoped to finish the piece by the end of this week. I hadn't anticipated the Spring Break thing. Well, she's back at school next week, so maybe then.

A Mighty Fortress

James — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:35:00 GMT

Things have let up a bit (for now) so I've been able to push forward on Shelter. The first track has been slow going, not only because I've been so busy, but also because it's a fully orchestrated piece. My intent is to mix up the instrumentation a bit on the CD, but this particular piece- it's feeling like it'll be Track 1- is a straight up huge, anthemic thing, based on the hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God". Hopefully it's not too bombastic though; I may have to throttle it back some!

I'm currently working on orchestrating the ending, but I've actually not quite decided on how I specifically want to end it. One thing I'm considering is bringing it down to a fermata and using that as the starting point of the second track in the CD, like movements in a suite. Or I may just end it. I'm fairly certain though it will end on a unison note and fermata.

The next piece I want to work on I think will be one of two different approaches. The first approach is an acappella arrangement, the second is a trumpet solo. I'll probably end up doing both of these on the CD, but I'm just deciding on which one to work up first. A couple months ago I discovered an amazing female acappella group that goes by the name Fourmata. I hope I can get them to let me feature them for one or two acappella pieces! Currently the trumpet solo in my head sounds vaguely like a chilled out Mark Isham sort of arrangement: muted trumpet, keyboards, maybe some strings- that sort of thing.

We'll see....

SCOREcast Ep17, TXT3, and Shelter

James — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:59:00 GMT

I listened to a great podcast today, the subject of which was actually podcasting itself, and blogging. I know it's been a while since I blogged anything, but I'm newly energized to get back in the habit.

The fact is I've actually been busy with a ton of stuff lately!

First, I'm happy to say that the first SCOREcast podcast of 2009 is now available on iTunes. This is the first episode of the "rebooted" SCOREcast, of which I'm on the leadership team. It's a great episode, especially for "media composers"- folks who write music for film, TV, video games, and everything else you can think of. This episode, Deane Ogden talks about putting together demo packages, which is sort of like a combination of cover letter, credits, and a demo CD, all packaged up to make a great impression. The way I think of it, businesspeople have resumes, artists have portfolios, bands have press kits- media composers have demo packages. It's a good segment that really has me thinking of how I can make mine more effective. Another great segment is from Houston Haynes, who gives a review of this year's NAMM show and discusses some of the latest music and production technology. I'm especially psyched about Cubase 5. I don't claim any participation in this particular SCOREcast episode, but I'm working on a couple segments for future episodes.

Another big project I'm working on is for my church. We're launching a new type of church service for Sunday nights called TXT3, and I'm in the praise band playing keyboards, doing sequencing, and maybe some percussion. It's time consuming at the moment because we're working up a completely new repertoire of tunes. Once we get a good 30 or so tunes nailed down, things should start to calm down a bit.

Meanwhile, I'm also working on augmenting my studio with the addition of another computer, swapping my old one to be a supporting machine to my new main machine (a.k.a. "The Big Switch"). I'm excited about this because the new machine should give me the speed and horsepower I need to work smoothly on my projects, which I've had challenges with in the past. If you're not familiar with the all the composing and synth software out there these days, it can require an enormous amount of computing power. Once I finish The Big Switch, I'll not only have a much better main computer, but I'll also have a dedicated video machine. And that's pretty awesome.

Last, I'm still trying to find time to work on Shelter. It looks like the project will not only have purely orchestral music, but I also plan to write some pieces for solo instruments, and enlist some guest musicians to perform on the CD. Something new that is very exciting to me, I'm talking to a group of ladies that specialize in acapella music, to record a piece or two on Shelter. I'm still figuring out what tune(s) to arrange for them, but I'll provide more details as things progress.

Definitely not bored!

Dire Predictions

James — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:21:00 GMT

As 2008 is coming to a close, I've been thinking about what the future holds. I just had to share a couple pretty good ones! The first prediction is in an article predicting the end of the United States in 2010.

