We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeremy Harvey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeremy below.
Jeremy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
I was born three months premature, weighing only two and a half pounds at brith. Because my lugs were not fully developed, I needed supplemental oxygen. As a consequence of the extra oxygen supplied, under-developed blood vessels in my brain and eyes ruptured, leaving me with a neuromuscular condition called Cerebral Palsy, and near-blindness. When I was two years old, my parents took me to a doctor for an evaluation. Part of this evaluation involved verbally identifying objects depicted on flash cards. One of the cards showed a red, round car that looked just like our family’s VW bug that we owned at the time. When shown the card, I responded that the object was a “bug”, of course referring to my family’s vehicle. The doctor’s mistook my response as me referring to an insect, and stated that I was borderline mentally retarded.
When my mother told the doctor that I had begun to play the piano at age two, the doctor insisted that I would simply become too frustrated and that my parents shouldn’t even allow me to touch the piano. Many years later, I now hold a Bachelors and Masters in Music in Composition. My parents and I have chosen to respond to mischaracterization with the intention of educating the public rather than defending myself. I have learned to work with professors and private instructors in unique ways, and these communication skills have fostered my interest in developing connections with people, and constantly improving my teaching skills. .
Jeremy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a pianist, composer, arranger, and audio engineer. I started playing the piano at the age of two when my mom showed me where middle C was on the piano, and I found all the other C’s on my own. My mom says that I would asleep at night to recordings, and gradually I began to play the melodies of each tune on my recordings. My parents, particularly my dad, enjoy music. I grew up listening to recordings of Beethoven, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff, and from a young age I was drawn to Rachmaninoff’s second and third piano concertos. These works significantly shaped my compositional style.
When I was 11, I saw a news special about a kid my age whose music was performed by an orchestra for the first time. This inspired me to compose my first piano concerto. For Christmas the next year, my family got a Roland digital piano that was the most realistic representation of a real piano I had ever played up to that time. It had a touch screen and extensive recording and arranging capabilities that I used to record my piano concerto. This ignited my love for music technology.
When I was 13, I used my keyboard and some audio editing software to record an album for my mom’s birthday. I remember stretching cables from my keyboard all the way up the stairs to plug into the sound card of my family’s PC. After that, I started responding to requests to record music for friends and even recorded music for small films entered in film festivals.
When I was in college, I started experimenting with producing electronic music, and that’s when I really learned about audio engineering, learning how to produce synthesizer sounds from scratch, and how to mix and master tracks. I started posting covers and arrangements to YouTube, and started branding my work with the name Jeremy Harvey Music.
In 2017, I graduated with my Bachelor of Musical Arts from Brigham Young University-Idaho, where I studied piano and acoustic music composition. After graduating, I applied to The Peabody Institute at The Johns Hopkins University where I complimented my studies in acoustic music with my Masters in Computer Music Composition, where I refined my skills as an audio engineer, learned how to use the computer as a musical instrument through digital music programming, and learned how to use the computer as a tool for composition.
Today, I continue to pick up adhoc scoring, arranging, and production projects. One of my most recent projects I’m most proud of is my classical album. I recorded that album by entering each note and chord one note at a time into my computer using a highly simulated Steinway concert grand, then manipulating each note to make the cording sound human, and exactly the way I wanted. I produced this album with the premise that even though I couldn’t play pieces exactly the way I heard them in my head, owing to my neuromuscular and visual challenges, I could produce what I heard in my head using technology.
As of this writing, I’m currently awaiting response from the Thornton School of Music at University of Southern California to my applications to the Screen Scoring Master’s program and their Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is to bring people bring people into the world of music by doing two things. One thing I love to do is to show listeners a little of what goes on behind the scenes. Most people I know enjoy music, but few people I know really appreciate what goes on inside the music. As a composer, I love to be able to talk about what makes the music people love sound a certain way, and this surprises and delights people! I love to help bring the joy that I feel creating music to the people who are consuming music.
The second, and most important thing l love to do is to bring someone’s vision to life, and to show them what they want but may not express to me in words. As I’ve matured as a producer, I’ve earned to listen to what clients are wanting, rather than listening to what they are saying in words when they ask me to create something. I love using my knowledge of music to interpret intentions. I’m always thrilled when someone says, “I didn’t ask for this, but I didn’t know this is what I actually needed.”
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Society needs to value the creative process more, rather than just the end result. As a composer, I learn so much, bond so much with people through the PROCESS of creating, not just delivery. Society needs to value learning, and develop patience through struggling through a process. As wonderful as it is that artificial intelligence has made music generation accessible to anyone–including people interested in music with no training, becoming overly reliant on automation can keep users from learning important principles about how music works, principles about decision-making, and principles about the physical connections and limitations of human performance. I will always advocate for learning principles of music, receiving feedback, and making artistic decisions before using automation, similar to how pilots learn to fly an airplane manually first before using the autopilot, auto-thrust, and flight management computers. Will artists still have the knowledge to make personal artistic decisions when automation doesn’t give them what they want? Will they understand when something isn’t playable in real-life? Will they have the skills when automation is not available? I believe the answers to these questions will dictate of the music landscape.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.jeremyharveymusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pianomaniac14/
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/pianomaniac14
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/GNa72QeTESts3SMZA
- Other: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/jeremy-harvey/475369635
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4aIfilSvcPGJy7XrOzulaj
Image Credits
Anthony Peña, Lance Harvey, Adam McBride