Exciting day...here's the play-by-play...stay tuned all day for continuous updates:

4:15AM--Alarm goes off. It's my iPhone playing "2000 Years" by Travis Cottrell. The ringtone always starts at the chorus..."Will I fall down and worship..." Good stuff.
4:33AM--Drive out of the Midway parking lot with Nathaniel asleep in the back and a bag of snacks on the seat next to me. I'm headed for West LA.
4:55AM--Massive fog near La Jolla. I slow waaaaaaay down to about 60mph.
4:59AM--Fog clears after a few miles. Phew...
6:07AM--Starbucks stop in Irvine. Nathaniel wakes up and is as sweet as a button. I buy him a bagel. He asks, "Is this the one that comes with cheese?" (cream cheese? yes...)
6:25AM--Arrive at Christy's parents house in Placentia to drop off Nathaniel. He instructs me to say goodbye to mommy and Noah, and tells me that he'll miss Noah and us tonight when he goes to bed. Awww...
6:35AM--Poop stop. Chevron. Fill up gas tank...
7:30AM--Arrive at Big Time Studios in West LA. No one is really here yet...I'll wait a bit.
7:35AM--Someone shows up and lets me in, but they don't have a key to the office I need to get in to. I meet a nice person named Rogina. She works for "The Company". Yes. There's a company called "The Company". I think she has an accent...British??
7:36AM--I read a devotional book.
8:00AM--Susan, the owner of the studio arrives and lets me in to the place I need to be...she looks concerned and asks how I got into the building..."I followed some people in???" Shhhhhh...she doesn't look happy.
8:32AM--Logic crashes. I pause to blog. Back to work now. (It turns out I'm orchestrating "Gabriel's Theme" from this movie. It's a pretty theme--and then I see this little window with the video it's going along to--BEEEEAUTIFUL!! Man, this is cool...

10:30AM--This is taking longer than expected. Getting used to someone else's setup is kinda hard, even for a smarty pants like myself. I figure some stuff out...these sounds sound good!

11:12AM--Snack break. Hmm..out to the car...what do we have here? Yum. FiberOne Bar, Sour Skittles, and Vitamin Water. Yep! Good enough...back to work...less than three hours until I have to leave.

1:05PMP--Less than an hour until I have to leave. Not good...I'm making great progress--in fact, I had an idea out of the blue to try something (in order to accomplish something the composer asked for) and the crazy thing is--after working on two bars for about 20 minutes...it worked!! I'm encouraged, to say the least...

2:11PM--Heading out! Back to San Diego! Pray for me for safe travels and light traffic...thanks!

3:30PM--I finally make it from West LA to Downtown LA. At this point my blood pressure is pretty high, as I start to feel like I may never make it to San Diego. If there was any time in my life where I could say I was praying without ceasing...it was this drive.

4:10PM--I make a stop in Fullerton to pickup Heidi and get a pretzel and a cliff bar. With Heidi I can now take the carpool lane...phew. Blood pressure calming down slightly as the freeway starts moving faster...

6:00PM--Jack in the Box stop in National City. Blood pressure back to normal as we are only 15 mins. away from Midway.

6:20PM--change into dress clothes.

7:00PM--Orchestra rehearsal (I made it!)
8:00PM--Final dress rehearsal with everyone (great job to all...)

9:30PM--McDonalds run for hot fudge sundaes. You can't buy a better dessert for a buck anywhere. Same price it was in 1997...I know because my freshman year of college I used to save up that $1.07 for a once a week trip to McD's...what a treat!

10:30PM--bed. Goodnight.

Stay tuned!

Just so we all know exactly what this is...because I didn't really know...

bra·va·do      /brəˈvɑdoʊ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[bruh-vah-doh] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun, plural -does, -dos.

a pretentious, swaggering display of courage.

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[Origin: 1575–85; < Sp bravada (now bravata < It), equiv. to brav(o) brave + -ada -ade¹]

—Synonyms brag, bluster, bombast, braggadocio. See courage.

---

Well...I've been looking for where I wrote all of that down to see what word she used in addition to bravado...but now I think we're really all just over analyzing this stuff.
The bottom line is this: when I meet someone new in the business--I can't be shy or reserved. Confidence. That's probably more of what she meant instead of bravado...

I visited a film composer in a studio yesterday--we talked--it was great. I'm going to flesh out/orchestrate one of his themes. I worked on it a little last night. It's very cool.

I can't believe Easter is this weekend!

My next class at CSULA is Advanced Flim Scoring and Songwriting.
It is going to rock.
I'm on break from grad school this week, then classes start up again on March 26th.

