Latest / 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast / Coming Up Through the Ranks (with Jonas Friedman)

Transcript

Coming Up Through the Ranks (with Jonas Friedman) · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:30
  Jonas Friedman: you know there could be a learning curve, no matter how great you are.
• 0:33
  Jonas Friedman: You know there's a learning curve from composer to composer.
• 0:35
  Jonas Friedman: But once you get that down and they can rely on you, that's probably all you're gonna be doing, because that is the largest time consuming task that if someone can do well, that, they're going to ask you to start taking crack at that.
• 0:50
  Jonas Friedman: And it might be that they start a cue and they hand it off to you to finish, or they have you, you know, start a cue by just putting in the sound design or just putting in the drums and then they finish, or you take on a whole cue from scratch, easy ["The Sound of the Wind"].
• 1:12
  Dave Kropf: What is happening everybody?
• 1:13
  Dave Kropf: This is Dave Kropf, and welcome back to another episode of the 52 Cues podcast, helping you grow your career as a production and library music composer.
• 1:22
  Dave Kropf: If this is your first time here, welcome.
• 1:24
  Dave Kropf: Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening to the audio on the go.
• 1:27
  Dave Kropf: I just wanna thank you for spending part of your day here with me.
• 1:30
  Dave Kropf: I also have to give a special word of thanks to the family, friends, neighbor and patron subscribers of 52 Cues who give their actual, real, hard-earned money to keep all of this happening.
• 1:42
  Dave Kropf: We are 100% community supported, so you're not gonna hear any embedded ads for mattresses or earbuds.
• 1:48
  Dave Kropf: But if you wanna learn more about how you can not only help support 52 Cues but also unlock subscriber perks like workshops, live streams, feedback and Zoom sessions and a ton more, then be sure to click on the links in the description for more information.
• 2:05
  Dave Kropf: You know the concept of apprenticeships has been around for centuries and while in the corporate world it's somewhat fallen out of favor, one industry where it is alive and well is the film music industry.
• 2:17
  Dave Kropf: Name-brand composers often employ teams of ghost writers and composers' assistants to help get their projects over the finish line, and one of those folks is Jonas Friedman, a composer's assistant, who joins me today on the podcast to talk about the gig, talk about the industry and how sometimes paying your dues can really pay off.
• 2:41
  Dave Kropf: I am here with the very, very talented Jonas Friedman, who has worked on Alita, battle, angel, halo, new Mutants, next the marksmen.
• 2:54
  Dave Kropf: I mean, these are big boy credits, jonas man, and just really happy to have you on the 52Q's podcast today.
• 3:02
  Jonas Friedman: Oh well, thank you.
• 3:03
  Jonas Friedman: I appreciate that they're not all mine I was brought on to those by other great composers and stuff but they are definitely.
• 3:09
  Jonas Friedman: You know, I was really proud to be on them and to work on them and they were great learning experiences.
• 3:13
  Jonas Friedman: So I'm happy to be here and talk about everything.
• 3:16
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and we're gonna cover a lot of different things today, but I'm glad you mentioned that because that's where I wanna start as someone who has a career in production music.
• 3:27
  Dave Kropf: Us library folks are very used to having music that gets on TV.
• 3:33
  Dave Kropf: You don't ever really get credits.
• 3:35
  Dave Kropf: I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen music by Dave Kropf on screen, because that's just what happens in production and library music.
• 3:43
  Dave Kropf: So your work as a composer's assistant or uncredited work you might have done, can you talk a little bit about that process, what that's like and where the line between composers' assistants and maybe ghost writing can you just tell us all about that?
• 3:58
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, well, I mean, that's a really good question and it's a really interesting industry where I kind of I had an idea about how that works, but you never really understand how it works until you get into the nitty gritty.
• 4:10
  Jonas Friedman: And so I decided when I was producing originally for bands and pop artists that's how I got into music.
• 4:17
  Jonas Friedman: I was in a band myself when I was a teenager and I started producing bands.
• 4:20
  Jonas Friedman: So at a certain point in my 20s I said I'm gonna go into film and television composing.
• 4:25
  Jonas Friedman: Right, that's where I think I wanna take things.
• 4:28
  Jonas Friedman: And when I decided to do that, I knew that the route that I wanted to go because it seemed like the path of least resistance to an extent was to work with an under somebody who had already been doing this successfully for a long time.
• 4:43
  Jonas Friedman: So I wanted to get some sort of apprenticeship under successful composers.
• 4:48
  Jonas Friedman: You know, and at the time too this was like 10 or 12 years ago when I made that transition all these people were coming out of remote control under Hans Zimmer, that had been assisting him and written additional music and all of a sudden, you know, they're getting their own big movies and TV shows and so on.
• 5:04
  Jonas Friedman: So that just seemed to me like the logical way to go about it and I got very, very lucky that I was at the time that I said, oh, I think I wanna try doing this.
• 5:14
  Jonas Friedman: I got a phone call from a composer that I knew, who was working on a Barry Levinson series, brian Keane, and he called me.
• 5:21
  Jonas Friedman: We had known each other for years, from when I was producing bands and my own music, and he said I'm working on this TV show.
• 5:27
  Jonas Friedman: Would you, you know, be interested in kind of doing something like this?
• 5:31
  Jonas Friedman: And it's like, yeah, timing's perfect, that's exactly what I'm looking to do.
• 5:34
  Jonas Friedman: And you know, I ended up doing additional music on the second, you know, halfway through the first season.
• 5:40
  Jonas Friedman: Then on second season of that, he then recommended me to a wonderful guy, mark Snow, who I worked with on a number of things, including the new mutants and bluebloods and X-Files and stuff, and they have written music on all those projects with him.
• 5:53
  Jonas Friedman: He recommended me from there to Sean Calary and when I got introduced to him I decided that's the time to move out to LA.
• 6:02
  Jonas Friedman: So I just thought that by doing all of that it was the right way to honestly get paid to learn.
• 6:09
  Jonas Friedman: That's kind of how I saw it and in hindsight I think it works.
• 6:13
  Jonas Friedman: You know, that's exactly what happened.
• 6:16
  Jonas Friedman: I got paid to learn and there's a lot of ups and downs to that and there's a lot of pros and cons to that.
• 6:22
  Jonas Friedman: Like you said, the term ghost writing and not getting credits and that certainly is a part of it to a degree, you know.
• 6:28
  Jonas Friedman: And then there's different kinds of credits.
• 6:33
  Jonas Friedman: You know, there's sushi credit, there's screen credit, there's Pat on the back credit, you know.
• 6:38
  Jonas Friedman: And then there's, hey, pretend this guy doesn't exist, no credit whatsoever, and I've experienced all of those.
• 6:46
  Jonas Friedman: And then you know so, and they all feel differently, based on where you are at the time, sometimes that, hey, this guy doesn't exist, despite whatever he did, it doesn't feel bad at all because you just got in and you got your music on to a movie or TV show, and that's like an amazing feeling when you're first starting out.