Bummer, right?

But that's okay because the world is ending in 2012 anyway, right? Mark your calendars, people!

Hello, Jetsons!

James — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:39:00 GMT

You know from a previous post that I'm involved with a new service on the web that we're calling SCOREcast. One of the fringe benefits of such an undertaking is I have the opportunity to hone my ability to work with people who are in different geographic locations from me. Perfect example, tonight the SCOREcast core team are getting together for our first planning meeting. Half of the team is in Los Angeles, half is in Austin, and we're meeting via videoconference. Most of the team have Macs, which has some awesome videoconference capability through iChat. But luckily iChat works with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), so I'm using that on my PC.

I've used videoconferencing at work many times, but it's usually a big deal involving very expensive equipment, insane bandwidth, reserving special conference rooms, coordinating with people "across the pond", training classes on how to use it all, and so on. But this stuff, iChat and AIM, is as easy as using the telephone. And that's the coolest thing about videoconferencing these days. When I was growing up watching Jetsons, Star Trek, and so on, everyone always spoke face to face over monitors, holograms, handheld screens, or whatever. Well that day is here, folks. I say we take advantage. And speaking of taking advantage, let's not forget, videoconferencing like this is FREE. The only problem with videoconferencing right now is similar to the problem when telephones were still "new": not many people had one, so its usefulness was limited. So go out and get set up. And to my family: This Means You!

SCOREcast

James — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:40:00 GMT

Facebook is pretty cool.

Over the last few weeks I've been getting to know a great group film score composers. A couple weeks ago, Deane Ogden sent out a note that he's rebooting his film score podcast, SCOREcast. SCOREcast is a free podcast, having to do with all things related to film scoring. The way Deane tells it, he started SCOREcast as a way to answer all the questions he would get from people, in a way that benefits everyone, and keeps him from having to write a ton of individual emails a month.

Well he's refreshing SCOREcast, but a few of us have been brainstorming on a web site to supplement the podcast (official name forthcoming). It's intended to be a destination site (rather, THE destination site) for film score composers, fans of film scores, and for people who aspire to become composers for film. The site will be a community for composers in all stages of their career. We even plan to court the A-list guys to do some guest articles or somesuch. For the seasoned guys it'll give them a chance to share experiences, techniques, network, and to mentor others if they choose. For the newbies, it'll be a place of learning, a reference library, and whatever else we want to make it. For all it'll be a great source of news, community, and support. And let me be clear on one thing: this will not be a "bunch of guys got together and built a site" site. It will be a legitimate, professional site with important information, useful resources, stuff available nowhere else. Our goal is to make it an indispensable resource to film composers- the type of site where you're considered out of touch if you're not on it. So if you are a film composer, aspire to be a film composer, or are a fan, contact me! We'll keep you up to date on progress.

The SCOREcast podcast is available on iTunes, here. It's available now, so please subscribe. Thanks!

Bar Stool Economics

James — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:07:00 GMT

During lunch I was reading the ongoing conversation on Twitter about the '08 Election, when someone posted there was a hilarious "flame-fest" going on at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/6pzo4w about how ABC was not going to air the 30-minute Obama infomercial (or whatever it's called). So I decided to check it out. The comments following the aritcle were your typical name-calling stuff until I came upon this interesting response. I'd heard this illustration once before many years ago so I'm glad I finally found it. With thanks to David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, University of Georgia, I'm pasting it here. Just for fun.

"Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.' Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'

'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too.

It's unfair that he got ten times more than I got' 'That's true!!'

shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!'

'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.

Professor of Economics

University of Georgia

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.

For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible."

Well anyway. An interesting illustration. This will be the first and last remotely political entry on my blog, so with that I have one last request:

Think, do your research independently of the spin doctors on both sides, then (and ONLY then) vote.

