Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm frequently asked about my musical education,

and most people already know that I'm basically self-taught.

But I just want to clarify that, that

doesn't mean I don't believe in the value

of a musical education.

And now, you have to realize, the son of two school

teachers-- not one, but two--

going off into a street group is not a happy moment.

There was this-- this thing that tends to happen in your 20s,

where you get these lofty ambitions of where you think

you should be at every moment in your life,

and you're not there.

And I go, there's a certain point where

I think I just had to realize, I'm not going back to school.

It just isn't going to happen.

So I've described how I began to teach myself to write and teach

myself to transcription of music,

and I taught myself many things.

And I really was committed to teaching myself

what I could do, and then I would try to take lessons,

and it was just--

my brain was a sieve.

I showed no propensity, but if I could

dig into a piece of music, I knew that I could carry it.

I could hold it in my head.

I could write it all down.

I knew how to take that piece of music

apart and put it back together, and yet I

couldn't read a fucking scale to save my life.

I would do it, and I would learn it.

And two weeks later, it was gone.

I had an equal problem with lyrics, and I was in a band.

I was like, I can't remember words.

I could remember melodies.

I could remember tunes.

And so I learned to work with my strengths and my weaknesses.

And my weaknesses were vast and many,

but I knew I had some strengths.

And so I tried to find those and focus on those that--

that can carry me through a narrow path in life.

Unfortunately, it didn't leave open many options,

and probably, that was a good thing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I remember being interested in gamelan music.

I love interlocking rhythms, and Willie Winant,

the percussionist that I grew up with, he used to do exercises.

And this is stuff that Steve Reich and many composers

I've learned to love since then did-- a thing called phasing.

And he would say, OK, play this on the wood block.

Just play this rhythm and hold it,

and I'm going to slowly speed up, but don't you speed up.

I'm going to slowly speed up, and we're

going to constantly shift the interlocking

position of these two rhythms against each other.

And it was an exercise I loved, and it was also an exercise

that I learned, I can do this.

I can do this really well.

I can hold this in place and not get

distracted by something else that pulls me off.

I can hold my place here.

And phasing was something I loved,

so the complex interlocking of the gamelan instruments

became something I was really fascinated in and, I think,

because I've always been fascinated

and loved complex interlocking rhythms.

So I wander into--

and my apologies to Cal Arts and Disney for the story

I'm about to tell because it's not anybody's fault,

but my own.

And I'm apologizing in advance because I wandered

into the gamelan room, and I sat down,

and I started to play and learn.

And I continued going for almost three years,

and I was never a student.

Nobody asked me, and I just kept going.

I didn't have any access to tuition at that point,

and there was no way I would've got

accepted into a music school.

I knew nothing about music even though I was in this theater

group, and I was playing stuff.

But I knew nothing about music, and to get

into a music school--

there was no instrument I could have auditioned on, and I

certainly--

even what key I'm in, it just made no sense to me,

and I never cared.

And I studied gamelan and developed a love of it,

so I tried to incorporate that and use that in my work.

There was something that I was good at.

Something I'm good at!

I could actually do this thing.

Even though I stole some of that knowledge--

to this day, that's actually the only musical training I've ever

had was those couple of years doing gamelan,

but it served me well.

Now, do I do a lot of gamelan in scores?

No, I don't.

That's not the point.

The point is, I was honing a skill

to be able to write tight, interlocking patterns,

and those just feel natural to me.

And so it's like, ultimately, whoever you are,

whatever your training is, I hope that training is deep.

I hope you went to a film school,

and you picked up a great knowledge base.

Because the more you have, the more you're

starting out with, and the fact that I didn't, it

was a problem for me.

It did not make things easier.

It made things harder, and it was a problem

that I had to find and invent ways around.

I hope you don't have to do that, but some of you will.

Some of you are going to be coming

from different backgrounds and different places,

and whatever it is that you do well enough to make

you want to get into film scoring,

you're going to have to learn a lot of shit that's

completely contrary to everything you knew.

So you're both going to have to learn vastly

new amounts of things, but you're also

going to look for the things that you

do know, those things that you go, I'm kind of good at this.

Maybe it's tunes.

Maybe it's something rhythmically.

Maybe it's some kind of harmonic relationships

that you're good with, or you're just

really good with atmosphere and tone and things

you could do with instruments in a small group

or with synthetically.

And you're going to have, I could do that,

and now, I want to expand.

So it's finding that bit that you have in your past.

If you're lucky, it's a lot.

And if you're not, that doesn't mean that you have to give up.

So that's the point of my education,

my lack of education, my faulty brain,

and my reaching into the bag to find a few things

that I could do well with my faulty brain and make it

work to my advantage.