Just a note--during the final class of "Seminar: Commercial Music" my teacher said the following:
"Daniel, you only need three things to make it in this business. You need to move closer to the city, you need an orchestra, and you need a little more confidence/bravado about yourself."

Interesting...I didn't know I was lacking bravado...

soooo....

Step one: move to Burbank
Step two: utilize Midway Praise Orchestra to record when necessary
Step three: ???

So I posted with all of that whining about how useless my LOGIC skills are (and so on, and so forth) at lunch time on Friday...

At about two o'clock I received a call from one of my professors with a referral to a film composer that just took on a big movie and may need some help. So I called the guy and went down to visit him on Friday afternoon. He asked me to tell him a little bit about myself, and after a bit of talking I mentioned that I used Finale and Logic (semi-hesitantly). He looked over at me and said, "Oh, that's good. I use Logic."
Of course I was quite surprised by this-especially in light of my earlier blog posting--and replied by saying:
"Oh really? Most of the people I've met use DP..."

his response:

"All of the composers I know use Logic primarily".

Sheesh. Don't I feel like an idiot?

All in all--this was good news--and full of irony.

"Count your blessings, name them one by one..."

Even though this is a weird, old song, it's actually a good idea sometimes. It's good to account what we are thankful for, right? I've certainly found this to be true.
When we write down or talk about things we are thankful for, it helps us to avoid the pit of negativity. You can't possibly have a bad attitude AND be thankful at the same time, it's a physical impossibility (ok...a slight exaggeration). But still...I think you get the point.

I have many, many things to be thankful for--including my lovely wife--but today I was just talking with somebody about a really cool opportunity I've been given, and I thought I should recount it here to make sure I keep a good record of things I'm thankful for.

In the film & TV industry, there are a few standards in regards to music prep. These are software programs that everyone uses with very slight variation. In order to work with other people (which you absolutely have to do), you must be using one or all of these platforms. These include the following:
--For scoring/sequencing: Digital Performer
--For recording: ProTools
--For print music: Finale or Sibelius

I use Logic. For all of it. Why? Because in reality, it's a better product, and was chosen so by professors at APU as the standard. And really, if I am doing the entire process for myself, and not working with anyone else--Logic IS the best. However, that's just not how the industry works. There are a dozen guys working on a film score at any given time (sometimes more). I'm working with about 4 guys on a project right now, and that's just the music prep (and it's a smaller job, relatively)...

So imagine my horror when I slowly figured out that I had been educated with an essentially worthless tool (Logic) and would have to learn an entirely new way to do "business". It's actually been a difficult thing to work through. The new programs--mainly Finale & Sibelius--are beasts, and are very difficult to learn. Regarding Finale--I've been unsuccessful in my previous attempts up to use it and become as adept at it as I am at Logic. It's frustrating when it takes you 3 hours to do something in Finale that you could have finished in Logic in 10 minutes...believe me.

Then Joe came along.

Joe is a composer and has given me little bits of work to do for him during the last few months. As it goes 'round here, when somebody asks you if you know how to do something, the answer is always "Yes!" even if that means working your butt off to figure out that thing you just promised you could do. So Joe gave me some little stuff to do for him in Finale with his scores, mostly just prep work. So I worked my tootie off to learn the "ins and outs" of Finale to get that specific job done. He told me to invoice him with an hourly rate, and since I was not as adept at Finale to get it done in a timely manner, I adjusted the hours slightly. If it took me 3 hours to do something, but most of the time was spent reading the manual and searching through the help menus, I only charged him for 1 hours worth of work, and so on...

I did good work the first time around, so the next time, the work load was slightly more. This means back to the help menus and fiddling around with Finale, but I've got all of the stuff I learned last time under my belt, so it was faster.
Then the next job came around--and this time I'm writing drum charts and guitar charts for the scores--more learning, but it goes even faster...and so on and so forth.

I've been working on a project for Joe this entire week, and I must say that I'm feeling more and more confident with my skills in Finale than ever before--and I have Joe to thank for it.
It's rare that someone like Joe comes around, because most people wouldn't give a guy a chance like this. Most people would just find someone they know that is an expert and that could get the job done quickly. I would not (at this point) consider myself that type of person, so the big jobs aren't for me JUST yet. But these smaller ones are perfect. PERFECT for me so I can learn a whole new set of tools.

So I'm thankful, and blessed.