• 7:05
  Jonas Friedman: And then, if you've been doing it for, like you know, 10 years or so and it's like, oh no, you know, you know you're not, there's no screen credit, view on this of any kind, or there's no QC, then that feels very differently than it did a number of years ago.
• 7:18
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, because.
• 7:18
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, because in the industry the Currency extends beyond just cash.
• 7:24
  Dave Kropf: I mean there's currency of relationship, currency of Networking, currency of experience, currency of other connections, learning, the gear, all of those kind of things.
• 7:34
  Jonas Friedman: And sometimes the cash might not be there or the on-screen credit might not be there, but the the relationship that you can make with somebody right, absolutely, and that's actually something I've seen a lot on forums, especially over the last couple weeks, as people discussing this different forms of currency, because I Don't think a lot of you know and you're you're in the educational space much longer than I have been.
• 7:59
  Jonas Friedman: You know I just started this on a whim a couple months ago, but I think that you know there's a structure now to Film and television composing, where there's programs, you know, like you go to college and you get a degree and you learn these things, and I think that's created a certain expectation of how currency is supposed to work in more traditional jobs.
• 8:19
  Jonas Friedman: But the truth is, no matter where you go to learn or what you do, it's the Wild West, like that's what composing and, at least in my experience, that's what Hollywood is, and every project is different, every person you work with is different, and so every conversation about credits and about that, for you know, compensation and all those things, it's all different and you learn as you go and I think that there's a you know that's a big reason that I started trying to help educate people, because I do think that there's a point when it gets ridiculous and people need to know that they can ask for things that they're just simply not feeling comfortable to ask for.
• 8:58
  Jonas Friedman: I think that's a really important thing and then, at the same time, there has to be a counterbalance to that, where it's like, well, you have to know that this is worth a lot, even though I know you need to.
• 9:08
  Jonas Friedman: You know, and it's a difficult, you know concept and conversation.
• 9:11
  Jonas Friedman: So, yeah, for me personally, I took that route where I was gonna jump into the Wild West and work under these people.
• 9:18
  Jonas Friedman: I got very, very lucky and Every single person that I worked under and every project that we did was a huge learning experience that, in one way or another, I was able to use to snowball into the next experience.
• 9:32
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, as soon as anything becomes curriculum, especially at a state school or something like that whether it be jazz or whether it be film music or whether it be dance or Plumbing, right as soon, as soon as you create curriculum, then you create yes, you create expectations.
• 9:50
  Dave Kropf: But by its very nature of having syllabi and lesson plans and everything, and it's you kind of put everything into its own little box that feels Inherently repeatable.
• 10:01
  Dave Kropf: But there are so many variables at play and and the industry changes and expectations change, and so, yeah, I could see how students graduating with a film degree might say, hey, what I'm not, I'm not getting credit on this.
• 10:16
  Dave Kropf: Well, I demand credit because my professors say I demand credit.
• 10:19
  Dave Kropf: And and while that's important, yeah, it's also important to understand when you are in your career, the value that you're receiving Versus you know, you've you legitimately being taken advantage of right now because of myriad circumstances.
• 10:35
  Dave Kropf: So I think there's value in just tempering your expectations and understanding that that the industry is gonna shift because, like you said you said Wild West the way I think it's, it's entrepreneurial and it is it's gig economy, freelance gig economy.
• 10:52
  Jonas Friedman: The whole entertainment industry is like that exactly Exactly, and I think there's also kind of like a confusion.
• 10:58
  Jonas Friedman: You know, right now we're dealing with these strikes between the WGA and the actors and, and that that has created a lot of conversations amongst composers something I'm gonna be talking about soon as, like, composers don't have a union.
• 11:10
  Jonas Friedman: There's this thought that it's like, oh, if we only had that, all these other issues would go away, but it's like, well, clearly that's not the case.
• 11:18
  Jonas Friedman: That's why they're on strike, right that those issues exist for everybody across the industry, and so it's a really it's a really interesting industry.
• 11:26
  Jonas Friedman: It's really kind of like, you know, not for people that think like I'm gonna graduate, I'm going to get a great, you know nine to five gig or something and have a completely balanced lifestyle right off the bat in my early 20s, and it's like no man, it's crazy, you never know get the help.
• 11:42
  Dave Kropf: You know the white picket fence and the family and all of those.
• 11:45
  Dave Kropf: And yeah, I mean those kind of jobs do exist, but they're not in the entertainment industry, I mean, if you go be a hedge fund manager or or probably not even that.
• 11:54
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, no, no, no, it's, it's.
• 11:59
  Dave Kropf: It's fundamentally unstable.
• 12:01
  Dave Kropf: And yeah, go work retail or something like that, if you want to punch into a clock and punch right right.
• 12:08
  Jonas Friedman: But, like you said, there there's there's understanding all of that, there's there's understanding what you're getting into, and then there's also just the you don't know what you don't know, and so that's also why it kind of runs rampant that there is people that take advantage of people in terrible ways, like in ways that it's like you know these people are.
• 12:26
  Jonas Friedman: La is a very expensive town and it's got insane post-COVID.
• 12:30
  Jonas Friedman: You know everything post-COVID in terms of rent and buy.
• 12:34
  Jonas Friedman: You know it is just outweighed groceries and gas.
• 12:37
  Jonas Friedman: Yes, everybody knows.
• 12:38
  Jonas Friedman: So, like you know, when there's people that are struggling they're living with four, five roommates, they're struggling to simply buy, you know, healthy enough food to eat, you know, and they're getting paid next to nothing, which I've been part of.
• 12:51
  Jonas Friedman: Those teams, too, where the people are paid unbelievably abysmal amounts of money and the Lee composers over here worth Millions and millions and millions of dollars, and it's just like, well, you know, this is, this is what it was like for me, or you know, this is just what it is to pay your dues, or something like that, whatever that rendition is.
• 13:09
  Jonas Friedman: And so it's a difficult balance then to know where that you know If.
• 13:14
  Jonas Friedman: Is that happening to you right now, or are you just kind of actually paying your dues and going through the Wild West?
• 13:20
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and sometimes it's really hard to suss that out when you're in the middle of it, right, and you know, in the in the production music world, you know we talk about buyouts and those types of things and and not getting any back in.
• 13:33
  Dave Kropf: And I've, like, I will never say Automatically no to any type of a deal if like, for example, hey, we want to buy this out, you're not gonna get any back in and we're gonna take all of riders or whatever.
• 13:45
  Dave Kropf: But if it's for a big company, that's gonna look great on my reel, that's gonna look, the logo is gonna look great on my website, then that's worth something.
• 13:55
  Dave Kropf: If I can leverage that in, if you could get Work on a triple, a game or a Hollywood blockbuster movie and in, and you can acknowledge that I mean.
• 14:07
  Dave Kropf: But let's say first of all we're saying that we can acknowledge that we've been, we're not under NDA or whatever.
• 14:12
  Dave Kropf: Right you know.
• 14:13
  Dave Kropf: Then you can say, hey, I worked on Alita, battle Angel, like that's James Cameron, that is, that's the dance, that's.
