AriKoinuma.com

This is a blog response to my hero Derek Sivers’ recent post What do you hate not doing?

1. I hate not playing my guitar to make up new music. That’s really the heart of what I like to do.  I’m a guitar-based “make-uper” of songs.  Every time I pick up a guitar, I can come up with at least one cool bit that can be used in a song somewhere.
2. I hate not being in touch with a big picture. I am obsessed about big pictures.  Life plans, career visions, big dreams.  I always look forward to my peer-mentoring sessions with my collaborators, because those are my dedicated time for talking big pictures.
3. I hate not talking to people about big pictures. I could care less about the weather or what you had for lunch.  If you come up to me and say “hi, my name is Tom, and the dream of my life is to go around the world in a yacht,” that’s the stuff that turns me on.  Let’s talk about your secret ambitions and cure for the world’s problems.
4. I hate not seeing my family.  Every once in a while I have days where I leave before my family wakes up, and gets home after they go to bed.  I hate those days, and I don’t have them often at all.

Wow, I can’t think of much else I can’t live without.  I really don’t need much.

What about you?

On Sunday night I stayed up late with America’s Next Felon director Ron Johnson to place cues into the film.

When a composer delivers a score, the timing of when and where to put the music is usually communicated via time codes.  But really, that’s still a very crude way of communicating.  It’s very hard to write down stuff like when to start fading in or out and by how much.  So, I just ended up sitting with him and just talking through all the cues.  It took about 4 hours to go through all the music for a 60+ minute film, but it was worth it.

Unless Ron comes up with additional tweaks, my commitments for that film are done!  If this was a true dramatic underscore, I’d want to be more involved in the mixing process, but for this film, it’s mostly just background music — so I’m not that picky about how loud/soft the music needs to be.  In the other words, precise mixing isn’t required for my music to do its job this time, as it’s really not supporting the visuals that actively.  So I probably won’t see the film again until it’s finished.

My hat’s off to Ron, though, as he’s planning to shoot a short soon, to use it as an experiment/practice for his next feature film already.  The guy just has something cooking constantly — and he makes it look so effortless.  I really enjoyed working with him.

What’s next for me?  I’m not exactly sure.  I’m holding down a full-time contract web work at the moment, so I don’t have a pressing need to find the next paying music job.  I produced a full-length album and scored a feature in the 6 months since resuming my music business, so that’s not bad.

I feel the need to put some energy into my own music (especially now that I’ve been making music for others for a while), plus I’m going to be developing a big film web site, too.  So I think I’m going to take it easy on the music front for a while.  I’m excited about maybe writing some new songs or at least practicing playing them.

This is going to be a bit of long quote, but it articulates why I do music so well, that I have to share.

It’s a portion of a welcome address given to the parents of incoming freshman class at Boston Conservatory, by its head of music division, Karl Paulnack.

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

And here’s another from the portion where he addresses the incoming students themselves:

If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet.

–

The truth is that while I am a musician, a rock musician even, but I don’t see myself as an entertainer.  I do what I do mainly because I can’t live the thought of not doing it, but also because I see it as an act of healing.

Yes, I am aware that when art takes on the grandiose notion of being more than itself, it can quickly get heavy-handed, preachy, and, well, Not-Entertaining.  And I do my share of checking in with the reality — it’s just another song to someone, and there are millions and millions of songs out there.

But music is healing to me, and if it’s healing to me, I bet that it will be healing to someone else out there.  I make violent music, sad music, yearning music and conflicted music, because I believe music is the healthiest way to process some of those emotions that tend to get bottled up inside.  Rage and sorrow are both very legitimate feelings, as are frustrations and despair.  Once they enter your system, we need a wholesome way to process them.  My music, I make with the intention of being an agent that contributes to that process.

This week I mixed & mastered all the cues for America’s Next Felon, the indie film sound track I’ve been working on.  I’m quite pleased with how it’s coming — acquired a new love for loop-based music.  I have never been much of a loop person, despite doing heavy MIDI sequencing for a long time.  I can see why it’s everywhere in today’s musical landscape — particularly among TV shows and commercials — because working with loops is faster!  I’ll put up a few choice cues in the film section when they are ready.

Soon the director and I will sit down for a mixing session.  Film mixing is just as fun as mixing music, as you get to see the whole thing come together.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the process.

Last night I had a terrific meeting with my long-time collaborator and “soul sister” Lorie Marsh.  She’s an indie film producer and a fellow art-preneur.  I’ll be helping her with online strategy and web development for the film she’s working on.

The great thing is that she and I relate to each other on so many different levels.  As a fellow Parent with Artistic Ambitions, we juggle family commitments with our quest to fulfill our artistic destiny.  We’ve been collaborating on and off for 9 years now — what a fruitful relationship it’s been.

I’m also happy about my new collaborator Rebecca, who is a gifted web designer and branding guru.  She’s able to help me see the big picture of my artistic career and my ongoing effort to refine my message/story to the world.

For too long I’ve taken on too much by myself — but my intention is to change that and have my life filled with these kinds of collaborations.  I have a very good start, and in my surroundings there are potential for more.

If you’re looking for a collaborator, don’t hesitate to contact me.  From arranging and home recording tips to online promotion, I have a lot to offer.