Recording - January 2018 - 61

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So, who knew? All it needed was a banjo.
I should carry one around in my back pocket.
So because you do these two very different disciplines... That's one of the things that has always
fascinated me about you is that I really can't think
of another songwriter who is a pure songwriter, and
also does scoring, and you've done instrumental
cues! You have really done it all. How does your
workflow differ, because in the world of scoring or
writing cues, you can't wait for the muse to come?
That's a prescriptive process.
No, you can't. I was very fortunate, as a young kid
I musicalized everything I did. If I was in a snowball fight with my friends, I would be the one
standing in between five of my friends getting
pelted with ice in my face, and I'd be musicalizing
it. So naturally I just assumed that everybody
musicalized everything-like we all see and we all
hear, and we all smell and taste-and I would ask
my friends, "How did you hear that?" Or if the
windshield wipers were going in the car and it
was raining, I'd have a symphony going on in my
head and I'd say, "How did you hear that, Mom?"
And she'd look at me like I was from outer space.

experience as a young kid, and I still have it. It's
called synesthesia. I didn't know what it was, but I
was telling my friend one day, who happens to be
a psychiatrist-and no, I wasn't going to the psychiatrist-and I mentioned how I would as a
young kid when I would hear music or be creating music in my head, how I would see lights and
colors, which represented to me the intervals. I
know it sounds very crazy, but it's a ... And he
just said, "Oh, Synesthesia." And I said, "What's
that? Am I gonna die?" He explained to me that
it's a cross-wiring of senses. I think he mentioned
that about 5% of the population experiences it.
Some people can taste coffee and all of a sudden
everything will turn green. It's that kind of a
thing. Well, for me, music triggered these plasma
bubbles, which is what I call them. It's kinda like

in a lava lamp, except they don't go up and down,
they kind of went this way. And I think that
helped me, to answer your question, when listening to music and when I decided this is what I...
When I saw Leonard Bernstein conduct the New
York Phil when I was seven years old, I knew that
was what I wanted to do. It was just a process of
hearing; I just hear this stuff. I heard the instruments before I knew what they looked like.
How do you translate that into conducting?
I'm a horrible conductor. All my friends tell me
they have no idea how any orchestra can follow
me. [laughter]

Don't miss Part 2 of this interview in next
month's issue!

So writing for film was why I came to California.
That's what I wanted to do, because writing to pictures and images, music and images was as natural
to me as breathing. That's a gift, or whatever you
call it, that I had. Writing songs came after that. So
when I started to do film and television work, I was
kind of back in my safe place. Writing songs is
actually harder for me than scoring, because I don't
have to worry about lyrics, and I don't have to
worry about time signatures. I just look at the picture and it tells me what it's supposed to sound like.
To this day do you still feel that way? That scoring or
doing instrumentals is easier for you than songs?
You know, it's all difficult, and it all does take a
discipline. And you are exercising two separate
sets of musicals. Writing songs is a formula and a
set thing that you're confined to. Writing music
for film-and especially working with
orchestras-it becomes much more difficult in
terms of you've got a lot more to think about.
How do you develop that skill? I don't know if we've
had this discussion, but I worked in New York, and I
recorded some big sessions with guys like Mike
Small... And it blows me away that guys at that
level can go, "Bar 43, tuba; you've got a rub on the
G." It's like how do they hear that? How did you
develop that aspect of what you do? Were you
trained for it? Did you read books about it?
No. I've never had a music lesson in my life. I was
thrown out of every music class I tried to take.
Go figure. I talk about it in the book. I had this
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