We were lucky to catch up with Zac Tiessen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Zac, thanks for joining us today. The first dollar you earn is always exciting – it’s like the start of a new chapter and so we’d love to hear about the first time you sold or generated revenue from your creative work?

Upon completion of my education in guitar performance and sound engineering at Berklee College of Music, I immediately started my audio freelance career by advertising my mastering services on various online platforms. I remember the first album that I mastered, for which I charged only $40! It was a crazy realization for me coming from teaching guitar at a school of music: I CAN BE MY OWN BUSINESS. In 2017 I received a small business grant, and established ZT Music Studio. Over the years, I built up my client base and increased my rates, since I was getting up to twenty albums a month. I lost count of the amount of songs mastered once I got over a few thousand. This work benefited me in so many ways creatively, as I mastered a variety of genres. So many of the unknown bands I worked with from around the world were insanely talented and had very interesting experimental sounds. In the last few years I have niched down to specializing in mastering cinematic and soundtrack albums. Some have been billboard charting albums, BBC documentaries, and video game OSTs. In 2020 I expanded my business, officially launching my composing career in custom soundtrack music.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My fine artist brother Josh Tiessen and I have collaborated for over 10 years, with me composing music inspired by his exquisite oil paintings. When the lockdowns hit in 2020, we brainstormed a larger passion project called “Streams in the Wasteland,” a collaborative art and music experience. I composed an original soundtrack for the seventeen paintings in his series, treating each track as it’s own ‘mini movie’ since the paintings also have a written story component. We crowdfunded an art monograph book and CD, and were overwhelmed by the support. I was lucky to have a popular YouTube channel, Epic Music World, feature songs from this album. After it had been up for a few months, I got an unexpected email from a video game producer in Texas, saying he enjoyed the video EMW shared and wanting me to compose music for a StarCraft II mod campaign he had been developing for over 5 years. Epic action sci-fi that would let me incorporate my guitar playing and analog synths? Say no more! I had renowned cellist Yoed Nir record my string arrangements, and vocalist Julie Elven (League of Legends, Horizon Forbidden West) add her ethereal magic to the lead melodies. Around this time I also worked on a few additional music tracks for Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs: Legion, which provided a feather in my cap for having worked on a console released game. These initial projects really helped establish me as a composer in the video game sphere, as I have a portfolio for when I meet audio directors at various networking events. My work stands out on account of using my bespoke sound-designed instruments and live musicians, including recording with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra on a couple occasions in the past year. Thanks to the StarCraft II mod project, my fan base has now grown to over 35k+ monthly listeners on Spotify. This has led to various sync licensing companies approaching me for signing on my music to their catalogs (non-exclusively).

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Most weeks I am researching new sample libraries, plug-ins, and sight reading concert scores from my favourite classical composers (most recently Penderecki and Ligeti). I also find it helpful to read books about the WHY of what we do, and the uniqueness we add to our craft. This provides clarity on what I ultimately want to give back to the world. Some books recently (non-exclusive to music) that have helped inspire me in this area are Making it HUGE in Video Games (lessons from Chance Thomas’ career in games), The Creative Habit (intentional brainstorming activities for overall project vision) and Wild Wonder (being a nature lover, I connected with this book and Stephen Proctor’s soul-stirring imagery). Although the aforementioned entrepreneurs are all in different fields (video games, dance choreography, and arial photography) the common thread is that they all found something that made them stand out, like an interesting genre blend, bold creative choice, etc. while being authentically passionate. This is something I hope to capture in my own work.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of what I do is experimenting and creating completely original sounds from the ground up. I love the process of sampling my own instruments, to compose with in Kontakt and X-Stream. My most recent undertaking was recording a pipe organ in Trinity Chapel at the University of Toronto. Ever since I saw the organ at Temple Church in the UK (which Interstellar was recorded on) I knew I had to capture something similar at home. The sound turned out EPIC, and many of the 350 notes I sampled were put to good use on the Supernova II main theme I recently released. I even ran the bass pedals through my LYRA-8 synthesizer, utilizing the external input as a moody undulating feedback distortion, which made the pipes sound as if they were on the verge of exploding! For the latest instalment of Supernova, I also sampled a spring drum, which you can swirl to get a gigantic ‘thunder’ effect or strike the spring for ‘lightening.’ I then chopped up the various hits I recorded and ran them through a plug-in called Life by XLN Audio. This sequenced the performances in a very glitchy unpredictable way, adding lots of variation to the hybrid percussion loops. You can hear these sounds on Supernova II (Original Soundtrack) which is out now, and the StarCraft II mod which it was composed for, is available to play at uedfl.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.zactiessen.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zactiessen/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zactiessen/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-tiessen-80401bb3/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/zactiessen
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/44VIiKcvL7jtY8hcWIraKc
  Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/zac-tiessen/786236894