Music from the Beatles and Bugs Bunny, music edits from YOU

hollywood-bowl-fireworksLos Angeles is a music and movie lover’s dream, packed with world-class performing arts venues. The Hollywood Bowl is a fabled venue that’s featured everyone from Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, and Nat “King” Cole, to Leonard Bernstein, Luciano Pavarotti, Elton John, the Beatles, and countless other legendary musicians.

bugs-bunny-conductHeck, I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons where Bugs Bunny appears on a huge half-moon stage either conducting music or torturing those who perform it. After moving out here, I got a real kick out of realizing that the stage in those cartoons was a real one, just over the hill from Warner Brothers where those cartoons were created.

james-brownSome of my most treasured musical experiences happened at the Bowl. I got to see James Brown, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, scream into the microphone and do the splits in front of 18,000 people at the age of 72.

Itzhak PerlmanMy wife and I joined a sold-out crowd in thunderous applause as a man on crutches hobbled across the stage, barely able to even walk. Then Itzhak Perlman raised a violin to his shoulder and proceeded to cast a musical spell that left tears running down the cheek of any who heard it.

john williamsAnd every year, a kindly man with snow white hair raises his baton and leads some of the most accomplished musicians alive in recreating some of the most recognizable movie themes ever written – songs like the theme from Indiana Jones, Jaws, Superman, and Star Wars. John Williams wrote them all.

Hearing those songs performed live can be both otherworldly and incredibly emotional. And no wonder, it’s what music does. It brings a whole additional depth of meaning and life to the moving pictures it accompanies.

Going back down the hill after a night at the Bowl tends to be a bit of a downer, a return to reality… especially for those of us who write, produce, direct, or in my case edit projects that don’t have the benefit of John Williams conducting soundtrack sessions staffed by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Which, these days, is pretty much everybody except Steven Spielberg.

Jeff at piano youngBut I can say this – I’ve come to the point in my editing where I am regularly acknowledged for my powerful use of music by those who engage my editing services. And that didn’t happen overnight – it started over 30 years ago when I began piano lessons at the age of 4. It continued when I started experimenting with MIDI synthesizers and multi-track recording in high school, and moved into college as a music composition major.

And even with all that musical background, I ended up in Hollywood as a young assistant editor starting to edit his own pieces, and I was absolutely clueless how to put the music to picture.

I literally asked an early mentor, “How do you figure out how to edit the music?” He looked at me with a frown and said, “Eh, that’s easy. You just drop it in.”

Yeah, that didn’t help.

Ever since, I’ve cut countless cues of music and put in years of skull sweat on hundreds of hours of content seen by millions around the world. And I’ve boiled down the skill of powerful music editing to a process that can be used by anyone, of any skill level, on any piece of music, on any project.

If you believe your projects would benefit from music that says exactly the right thing every single time, you can find out here for free.

Click right here, tell us where to send the info, and within moments you’ll have access to the same process that will take your projects to the next level in the way only powerful music can.

And in the meantime, if you ever get the chance to see a show at the Hollywood Bowl and you haven’t already done so, DO IT.

Leave a Reply