Category
Orchestration

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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Part 2 This is the second half of my discussion of the piece I recorded with Hollywood Scoring, where we look at the melodic section of the piece from bar 32 onward. Be sure to check out Part 1 so everything here makes sense. Main Theme I recently bought a new piano and walk past it on every trip to the kitchen. I remember as soon as I got confirmation that this session was happening, I was on my way to make some vegemite on…
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I have been on many rants about the abuse of tenuto in current notion practice. I see scores needlessly littered with them. They can be of use, but in my experience 98.254% of them I see out in the wild are redundant. In my film orchestrating and arranging I rarely use them. I can go an entire 100-minute score and count the number of tenutos on my fingers. I have been trying to work out what they mean in all contexts, and they could mean…
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Introduction My friends at Hollywood Scoring wanted to test out bringing their own recording gear into the iconic United Recording Studio A, which has been 'closed' since the beginning of 2023. They invited myself and a few others to write for a small orchestra. I was also on hand all day to conduct or help in the booth for other composers who conducted themselves. I consulted with contractor Noah Gladstone and engineer Adam Michalak on what ensemble would be best for the day. We came…
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The Star Trek franchise decided to once again boldly go, and aired a musical episode ("Subspace Rhapsody," season two, ninth episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds). Kay Hanley and Tom Polce (members of the band Letters to Cleo) were brought on to do the songwriting, and then I got to orchestrate their tunes. Check out a couple of them below, or stream the whole episode on Paramount+. Status Report: And here's the big finale:
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