Micah Brill - Composer for Media

I have been happily writing for Velvet Green Music’s catalog for a year and a half.  Since January of 2017, I have contributed 7 songs, spanning 5 albums.  My contributions have been towards horror, drama, and action genres.  My most recent songs are part of the new Sports Action sub-genre, which I am very proud of.

Velvet Green Music is headed by composer and creative director, Michael John Mollo.  Michael is a contributing composer on many albums, having spent time as an assistant composer for John Powell.

VGM has recently signed a distribution agreement with Bulletproof Bear.  This move allows VGM to focus on writing great music while allowing BPB to do what it does best, helping our music to reach the largest audience possible.

I am happy to announce that I am officially part of the Full Clip Music team! Full Clip Music is an artist management firm, featuring an exclusive, hand-selected composer roster.  FCM maintains an aggressive focus on quality over quantity.  As a writer this resonates deeply with me, as I never want to write music half-heartedly that I don’t really believe in; I always want my best piece to be the one I’m working on right now.

Full Clip Music is headed by music legends John Pregler and BJ Perry who have made a name for themselves as composers, producers, and engineers.  I look forward to becoming a better composer, producer, and engineer under their professional guidance.

Every composers has an ever-growing wish list of sample libraries, plug-ins, and instruments.  However not all items on that list are created equally.  There are toys and then there are practical necessities.  I would say for most modern composers an epic drum library is a necessity.

I had a recent project that required me to write epic thundering percussion.  Up until this point I have used various methods of producing large sounding drums, but for this project they weren’t going to cut it.  I needed HUGE drums.

LISTEN TO MY EPIC PERCUSSION SONG

After researching some of the industry standard percussion, the library that stood out to me was Cinesamples’ Drums of War.  Many of the other libraries had lots of drum patches, but they were not the HUGE low thundering drums that I needed.  Not only did Drums of War meet my need the best, but it was the most reasonably priced.

Wow!  Can you believe that 2016 is over? I’m truly thankful for everyone that trusted me to write music for their project over this past year.  I want to share with you some of my favorite projects from 2016. Here is a countdown of my Top 3 Projects from 2016:

3. Among The Dead - Hide & Go Seek

Among The Dead is a brand of horror/post-apocalyptic comic books and short films created by Writer/Producer, Israel Gual.  I have had the honor of working with Izzy for a few years now, creating trailer music, the official theme song, and now a short film. This film was especially enjoyable to work on because of the film’s genre of music.  I enjoy writing music that creates dark overtones.  I was also especially happy to hire a viola player to record the main theme’s melody; I look forward to using more live musicians in future projects. WATCH THE FILM HERE!

2. Audio Comic Universe: Volume One

Audio Comic Universe is unlike any project that I have ever worked on.

Audio Comic Universe is a composer collaboration project. ACU releases compilation albums from various composers, based on re-interpreting classic superhero and supervillain's sonic identities. All profits from the sales of ACU songs are donated to charities.

I was very excited about the challenge of creating unique sonic character identities, especially because I had previously never had the opportunity to work on any superhero music. I put a great deal of time and effort into this project and was happy how all of the music turned out. SUPPORT CHARITY & DOWNLOAD THE ALBUM HERE!

1. Welcome To My World

History records that Ludwig van Beethoven drank one cup of home-brewed coffee made from exactly 60 coffee beans everyday.

It's no mystery that great coffee and great music are intricately intertwined.

I am somewhat of a coffee enthusiast myself, having worked at two different coffee shops in my younger years; one local shop and one large global brand with a very famous green mermaid.  While I am not above drinking pre-ground mass-produced Folgers, I do prefer great freshly ground whole bean French press coffee. Here are my reviews of 3 COFFEE BRANDS that I recently tried:

1. Doi Chaang

​​I purchased this brand of coffee because I had been feeling like I was getting too much caffeine in the morning.  I enjoy drinking my daily cup of coffee but did not enjoy feeling jittery.  This coffee is known for being naturally low in caffeine so I purchased a few bags. The coffee itself is from the Doi Chaang region in Thailand, and is imported through a Canadian company.  Overall, I liked the coffee.  The light was too light though; I recommend the medium or dark roast.

2. Death Wish Coffee

Before its Superbowl commercial debut and rise to fame, I was gifted some Death Wish Coffee.  This coffee receives its name and reputation from being "the world's strongest coffee."  I am normally a details person, but missed the details on this one.  I wrongly assumed that this was about a strong flavor, not caffeine content.  Needless to say, I have only drank one or two cups. I have to admit that this was one of the worst cups that I've had in a while.  The experience and challenge were fun, but not a good everyday blend for me.