• 14:20
  Dave Kropf: You don't get much beyond James Cameron.
• 14:22
  Dave Kropf: I mean, he has like the top two or three highest-grossing movies of all time and you are, you are related to that.
• 14:30
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, you, you might, you might take an uncredited job on that because it can Springboard into other opportunities.
• 14:37
  Dave Kropf: But when you're in the midst of it, I don't know what's your advice to somebody who, who might be right now, whether they're production music composers or film composers, what's your advice to to To say to them if they might be feeling that way, like am I being taken advantage of, am I paying my dues, or is this like a whole kind of that's just the way it is, but it like you know, something that I personally adopted while I was working for different people was that I, you know, part of working for more experienced people is that they have a track record of other people that have worked for them, and so to me, the really important thing to do is to look at your situation and what you're doing.
• 15:15
  Jonas Friedman: What are they doing and how?
• 15:18
  Jonas Friedman: Where's the transparency level?
• 15:20
  Jonas Friedman: You know, there's some people that I have worked with where the transparency level was like Non-existent.
• 15:26
  Jonas Friedman: You know it was just like they were.
• 15:28
  Jonas Friedman: You know they would and this is probably me sharing way too much but the truth that they would make up stories about how they wrote a cue that they had nothing to do with.
• 15:36
  Jonas Friedman: You know that I would sit there, there, there, with the director's producers, go into an elaborate conversation about like, oh, you know, I did couple versions of this, that and the other, when I know, as a fact being on that team or with whoever it's like you didn't write that cue at all.
• 15:50
  Jonas Friedman: You know that's that's that's pretty incredible.
• 15:53
  Jonas Friedman: So if you see things like that, where the transparency level is really abysmal, and Then I'd say, look at the track record, I have other people on this person's team that you're, you know, part of.
• 16:06
  Jonas Friedman: Have they accomplished what you're hoping to accomplish by Making these sacrifices?
• 16:10
  Jonas Friedman: Have other people gotten the results by going through the same tunnel that you're going through of saying like, alright, well, I'm doing something?
• 16:17
  Jonas Friedman: It's not a transparent situation, but it looks like that person went through this.
• 16:20
  Jonas Friedman: They came out the other side and look at what's happened for them.
• 16:23
  Jonas Friedman: If you can't pinpoint an example where it came, someone came out the other side of that Sit, that team or that incubator, anything like that, with what you want, then it's not very likely that it's gonna happen for you.
• 16:37
  Jonas Friedman: You know that that has to do with what that person's willing to do, and there's nothing wrong with what someone's willing to or not to do.
• 16:45
  Jonas Friedman: That's who they are.
• 16:46
  Jonas Friedman: The game isn't to change people's psychology.
• 16:48
  Jonas Friedman: You know.
• 16:49
  Jonas Friedman: The game is to make your best educated decision as to where to invest your time and what you get in return for that time, whether it's knowledge, education, connections, financial return, credits and so on.
• 17:01
  Jonas Friedman: So I think that that's really what you need to analyze I, who else has gotten what I want out of this and what is what exactly?
• 17:09
  Jonas Friedman: Have you and other people had to go through to get to that?
• 17:11
  Dave Kropf: You know, that's absolutely stellar and really well put.
• 17:15
  Dave Kropf: I mean, the proof is in the lineage right.
• 17:19
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, 200 percent and so the proof is in the down line.
• 17:22
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, I mean again, you know, you there's whenever there's a conversation about, you know, teams and different writers, which honestly is necessity at this point, with the size of these projects, people say like, oh, they're not writing everything.
• 17:35
  Jonas Friedman: It's like, well, if you knew what the deadlines were and what the job was.
• 17:39
  Jonas Friedman: There's no way one person can write.
• 17:41
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I mean, just look at the end credits of any Marvel movie and look at all of the visual artists.
• 17:46
  Dave Kropf: I mean there's 10 to 15 minutes worth of just credits of people's names going by.
• 17:50
  Dave Kropf: It's of course there's teams of people working on the music as well.
• 17:54
  Jonas Friedman: Exactly, and I think that this is becoming talks about more, which I think is a great thing.
• 17:59
  Jonas Friedman: You know, the problem with these situations over the years has been that it was a big secret, and I think now people are starting to talk about it People that have no filter, maybe Right.
• 18:11
  Dave Kropf: You have folks like Hans Zimmer or Barry McCreary who have they're just being open and transparent.
• 18:16
  Dave Kropf: I mean, remote control studios isn't like you could go right now, and I've had students from Full Sail go and intern for them and it's great.
• 18:24
  Dave Kropf: I love that they're transparent, that yes, there is, there is a process and there is a team and there is a machine, if you will, you know, working on it, but it's nothing new and I appreciate that they're transparent.
• 18:36
  Jonas Friedman: I 100% agree, and I actually just saw that Bear on Foundation Season 2, he's now crediting, like you know, themes by Bear and the score is by Sparks and Shadows, which is his company, and I think that that's definitely 100% the step in the right direction, you know.
• 18:51
  Dave Kropf: And then those composers are credited in the end credits.
• 18:54
  Dave Kropf: Oh, are they In the title?
• 18:55
  Jonas Friedman: Yes, so that's what I'm talking about.
• 18:58
  Jonas Friedman: I just saw the cover of a thing that said Music by Sparks and Shadows.
• 19:01
  Jonas Friedman: The fact that that's happening is amazing, and that's what I'm talking about.
• 19:05
  Jonas Friedman: You can't really ask for much more than that at this point, because that's really where the problem lied.
• 19:10
  Jonas Friedman: It's like music by this person, and they literally sometimes aren't even listening to the cues.
• 19:15
  Dave Kropf: Right, and it's a double-edged sword, because you know you have Apple TV, who's about to pump millions of dollars into this and they're not necessary.
• 19:23
  Dave Kropf: I mean, let's just be honest, they're not necessarily going to pump millions of dollars into a no-name composer.
• 19:28
  Dave Kropf: Right, there's a lot riding on this.
• 19:30
  Dave Kropf: So they are investing in and they're taking creative risk on a composer and so if they can attach somebody's an established name, like I appreciate that they're doing that.
• 19:42
  Dave Kropf: Yes, so we need to understand for folks who are you, know further or are earlier in their journey.
• 19:49
  Dave Kropf: Right, they're not further down the ladder, they're just earlier on the same road, right?
• 19:53
  Jonas Friedman: Agreed.
• 19:53
  Dave Kropf: Right Understand the amount of money that's at stake here.
• 19:57
  Dave Kropf: That's getting the checks that are getting written.
• 20:00
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:00
  Jonas Friedman: But the important thing to acknowledge too, that I think that they're able to do and that I imagine was part of it, it's the only thing that seems that I think is changed, and I don't work on that team.
• 20:10
  Jonas Friedman: I actually don't know people that work on that team, so I'm not.
• 20:12
  Jonas Friedman: I'm not speaking.
• 20:13
  Jonas Friedman: Incredibly, it's all conjecture.
• 20:15
  Jonas Friedman: But you know that's how it kind of goes, like it's.
