We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gabe Sokoloff. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gabe below.

Gabe, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The closest thing I had to a formative period in that regard occurred the summer after my junior year of college. Music was still just a hobby at that point, but I had applied for an artist-in-residency with the National Park Service. I thought it’d be a dreamy way to spend the summer, holed up in a cabin making music inspired by the surrounding natural beauty. I was accepted and placed in a small house at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in Iowa. It wasn’t exactly Yellowstone, but I got what I wanted to out of the experience and left with a handful of new, original songs. They weren’t great, but I sure thought they were. And ironically that unearned confidence led me to what actually turned out to be the right decision, pursuing music professionally. I’m not sure if there’s a lesson in there—embrace youthful and naive delusions of competence?

Gabe, 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 and multi-instrumentalist known mainly for my musical contributions to popular animated television shows, as well as a handful of other well-known programs like American Idol. I’ve written both score and songs—including over a dozen show themes—and take particular satisfaction in my contributions to series I feel are genuinely edifying to kids, like Netflix’s StoryBots franchise and Waffles & Mochi’s Restaurant (starring Michelle Obama).

My composing career began in earnest scoring advertisements, which was a great way to gain experience across a lot of different styles, en route to really honing my own sound. I’ve also dabbled in pop records along the way, and have played the role of vocal-producer for Weird Al Yankovic, Jeff Goldblum and others. These days I seem to do a bit of everything, focusing on shows but also creating music for commercials, live events, the occasional record, and working as a lyricist.

Creatively, I was kind of a late bloomer: I went to a liberal arts college and received my degree in philosophy, and only in my senior year started thinking seriously about pursuing music as a profession.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Throughout my career so far, I’ve found it incredibly crucial to be able to create work that reads as contemporary—whatever that might mean for a given project. Being ready to create something that feels palpably ‘now’ isn’t automatic; keeping up with trends can be burdensome but it’s part of the job. Even less edgy forms of media like kids shows or movie-musicals are still ever-evolving, including the way music functions within them. Something as subtle as your choice of clap sounds or tambourine, let alone the way you approach the storytelling, can make a difference in how current the music feels.

Trends are also interactive across mediums, so I personally think there’s benefit to having a sense of what’s happening in creative fields outside your own. Styles of comedy, animation, and storytelling all change quickly with the times and, if you’re up on those trends, you’re more likely to relate to the vibe a director is going for. I even think personal fashion figures into one’s creative lens in kind of a mysterious way. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’d be hard to create current-sounding music wearing dad-jeans and a flannel.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I grew up hearing stories of songwriters getting contracts based on their unpolished demo recordings, composers getting scoring gigs off a lone piano sketch, that sort of thing. Nowadays that’s a fantasy, of which I was disabused early in my career. Rough sketches don’t cut it anymore, except in rare situations where either there’s a lot of built-up trust, or extremely luxurious timelines.

Obviously this change has everything to do with technology. I also think, in the scoring world at least, increased competition has driven us composers to feel that every possible measure must be taken to put our music in the best light at each stage. I recently heard a story of a composer hiring a 70-piece orchestra on their own dime just for an audition. Hopefully that remains an extreme case.

Contact Info:

• Website: gabesokoloff.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabe-sokoloff-31534714/

Image Credits
All images: Alessandra Guth