3. Starbucks Reserve Blends

​I tend to prefer things in life to be consistent, but coffee is one of the exceptions.  I enjoy trying different kinds of coffee all the time.  After I finish a bag of coffee beans, instead of buying that coffee again, I like to buy new kinds. Starbucks Reserve is a brand of unique coffees by Starbucks that are produced in limited-quantities.  Each bag is small and contains very specific and targeted flavors. I have had a very good experience with this brand of coffee.  I can't exactly remember which kinds I had, but I really remember liking the Costa Rica blend from earlier this year.  If you are looking to change up your coffee drinking routine, I recommend purchasing one or two bags.

BONUS TIP:  If you are a coffee enthusiast, I recommend purchasing a coffee grinder and a French Press.  There's nothing like freshly grinding whole bean coffee and making your own cup to order with a French press.

In any creative field, it is paramount to learn how to be creative.  Inspiration is wonderful, but if your job is to create then you must learn to harness your own creative powers.

What do you do to be creative?

Waiting around for inspiration in not an option when a deadline is quickly approaching.  It is a myth that you always have to wait idly by until inspiration strikes.  While serendipity may find some, the rest of us will push through the writer's block.

Here is a quick TOP 3 LIST of how to push through a creative drought:

1.  Just put something down!

It's amazing how once you dare to commit to something, even if you hate it, it forces you to look at your creative problem in a different way.  It's no longer about what you don't have, but how you can make what you have better.  I've written some of my best pieces of music by recording in a few notes that I hated, but continually developed into something beautiful.

2.  Walk away and take a nap.

Wait a second...you said that this was about how to create creativity!  It is, I promise.  I can't tell you how many times I've gone to sleep early when I had a pressing deadline, woke up, and BAM...there was my needed inspiration.  It's amazing how getting a little sleep and walking away to get a fresh perspective can unravel your mystery.

3.  Get inspired through inspiration.

This seems too obvious to say, but it's actually very important.  I find that when I feel like there is no new music to write, I listen to some of my favorite albums, and instantly feel inspired to create new music.  For you it may be re-reading a section of a book or re-watching one of your favorite movies; learn how you feel inspired and use that to your advantage.

I am happy to announce the release of my most recent project, Among The Dead: Hide & Go Seek.

About:

Audio Comic Universe is an international composer collaboration project, conceived by composer Rayshaun Thompson, which re-imagines the sonic identity of your favorite comic book superheroes and supervillains.  

There are a total of 12 composers, 23 songs, and over one hour of music.

I have had the honor of being one of the chosen composers for this project.  Each composer chose one superhero and one supervillain and created songs for each character.  For my characters, I chose Hulk as my superhero and Thanos as my supervillain.

STREAM ON SOUNDCLOUD HERE Charity:

The album will be made available for a $5 donation to Capes 4 Heroes, which is a non-profit organization that makes personalized superhero capes for kids with disabilities, kids with life threatening illnesses and kids who just need to feel empowered. DONATE FOR DIGITAL DOWNLOAD HERE

Writing My Thanos Theme: I started my writing with Thanos, because I had a clear direction for what I wanted his theme to sound like.  Over the course of a month or so, I wrote theme ideas on piano and synths, which I felt like captured Thanos’ sonic identity.

I recently posted a Youtube video on how I create realistic sounding MIDI sampled metal drums.  I suggest you go and watch it, but if you prefer to read lists (like me!) then enjoy the below blog. Here is a quick breakdown of how to  program MIDI sampled metal drums: 1) Appropriate Velocity

Velocity is how hard or soft your virtual drummer hits the snare, kick, tom, etc.  Big snare hits should hit really hard but ghost notes should be soft.  Are all of your MIDI notes maxed out at 127 velocity or tiny at 42 velocity?  Treat your MIDI like how a real drummer would.  Go big during the heavy parts of a song but dial back when the drummer needs to hit softer.

Don’t forget that during blast beats, a drummer’s overall velocity is going to be lower.  Keep snares on blast beats closer to the 100 velocity mark, +/- 15.

2) Timing Randomization

No drummer’s timing is perfect; that is why perfectly quantized drums sound so fake.  Your virtual drummer should be slightly off time in some parts; especially during rolls, fills, and blast beats.  This little bit of timing variation will add SO much life to your drums.  I find that between 3-5% “humanization”, or timing randomization, can bring a drastic amount of realism to your drums. 

Make sure to test out what percentage you think is appropriate before just changing everything.  Too much will make your drums sounds sloppy and incorrect.  I like to leave down beats or big snare hits right on 100%, but any other notes will get some amount of variation.

