We recently connected with Andrew Mason and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Andrew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
This may sound obvious, but the way I learned the craft was just by doing it. I’m really fortunate that the composer whom I assist, Nathan Lanier, gave me the opportunity to write along side him pretty early on. The combination of personal experience I get from that and guidance from him has really been the bulk of my learning experience. Knowing what I know now I think the best thing I could have done to speed up the learning process would have been just to do it more. I’ve heard stories of some pretty big name composers in Hollywood making their own films just to have something to score to and that is just so genius haha. Sometimes I just score random things that don’t have any music just for fun. Doing this can be really fun because you can kind of go as crazy as you want with since you’re not trying to please a director or studio. In terms of skills that I find most essential, I think knowledge of music theory has to be the biggest, even though that technically isn’t a skill. The more you know, the more tools you have in your musical tool box so to speak. That especially rings true for music where the possibilities are almost endless. Now obviously the process of learning all that theory isn’t exactly the most fun way to spend you time, so that can be an obstacle in the way of learning more for sure. Most times after a long day of work the last thing you want to do is sit down and analyze Beethoven or learn about this new scale or new form of harmony. But it is always worth it course. Another obstacle would be the inconsistency of work. As I’m sure all people in the industry know, there are times when you are so slammed with work that you feel like you’re downing, and times when you wonder if you’ll ever work again. I can be really tough in those stagnant times to feel like you’re learning and improving. After all, how can you improve at something if you don’t do it?
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I think I was 4 years old when my mom put me in piano lessons. From what I remember I was pretty much obsessed from that moment on. That obsession never really went away and I remember writing music pretty much as soon as I was able to. In highschool I got my hands on Logic Pro when me and some friends decided to start messing around with electronic music. Hearing music from huge artists at that time like Avicii and Swedish House Mafia really fueled my interest in the whole digital side of music. When it was time to start thinking about college I knew I had to go somewhere for music, I just didn’t know what aspect of music. I hadn’t really taken composition seriously at that time, and although I loved playing, I knew the performance route wasn’t for me. After some consideration I decided to follow in the footsteps of one of my friends and study Music Technology at Duquesne University. Later in my time there I started taking private composition lessons as my interest in that grew. Faced again with the dilemma of what to do next, life after college in this case, it was my composition teacher who brought up film composing. To be honest, the thought or scoring films had never even crossed my mind but boy did it take hold. Next thing I knew I was moving out to Los Angeles to see if I could make it work!
As a film composer my goal is to give clients something that they get excited about when hearing. You can tell a lot about what people think just based off their reaction. And for me, if they aren’t show any sort of emotional engagement with the music, then I know I still have work left to do. I also want to help directors think a little bit outside the box. What I don’t want to do is play it super safe. A lot of times I’ll maybe give the director something that I think may be a bit outside their comfort zone. If they don’t like it I have no problem reigning it back. I just want to show them what is possible. Ideally I like to get a place where the music sounds super original, but doesn’t distract the view from whats happening on screen. Whether this be with some non-traditional harmony, and cool musical textures, I want people to really think my music is different.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
In music, especially in composing, you are told to just kind of follow your heart. For the most part this is true! However, that isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to composing to picture. I remember one time when I first started working for boss, he gave me scene to score. Along I went creating music that I though sounded good. Excited with my work, I showed it to him, excited to hear his thoughts. I must say that I was a little let down when his reaction wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d hoped for. He asked me to listen back to the music and tell him if what I had written REALLY suited the picture. Upon listen back I realized that he was right, even though the music sounded good, it was quite out of character for the scene. That was when I learned that my job was not to write music that just sounded good to me, but sounded good AND worked for the picture.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I recently learned that you can buy scores to so many different movies online through some different publishing companies. Going through those and seeing how some of the greats make great music has been invaluable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andrewmasonmusic.com
