Northwest University
Meeting with Steve Smith and Skye Cornell
I am immensely passionate about music and keen to pursue graduation in a related field. As an attempt to explore higher studies, I came across Northwest university, situated in Seattle, Washington. I had a conversation with two people. Firstly, Skye Cornell, the Senior academic advisor at the university. Secondly, Steve Smith, a 43 year recording veteran who is an expert in the recording and engineering section of the scoring of films and games.
Meeting with Skye Cornell:
In the meeting with Skye, I got to know about the campus and its location. Via a presentation, Skye was able to brief me about life on campus with many interesting facts. For example, the campus is relatively small but the infrastructure is beautiful. The university also has a 12:1 student teacher ratio so that the student’s are able to receive more attention compared to a normal university class. We also discussed scholarship options and I gained a better understanding of GPA’s and the SAT/ACT exams and how they determine the scholarship which a student can receive.
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Meeting with Steve Smith:
In this meeting, we mainly discussed the process of film scoring and what I can do as a highschool student to better prepare for this career option. Because Steve himself is an expert in the process, he was able to perfectly describe who is involved in film scoring, what are the steps and how it is an enjoyable career, in general. The session was filled with an insightful perspective coming from experiences from Steve's career. Briefly, the process was described as the following:
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There are multiple people involved in the process of film scoring - The composer, conductor, musicians
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The music for the film is composed usually, using Logic Pro
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The composer communicates to the conductor of the orchestra how he wants the harmonic structures to portray emotions, and according to that, the number of instruments in the orchestra playing specific notes is finalised
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The conductor helps the orchestra to play the sheet music live perfectly even if its their first time playing that specific piece
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The music is finished after recording all the instruments in Pro Tools.
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There are mainly 2 suggestions that I got, regarding what is needed at high school level, to be one step closer towards becoming a film composer in future. Firstly, during the conversation of the process of the scoring, Steve mentioned how understanding harmonic structures via music theory are very important to learn. Harmonic structures and a good understanding of music theory allows a composer to know how a sound might make a listener feel. Therefore studying courses on music theory and understanding concepts of harmonic structures will help clear out the basics and set the ground for film music composition. Secondly, Steve suggested that I should learn a software called Pro tools (that I previously mentioned) which is used for almost the entire process of the creation of the music for any movie.
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Overall, both the meetings helped me gain a better idea of what college life will be like, at Northwest university, and how the process of film scoring works. Not only were these discussions enabling, but I also enjoyed the conversation I had with both Skye and Steve.