3) Velocity Randomization

This is just as important as timing randomization.  Even if you set the timing on your virtual drummer to be slightly off, if the dynamics (aka velocity) are all the same, it will sound weird.  Even very consistent drummers have variations in how hard they hit their drums.  Even slight variation will add tons of life to your virtual drums.

This is especially important during busy parts, like fast hi-hats or blast beats.  First choose the overall appropriate range of velocities(i.e., 90-100, 100-127), set your MIDI to an average within that range, then randomize whatever is an appropriate amount, like 5-10%.  Occasionally you will have to manually edit this randomization to account for awkward random seeds, like that place one really loud note between two really quiet notes.

4) Fills, Rolls, & Double Kick

If you have ever played real drums, you will know that there are dominant and non-dominant hands/feet.  For me, I am a righty; that means that both my right hand and foot are dominant.  If I were to hit a snare drum as hard as possible with my left hand, it could never be nearly as hard as my right hand.

We must keep this is mind when writing snare rolls, tom fills, and double kick parts.  If I am writing a triplet double kick part, I should know that the 1st and 3rd kick will be with my dominant foot and the 2nd note will be with my non-dominant foot.  That means that I should make a strong 1st hit and then weaker hits after that.

I have played with variations on this concept.  One is that all notes go down in velocity.  For example a quadruplet kick pattern might have the following velocities: 125, 115, 105, 95.  This shows that kick patterns get weaker as you go.

I have also used another variation on this concept that emphasizes the dominant foot/hand.  An example of a quadruplet kick pattern would be: 125, 115, 120, 110.  This nuance accomplishes both that the overall trend is downwards, but it also demonstrate (see 3rd note velocity) that the dominant foot/hand is stronger.

5) Write How Real Drummers Play

This might be the most difficult part of non-drummers writing drum parts; what would a real drummer play?  I don’t think this is just a mater of preference or genres.  I know that I tend to write drum parts from the perspective of a guitarist, because I am a guitarist above everything else.  So I find that I write parts that a real drummer might never think of.  This can be both really cool and really awkward.

When you spend more time critically listening to albums that have great drummers, you can pick up lots of cool tips & tricks on how to write better more realistic drums.  Maybe that drum fill doesn’t need to be 32nd notes; it might sound more appropriate with 16th notes.  Maybe one longer drum fill at the end of the verse is better than two smaller drum fills halfway between the verse.

When you critically listen to real drummers, you will write better drum parts.  I like to show my drums to real drummers and get their feedback.  Keep in mind everyone is going to have preference on what they like and how they would personally write, but there is something to be said about common techniques.  If you are constantly writing drum parts out of the norm, you might consider getting critiques from a drummer friend and asking them to comment on your fills or overall grooves.

This is the first part of at least a two-part series entitled “How To Start Writing.”  These blogs will focus on overcoming the blank page and getting started writing music.

Enjoy! One of the most difficult parts about writing film music is overcoming the daunting mental giant of the blank slate and simply starting to write. Writing music for a film is a tall order - writing music that is consistent, emotional, reflective, diverse, iconic, augmentative to the picture, and perfectly timed.

Here are FIVE STRATEGIES that I have learned that you can start to use today to overcome writer’s block and start your film score: 1) Create a Sonic Landscape Suite: Hans Zimmer often writes demo suites or what I am calling a “sonic landscape suite” in an attempt to find the world that the film music lives in.  The question you are asking the producer is “Do you hear your film in this music?”.

This strategy is to not get lost in debating specifics but to conquer the big question of “What is the overall tone of this film?”.  This helps both you and the producer move from the ethereal philosophical realm into the real world of music.

It can be a daunting task to interpret comments like “I want a film score that sounds like its from a different dimension but is grounded in humanity.”  A suite can get you in the ballpark and help to unwind the mystery. 2) Create Themes: Star Wars is widely recognized by the majority of film go-ers and industry professionals as the most recognizable and greatest film score of our time.  While there are dissenters, you can’t ignore the cultural impact and pervasive nature of John Williams’ score.

What I find most amazing about the Star Wars film series (I’m mainly thinking of “A New Hope”) is that it is basically built on two themes; the “Main Theme”, which is also Luke Skywalker’s theme, and “The Imperial March”, which is basically Darth Vader’s theme.

Sure, there are other smaller themes and cues that use music outside of these two themes, but 90% of the film’s music is just different arrangements of these two themes.  Every time I re-watch Star Wars films, I am amazed that as an audience member, I am not bored or annoyed at the use of only two themes for a two hour long film.