• 20:19
  Jonas Friedman: The only thing that's changing is the transparency.
• 20:21
  Jonas Friedman: It's not like the.
• 20:22
  Jonas Friedman: It's not like all of a sudden there is just like oh, I'm not writing, he has so many shows.
• 20:27
  Jonas Friedman: I assume that he's not in there writing every cue on every single one, because that would not be humanly possible.
• 20:33
  Jonas Friedman: So it's a really big step forward in transparency, which is amazing.
• 20:38
  Jonas Friedman: It's wonderful, and I'm hoping that we see other people follow suit, because I think it's really really necessary, because otherwise, how are those composers who are now being credited on that back end, how are they supposed to be able to point to things that they've done successfully when they've been hidden to this point?
• 20:54
  Jonas Friedman: So that's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
• 20:56
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, 100%.
• 20:57
  Dave Kropf: Well, let's talk a little bit about the kind of the day in the life of a composer's assistant or somebody kind of early, early on, because I know we've have folks who listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube channel, who you know they're production music folks and they're into library music but they also maybe they have a dream of being a film composer.
• 21:17
  Dave Kropf: So what's a day in the life of a composer's assistant like?
• 21:20
  Jonas Friedman: Well, that's a good question.
• 21:22
  Jonas Friedman: I kind of went a slightly different route of composing, like I kind of started as being able to write additional music for the most part.
• 21:30
  Jonas Friedman: I kind of went right into that.
• 21:32
  Jonas Friedman: So but when I was on some larger teams you definitely get to.
• 21:35
  Jonas Friedman: You know you're hanging out with everybody and I would go to their studio to work rather than working for my home studio.
• 21:40
  Jonas Friedman: So, and there's a lot of different jobs that are entailed Additional music can be one of them.
• 21:44
  Jonas Friedman: So if you're starting from the beginning point, what you're kind of doing is you're hanging around and you're depending on how many workstations are available.
• 21:55
  Jonas Friedman: You know you might be hanging around waiting for the opportunity to be like OK, so I'm going to go do X, y or Z says you know this composer, and you're going to clean up this session.
• 22:05
  Jonas Friedman: You're going to do the MIDI programming, you're going to break out my ensemble patch and you'll turn that into the full string section or things like that.
• 22:14
  Jonas Friedman: Or maybe they finished a queue and it's the delivery point in the pipeline, in which case you're going to be printing stems or maybe walk in the door first thing in the morning and you open up the company email and you're getting in you know new picture that's been updated and notes from you know the directors or producers that have been added and stuff, and so you're updating, like QDB or whatever Excel documents are being used to track all of that information.
• 22:41
  Jonas Friedman: So it can be a really sort of like mixed bag of very clerical work you know, very office like work, but in a music you know business.
• 22:51
  Jonas Friedman: Or it can be a much more sort of technical position where you're doing that MIDI programming and setting up templates and things like that, and then as you kind of build a rapport with said composer or you know one composer to another, you know it might be like, oh well, I have nothing for you to do at this moment or something, and you can say, oh well, I'm looking at the document, there's a 30 second queue here that is going to need to be done.
• 23:17
  Jonas Friedman: I have nothing to do for the next few hours.
• 23:20
  Jonas Friedman: Maybe I'll take a crack at that.
• 23:22
  Jonas Friedman: And that's how you then sort of get into that world of like you submit that and if they're like, oh great, one less queue to do.
• 23:28
  Jonas Friedman: Why don't you take crack at this minute long one, you know?
• 23:31
  Jonas Friedman: And then you start writing additional music and I'd say, once you're writing additional music and that's sort of like your specialty for a said composer, which every composer is different Every composer wants you to adapt their style and their aesthetic.
• 23:44
  Jonas Friedman: And so, as a result, you know there could be a learning curve.
• 23:48
  Jonas Friedman: No matter how great you are, you know there's a learning curve from composer to composer.
• 23:52
  Jonas Friedman: But once you get that down and they can rely on you, that's probably all you're going to be doing, because that is the largest time consuming task that if someone can do well, that they're going to ask you to, to start taking crack at that.
• 24:07
  Jonas Friedman: And it might be that they start a queue and they hand it off to you to finish, or they have you, you know, start a queue by just putting in the sound design or just putting in the drums and then they finish, and or you take on a whole queue from scratch.
• 24:20
  Dave Kropf: It really reminds me of like animation, like like 2D hand drawn animation, you know, like the Simpsons has been going on what?
• 24:27
  Dave Kropf: 30 years, or no longer than that.
• 24:29
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, a long time.
• 24:31
  Dave Kropf: And it all looks like Matt Groening's work, but Matt Groening probably has an animated episode of the Simpsons since like the second or third season, and so you have in-betweeners, you have outliners, tracers, colorists, you have photographers, you know all these people in the pipeline who are ultimately working, but it's every drawing you see has Matt Groening's you know signature on it.
• 24:54
  Dave Kropf: So it reminds me a lot, a lot of that, which leads me to my next question.
• 24:59
  Dave Kropf: I mean, how much of this is you have to be in the room where it happens, right, meaning, do you have to live in LA, or is the has technology decentralized enough of this to where somebody listening to this in Saskatchewan or listening to this in Miami or you know Chicago, they were like, okay, we can actually kind of have part of a career and not have to live in LA.
• 25:26
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, you know, that's a really good question, and it's an interesting thing that's happening post COVID, like we were talking before we started here.
• 25:33
  Jonas Friedman: Like I'm, I'm in Connecticut at the moment, right, so I was in LA, and then I moved back here a few years ago, and so my assistants, though, are either in LA or I've got someone that's helping me right now in the UK, and they're kind of all over the place.
• 25:46
  Jonas Friedman: I, and for myself, I was still doing additional music when I was back here for people in LA, and so you can be all over the place, but I do think that the thing we all have in common is we spent a good amount of time in the room with more experienced people, got to a certain level, and that's what makes it so much easier to be able to hand something off to somebody, not to mention to be able to have a rig that is capable of, you know, having all the virtual instruments, which applications like Museo are going to start making that a lot easier.
• 26:22
  Dave Kropf: Yeah.
• 26:24
  Jonas Friedman: Things like that are going to, I think, really change the you know, assisting lead composer dynamic in an incredible way.
• 26:31
  Jonas Friedman: But so it's a mixed bag that's based upon, like, where your skill level is and, honestly, where your resources are for your own setup.
• 26:41
  Jonas Friedman: So, like, I've been able to work from my home studio for a very, very long time, almost the entirety of my career.
• 26:48
  Jonas Friedman: But that's because, like I said, I was I had a studio prior to starting film scoring, and so I was able to invest in virtual instruments that were needed, and I've kind of made it a rule that whoever I was writing additional music for, if they made a suggestion to me or even just like not even thinking about it, said yeah, you know, for something like this I actually use this library.
• 27:08
  Jonas Friedman: I think it's really good.
• 27:09
  Jonas Friedman: If you have something like that, you know, go ahead, you know, see if you find something similar.