Checking out SoundCloud

James — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:09:00 GMT

One of my friends turned me on to SoundCloud a couple months ago, but I never really messed around with it. At first it wasn't open to the public, so I didn't get much value out of it. But a few days ago SoundCloud finally opened up to the world, so I'm giving it another look.

At first glance SoundCloud seems a sort of "me too" when it comes to music hosting. It allows artists to upload their music so other people on the site can discover it. But there are a few things that makes SoundCloud cool. One is the concept of the DropBox. Let's say you and your friend are on SoundCloud, and you find a cool song you want him to hear. Just drop it in his DropBox, sort of like a "song email" without clogging up your friend's email. My friend could send me music in the same way through my DropBox. But they've also just come out with a couple nice Facebook apps that exposes SoundCloud content to folks on Facebook. There's the DropBox app, which is basically the same functionality as the SoundCloud DropBox, but on Facebook- my friends could drop music in my box for me to hear. Going the other way there's the SoundCloud Player Facebook app, where I could drop music into the player and folks on Facebook would have access to it.

So yes, this sounds like any other player. An additional fun piece of functionality makes using SoundCloud cool: SoundCloud provides a waveform display of the song itself, and allows users to place "time-based" comments within the timeline of the song. Usually it could be something as simple as "I love this part". But artists could also use it to give fans additional insight into the song.

Taken as a whole, SoundCloud seems pretty cool, and the combination of the DropBox feature and in-line commenting could make SoundCloud especially useful for long-distance collaboration.

I think I'll try it out for a while and see if it sticks. By the way, I'm at http://www.soundcloud.com/jamesolszewski.

New Projects

James — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:12:00 GMT

CD Project

Well I've finally gotten off the couch in the evenings and started my new CD project. (By the way, DVRs are evil- I have HOURS of my favorite shows to catch up on! Oh well.) I had done some planning for the project earlier, but hadn't really actually sat down at the keyboard until last night.

The new CD will be called Shelter, which I think I mentioned in a previous post; it'll be new arrangements of old hymns. This is a bit of a challenge actually, because if you're familiar with hymns, they're usually short and repetitive. Obviously this doesn't make for a great instrumental contemporary classical CD! So I'll need to be very creative, writing additional passages, maybe merging hymns, and so on. But I'm optimistic, especially from the piece I started last night.

Film Project?

Another project (which may actually delay Shelter) that may be in the works: I may get the opportunity to write some cues for a film student doing a feature length documentary. We'll see how that works out; until then, I'll continue working on the CD.

Other Stuff

Taxi forwarded one of the pieces I wrote for the Olympics to the requestor. That means it's possible it could be used in something- a commercial, DVD, whatever. I'm not sure who the requestor is, but my best guess is an ad agency or a company that makes sports-related equipment. Anyway, however it's used, if it is, is fine with me.

Halloween Music is Ready!

James — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:23:00 GMT

I've finished putting together my Halloween music! I'm looking forward to playing out the window on Halloween. I'll be playing it from my daughter's boombox, but I wish I could play it from some larger speakers. There are some really low frequency parts, below the range of smaller speakers, but I guess it'll have to do. I don't want to bring the "big system" downstairs. Maybe I could play it from my window on the second floor? Well whatever. I'm excited about it.

By the way, come and get it! It's a free download on the Halloween page.

Halloween Music

James — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:13:31 GMT

Every Halloween my neighborhood does it up big. I'm talking block parties, house parties, haunted houses, people decorating their yards, awesome candy, creepy music, thousands of people, and so on. In fact our neighborhood has become "famous" enough in my town that people actually drive from other parts of town to be part of the fun.

In a previous post, I mentioned that Austin has an awesome radio show on film music hosted by Brian Satterwhite, called "Film Score Focus". For a while I got into the habit of downloading Brian's shows and listening to them at work (sadly KMFA has since had to remove its archived shows off its web site or I'd give you a link). One such show was called "The Scariest Music I Ever Saw", a great collection of really creepy film music. Brian mentioned he loved to play this for the Trick or Treaters on Halloween. Well this got me to thinking. Maybe I could make a "Trick or Treating soundtrack".

