How to listen

I came across this video from 2003 on TED Talks featuring the brilliant Evelyn Glennie. (If you haven't seen the documentary, Touch the Sound, add it to your Netflix queue or find it online.) This video is about 30 minutes, but it's worth the time. Great reminder that I need to listen with more than my ears.

New score

This week, I started working on a score for a new film called Last of the Great Unknown. It's a documentary about the history of exploration in the Grand Canyon and follows a modern explorer and his expedition team into remote slot canyons never before documented on film. The director, Dan Ransom, has a great website showcasing his still photography - if you can imagine these stills come to life, you'll start to get an idea of the footage in the film. Beautiful!

http://danransom.com/

More to come so stay tuned...

Congratulations Ben Stookesberry and team!

Kadoma is a film that I scored in the spring of 2011 and it keeps winning at film festivals!! Right out of the gate it won Honorable Mention in the People's Choice category at Mountainfilm in Telluride (which apparently has been a harbinger of success in past years), Best Adventure Film at the Port Towsend Film Festival and this last weekend it won Best Film - Adventure and Exploration at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Congratulations to director Ben Stookesberry and Chris Korbulic from Clear H2O Films. They went through a harrowing experience and by finishing this film the way they did it is really affecting people. Great job!!

Can't stop thinking about Steve Jobs

Like a lot of people, I am not a technical person. I appreciate the impact technological advances by some original thinkers have had on my life, but computers are like cars to me. I know where the gas goes and I know how to check the oil and I remember to change the oil every 3000 miles because the sticker on my windshield tells me to. I don't know how it works, it just does (or doesn't). I have owned PCs and I have owned Macs and I can say with confidence that a Mac just works. Based on that idea alone, it has made my life easier. Thank you, Steve.

When an Apple product is taken out of its beautiful package, you know you are holding something special. You're like a kid at Christmas. It's exactly what you wanted, you plug it in and it works. Your whole day is spent surfing the web, listening to music, video chatting with Grandma (she has a Mac too), you import your pictures and videos from Christmas morning and post them on your Facebook Page and then you rent a movie on iTunes and pop some popcorn and chill by the fire.

If you get a PC, your Christmas morning goes like this.... You open the box (which is just a box), plug everything in, turn it on and some green letters flash across the screen and amongst all of the code is the word FAILURE. You wonder aloud: Can I call someone who can help? What time is it in India? What's a driver?

C: + \\\help.boo = wtf?

It's like getting a toy for Christmas, no one knew the batteries weren't included and the store is closed. Sorry Grandma, I will have to write you a letter.

As I sit typing on my Macbook, I am so thankful that Steve Jobs was an intuitive, talented, perfectionist genius and that he lived his life the way he did. He could've done anything, but he understood that people want to enjoy their computer, not curse it. He understood that functional could be beautiful. He understood that making products that are seductive is exciting and that marketing can be subtle and successful. You can't teach that. Maybe that's why I can't stop thinking about him. He was one of us. He was passionate about his work because he loved it - it was who he was. He was real. He was creating products that he would use not what a focus group told his marketing department that they thought they might be interested in using.

Enough. I'm probably preaching to the choir. Did you know Steve Jobs got the idea for iTunes from this episode of Star Trek?

 Data is listening to music from the ship's computer. All the files are stored there and Data can access any song he wants - in fact, he's listening to four songs at once. I read an article once where Steve Jobs said that he had an epiphany when he saw this scene - if people could access their music from their computer's hard drive like Data they could listen to individual songs, albums or create mixes of favorite songs. Uhhhh.....

Steve Jobs was like any other man. He got up in the morning and put his pants on one leg at a time. The only difference is that after his pants were on, he actually followed through on his inspired moments and created white and silver objects of various sizes that changed the world for the better - oh yeah and he was a billionaire. May we all follow our dreams and may we all have more cowbell.

Thank you Steve Jobs. We will miss you..........

Steve Jobs was so inspiring on so many levels. He was an artist and a visionary. Even the boxes that Apple products come in are so well thought out. Here's a quote from a commencement speech he delivered at Stanford:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” Jobs said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Rest in peace.....