Category
Orchestration

A Minecraft Movie, starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black, is out in theaters! It was great working with Mark Mothersbaugh on another awesome score. This one was part of my crazy travels in November-December 2024. I went to Wellington twice to conduct the score. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra were a lot of fun to work with and sounded incredible.Thanks to my crew for helping out at such a crazy time – Pano Fountas, Jeremy Levy, Lorenzo Carrano, and Ryan Humphrey. Also Trevor Motycka and…
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This is such a huge topic with so many angles to explore that I’m not even sure where to begin! I think the best approach is to show how I write for percussion and compare that to some of the other standards out there. My overall philosophy for percussion writing—and for all my writing—boils down to keeping it clean and simple by using common sense. I won’t go into exhaustive detail about the range or intricacies of each instrument; there are plenty of books and…
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In this post, I’ll explain how to clean up a MIDI file and import it into notation software to create a clear and organized sketch for the orchestrator. On major film projects, music preparation houses like JoAnn Kane Music or Fine Line Music Service typically handle this process for us. However, when I was starting out, I did all of this myself and developed a range of tips and tricks to make the workflow as efficient and painless as possible. Fun fact: before my career…
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When I am working I am constantly listening to the cue or song. I need to be able to quickly locate, scroll, play and stop in a way that does not slow me down. There is nothing worse than something playing back in an unfocused program and you can't stop it! Several years ago I came up with a way to control DP in the background using a Contour Shuttle. This means Finale is still the focused app. I currently use the Xpress, but any…
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Season 4 of Outer Banks is out on Netflix. It was a blast working on another season with Fil Eisler and the gang. Thanks to Fine Line Music Service for the music prep and to Pano Fountas for keeping us organized.
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  Agatha All Along is now streaming on Disney+! It was a pleasure to orchestrate the music by Christophe Beck and Michael Paraskevas for this cool project. A lot of hours of musical wizardry, orchestrated mostly by myself and Jeremy Levy, with the help of Lorenzo Carrano, Ryan Humphrey, and Jordan Siegel. Thank you to the team at Joann Kane Music Services, Fer Bos, Matthew Feder, and Casey Stone, for keeping everything organized, delivered, and sounding awesome. 
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You will notice that on my desk I have a pretty unique layout of input devices, but everything is there for a reason. I spend many hours sitting here working and have developed and refined this setup over the years. I am also always trying out new toys, anything to make work easier, faster, and more ergonomic, all of which allow me to be more creative. Note that this setup is totally geared towards orchestrating and arranging. While I do use it to compose, if…
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Unfrosted was released on May 3! You have no idea how surreal it is to have Seinfeld in the headphones giving notes! Once again, it was a pleasure orchestrating and conducting Chris Beck's score on this cool project. Check it out on Netflix now.
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For the last 10 years or so, I have been lucky enough to work on shows for the Kennedy Center in Washington DC and the National Symphony Orchestra. This started with NAS and the Twentieth Anniversary performance of Illmatic, continued with Kendrick Lamar, Common, Babyface, Maxwell, Ne-Yo and, most recently, Killer Mike. Along the way, I have done one-offs for many other shows and orchestras and whole shows for Aminé and Tech N9ne. The process for putting these shows together has evolved over the years to…
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I recently had the chance to do some live recording with my friends at Hollywood Scoring, and took the opportunity to put together a piece that could demonstrate lots of my favorite orchestration techniques as well as some issues I commonly encounter when working with scores. I've done an in-depth exploration of my process over on my orchestration blog, deBreved. You can check out Part 1 here!
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