So that's what I'm doing!

Coming soon to jamesolszewski.com, 60 minutes of creepy Halloween music. And even better: I'll post it as a free download! So feel free to burn it to a CD, play it from an iPod, or whatever, and play it out your window on Halloween! The music will simply be ambience- atmosphere- no really "music" to it. But hey it's free- it's worth a try.

Assuming all goes as planned, I should have it posted within a few days. Oh and I'm taking suggestions for titles- just add it as a Comment on this post.

Wordle: Blogging Toy

James — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:09:00 GMT

Someone I'm following on Twitter just posted a tweet about Wordle, a cool little app that takes the words from your blog and turns them into these cool "word clouds". I just ran it on my blog: here's the result! (Click for a larger version)

Rant

James — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:16:00 GMT

You know what bugs me? When people say "You need to earn my respect." That's such a negative attitude in my opinion. What that means is really "Every person in the entire world does not deserve my respect, unless I know them and they've proven themselves to me." This seems to be a most arrogant, self-centered, lazy, and unintelligent outlook.

I come at the concept of respect from the opposite angle: "You earn my disrespect." Basically, I'm starting off assuming everyone in the world must have some inherent value and thus deserves my respect. Even strangers, even people I don't know, even people I'll never know. There are people in this world I don't respect, and I can at least articulate why I don't. To me, this seems like not only a more positive way of seeing ther world, but healthier and more intelligent.

Looking at people, you can see how they view the world by how they treat others, especially strangers. Nowhere is it more noticeable than in two places: while driving, and on the Internet. Have you seen how people treat one another online, or when they're separated by their cars? You can see the blind disrespect; it's everywhere- and not just in the US. Every once in a while you'll see others treat each other kindly for no reason. But it appears to me that those people are in the minority.

Olympics! I Hope.

James — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:16:00 GMT

I'm taking a side-trip from my work on my next CD project, to instead work on three pieces of music that I hope will be used in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Taxi (see previous posts) has a few Olympics-related listings, and I've decided I can't pass up the opportunity. Basically I'll submit the music to Taxi for this listing, they'll evaluate it, and hopefully send it to the producer(s) who requested it. The producer(s) will evaluate it as well and, if they decide they can use it, they'll contact me and play "let's make a deal".

I need to get these pieces done quickly- the Olympics starts on August 8th! I've never written orchestral pieces quite as quickly as I need to write them for this listing. Writing orchestral takes quite some time since you have to write so many parts. It's like writing the same song- but slightly modified- 14 times! Yes, I write each part individually. Sure, there are quicker and easier ways to get a similar sound, but not if you want it to sound as perfect as possible. As I compose, I actually consider the "playability" of each part as if an actual musician were to play it. For example, you can't have horn parts that never take a breath. And tuba requires more "breath pauses" than trumpets. For string parts you have to account for the length of the bow and so on. So I go to the trouble to get it right. And for this listing, since it likely won't be rerecorded, it needs to be perfect or it doesn't stand a chance. The biggest compliment I can get is "What orchestra performed this?"

But this weekend I had a really productive composing marathon- 7 hours straight, no breaks, no meals. Writing for several hours without stopping is rare for me because I have so many other commitments. But on Saturday my wife and daughter went shopping and left me all alone in the house. So I forsook my chores and other distractions and hammered out a bunch of work I'm pretty happy with. Nice to be able to keep my train of thought going strong! As a result I have the song completely laid out, the roadmap complete, and the orchestration about 2/3 finished. So another couple days and I'll be done. As always, I'm getting that anxious excited feeling of wanting to hear with my ears what's running around in my mind.

When I finish the piece, I plan to post it online somewhere (for streaming) in a private area for members of my mailing list. Please sign up if you haven't already on the jamesolszewski.com home page.