We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pamela Symphony a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Pamela, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
When I was a kid I was interested in music and all arts. Neither my parents or me were interested on pursuing a carrer in arts. I was taking cello lessons, consposition lessons, painting lessons and photography lessons just as a hobby and a way to cultivate my spirit and mind at the moment. I never thought this was gonna oppen up so many habilities for me to communicate and express my ideas in the future, even though I did´nt know if I wanted to be a musician.
Music and arts gave me a fan of creative ways to solve problems, learn to be by my self and share with other humans in an inclusive and collective way.
There is many things my parents probably did´t do right, but one of their successes was allowing me to experiment with these trades, learn, dream and achieve my dreams.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am Pamela Symphony.
A Cellist, Composer and Singer.
I love to record music for bands, soloists and sountracks. The Music Studio is a habitat for me, specially when recording cello and arranging music for Audio-Viusal projects. I also perform playing an electric Cello and singing my own songs.
One of the compliments I receive the most when I have recorded with clients is the melodic and harmonic designs I create at the moment without the need for a pre-arranged score. If there is an arrangement I will follow it, propose something else and build a cinematic enviroment over it, if needed. Sometimes I am the one that arranges or composes from scratch.
It´s important for me to get a feedback from the client and use the best tools that resonate with the music piece we are working on.
The quality is important since you don’t know if one day that arrangement will be heard in the Oscar nominations.
Just like what happened to me with the arrangement of ¨La Llorona¨ movie, in where I participated as a cellist.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
As a woman navegating in the Music Industry for over 15 years, I have understood that this is a very powerful plataform of visibility, accountability and risk. No matter how small or short they are.
For all risks you can take it is important to understand the social enviroment in where we live in and ensure a healthy lifestyle in the spaces where we operate.
The musical field can easily become contaminated by the idea of a hobby.
When you pursue a hobby, you don’t necessarily worry about the safety of those around you. Art can easily become unprofessional, a hobby rather than a job.
And this is because artists enjoy what they do and don’t see this field as a business, whether creative or educational.
This cruelly creates hostile environments.
It’s important to set boundaries to prevent this.
This includes protocols that reinforce inclusivity, formal contracts, and information about forms of violence in creative and educational spaces.
A hostile environment is unsustainable.
A hostile Music Industry is unsustainable, and even more so today.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Yes.
I have worked with technicians in Music: Music Ingeneers, Recording Managers, Producers and even Film Directors that
don´t necessarily manages Music simbols or Musical writing. We can get easylly lost trying to understand everyones lenguage without getting the necessary resoult.
It is important for musicians to soak in to the different technical lenguages there can be presented by every different occasion and don´t pretend achademic music lenguage is the only one that exists and they should know it.
Most technicians will have a hard time trying to imagine the real sound of a demo made of midi sounds.
(Musical Instrument Digital Interface). Which tend to sound like an 8 bit video game. Unless it´s intentional, instead of helping, it can actually deform the vision of the music in mind.
As interpreter, composer and arranger, it´s important for me to show a macket of my work as close as possible of the reality. Realistic always wins and communicates better than any lenguage we use.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pamelasymphony.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pamela_symphony?igsh=eWI1emw4MHZ0amQz
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pam.symphony/
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/oqhimV_9rX8?si=zeCcwcv5E0b9FVYY
Image Credits
Andrew Warren / Jaco Jimenez