We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Muse recently and have shared our conversation below.
Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I grew up in a musical household. All of us took piano lessons and participated in band and chorus. Before moving to LA, I was doing a lot of clinics and percussion teaching for drumlines and marching bands. While I enjoyed teaching, it was writing the warm-ups and the drum shows that brought me such a thrill. It got to a point where I knew I wanted to explore writing further, especially with orchestral instruments, and I started thinking about the possibility of making a career out of it. The idea of scoring films and media was always in the back of my mind, but I wrestled with it because there was no guarantee of stability, especially when first starting. Funny enough, when I felt it was time to transition from teaching, I found my old iPod Touch and saw that it had tons of these little audio recordings I took in my early teens, sitting at my piano. They were rough sketches of melodies and musical ideas I came up with and wanted to remember. Why? I had no idea at the time. I just wanted to capture the ideas in case someday I could use them. Playing through these recordings years later was like having an epiphany because it reminded me how that little passion for writing and creating musical ideas was always there, wanting to come out.
It was very obvious at this point that I was a composer at heart. I knew that breaking into this career was going to be tough and very competitive, but I am pretty relentless when it comes to pursuing my goals, and I needed to chase this. I packed up my car and drove across the country from North Carolina to Los Angeles because I knew I would end up there someday anyway. The choice to pursue this career is still solidified every time I sit down at the piano to write for a project or even just to play for fun. My weekend nights are often spent at my piano. That’s embarrassing!
Amanda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a composer based in Los Angeles, specializing in orchestral music and percussion for media. Essentially, I get to use my knowledge of music to help tell a story! I have this fun combination of a master’s degree in music composition and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, which is something that has helped me understand and effectively communicate human emotions through music. A deep understanding of people is one of the best skills a composer can have because, in turn, they will create scores and pieces with such depth and emotional resonance.
In addition to composing, I am also a full-time producer at the virtual instrument company CineSamples, where I get to help record, develop, and produce virtual instruments for composers to have at their fingertips. Learning the ins and outs of the sampling world has been fun and extremely valuable because it has taught me so much about recording, mixing, paying attention to details, creating and editing sample patches, and so much more. I get to put my composer hat on and figure out what instruments will spark the most creativity for composers and how we can best execute that in a sample patch.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
There are many rewarding aspects when writing on a project, whether it’s composing for a short film, a media project, or even just composing a virtual instrument demo, but the biggest for me is the collaborative aspect and the idea that a group of people is working tirelessly to perfect an artistic vision. I have always loved being part of big productions (probably why I loved marching band so much) because there is something contagious about the energy. Everyone wants this one thing to turn out great, and we are all here only because we love doing what we do. Media composers help service a project by bringing a feeling to the surface, and we have the power to boost a visual (or to ruin it), to make it more effective, and to steer it in another direction by a simple semitone. For a composer to nail a scene, we collaborate by working with directors and producers to find what story to tell musically, and we get to use our gifts and the tools we’ve learned to translate that into notes on a page. It’s about telling a story. So for me, it’s most rewarding to see the final product of a collaborative effort by people who just want this story to be told effectively.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
“Creatives” all have this thing inside them they need to let out, and I think their way of thinking when it comes to following their heart about their career may seem odd to people who don’t relate to that mindset. They want to “chase their dreams” even though there is no guarantee of success, and it seems ridiculous. But creatives (especially deeply passionate music creatives like me) are kind of plagued with an itch they need to scratch, and they are not satisfied until they are pursuing their passion. It’s not something that can just be turned off.
Many people pivot careers later in life because they tried to shove that little passion down, and it didn’t work. I pivoted from being a psychology degree graduate to eventually getting my master’s in music composition because I realized that my desire to compose music was never going away and that having it as just a hobby was not satisfying enough. Some people don’t have the freedom to just pack up and move across the country, though, so I consider myself very lucky (and maybe a little delusional). 
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.amandamusemusic.com
- Instagram: @musegrooves
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.muse.3/