Think about the economy of scale of writing themes.  Even if it takes days or weeks to come up with a few great themes (character or narrative concepts), if you can simply re-arrange the themes in a clever way for the individual cues, you could create an entire film score from only a few themes.

3) Start with the Most Critical Scene: The goal with this strategy is to find the most crucial scene (the climax) in the film, that captures the heart of the film, and write that cue first.

The idea is that once you have conquered the most influential and crucial piece of music, the rest of the film’s score will begin to unravel.  The music for the film will be grounded and centered in the climax, with the previous cues building to that moment and the later cues concluding from it.  This is like setting a location in your GPS; you know where you are going to end up, so you can choose from a variety of possible routes to get to your final destination.

In this way, you can battle your demons early on and when push comes to shove days before the final music is due, you do not have a huge dark cloud overshadowing your mind; you have already conquered the giant.

One disadvantage of this approach is that you may struggle for a long time to “get it right”, which can be very frustrating and demoralizing.  You can also put too much emphasis on a single scene and neglect the ebb and flow that needs to be present during the rest of the film.

4) Start with the Easiest Scene: This strategy says “Let’s start with what I know and figure out what I don’t as I go.”  I like this strategy because it feeds on the idea of momentum.

There are some scenes that both you and the director completely agree on and will be easy to write, either because you know exactly how you want to approach the cue or because there is one obvious answer, like a love scene with a love theme.  The scene may be short or it may be long, but the scene “cries out” for a certain type of music.

This strategy allows you to provide some “early wins” with the producer.  If you have a dozen cues, which you know some will take a while to get right, it can be very advantageous to be able to crank out a few scenes early on to demonstrate you competence and musical ability to the director.  While you are working on and delivering these easier cues, you can be thinking about and “finding the voice of the film” rather than fumbling for weeks and not having anything to show for.

This gives you credibility with the director.  Later on you may deliver a cue that is not satisfactory to them and you need to alter it.  In their mind, if you have already delivered good work from earlier scenes, they will hopefully be thinking “This cue is wrong but they’re done good work already so I know they’ll get it eventually.” as opposed to “Uh oh, I think I need a new composer.”

5) Start with a Random Scene: I think composing benefits from our knowledge of the story arc and understanding of the characters, but there can be occasions where knowing less is better.  Sometimes you can nail the heart of a scene the first time by taking your cues from the scene and writing to what you see on the picture in that moment. If you overthink a cue, you might not give the scene the music it needs.  You can get bogged down with “Does the start of this scene flow consistently with the end of the last scene?  Will it flow perfectly into the next cue?  Did I integrate all of the character themes for every main character in the scene?” There can be wisdom in writing music that is the “greatest common denominator” or that beats the audience over the head.  When you lose your context, you may just lose yourself in the scene enough to give it what it truly needs, without overthinking it.

I hope this blog gives you strategies that you can start using today.

Stay tuned for part two of this series, which will be titled “How To Start Writing: A Scene.”

As mentioned in a previous blog post, G.I. Jack has been selected for the Sarasota Film Festival.  It is receiving some positive press, catching the attention of a website focused on the local film scene. SRQ Backlot is “Your peek behind the scenes of Sarasota, Florida's growing film industry”.  The website recently interviewed the film’s writer and director, Benny Davis. The interview brings up the music that I completed, stating that: Another key influence in capturing the larger-than-life story was a childhood watching James Bond films. “A lot of that you can hear in the music,” says Davis, which was composed by Micah Brill.

I am currently working on music for a new film called “Welcome To My World”, written and directed by Ching Wang.  It is an indie comedy with an adventurous and romantic edge.

The tag line is as follows:

A film that I wrote music for, G.I. Jack, was just recently accepted as an official selection for the 2016 Sarasota Film Festival.  Pretty cool! If you're in Sarasota you'll be able to see it on April 3rd at 12:45 PM or on April 9th at 10:45 AM at the Hollywood 20 movie theater!  More info is available on their Facebook page.

I am happy to announce my newest project, Among The Dead.

Among The Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror drama Comic-book series and movie.  I have been working with the creator and mastermind behind the project, Israel Gual for the past few months.  I wrote a trailer song and an official theme song for the comic book series.  Israel is now beginning filming for the movie, and I will be the composer. I am very excited and already have lots of ideas.  Keep an eye out for news on this project. Official Website Twitter Facebook

I’ve been expanding my sample libraries little by little over the past few years.  As I have a little extra cash that I’ve earned from composing jobs, I like to purchase a new composing tool.  One crucial instrument that I didn’t have was a great sounding piano.