We recently connected with Brando Riccardo Spedicato and have shared our conversation below.
Brando Riccardo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I tried to make music my source of revenues since I was 18 years old, in 2004, taking every opportunity and job coming in; also that ones that weren’t very well paid or artistically satisfying. The three key words were: compromise, adaptability and sacrifice. Italian society see artistic activities as a hobby; the most often asked question was: “ok, but what do you do for living?”. I progressively abandoned the studies to be able to earn some money as pianist, singer, actor, teacher and events organizer. I realised that in order to be a composer, huge investments were needed, high performance computer, many hardwares and softwares constantly up to date; not having any guarantee to recover the investment on the short term. It wasn’t feasible at that time. In 2014 one of my clients asked me to go to Cannes to replicate the formula that I created in Milano, create a network of musicians and make them perform in different contexts. The high demand of workers in the hospitality sector on the French Riviera made me stay and changed my life for the better. For ten years I worked in parallel in the two fields; waiter and receptionist during the day; pianist and singer at night. This double life allowed me to purchase all I needed to start my journey as composer. Fate had it that I should have met Amanda Woods at the 76th Cannes Film Festival edition, she asked me if I wanted to score her short film project and I was eager to put all my investments at good use. A new professional adventure has begun and only time will tell where it will bring me. If I went back in time knowing what I do now, I would have tried to achieve financial freedom by any means as soon as possible to have the right state of mind and the resources to start doing what I always wanted, but much earlier.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve always thought that being a skilled creative it is only a small part of the requirements to attract investments and get the job done. In my considered opinion social skills are essential, being humble, to listen and to learn fast are necessary; and adaptability is very important. You can be the best composer in the world, but if you are not professional assertive and being able to satisfy your employer’s requests, your creativity is worth zero. Empathy is very important to interpret the producer’s messages and the emotions that he wishes to communicate. I am at the beginning of this new journey and I am sure that the awareness of the above-mentioned can help me to face the challenges that await in front of me.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
The tokenization of music exist since 2019 and had a boost during the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021 but hasn’t reached its full potential due to lack of regulation and the mass media war against the crypto space. ERC-721 and SPL are immutable proof of intellectual property rights that are taken into account for an eventual legal dispute, that is today the main advantage of uploading music on distributed ledger technology. The main objective of blockchains is to get rid of intermediaries and is not difficult to imagine that big companies that manage production and distribution of artistic products are not pleased to get cut off from the market. I personally think that a compromise will be reached through CeDeFi (Centralized / Decentralized Finance) where the purchasing and distribution of music and cinema will happen on blockchain using smart contracts under the direct control of major music and cinema companies. And this will be possible only after the creation and regulation of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currency). In a plutocracy, the House always win.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
When I used to study music composition at the Conservatorium in Milan I dreamt of having the opportunity to score an historical movie. I loved imagining the research on the instruments, the composition and performance techniques and how the reverb of the sound waves was going to react in the historical accurate acoustic spaces. I dreamed up to bring to the big screen a composition that could have been created by the musicians of a given time, in contrast of what I used to hear in almost all products coming out from the American film industry; I guess that is related to my european heritage. I sincerely hope that one day I will have this opportunity, a dream come true.
Image Credits
Main photo. Atelier photographic Cannes 1. Atelier photographic Cannes 3. Atelier photographic Cannes 4. Dave Darbin