• 27:13
  Jonas Friedman: They're not telling me to buy the same library, but I just go and do it, because when people hear their own sound back to them, they just think that you got better at writing cues.
• 27:24
  Jonas Friedman: You just are giving them what they're used to, and especially when you're working with composers who have been doing this 20, 30 or 40 years.
• 27:33
  Jonas Friedman: Their own sound is so like in their head that that's what it takes to make the cue sound right and there's no reason to sort of like work against that.
• 27:43
  Jonas Friedman: There's opportunities to do that and then kind of inject your own voice a little bit and then it's like, ooh, that's really great, you know, but to pull that off you need to have your own setup with the libraries and sequencer and be able to pull off composing your own stuff.
• 27:57
  Jonas Friedman: So if you're someone that has your own rig and you're able to if someone says, oh, these are the sounds we're using for this project, if you're able to adapt those sounds or have something incredibly similar, then I think that you would be in a much better position to work from anywhere than somebody who might be starting out and has only a handful of libraries to do the job, not to mention the ability to open up somebody else's session.
• 28:26
  Jonas Friedman: You know which, again, museo is going to cure.
• 28:29
  Jonas Friedman: If other places sort of got into that sort of technology.
• 28:32
  Jonas Friedman: That's going to become a thing that passed in a certain number of years.
• 28:35
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, they could just hand it off to you, like, let's say it's somebody overseas, you know, you can just hand up, you go to bed and you wake up the next morning and they've been working on it.
• 28:43
  Dave Kropf: You open the session and it's all just there the same plugins, the same reverbs, same whatever.
• 28:49
  Dave Kropf: And yeah, I could see how Museo would absolutely help with that and other, like East-West subscriptions, where, yeah, we've talked about subscription services and, while they are their own bag of challenges, I could see how that would make life infinitely easier and just the handoff.
• 29:08
  Jonas Friedman: That's what I, because I actually don't like subscription services.
• 29:11
  Jonas Friedman: My wife and I just took like a whole week.
• 29:14
  Jonas Friedman: We went through, we went through our credit cards.
• 29:16
  Jonas Friedman: It's like how many subscriptions do we have?
• 29:18
  Jonas Friedman: We cut out so many just because it was like we don't use any of them.
• 29:22
  Jonas Friedman: You know what I mean?
• 29:22
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, and so I don't like them.
• 29:25
  Jonas Friedman: And I was very delayed to get into Museo and I went and downloaded it for the sake of, like I love Cine Samples and I was.
• 29:31
  Jonas Friedman: They had a library in there.
• 29:32
  Jonas Friedman: I was like, oh, why can't I get that library?
• 29:34
  Jonas Friedman: And then I got into it and I'm like, oh my God, the sharing feature.
• 29:39
  Jonas Friedman: Now that's what you described as exactly how I'm working with my collaborator on this other project.
• 29:45
  Jonas Friedman: They're in the UK, I give them an assignment, I wake up in the morning and everything's done because of the time difference and I check it out and it's an incredible thing.
• 29:53
  Jonas Friedman: But, that being said, you know to answer your question too, regarding like, do you have to be in the room?
• 29:59
  Jonas Friedman: Can you be somewhere else?
• 30:00
  Jonas Friedman: That's becoming I think we've made it clear it's becoming much, much easier to do that with certain if you're at a certain level.
• 30:06
  Jonas Friedman: But I will say, for me personally, I was working from my home.
• 30:10
  Jonas Friedman: Even though I moved out to LA, right, I still had my home studio there.
• 30:13
  Jonas Friedman: So when I moved out to LA and I was working with Sean Calary on like 24 and these other series and stuff, like I did that for my home studio, I didn't spend much time in his studio at all.
• 30:24
  Jonas Friedman: But when I went to work with Junkie XL, there was a certain point when it was like shit, the deadlines are closing in, can you come and do this from the studio?
• 30:33
  Jonas Friedman: And he had already set up his studio in my studio.
• 30:36
  Jonas Friedman: So I had my home studio and then I had a separate you know Junkie XL room with his entire studio set up in there, right, yeah.
• 30:43
  Jonas Friedman: But he still wanted me on site because that's how the former communication could just be easier.
• 30:47
  Jonas Friedman: And I got to tell you, the learning experience from being on site there for me was irreplaceable.
• 30:52
  Jonas Friedman: The ability to work with the other assistants that were there and we all had different specialties, you know, and that is what really helped me grow as a writer, musically was to be able to learn from these other people.
• 31:07
  Jonas Friedman: And then technically you know his tech, you know, was incredibly brilliant guy and so being on site by forming those relationships, I think that made a really big difference.
• 31:17
  Jonas Friedman: So what I personally say when it comes to LA or being somewhere else is like go for a little bit, get in the room with people, learn as much as you can, but think of it just as a chapter.
• 31:27
  Jonas Friedman: You know, if you don't want to live there, it's just a chapter where you're just like Neo in the matrix, like getting as much in there as you can and then go wherever you want and do whatever you want, because that's available now to people to be somewhere else.
• 31:41
  Dave Kropf: And I mean to your point, just being in the room, surrounding yourself with people who are going to pour into you, who are open with themselves, open with their knowledge, ultimately, you know, so that we can make a thing together.
• 31:55
  Dave Kropf: But just mentoring and apprenticeship.
• 31:58
  Dave Kropf: And I know for you that has started to become more of what you do, specifically with your relatively new YouTube channel, which is Fanda.
• 32:08
  Dave Kropf: Everybody just go subscribe.
• 32:09
  Dave Kropf: Right now it's just looking at your YouTube videos.
• 32:13
  Dave Kropf: Those are like production goals for me.
• 32:15
  Dave Kropf: You know you've got like the track and like you know the camera movements and all of that B-roll and everything.
• 32:21
  Dave Kropf: But you know, I've talked on the channel before about I stay in my lane and that's fine.
• 32:26
  Dave Kropf: So I'm just going to watch your videos and appreciate them and secretly envy your production process.
• 32:31
  Dave Kropf: But Modern Media, composer and modernmediacomposercom this is a relatively new thing for you, and is it my correct in assuming that it's out of a place of wanting to start pouring back into composers who are looking to do this as a career?
• 32:49
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:50
  Jonas Friedman: That's definitely where it comes from, and the thing, though, is that the idea of like mentoring and stuff it actually that wasn't as new, as much as it was kind of on pause, and at a certain point, I realized it was on pause for no reason.
• 33:04
  Jonas Friedman: When I was producing bands and artists like that, like I had an assistant and I had an intern, and I loved hanging out with them and I loved showing them how to do stuff, and, like I remember one guy who was in my studio like you know, this was before we had all these amazing technologies that we have now and it's like a big part of the process was vocal tuning.
• 33:25
  Jonas Friedman: You know, a big reason that I wanted to leave that, too, was vocal tuning and drum comping, and you know what you do as a producer for artists and genre music like that is.
• 33:36
  Jonas Friedman: You know, you take somebody that sometimes doesn't sound great and you make them sound amazing, and there's a lot of work that goes into that, and so I really thought of myself as a mentor for people that did that, and they came back and told me, like can I just spend more time in the studio learning and doing that?