I'm also thankful for my wife that tolerates the enormous amount of hours away from her (and the kids) to pursue this career. Eventually I won't have to work 70 million jobs and will have a little more balance in life--but in this season she has been and continues to be extremely supportive of my pursuits. Not all women would be so understanding and sacrificial. So I'm thankful, and blessed.

I'm sure there will be more to come.....

EDIT ADD:

Suspicions confirmed. Christy picked up the DVD at Albertsons...this IS where the songs are. 2nd disk under "Music and More". Cool.

Originally I thought the songs were going to be used for a straight-to-DVD Dalmations sequel, but now I'm convinced that they are on this special edition release of the original movie. Which, makes sense given that the songs we recorded were songs written by same song writer that did "Cruella DeVille" and all of those others in the original movie. I was looking at the original sheet music when making the demos and it had things like "Copyright 1939" on it...definitely not a new song...

Check out the amazon.com description. I highlighted the part that finally convinced me...

Yeah--abandoned songs. I think that's me...

I also happened to be doing some more work for this same guy...gotta get back to it.

Don't judge me.

At least I'm man enough to admit I have a problem...

We all know that there are some killer movies coming out this summer. Indiana Jones 4, Prince Caspian...and I can't think of any others right now...but there are a ton of them. It looks like a great movie summer...

However, I bet you didn't know about this little diddy...yes, that's right, it's M. Night Shyamalan's new film. Of course, if you are a long-time reader, you'll know from my past reviews of Shyamalan's films that I think they're all fantastic. I am absolutely a fan of his work and his brand of storytelling. I think he has completely unique style of filmmaking that tantalizes the mind and brings a non-mainstream perspective to the table. This guy's a genius--and don't tell me Lady in the Water was a bomb, because even though it wasn't Signs or The Sixth Sense, it was still totally creatively fresh and brilliant. If you don't believe me, go watch the special features on any of his DVDs. Listening to his process is like taking a master class in awesomeness. Oh yeah, and this movie--The Happening--is being released on Friday the 13th...June 2008...oooooooo.

I can't wait.

Here's a funny one: Get Smart. You know Steve Carell is the best...watch trailer 2.

And this one might be good: Ironman. The jury is still out...

We went to see Semi-Pro last night and if you haven't heard already, it wasn't good. It was too dirty and not funny. I am a tolerant man, and I can handle a certain amount of off-color jokes in a movie, but this was embarrassing. I felt embarrassed to be watching it and embarrassed for Will Ferrell. There was way too much unfunny, and it's not a good showing for his only project in a year. For a couple of years right after ELF he came out with 2-3 movies a year, but this is his only movie since last year's disappointing (but not horrible) Blades of Glory. I still like Will Ferrell, and I think there is a good place for him (can you say Stranger Than Fiction?), but it is do-overs of previous box office flops. It almost seems like he went back to remake BOG due to it's dismal showing at the box office, but came up with an even less funny movie. Ugh. Let's please not start a trend here. I'm hopeful for a better and brighter future. But for now, save your money.

I just wanted to clarify something in regards to my last post. Please understand that I'm not complaining or trying to justify any kind of slacking on my part. I'm also not trying to gather your sympathy. I have just observed a new tendency of mine to completely compartmentalize my life--and I think it has been working--I just find it odd. When I'm in San Diego, I live & breathe Midway (attn: new church name coming...more on that later). We come down here in a whirlwind, hold a slew of rehearsals, pour ourselves into building up people and changing lives, and then we go home to Covina (soon to be Burbank). Once we get home--after a good 2 hour drive to de-tox and debrief the weekend--life switches to L.A. mode. The kids have school, I have Associate Registraring to do, Christy takes care of the home (quite well, I might add) and emails go a-flying. I communicate quite efficiently with emails, and I am able to track my progress in planning for church with an amazing resource I just fell in love with at the beginning of this year: www.planningcenteronline.com This site took a little bit of setting up, but now houses and tracks all my songs, people, and worship services for church. I send out fancy emails via this web app to let people know they are scheduled--and they can go to the website to see the worship set for the next week and check out the music. It's amazing. I don't hardly need pens and paper, I just put it on the web, and it's DONE. I love it.

All that to say--even though I'm busy doing all of that stuff--I enjoy it. I enjoy the struggle to stay on top of everything. I enjoy the challenge to achieve excellence all the time. I enjoy being around hundreds of people every week that I can learn from, and that can learn from me (I'm truly an extrovert). I enjoy the built-in family time in the car on the long drives to and from San Diego, and the way it feels like a vacation every weekend. I enjoy feeling like the big toe of my foot is in the door of the film music industry, and feeling like I've learned the skills to successfully navigate through the jungle of this business. I enjoy the friends I've made and the prospect of making new friends. It's great. I really can't complain. I think that I would only be in danger of burning out if I stopped enjoying what I'm doing--but right now I'm not at that point...stay tuned.

