Christmas Cowboy | Music from the Film
“Christmas Cowboy” is a new holiday film that I composed/produced the original score. Featuring an orchestral score, the music touches on the emotions of family, Christmas, estrangement, nostalgia, and most importantly…..horses!
Christmas Cowboy is out now on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and all cable VOD.
The musical aesthetic was purposefully intimate: a small string ensemble, with piano, celeste, woodwinds, steel string guitar, and occasional full orchestral percussion. The score needed to mix the nostalgic and warm Christmas vibe, with the complicated family drama that unfolds throughout the film.
The string musicians were Gabe Valle (violin, viola) and Ansel Cohen (cello). These are talented friends of mine, and they masterfully laid down their string recordings at Gabe’s studio, Big and Tall Recording, along with co-owner Tommy McCormick at the engineering helm.
The woodwinds (piccolo, flute, oboe, clarinet) were laid down by my friend Matt Lepek. Matt is one of the woodwind chairs on Aladdin on Broadway, and a long time music friend going back to our reggae-band touring days with Echo Movement.
The guitar was recorded by V.J. Manzo, who is a long-time friend, going back to our undergrad days at Kean University. VJ has been part of my film music team since my first film, Bezos: The Beginning, and is a critical and unique musician for my scores not only as my “guitar guy”, but as someone who programs custom software instruments and plug-ins, invents new methods of making music on guitar, and always brings new ways of making music to the table.
Songwriting was a special treat that I was able to partake in the film as well. I teamed up with long-time friend Dave Fowler, and we co-wrote a song called “Everything’s Fine” that can be heard in the end credits. The song featured Bluegrass musician Dan Whitener on vocals and mandolin. Dave also served as a score engineer on the film.
Christmas Cowboy was directed by Khoa Le, who is the CEO and founder of KVibe Studios, who produced the film. This is Colin’s 2nd film with Khoa. All press information can be found on the press page of this site.
Here are some highlights from the original score. The score album, which will also feature a number of original pop Christmas songs by various artists, will release in December 2024.
Thanks for stopping by!
Echoes (Original Score Soundtrack) | Album Release, Behind the Scenes and more
After composing the original score to the thrilling sci-fi narrative podcast Echoes, I decided to go back and remix and reorganize the music for an album release…..
After composing the original score to the thrilling sci-fi narrative podcast Echoes, I decided to go back and remix and reorganize the music for an album release. The show offered the opportunity to write many different styles of music: orchestral, electronic, indie rock, jazz, New Orleans music, and so on. An album release was a must.
The album released on May 7th, 2024, and be found on all platforms.
The musical opportunities this production provided meant that I got to collaborate with a number of great people. An eclectic mix of musicians, custom-designed software and my own drumming all got to contribute to the score. The videos below tell some of the unique stories of how the music was made.
Echoes (Original Score Soundtrack) is available everywhere! Thanks for stopping by.
Bezos: The Beginning | Music from the Film | Miami Premiere
It’s taken a little while to get the Bezos: The Beginning score to an album-style mix and assembly. I’ve enjoyed the process, but moving it from film-score > album-mix is involved! I put together some of the music from the film, to share here. I also put this playlist on the credits page, with all the info on Bezos: The Beginning.
Miami Premiere
Attending the premiere in Miami was a treat. I got to link up with director Khoa Le again, I met the production team of Armando Gutierrez, Alberto De La Cruz and Nehir Ornay. I also got to meet Emilio and Gloria Estefan. Emilio plays Jeff Bezos’ father, Miguel Bezos in the film. Getting to hear him speak at the premiere, especially about his personal journey, was inspiring. I was fortunate to be able to hang with Gloria Estefan afterwards, where we got to talk a little bit of music shop, and I got to hear some awesome stories of her early years with the Miami Sound Machine and Emilio. It was one of those special moments where you just have to sit there, enjoy a rich conversation with some of the most influential people in the game, and be grateful you got a seat at the table. Truly awesome.
The film is available on Prime, Apple TV and Google Play. Here are a few pics I took from the premiere.
Writing For Me - Part 2
In 2019, I was at a point I’ve never experienced before. I walked away from a 20 year stint as a composer/arranger for scholastic and university instrumental ensembles. It was the job that got me into writing music, and for the first time since I was 18 years old, I was without work.
There was this small lull before I started writing music for film between 2019-2020. I was so used to writing music for a specific project that I found myself sitting on material that was never fully realized. I spent many years teaching percussionists how to play marimba and vibraphone, and decided to make some moves to get some of my original music finished and published.
