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

Hi Garret, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned to compose in high school by writing tunes for any trumpet trio, string quartet, or marching band that would play my music. Though I’d already been playing the trumpet for years, composing quickly became my favorite way to make music. While studying Jazz Trumpet at the Eastman School of Music, I started composing music for a bunch of short films and games with student directors and game designers in the Rochester area. These collaborations are where I started to developed my understanding of drama and timing while refining my musical sensibilities, listening to all kinds of music. I continued my formal education with a Masters in Contemporary Media and Film Composition at Eastman. After graduating, I moved to Los Angeles, working as an additional composer and technical assistant for Ramin Djawadi where I gained invaluable hands-on experience and mentorship.

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 provide music composition and production services for media from concept to delivery. A focus of my work is creating music that fosters brand identity. Whether it’s a tune that people walk away humming after seeing a film or a sound combination that immediately brings a client’s project/brand to mind, my music provides my clients’ projects with a distinctive musical fingerprint.

From the very beginning, my approach to composing music for media has been to put the director’s
vision at the forefront. Film music has a specific role in storytelling that can vary from project to project. My role is to help define what the world sounds like and to create music that supports the dramatic and emotional needs of a story. Sometimes this means building and recording bespoke instruments to create melodies and textures of another world. Other times this means drawing upon the classical and jazz musical traditions I grew up with to bring familiarity to our viewers. Often, the music I produce exists at the intersection of these frameworks, blending the contemporary with the traditional in a way that is fitting for each project.

Whether I am joining a project in early pre-production, helping to establish the musical tone for a project based on scripts and creating assets for on-screen usage, or coming in at the tail end to add the final layer of musical polish, I compose music that supports the team’s creative vision and contributes to the musical identity of that project.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

By far the most rewarding aspect of doing this work is collaborating with other creative people and sharing these stories with the world. My music would not be what it is without the inputs and feedback from the people I work with. The scores that we create are not only a product of our ideas but also our relationships.

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

When I was a young musician, I received a lot of praise for playing the trumpet well, practicing a lot, and performing with the “best” groups in my area. From this I learned that it felt great and personally satisfying to achieve musically. The side effect of learning this lesson at that age is that trumpet-playing became the core pillar of my identity.

When I found myself surrounded by incredibly skilled peers at university, I had to unlearn this conflation of trumpet-playing with my entire identity or risk burnout and depression. Thankfully I was able to work through this with the support of my partner and friends at the time.

It turns out, we are all complex individuals who are more than just our work. This has been a healthy re-learning for me. I love music, playing the trumpet, and composing to this day, but it is not my entire identity. This has freed me to receive feedback and criticism of my work without taking it personally. I am a more resilient collaborator, a better listener (less distracted by my ego), and a more creative composer as a result of this lesson.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://garretreynolds.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soundslikegarret
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7333905/