Summer Update
Hope you’ve been enjoying the recent interview/conversations I’ve been having on the newsletter. This week, a quick update with some more personal things.
Summer Reading
Make it stand out
Earlier in the year I did a new year booklist. With reaching the mid-point of the year and (hopefully for many) also hitting the beach this summer, comes a new push to crack open one of these old things. Books.
Here are a few recs:
Diaries 1898-1902 by Alma Mahler-Werfel
Also recommended by actor Jeremy Strong, I finished this great book earlier this year. It’s non-fiction, but reads like fiction. It’s a selection of diaries from the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, Alma. Picture something like Jane Austin’s Emma, but written in journal entries, where you slowly develop an understanding of the prickly, talented, and ambitious young Austrian woman looking for a suitable suitor. I’d recommend for any artist or anyone interested in European painters and composers of this period. They were all partying together, like always.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
This is the sci-fi novel upon which the movie Blade Runner is based. For all my film-heads, I’m sorry to say, but the best parts of the novel were unfortunately left out of the movie, in my opinion. Of course, the book doesn’t have that amazing score and Harrison Ford being cool as all hell. But it does have hilarious suburban bickering, bumbling cops, and a somehow even more existential ending than the film. It’s 210 pages. Easy beach read.
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
I think this is Thomas Pynchon’s most accessible and funny book. It’s one of those rare books that doesn’t ruin the movie either. Whereas I’d suggest seeing Blade Runner before reading Electric Sheep, because the other order would probably leave you disappointed in the film, with Inherent Vice, both the book and movie are equally as dense and singular. You’ll only gain appreciate for each by consuming both; they won’t spoil each other. That being said, the book is much funnier and lighter, which is why I’m recommending it for a summer read.
Musical Medicine?
A lot of people argue that music is medicine, but I came across something recently that made the concept even more literal.
Many of you may have heard about a study that found playing classical music to plants stimulated their growth. If not, it’s worth looking into Singh’s 1962 experiment which found particular genres like classical, jazz and raga Indian music could boost rice harvest by 25-60%.
In a similar vein, MIT researchers were able to “recover speech” from vibrations of a bag of potato chips.
Sound healing with singing bowls is also another common form of audio holding a physical power.
The idea that audio holds information that can be translated to other mediums is an interesting one. What about medications, supplements, or hormones our bodies need?
Any and all of this stuff is quite laughable… until it’s works. That’s why I was fascinated to come across this concept as it could relate to health (another big interest of mine).
Forgive me while we get a little scientific: The thyroid gland in your neck makes a hormone called thyroxine. Thyroxine essentially controls how much energy your body uses (also known as your metabolic rate). Faster metabolic rates can promote faster growth and reproduction in some species. Let’s get that out of the way!
From my limited scientific understanding, there was a study where thyroxine’s magnetic frequency was isolated, stored on an CD, and then played to a bunch of tadpoles, stimulating their metamorphosis into frogs.
If bio-information can be stored as electro-magnetic frequency and the spectrographs that measure these frequencies can be turned into audio via spectrograms, then conceivably you can isolate any bio-compounds and listen to them… Whether they have the same effect definitely needs to be studied more, but it’s a super interesting concept. Don’t tell Big Pharma.
Compiled by someone on X.
Anyway, someone I follow on X got the spectrographs of some various thyroid stimulating molecules and put them together to create a wav file.
Their disclaimer: Note that this is entirely experimental and I do not make any claims as to its effectiveness. Audios are notoriously weaker than those ran through a PEMF coil but there is ample evidence that they are still effective.
Please listen at a low and comfortable volume. Speakers are preferred. Nourish and hydrate yourself before or after listening. Substantial increases in metabolism may occur. Limit 3 listens every 12-24 hours.
Interesting, to say the least. But please listen with some caution. I listened once recently and notice some head and neck tingling, akin to what people describe in ASMR. Again, more studying needs to be done on this.
Seeing/Hearing Your Work on The Big Screen
The last thing I want to talk about is reflecting on seeing (or in my case, hearing) my work on the big screen.
At the end of June, I was stoked to see filmmaker Ethan Romaine’s short film series 301 Stories premiere at Syndicated here in New York. Ethan’s been a good friend of mine for a long time (we were in a high school band together, among other things). I was super happy to come in to score the third episode of his series earlier this year. The shorts, including the one I scored, will be having some other screenings this summer, and will be available online soon, so follow the Instagram account for updates on that.
I have only witnessed hearing my work in a theatre one other time, a couple years back when a feature I scored called For Roger premiered at the Philadelphia Unnamed Festival. It’s always an interesting experience.
There’s mixed emotions. Usually a combination of gratification and personal critique. I’m excited about what’s working and I wish this part of it could have been better. I would think this is similar an experience to anyone who’s publicly put out any creative work.
Another element is how the music’s mix plays in the particular theatre. It’s something mixing engineers everywhere deal with on a daily basis. How do I make my music work in a variety of listening experiences? On different devices? It’s difficult to anticipate all of the possibilities.
Much like how once a work is out in the public, you give it away to the audience, I started to consider how you give away the music to the environment as well. If someone’s listening to your song in summer and blasting the AC, then that AC unit becomes a part of the song. If some guy is watching your short film on the subway, then the subway rail screeching is a part of your movie…
The hope is that people would try to give their attention and focus to your work as best they can, but our world is full of distractions, and in a positive spin on this, sometimes those distractions can inform the work in a beautiful way too. Like how when I saw Oppenheimer in theatres, some kid pulled the fire alarm within the first 10 seconds of the movie starting. How apropos (spoiler: it starts with a bunch of fire imagery and the movie is about bombs). We had to evacuate the theatre, wait, then go back inside and start the movie over.
I’ll never forget that, and the work, to me, is better for it. Christopher Nolan probably wanted me to see it in IMAX, uninterrupted, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
will dinola (he/him) is a film composer, musician, and writer currently working in new york city
he is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons
he writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do”