Mallet music usually becomes popular because of the virtuosity that it requires and displays. It is difficult! The musicians who master it are truly talented. After writing complex mallet music for many years, I got a bit bored of showing off chops, both playing and composing. I wanted to provide the intermediate student with something that they could enjoy playing. I didn’t care, at all, about showing off chops or flashy writing. I just wanted to write what I heard and felt, without it trying to impress the percussion community. The goal was to give some young percussionists something to play that they could enjoy, with a moderate amount of challenge.
Friends
One of the biggest hurdles for a young percussionist is to simply have a nice instrument to play. Marimbas are expensive. Many schools have one (and maybe a graveyard with parts of another). I wanted to provide a chance for a beginner level student, and intermediate student, to play a duet together, but only requiring one marimba. “Friends” was the result.
This piece has an interesting story. Some of it started as music I composed for my wedding (we had a friend play marimba as we walked down the aisle). It was reborn as a duet when actress/musician/friend/incredibly talented person Janina Gavankar hit me up and asked for a marimba duet that she could live stream with her close friend Ahmed Best (I became friends with Janina when she hired me to arrange and music direct a music video for her). You might know Ahmed as the actor who played Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Aside from that enormous role he’s played, Ahmed is also a solid drummer.
Janina and Ahmed, live streaming Friends from Janina’s place.
Janina and I choreographing her music video for “Don’t Look Down” with the Jersey Surf.
Janina’s request was certainly the spark I needed to get this marimba music set up for a duet on a shared marimba. After they had a live stream playing it together; I decided to make a move and have it published. I went to Tapspace, a publisher out of Portland that is popular in the contemporary percussion world. Jim Cassella and Murray Gusseck are a great team of guys over there (as well as percussion composers/arrangers themselves), and I had my first piece of music published. Every year, I see high school and university students play this duet, and I always get excited when I’m contacted by a professor, letting me know they are performing the piece.
One of the biggest treats of recording this piece was having two of my former students perform it. This video features Jessica Ballenilla (left), and Pam Ferrali (right). These were percussion students of mine from years ago, and the combination of their talent and youth served as the perfect choice for the piece. These two ladies were in numerous ensembles I wrote for and taught over the years. They really understand what I am looking for in music, and working with them was one of the most enjoyable experiences in my career.
I would have never done anything with this music if it hadn’t been for Janina and Ahmed. Thanks FRIENDS!
Friends - Music Video
If you would like to purchase Friends, please check it out here.
Lament for Shirley
Once I published Friends, I immediately realized that I had a vibraphone solo I wrote a long time ago….as in 2006! I composed this vibraphone solo in honor of my late grandmother, Shirley Bell, who was the matriarch of our family. We have a rich history of Celtic music and dance in our family, and she was right at the center of it. I wrote this after her passing, and right after I completed my undergrad studies. She was a huge family figure to me; the music came out naturally.
Shirley Bell
I remember writing this on a Dell laptop, while living in a pool house, in the backyard of the house I was renting it from. There was no kitchen, and the bathroom was a camp-cabin style. I was writing in Finale with a 1 octave MIDI controller. I graduated with my BA in Music Ed and decided I did not want to teach. The whole place was about 12-15 square feet. Humble beginnings…
Fast forward 13 years later, I finally decided to get this published. I dedicated it to my grandmother, and followed up with another Tapspace publication. Evan Glickman, my talented friend, offered to perform the piece for this video. Evan and I share a long history of percussion adventures, and I consider him one of my top guys for anything I write. He is one of those musicians that gets me; we are often in musical lockstep.
Lament for Shirley - Music Video
If you would like to purchase Lament for Shirley, please check it out here.
That concludes my two part blog series about writing music for myself. It’s not something I get to do often, and that’s just fine. I like writing music for big productions like film, where I get to work with others on realizing something bigger than ourselves. For the few times I have written for myself, there was always a story behind it from my life experiences, and the talented musicians I get to have in my life. See you next time!
Writing For Me - Part 1
Most of the composing work I’ve done has been for big team projects. Today, that is music for film. For the prior 20 years, that was music for scholastic and university instrumental ensembles. While the latter got to a point of steady work before I pivoted to film, the nature of the work I love the most is always reliant on phone calls coming in.
That inevitably leads to periods of the phone ringing off the hook (usually all at one time), and times where the phone is not ringing at all. When the phone is not ringing, and nothing is booked…what do now? (That’s an Always Sunny reference for you fans out there).
Since my work is usually tied to a larger artistic medium, I have two choices…keep working on getting those phone calls (that’s going to happen anyways), and/or start creating something else. I’ve never been much of a “lone wolf” type of composer, so creating things for myself is not usually something I do. However, there have been times where I decided to just “do what I want”, without an expected outcome.
