Radical Face - One Last Dream

So this one was has a bit of story behind it.

Last Friday I got contacted out of the blue by the creator of the show "The Blacklist." There was a very important final scene in the the season finale, and there was suddenly an issue with the music that was slated to go along with it. I was asked if I could come up with something for the scene over the weekend, as it was due to air on Wednesday. But it was a long cue -- about 5 minutes. We had never spoken before that moment, but they've featured me on the show multiple times and it's been a really big reason that people have heard of me at all. So of course I was happy to at least try.

I got a cut of the scene, some notes about the tone and the mood, and then the work started. Writing to cues is a bit different than writing songs, because the tempo and mood have to fit something that already exists. It's about amplifying a mood instead of generating it from scratch. So just sorting the structure can take a lot of time. I could also tell right from the start that I'd need strings on this, so I asked Josh, my partner, to help me come up with some cello parts. He's really great at playing emotively, so we got all that sorted in a couple hours. The rest was a blur. But it's fun to just move sometimes and go entirely with gut responses. There wasn't time to second guess anything. And luckily it was all moods and tones that are well within my wheelhouse.

To jump to the end, the piece worked out well and was accepted. And since it will have already aired before I put out my next newsletter, I am uploading it early.

Oh, and if you would like to hear more of Josh's string work, he records lots of classical music, and also has compositions of his own. Check out his new channel at:    / joshlee415  

For the art, I just grabbed one of the images from my "Rain" series I did earlier this year that felt like it paired pretty well. It's something I painted on Procreate, on my iPad.