• 33:51
  Jonas Friedman: And it was really, really rewarding.
• 33:53
  Jonas Friedman: I loved that.
• 33:54
  Jonas Friedman: Then I switched to composing, though, and that's really an isolating gig, because it's like you're in a room, you're by yourself, you're doing stuff, and I had no need for an assistant, because I was really committed to streamlining my workflow to the extent, like you know, cubase is.
• 34:11
  Jonas Friedman: I've pointed out in a lot of my videos, and I say things repeatedly in videos because I have a philosophy.
• 34:17
  Jonas Friedman: You know repetition is the key to mastery, so I want to repeat things.
• 34:20
  Jonas Friedman: So, like my stems are.
• 34:22
  Jonas Friedman: For a lot of people, stemming is a very, you know, long and tedious process.
• 34:27
  Jonas Friedman: For me.
• 34:27
  Jonas Friedman: It's like I highlight my tracks, press a button, it's done, so I don't need an assistant to print my stems and I don't need an assistant to do this, so I was by myself in the studio for about 10, 12 years composing, and there was none of that opportunity to be like, hey, you know, help me with this and this is how you do it.
• 34:42
  Jonas Friedman: And I, when I started looking for help because I saw a bottleneck happening in my schedule and I'm like I'm definitely going to need some help and I went out to find an assistant, I put out like an ad for an assistant and I got all these applications that I did not expect, you know, and I was going through the applications and it's just like, oh, there's like there's a gap here.
• 35:08
  Jonas Friedman: You know, I felt there was a real gap in knowledge that is not being fulfilled for some reason.
• 35:13
  Jonas Friedman: And then I went and I spoke to other colleagues that are much further along than myself and have larger teams and I'm like what's it like hiring an assistant?
• 35:24
  Jonas Friedman: Where's the pressure points?
• 35:25
  Jonas Friedman: And they're like it's all pressure points.
• 35:26
  Jonas Friedman: You know that they're not really.
• 35:28
  Jonas Friedman: Most of them aren't that useful for at least six months, you know.
• 35:31
  Jonas Friedman: And it's like, oh my God.
• 35:32
  Jonas Friedman: So you're getting out of school and you think that, you know, no wonder there's a problem with people feeling like they're not being paid what they're worth.
• 35:40
  Jonas Friedman: But to the, to some composers, it's like, well, I'm going to pay you, I have to pay you, but you're actually not valuable to me, you know it's, and so there's a big problem there.
• 35:48
  Jonas Friedman: So I thought, all right, let me try and put out YouTube videos that are really as much focused on those tasks and those abilities as possible to help fill in that gap of knowledge.
• 35:58
  Jonas Friedman: And then it just became really, really fun and, as you pointed out, I really appreciate the comments on the production because I started getting carried away as I do with that.
• 36:06
  Jonas Friedman: It became like an artistic endeavor.
• 36:09
  Jonas Friedman: You know, I have this you know how you do.
• 36:12
  Jonas Friedman: One thing is how you do.
• 36:12
  Jonas Friedman: Everything is kind of my philosophy there.
• 36:14
  Jonas Friedman: So I started getting way too into that and had a lot of fun.
• 36:18
  Jonas Friedman: And then I started getting, you know, a reception from people that it was really being helpful to them, and so it kind of ignited what I felt I had been missing all those years, from when I had help in the studio all those years ago.
• 36:31
  Dave Kropf: So, yeah, it's like you set the bar for yourself, like it looks legit your YouTube videos, and am I to assume that it's kind of a one man operation there?
• 36:40
  Dave Kropf: You know what it's not.
• 36:41
  Jonas Friedman: You don't have a camera crew necessarily, I can't see.
• 36:45
  Jonas Friedman: You have to give credit where it's doing.
• 36:47
  Jonas Friedman: It is not a one man operation.
• 36:48
  Jonas Friedman: I have someone here, you know.
• 36:51
  Jonas Friedman: Before I did my YouTube channel just as a passion project.
• 36:55
  Jonas Friedman: Just you know, I have this piece of music safe house and I wanted to make a music video for it because I wanted to fool around with filming stuff.
• 37:01
  Jonas Friedman: I just had this little, you know, desire to do so, and so I had a friend that was working that had his like cover band you know, he plays in cover bands and stuff and he had a video film.
• 37:12
  Jonas Friedman: I'm like, hey, this is really good.
• 37:14
  Jonas Friedman: Who did it?
• 37:14
  Jonas Friedman: And he's like, oh, this guy, mike turns out it's a guitar player from a band that I recorded like a lifetime ago and he's now into video.
• 37:22
  Jonas Friedman: And he was in the area that I was living in, still.
• 37:25
  Jonas Friedman: And so I'm like, hey, do you want to just hang out and like experiment with video stuff?
• 37:29
  Jonas Friedman: Because I'm trying to do something cinematically that I don't know how to do.
• 37:34
  Jonas Friedman: I've never done anything with video.
• 37:35
  Jonas Friedman: Can we play together?
• 37:36
  Jonas Friedman: You know, which I think is how, all you know, great stuff gets made as people, there's no monetary payoff to this, we're just playing.
• 37:47
  Jonas Friedman: And so we did that video and it was a lot of fun and really tedious because, like you know, you go to film something and it looks like shit.
• 37:55
  Jonas Friedman: And so we did like I've got it at some point, because I get a lot of these comments, which again super flattering and super wonderful since we spent so much time, but the amount of beer, of just like bloopers we have, of how bad it looks, dude, is unbelievable.
• 38:10
  Jonas Friedman: So we did that video and then I'm like hey, let's try and integrate this into how we do this YouTube channel.
• 38:17
  Jonas Friedman: And we worked on it extensively.
• 38:19
  Jonas Friedman: His name is Mike and he edits all the videos right now too, and we went through that together too.
• 38:27
  Jonas Friedman: Like the editing process was, you know, I edited a number of them and it's like right, I think we're on to something here, I pass it off, and so it's a very tedious I keep using the word tedious, or I shouldn't use that word detailed.
• 38:38
  Jonas Friedman: We're trying to be detailed and very critical process, because I think that when somebody goes on YouTube, there's a lot of stuff on there and that for where I am, you know, personally as an artist and stuff.
• 38:54
  Jonas Friedman: I didn't want people to see it and just be like, oh, this is just another YouTube guy.
• 38:59
  Jonas Friedman: I want them to see it and just take a double take like oh, who is that?
• 39:02
  Jonas Friedman: You know Well well, I'm here.
• 39:05
  Dave Kropf: That was quite literally my reaction, right, because it's relatively a young channel or whatever, and you're going to have thousands and thousands of subscribers, no doubt about it.
• 39:15
  Dave Kropf: I'm speaking that into the universe right now for you.
• 39:17
  Dave Kropf: We'll put it on your whiteboard.
• 39:19
  Dave Kropf: But I was like, wow, this, it reminded me of the crew that does those masterclass.