Those times have led to some unique and varied projects that I like. Here are two of them. You may like them too, maybe not. The point is: I did it for me, which is rare! It’s liberating to share something I’ve created, without a specific goal or agenda in mind. If you see something you like, please consider leaving a comment with that video, or just hit me up!
Reflections of Home
While stuck in the pandemic lockdown, we were all grinding to find a way to keep the music coming. Just about all work came to a halt, so I wanted to write something I’ve been sitting on. I had two main influences that I wanted to bring to a piece of music:
1. The memories of homesick feelings I had on tour with Echo Movement. I especially remember driving across the midwest, looking out the window at all the green fields, and listening to Aaron Copland (for a reggae band, we had some diversified listens on the bus!).
2. The melodic stylings of Celtic music, which I grew up playing. I was born into bagpipes, drums and fiddles.
Luckily, I had 4 talented musician friends who could record remotely, and send me their tracks. Together, we made the music happen.
Gabe Valle- Violin
A great musician and friend I’ve made through the pit orchestra scene in NJ. Owns and runs Big and Tall Recording Studio.
Alex Grimes - Viola
Alex is a very talented musician and composer. We met in our classes at Berklee when we were getting our MM in Film Scoring. He is the Principal Viola of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra in Seattle.
Ansel Cohen - Cello
Another awesome musician who I’ve become friends with through the NJ pit orchestra scene. His musical talents extend well beyond playing cello.
Anthony Bianco - Bass
Would you be surprised to learn that Anthony and I met….through the NJ pit orchestra scene? I’ve made a lot of talented friends there over the years. Anthony is no exception, and slays the double bass, as well as electric bass.
On the Wire
My good friend and partner in reggae Dave Fowler got restless after we stopped touring and recording with Echo Movement. We were not interested in starting another band. However, Dave had a cool idea. He observed birds sitting on a set of power lines near his place in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ. They were in different formations every day, and they resembled notes on a staff.. We decided to let nature take the lead. He took numerous pictures, and we looked them over. I took the birds' positions on the wire, translated them to notes on the staff, and let their position to each other dictate the rhythm.
Following that, I wrote and recorded a marimba melody. Then I laid down a drumset groove and addded some percussion loops. Dave wrote the chords and keyboard hook. The next step was to bring the visual part of the project to life. We enlisted my friend Alexander Pudov to be our videographer, who always has a creative eye for telling stories. We set up in my music studio, and had the music video show how we turned the bird pics into music notation. I notated each phrase of the music in the video. I hope I made my undergrad professor proud with my penmanship (not likely).
This was a fun and artistic project with no expectations beyond our own enjoyment. It was a satisfying experience, and a great lesson in sparking musical motivation from unexpected places.
I have a 2nd part to this blog topic that I will share next time. Years of gigging, teaching and collaborating have given me a rich circle of friends who I am lucky to have in my life. Value everyone in your network, and give them a chance to shine with your own creations! See you soon…
Inside the Mind of Others
One of the things that I enjoy the most about writing for film and other visual media is the collaborative aspect. Films, TV productions, video games…these are all massive pieces of art that so many people work on. A million little gears spin away at their specific task(s), all fitting together in harmony.
Writing music is a big gear in that machine! But it is still a gear, in a much larger system. I get to be creative, but it has to be steered towards the vision of the person at the helm, looking over the whole. This means that my creative efforts have to be in the lane that the director/producer/project leader lays out, and has to move towards their destination.
Getting inside the minds of others: decoding the director’s language, into my musical language, is a process I enjoy. I ask questions, I listen, and I take notes on interesting descriptions that can range from specifically musical to wildly abstract. I write drafts where the music slowly hones in on that lane and direction the director is seeing and hearing. Sometimes it’s a homerun on the first pass, sometimes it’s close but needs some tweaks…sometimes it’s far away from what they want! Talking through it, listening, translating, decoding, interpreting…I view these actions as opportunities to evolve my own craft.
If I’m left alone to my own thoughts, I am going to move in a direction that is comfortable, familiar, and comes naturally. When I get a challenging task, request, or artistic vision from another, learning how to make that thing come alive only helps my own evolution as a composer. I think it’s fun. Let’s have a chat and deep dive into making those thoughts come to life!
Here are a few short examples of my experience with getting inside the mind of other talented people that I’ve been lucky to work with:
Khoa Le - Film Director, CEO of KVibe Studios and Sutudu
Khoa is the director of Bezos: The Beginning, a film that I recently scored, and has just released on January 24th, 2023. Working with Khoa was a great and unique experience for me. He is a studied and knowledgeable musician, yet he was able to communicate his ideas through artistic language, and not musical jargon. He gave me a lot of freedom and autonomy, yet he was concise and articulate with what he wanted. His approach made it clear that he knows how to lead a creative team, and allow them to stretch, while still keeping everyone on the same path.