Marathon update: On March 2nd, 3.6 billion people will be running the L.A. Marathon (OK, my numbers could be a little bit off). I will be resting up for my Monday run...because the marathon I'm running isn't until November.
Today the training group from the UG REG office at APU (I think we're calling ourselves "The Reggies". I'm not sold on it yet) ran our longest run yet--5 miles. I didn't make it the whole way, but I made it farther than I had ever made it without stopping since we started training a few weeks ago. I feel good about it. Plus, even though I walked a bit, I still ended up making pretty good time. And, the running is getting easier, which is encouraging. I had a really bad run this past week and really wanted to give up. It was one of those days I felt like God never really intended man to run anywhere...

I'm working on a special university project at APU--one that only an elite group of people have been selected to participate in (I say "elite" very loosely). My boss and I are both involved, and we're going to start up a live blog of the activities over this next year while we go through the project. This will mostly interest my coworkers since they are the ones still "in the trenches" while we are off working on the project-- a project that will affect them greatly in the future. More details soon...

Christy and I were asked by a friend from our old church in Covina to sing at a funeral today at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.
Funerals have classically been a non-event for Daniel. The last funeral I went to was several years ago (seven or eight) for my grandma. I think at that point I was much too young and immature about the concept of death to really internalize what was going on. I really just participated with little personal reflection or any time to grieve for the loss of my grandma--which was someone who was highly involved in my years as a young person. I was very close to my grandma for several years of my childhood--but I think I had been distanced from her due to time away at college or something. But nonetheless, during my grandma's funeral--and the one or so funerals that I've partially attended since then--I really felt no emotional response or connection. I was like Data after turning off his emotion chip (think Star Trek: First Contact)--I was a robot. Even my wife mentioned it in her attempt to be comforting. For a reason which I cannot explain, I just didn't ever process it. It is weird, I know. I'm a little bit of a Tin Man.

But today, at a funeral for someone I had never met (my aforementioned friend's mother), I partook properly in the funeral event. This was a classy, beautiful funeral, held at the Old North Church at Forest Lawn. The church is a replica of the original Old North Church in Boston, MA, famous because it was the place that Robert Newman climbed the steeple to light two lamps signaling Paul Revere that the British were invading Lexington by sea, not by land ("One if by land, two if by sea"). You should check out the story cause it's pretty cool (but back to my emotional break through).
So the service was simple and straightforward. Christy and I sang three songs interspersed throughout the service, the pastor officiating spoke for about 10 minutes, and the three children got up one at a time to share memories of their mother. That's the part that struck me.
There was something simply beautiful about the emotional response of these three kids reflecting on their mom--a mom that seemed to be quite a remarkable lady.  I was moved by their thoughts and recollections--and I can't begin to know why--I just was.
So, I guess I'm not a Cylon after all...(that's robot, for you non-Battlestar Gallactica geeks).

I lead a double life. Well...maybe a triple or quadruple life. Or you might just say that I wear a lot of different "hats".
Dad, Husband, Associate Registrar, Worship Pastor, Freelance Arranger, Composer, Grad Student...and unfortunately, the list goes on...

Not that I'm complaining, mind you! I enjoy my plate being full and the challenges that life brings. It's just that right now, I'm learning so much new stuff that I feel like my brain might be on overload...AND, I think that I'm losing old stuff in order to learn the new, like an airplane that has to toss it's luggage overboard to be able to get off the ground (no sympathy required, thanks). It's actually really fun, I just feel like a ditz sometimes because I can't remember some stuff. Weird.

I also operate on this "checklist" kind of mentality. I get a million emails a day (yes, that's one MILLION emails) and they don't get out of my inbox until I've completed the action required of me by said email, or given a proper response. But once I HAVE done that, I quickly get it out of my inbox and into a saved folder--highly organized, of course--for future reference. Out of sight, out of mind. And I mean REALLY out of mind.

In other news, I actually am going to take a small break tonight (while I can) and go see Semi-Pro, the new Will Ferrell flick. It's bound to be awful.
Awfully funny, that is...

Disney guy called again (YES!) and he's sending more work tomorrow. I'm so stoked.

We also went to the Catalina Jazz Bar and Grill last night to see a good friend perform with a full big band. It was really awesome. The place was super classy and the music was fantastic. Big band is always fun!