Recording - August 2017 - 56

Continued from page 55
Music Academy in Hollywood. Please give it up
for Doug Fenske!
Patty Bosscomposes music for television, including national feature scoring credits for Emmy
winner Bay Windows in San Francisco. Her music
plays on CBS, Fox, CNN Special Report, CBS
Sports Spectacular, MTV, Bravo, National Geographic Channel, Entertainment Television (E!),
TLC, Oxygen Network, TV-One, FYI Network, History Channel, H2, Travel Channel, VH1, etc. She
has held roles as Audio Lead and Composer for
Leapfrog Inc., Composition Guest Lecturer at New
College, San Francisco, Broadcast Mixer for CurrentTV, music production for XBOX advertising;
EA Games sound design credits for The Sims, &
The Urbz; Keyboard and backing vocalist for several touring bands. She holds a degree from
Berklee College of Music, Boston, and she's got a
Master of Arts, piano principle. Please help me
welcome Patty Boss!
CK, let's start out with you. Tell us about your journey. I mean, not going back to grade school...
CK: Well, I was born... [laughter]
At what point did you say, I want to do stuff for television? Where were you at that time, and how did
you become so darn good at what you do?
CK: OK, I started playing in bands when I was 13,
and of course was told by my parents that that
had to stop because it wasn't "ladylike." I was
always playing in bands, and then I minored in
music-because majoring wasn't a smart career
move. This is the kind of messaging that we get.
I'm not mentioning it to be negative and snarky,
but everything from Grandpa saying, "Don't let
people see how smart you are, because you won't
get any boyfriends," then to "Don't major in
this-you'll never get a job," to "That's not ladylike." So all of this impacts us, and I know men get
exactly the same stuff, but in a different direction.
We were saying, like, "You're supposed to know
how to fix stuff." You're supposed to know plumbing-because of your "plumbing," right?
Fast-forward, I did a master's degree in music theory and composition. The reason I did it, actually,
is because I started having a lot of wrist problems.
I was working fulltime as a technical writer, working as a freelance tech writer, playing in four bands
in Albuquerque-so like salsa and all kinds of
crazy piano parts-and taking a programming
class at the community college. My wrist just said,
"Stop!" So I started the master's program just to
keep involved here while my wrist healed, and
while there I got hooked up with the theater
department, and started writing music for theater
productions. I had a blast, and then at some point
thought that this could translate. And then, here's
56

where the production knowledge kicks in. Because
I was OK, but I would say I was 99% composer and
about 1% producer, and very quickly learned that I
needed to balance that out.
Then, a few years after I got out of my master's
degree, the University of New Mexico asked me to
start teaching there. So now I've been teaching
music technology for a university since 2008. And
as I get more and more into TAXI, I sort of shifted
into more like... And at the same time, the student
body is asking for more contemporary styles. So it
just tracked right along. I moved to Baltimore
recently, and I still teach for UNEM online, and I
just picked up another music-technology teaching
job at a college in Maryland, Montgomery College. So basically, it just all sort of progressed in
parallel.
So because we're not going to teach you to be pro-

"The people who make it just stick in
there the longest and fight the
hardest."
-Elizabeth Anne Mall
ducers in this hour, we're going to try to help you
understand that you can do this. So get the book
Grit by Angela Duckworth, please, if you haven't
already... She's like a MacArthur, that's the socalled Genius Grant winner, who studied the
intersection of passion and perseverance. Her
stats are all accurate; there have been some
critiques saying that she presents them in a way
that might inflate their significance, but the book
is so inspiring. In fact, in the last couple of sentences she is saying that because we've proven you
can change your IQ, because we have proven that
deliberate practice, not just by repetition of stuff
you're already good at, but picking out the things
you stink at and working on them until you're
great at them. You can learn just about anything,
and you can become a genius. You can do this.
Another great reference for you that I want to give
you is James Clear, known as the habit guy. Check
out his site, jamesclear.com. He looks at the plans
behind habit creation, and that means getting rid
of bad ones and starting really good ones. And let
me tell you, workflow ... damn, good stuff!
Get a mentor. And I practice what I preach. I had a
two-hour lunch with a very, very successful TAXI
member on Friday for the price of lunch, and
completely got my head screwed back on straight.
So do this stuff that we recommend. Is there anything else you want me to proselytize on, Michael?
No, but I want to compliment you because probably
my first recollection of you was at a Road Rally, and
you were kind of part of the inner circle. I saw you
networking well early on, and networking with people who could mentor you. I think that they all found

it easy to respect you and it worked out.
CK: Dan Kimpel's book, Networking Strategies for
the New Music Business. I teach an Art Entrepreneurship course as well, and I use that book to
make my students not be so scared of networking.
Because it's about listening, and once you realize
that, the pressure's off. Just be a good,
compassionate, attentive listener.
Right, it's not about handing the CD to somebody. It's
"Can I get you another glass of wine?" and just listen.
CK: Right, you don't want to ask for anything the
first time you just meet somebody. It's just rude.
But I can clearly remember you standing in the hotel
lobby with Matt Hirt and John Mazzei-kind of the
regular cast of characters that have been coming
here forever. And I think that that was probably a big
part of your growth. At least my observation was you
were in the right place at the right time and knew
what to do.
CK: Forums.taxi.com, people, please. And
Lynda.com, most universities have access to this.
But I found out just two weeks ago that my public
library has access to it. So please check with your
library membership; this is a wealth of information. Pro Tools, Logic, Dream Weaver, whatever it
is you want to learn, it's there. And then a really
great quote that I saw the other day is Don't stop
until you're proud.
That's a great quote. Is it Abraham Lincoln?
CK: I don't know. My partner texted it to me, and
she's, like, way smarter than I am, so...
Great. I will bounce around with some questions
later. Elizabeth, how 'bout you? What's your story?
Elizabeth: I grew up in the middle of nowhere in
Kansas on a farm with many cows and pigs, things
like that. So I knew from a young age that I wanted
to do music, and I really wanted to be an artist
and a songwriter. There was no one really around
to help me with production at all, and we were not
wealthy by any means, so that was another problem as well. So what happened for me was, when I
got to high school, I had the opportunity to take
an independent-study class. It was a very small
school, and they had just gotten recording equipment-Logic Pro-and they said, "Hey, would
you take this as a class, as a Theory in Sound class?
We'll just let you stay in there, and then you can
help teach the rest of the class how to use the
equipment." And I thought, "OK, I can get on
board with that." So that was really a blessing, but
I had a bad attitude about it a lot. I thought, "I'm
an artist; I'm a songwriter. I wish I didn't have to
mess with all this technical stuff." I'm not a technical person at all. I took that class for two years. I
had the goal of completing an album by the end of
it, and I did that completely on my own. When I
go back and listen to it now, it sounds rough, but
it was completed, and that was something I really
wanted to do by the end of high school.
Continued on page 59

http://Forums.taxi.com http://www.Lynda.com http://www.jamesclear.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017