The music that took the longest to land on was the main theme for Jeff Bezos. I believe I wrote 6-7 versions before we found it. Each time, Khoa was able to explain the unexplainable, and when I finally sent him the final version, he was thrilled. Khoa has an ear and passion for classic character themes, so we landed on the theme you’ll see below.
Watch Bezos: The Beginning!
Amazon Prime
David and Stephen Fowler - Echo Movement
In my younger days, I was the drummer of the band Echo Movement. We were a 7 piece reggae band, and we spent several years touring and recording albums. The band was headed up by brothers David and Stephen Fowler. Stephen was the lead singer, and Dave was the songwriter and producer, as well as the keyboardist. They also ran the entire business themselves, owned the tour bus, and made the entire operation run. As the years went on, I fell into a #3 position and got involved in some operations myself. It was a massive learning experience.
There were many parallels between working with a film director, and working in-studio with Dave and Steve. Steve came at the music from an overarching viewpoint. He wasn’t caught up with the technicality of the music; it was all about the arrangement, vibe and staying authentic. Dave was also great at not getting caught up in the boring technical minutiae and instrumental virtuosity. Dave was passionate about infusing other styles, new directions, and experimental things, into the very established and characteristic genre of reggae.
Both guys never got caught into the self-important mindset of showing off musically, despite being surrounded by a band full of guys with degrees in music (they were “unspoiled” by academia in their musicality). I was already composing myself at this point, so I was able to understand the hat they wear, and the one I wear, when recording new music.
Even still, as a young drummer ready to show off, we had numerous discussions, experiments, arguments, rants, debates, and everything in between. I had to take my creative interests, and make sure I put it into the lane that they created, and put it in the direction they wanted.
This was a great precursor to working in film. You are the music, but it’s not about you. What overall thing, that is greater than yourself, are you servicing? For Echo Movement, and Dave and Steve, it was about being studied and authentic to the reggae style, while being our true selves (guys that geek out over science, the universe, and recreational activities), and pushing the genre in a new direction. These are all purposes that far outweighed my need to play that sixtuplet fill down the toms, even though I’ll still say that it was cool 🙂
The song below was a great example of this. I don’t drum a ton in this song. The purpose of this tune was way beyond that. We worked together on the percussion sounds that I laid down, we talked about the message that Carl Sagan has in this song. How does it come together? How does the music support the concept?
Fun fact: the end of this song has a slowly building accelerando that eventually reaches the tempo of the opening track of the album, where the album can endlessly loop.
Although Echo Movement no longer plays, I always speak about the band and my experience, as it was just as profound as any other musical adventure in my life. The song below features Carl Sagan, and is a great example of Dave and Steve’s creativity, and how we all came together within that vision.
Maurice Paramore - Writer and Director
As of right now (Feb. 2023), I am working with a new film director, Maurice Paramore. Maurice is an independent filmmaker that I slowly became acquainted with over Instagram. As our paths crossed more and more online, we eventually had a hang at my studio, and before we knew it, we were on to our first film together.
Maurice is a talented filmmaker, who does everything himself. He writes, directs, shoots, edits, and produces all his films. He is from NJ like I am, and we’ve enjoyed numerous face to face meetings to work on his new film. After years of Zoom meetings and Covid, I am digging getting back to face to face conversations. The vibe is totally different, and the creativity flows at a higher rate.
Maurice and I have started to work together on themes, before any video has been shot. This is something neither of us have done much of before. Being able to discuss the characters, talk about the sound and vibe we want to bring, has enabled me to experiment more with creating a unique selection of sounds for the film.
Maurice is a clear communicator, but is not a musician. I find this to be refreshing. I am able to pose questions that are strictly based on the mood, emotion and style he wants. After he receives drafts, he can communicate his thoughts without having to speak in music-talk. I’ve found that this early-in approach, with many in-person meetings, has enabled me to ask many questions, and really try to get inside his mind. I feel like I am practicing amateur psychology as much as being a composer with a director. Maybe I’ll get a fancier couch for my new practice?
It’s a bit too early yet to let the details of the film come out, but on the topic of diving into other people’s minds, I’ve had a great time doing this with Maurice. We are both excited about the sounds we are building, and it will be interesting to see how this early, pre-production approach to building the score goes!
Working with Khoa, Echo Movement, and Maurice, are three unique experiences, but the underlying ideas of communication and working towards a common goal are similar. This is something that I’ve been thinking about lately, so I decided to make blog #1 about it. Thanks for coming here and reading the first one!