MCB Interviews Ryan Leach
"I don't believe the basic principles of music can be affected by technology...these core ideas are the same whether you're writing for string quartets or sine waves." - Ryan Leach
Ryan Leach knows that library music is an important part of any working composer's portfolio. "Already many networks have realized that they can get away with not paying composers directly for original music," says Leach. "In my view you can either complain about the good old days and try to fight the system, or you can make the most of reality. I have a lot of music circulating through libraries and I'm always very grateful when that ASCAP check arrives." Under the library model, composers often receive no upfront money but do get royalties through their PRO. No upfront licensing costs saves money for the networks.
Another trend Leach expects to see more is pre-scoring, recently made popular by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in the Social Network. "There are a lot of critics in the film music community that say this isn't 'the right way of doing things'," says Leach. "For me this is another situation where old-school composers will complain that it isn't pure, but the reality is more and more directors are going to follow David Fincher's lead in the years to come. I've tried a semi pre-scoring method a few times already as an experiment, in which I wrote one or two cues before seeing the film, and have had great success with it."
Despite the changing methods, Leach doesn't believe the basic principles of music can be affected by technology. "Variation, development, proportion, balance, a singable melody, an emotionally resonant harmonic progression. These core ideas are the same whether you're writing for string quartets or sine waves."
Starting at the piano keeps him from getting distracted by all the toys inside Logic. "If it's something melodic as opposed to textural, usually I'll sit at a piano with pencil and paper," says Leach. "Rarely do I sketch out more than melody and chords at this stage. Then I take it into Logic and flesh it out." When writing for live players, Leach exports a midi file into Sibelius and cleans it up.
Visit Ryan Leach's website at RyanLeach.com and check out some of his fantastic audio tutorials over at AudioTuts.com.
Upcoming Projects:
"Right now I'm finishing up the score for a fun indie feature called Rehearsal, with writer director Dan O'Hare. The film centers around theater and New York City, so we thought a jazz approach would be appropriate. I studied a lot of jazz in high school and at Berklee so it has been fun to get back to that style after a long while."
More Tips From Ryan Leach:
"I'm very interested in composers that have developed a unique voice, and what I've found most fascinating about the masters is that their early work is often very competent but traditional. I've heard people say things like 'Picasso was so amazing because he painted in a totally unique way, in the only way he could paint.' But that's not true! If you look at early Picasso it's incredibly traditional. Look at "The Old Fisherman" for example. Can you tell that's Picasso just by looking at it? Obviously he could paint masterfully in the old style, but he pushed past that. The same is true of early Stravinsky, which sounds much more like Rimsky-Korsakov than what we think of as the Stravinsky style. I'm also very interested in prolific composers and artists. I think it's no accident that Mozart and Schubert are legends, just look at how much work they put out! I would love to look further one day into the correlation between an artist's development and the amount of work they published."
John Presley is a composer and founder of Music Composer Blog. You can visit his music site here.