• 39:26
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, right, that looked like like you put your video next to like Hans Zimmer's masterclass.
• 39:32
  Jonas Friedman: That's what we did.
• 39:33
  Dave Kropf: That's what we did 100% Well mission a freaking accomplishment because it looks fantastic.
• 39:39
  Dave Kropf: So I'm still picking it apart.
• 39:42
  Jonas Friedman: So I don't mean to interrupt you, but it's like whatever, wherever it is now, like that's the baseline, like we have plans where we're going to just keep up again.
• 39:49
  Jonas Friedman: You know it's, I look at it and I get.
• 39:51
  Jonas Friedman: I get a little, you know.
• 39:52
  Jonas Friedman: Oh, we need.
• 39:53
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, you see the cracks, you know, in the paint job, but from somebody who's just receiving it, it's really really top, top drawer.
• 40:02
  Dave Kropf: Appreciate it.
• 40:02
  Dave Kropf: And I think you're right what you do with little, that reflects what you are able to do with a lot.
• 40:07
  Dave Kropf: And so I just want to encourage you from, you know, one YouTuber dude to another YouTuber dude, I think it's really well done and I appreciate it and I appreciate it on a on a video producer level and it's goals.
• 40:23
  Dave Kropf: I'm like, oh right, okay, do I need a track bar now?
• 40:25
  Dave Kropf: Do I need to get?
• 40:27
  Dave Kropf: Do I need I'm there?
• 40:29
  Dave Kropf: Okay, do I need an editor?
• 40:29
  Dave Kropf: Maybe I do need an editor, but I'm committed to kind of staying in my lane and doing my thing and connecting how I am able to sustainably connect.
• 40:38
  Dave Kropf: But but just, yeah, it looks like the masterclass, which is funny because when I started doing podcast production, I did the same thing, just from an audio level.
• 40:47
  Dave Kropf: I took I I wanted this podcast to sound as close as possible to like an NPR.
• 40:54
  Dave Kropf: I wanted it to sound like a public radio production and and that's the, that's where I pour all of my details it's not necessarily in camera editing and B-roll and all that stuff.
• 41:03
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, success.
• 41:03
  Jonas Friedman: I think you've succeeded with that, because it really is.
• 41:05
  Jonas Friedman: I think it's.
• 41:06
  Jonas Friedman: I think that that's great, this video aside, because, unfortunately, as you know, yeah, we had a lot of technical difficulties.
• 41:12
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, talking about my production quality and how you do.
• 41:15
  Jonas Friedman: One thing is how you do everything.
• 41:16
  Jonas Friedman: Unfortunately, my setup was not available, so I had to just resort to a pop-up Put a disclaimer, you know not results not typical here.
• 41:23
  Jonas Friedman: Exactly, exactly, but yeah, no, I think.
• 41:25
  Jonas Friedman: But you know you talk about oh, do I need a try?
• 41:27
  Jonas Friedman: And I think that that's kind of the beautiful thing about YouTube, and the beautiful thing about composing these days and stuff too, is that, like the.
• 41:35
  Jonas Friedman: The reason I did it that way was because that felt to be the most authentic version of myself.
• 41:42
  Jonas Friedman: To some people that, like you know, seems completely over the top, and I had people telling me like you're wasting your time and your money and no one's going to notice it, and it's like yeah, but I don't do it for them, like I'm making this to be the best version of this for my, you know, for me, and then, if it's, if I can say this is the best version for me, I can put it out to the world and whatever anyone says about it, it really doesn't matter.
• 42:06
  Jonas Friedman: You know, and that's what it means to be a composer today too, I, you know, I have a video I think that we're going to put out either this week or next week that I had someone ask me a question specifically about market saturation and all these other people doing it.
• 42:18
  Jonas Friedman: It's like it's the same thing as YouTube.
• 42:20
  Jonas Friedman: Man, there's, there's infinite people on YouTube and there's there's a lot of composers doing production music or film and TV music or trying to be like a you know pop artist or whatever.
• 42:30
  Jonas Friedman: But it's just about you just do the best version of you that you can, as cliche as that sounds, and then that's going to resonate with somebody.
• 42:39
  Jonas Friedman: I think yeah.
• 42:40
  Jonas Friedman: So Authenticity.
• 42:42
  Dave Kropf: You know it's it's.
• 42:44
  Dave Kropf: We talked about currency authenticity.
• 42:46
  Dave Kropf: These are the things that matter to folks who want to bring a composer along into their project.
• 42:53
  Dave Kropf: Right, Because as much as you want the music to be really good, whoever's making that movie, whoever's making that TV show, whoever you know, they have probably spent years of their life leading up to that point, right.
• 43:08
  Dave Kropf: And so you, you're coming along really late, and so they want you to be your authentic self.
• 43:14
  Dave Kropf: And so me doing my talk to the camera for an hour videos that's authentic to me, it's sustainable to me.
• 43:21
  Dave Kropf: You doing like tracks with lighting, and that's authentic to you.
• 43:25
  Dave Kropf: And, man, I respect the heck out of that and and it shows.
• 43:29
  Dave Kropf: And I think, like I said, it's only a matter of time before your YouTube channel really really blows up.
• 43:35
  Dave Kropf: And so, if you're watching this right now, you know I recently did a video on do you need a YouTube channel?
• 43:41
  Dave Kropf: And at the end of the day, it's like you don't need to be a YouTuber, but you probably should have a YouTube channel.
• 43:47
  Dave Kropf: But in that video I talked about authenticity, just being true to yourself, doing what you do, and I think, whether they're publishers, libraries, directors or whatever, I think they're going to respond to that.
• 43:59
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, and here's the funny thing that I learned from doing YouTube and then I went back, you know, and in hindsight it kind of happened musically too is that it seems Some people might disagree with this?
• 44:10
  Jonas Friedman: But authenticity, strangely enough, takes practice to an extent, you know, which I found kind of to be counterintuitive.
• 44:19
  Jonas Friedman: You think authentic means it just comes naturally, but like, for example, on YouTube, like when I started, like we have videos that we completely reshot the entire thing, because I'm like it doesn't feel like me when I'm talking to the cameras, because I wasn't used to it and I had to practice finding how to communicate through that medium in an authentic way.
• 44:38
  Jonas Friedman: That felt right.
• 44:39
  Jonas Friedman: And it's just like with music, I obsessed for a long time.
• 44:42
  Jonas Friedman: It's like, well, that's what this composer sounds like and that's what that one sounds like.
• 44:45
  Jonas Friedman: Well, but who am I, you know, and I would write stuff and I'm like not, you know, start by knocking people off and doing that.
• 44:52
  Jonas Friedman: And it's like all of that is sort of discovery and practice.
• 44:55
  Jonas Friedman: And then that's why that piece of music safe house that I wrote was important to me, just on a personal level, because I did that and I didn't think of anybody else or anything else and I'm like, oh, that's that feels authentic, but I didn't get there right away.
• 45:07
  Jonas Friedman: You know?
• 45:08
  Dave Kropf: yeah, because your authenticity comes from, at least for me, through imitation and repetition and through that your authentic voice, or whatever your sound, emerges from that.
• 45:21
  Dave Kropf: Right, we are not transplanted trees that just plop down in the middle of a field and we're already full grown.
• 45:28
  Dave Kropf: No, we have to grow into that, which means that we have to surround ourselves with the soil of influence and everything else and referencing and all of that.
• 45:37
  Dave Kropf: So authenticity is born out of repetition and imitation.
• 45:41
  Jonas Friedman: I believe yeah, and I'm going to add one to that for me personally too is the way you constructively criticize your own work and development.
• 45:49
  Jonas Friedman: Because if you're doing things like, for example I was thinking about this the other day during this conversation with another composer like I've worked for these wonderful composers, right, and I have had to take my way of doing things and bend it to the way that they feel that that's the way it should be right, and after a while you have to kind of remind yourself it's like, oh, it's not right because it's that way.
• 46:15
  Jonas Friedman: That's just the way that they like it.
• 46:17
  Jonas Friedman: So then, when I went to do another pitch I remember years ago it's like I did that pitch and I was using the feedback and the constructive criticism that I got from them on myself and I did the pitch and I didn't feel good about it and I didn't get it.
• 46:31
  Jonas Friedman: And in analyzing it's like, oh, I was trying to do it their way, you know.
• 46:36
  Jonas Friedman: So then I started.
• 46:37
  Jonas Friedman: Whenever I do my own pitches, I have to remind myself it's like, oh, wait, no, get them out of your head.
• 46:41
  Jonas Friedman: What do you think it needs to do?
• 46:43
  Jonas Friedman: How am I going to make this better for me instead of the way they would make it better for them.
• 46:47
  Jonas Friedman: And if you sort of correct yourself in that manner and I think that just comes down to having taste, like what is your personal taste and preference, and there's no right or wrong to that, you know.
• 46:57
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, that's really good.
• 46:58
  Dave Kropf: And especially in the production and library music world where you know we are like the form can often be, you know, prescribed to us loudness and everything it has to check so many boxes.
• 47:10
  Dave Kropf: And I've talked on the channel before about how, like what I'm doing here, library music is it necessary?
• 47:17
  Dave Kropf: Isn't necessarily art with a capital A?
• 47:19
  Dave Kropf: And we're not often given the type of creative freedom I don't want to say freedom because that feels scifally.
• 47:28
  Dave Kropf: But you know, a film composer is given a much broader pasture to graze upon than you know a film composer writing, or a production music composer writing drama DQs for reality TV, right, that's it.
• 47:40
  Dave Kropf: But it's within that, with for me, within those confines, that I look for and try to exert my authenticity.
• 47:50
  Jonas Friedman: That that's when it's super rewarding for me, I think too, sometimes when you're given those sort of that box to play in, you know whether it's, like you said, production music, which will have a smaller box, but nevertheless, when you're doing a film, or like, if you're doing a Marvel film, like that's still a box, it's not like it's not doing you know, which was like you know.
• 48:11
  Jonas Friedman: Or the white lotus, which I keep pointing out as like this creative masterpiece, right Musically.
• 48:17
  Jonas Friedman: I think that's where the small details come in is the way that you do the very little things inside of that box that create, you know, the, the extra polish that might be your way of doing it versus somebody else, because the broad strokes that they're covered for you, you have to, you know, broadly, keep it up like that, but the small details you choose to use when creating those things, I think that that's what then creates your voice in that particular medium.
• 48:43
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, absolutely, and it's about finding creative ways and original ways to absolutely meet everybody's expectations.
• 48:54
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, yeah, well, jonas, where can folks find you?
• 48:59
  Dave Kropf: We've already talked about your YouTube channel, but how can folks find more about you?
• 49:04
  Jonas Friedman: Yeah, so you know the YouTube is a great place to start.
• 49:07
  Jonas Friedman: Modernmediacomposercom is just an extension right now of the YouTube that I put out there, where you know, if they sign up for the mailing list they get free instruments and they'll get more information that I'm putting out in order to be helpful to composers about the field and the industry and working in it and all those things.
• 49:24
  Jonas Friedman: And then you know, I've got my website, justjonesfreedmancom, which has music for my projects and yeah, but I think the social media and modernmediacomposercom they get a lot of questions now coming in through there.
• 49:37
  Jonas Friedman: So if anyone ever asks questions about this stuff that's kind of the point of it is to use it as a resource.
• 49:43
  Jonas Friedman: So it's yours, go ahead, use it.
• 49:46
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and subscribe now.
• 49:47
  Dave Kropf: Subscribe now, before there's tens of thousands of subscribers, because, jonas, you're absolutely you're doing it right, you're one of the good ones, you're being authentic, you're also being creative and it's such a high quality product that you're putting out there that it's no doubt that success will be attracted to you.
• 50:10
  Dave Kropf: So thank you so much for joining us, thank you for your generosity of time and just for kind of lifting the veil back about some parts of the industry, and really appreciate you being with us today.
• 50:22
  Jonas Friedman: Oh, it's my pleasure.
• 50:22
  Jonas Friedman: Thanks for having me on All right.
• 50:26
  Dave Kropf: Once again, a huge word of thanks to Jonas for joining me today on the podcast and, as always, we will have his links in the description below.
• 50:33
  Dave Kropf: And also a huge word of thanks to the family, friends, neighbor and patron subscribers of 52Q52 Cues, who give their actual money to keep all of this going.
• 50:41
  Dave Kropf: Thank you so very much.
• 50:43
  Dave Kropf: Please know that I love and appreciate all of you and if you wanna support us, then head over to 52cues.
• 50:49
  Dave Kropf: com and you can choose to be a neighbor, a family or a friend subscriber.
• 50:55
  Dave Kropf: We would love to have you, but that's gonna do it for us this week.
• 50:59
  Dave Kropf: You definitely wanna tune in next week where we are going to be having our podcast episode recording live, because we are doing live voting for our current Fright Night 52 Cues Composer Quest.
• 51:14
  Dave Kropf: This will be next week, that is, october 26th 2023.
• 51:19
  Dave Kropf: It will be a live event at 4 pm Eastern.
• 51:22
  Dave Kropf: We're going to be listening to all of the cues submitted and you are going to get to vote on the submissions.
• 51:29
  Dave Kropf: And if you wanna join us, it's not too late you can join us over at 52Cues.
• 51:34
  Dave Kropf: com and join the Fright Night Halloween Composer Quest, but we would love to have you.
• 51:41
  Dave Kropf: So, again, that's gonna do it for me and I hope you've had a stellar week and just know, friends, that I trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans just for you.
• 51:52
  Dave Kropf: Until next time, peace.
• 51:55
  Dave Kropf: The 52 Cues podcast is copyright 2023 at 818 Studios.
• 51:59
  Dave Kropf: All Rights Reserved.
• 52:00
  Dave Kropf: The music played on the podcast is copyright of their respective owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only.
• 52:05
  Dave Kropf: For more information and including joining the community and submitting your QCue for consideration on the podcast, head over to 52Cuescom.