While other programs produce alumni, only the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program produces Alummies. The graduates of our Masters program are an elite group and form a tight-knit network of music professionals in film, television, video games, and other media around the world. Join us every month for a free lecture from one of our Masters and get your illumination from Alummie Nation!
Navigating the Path from School to Career:
Insights from a Foreign Composer
Saturday October 7th at 10AM (PST)
In this talk, I will share my personal experiences and provide my insights into the challenges faced and strategies employed while transitioning from school to a successful career in the United States. The talk encompasses two main themes: the difficulties encountered as an international student during the program and practical experiences working with Seattle filmmakers and Taiwanese game developers after graduating. The audience will gain a general understanding of some useful strategies for career development in 2 different industries, as well as essential information for international students to take notes on.
Presenter: Vicky YiChan Li
Vicky YiChan Li (b. 1994) is a Taiwanese composer who graduated from the music institute of National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in 2020 and completed her second master's degree in film scoring from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program (PNWFS) at Seattle Film Institute. As a composer, Li loves collaborating with diverse groups of people and finds joy in bringing her music to various mediums, including film, stage drama, musicals, and dance performances.
Her first significant career success came in 2018 as a music composer for "Toward Heavens - A Dance Piece about Birds and Humans," which was featured as one of the opening performances at the "2018 Guandu International Nature Art Festival" in Taipei, Taiwan. Following this accomplishment, she continued to work on numerous projects, such as musicals, musical installations, and teaching. Currently, she is dedicated to game and film scoring.
Motif Mo’ Fun
Sunday November 19th at 1PM (PST)
This session highlights the compositional value of motivic saturation. By looking at the speaker's musical compositions from four distinct games (Dreams and Nightmares, Fat Roll, Breakers World, and Allies of Majesty), we will explore the concept of adaptive audio in the realm of game music and its implication for motivic development. We will also see how the compositional process can be informed by both the features and limitations of each game. The speaker will also demonstrate how this was implemented using the middleware FMOD.
Presenter: Kyle Griffith
Kyle Griffith is Seattle-based composer for video games as well as a musical performer in the greater Pacific Northwest. His respect for motivic writing spans through a vast majority of his musical endeavors. Since 2019, he has been focusing on composing specifically for video games, intrigued by how gameplay dynamics can impact compositional decision-making and sometimes vice versa. Being primarily active in the Indie game scene, Griffith has learned to wear many hats as a composer, sound designer, dialogue editor, audio implementer, and audio director. Through all these audio-related positions, he holds tight to a pearl of wisdom from his teacher, Hummie Mann, concerning music for multimedia: scores should enhance, support, or redirect the emotional content of the medium.
Mixing and Mastering on Only Headphones: Insights from an Acoustics and Audio Super Nerd
Saturday December 9th at 10AM (PST)
In this session, we’ll be diving into every aspect of mixing and mastering on Headphones from what it takes on the hardware and software side all the way to how much more cost effective it can be while giving better results than the vast majority of “speakers in a room” setups. We’ll also make a couple detours along the way to talk about room acoustics and how much it really takes for the best mastering studios in the world to get a good enough “speakers in a room” setup to beat what a correct headphone setup can achieve. This session might be a bit of a blunt awakening for some, but in the end you’ll know how to get the best results possible for the least amount of money in the mixes and masters of your music!
Presenter: Tim Gargiulo
Tim Gargiulo is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who creates novel music for any desired experience. Before starting his compositional studies at the University of Texas at Arlington, he was interested in becoming an audio engineer, so his vast knowledge of room acoustics, pro audio gear, mixing, and mastering has never ceased to continually grow.
Since graduating from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, Tim was the sole music composer and sound editor/mixing engineer for the Drama/Slow Cinema short film: "Turmoil" by Pawan KC, has mastered and released 2 singles and a compilation album, and has been transcribing and learning to play a lot of technically unique guitar music which has lead him into creating multiple solo guitar song covers as well as an original mini song on solo bass guitar.
His most notable achievement is winning 2nd Place in the Film Score University Division at the 11th Annual Robert Avalon International Composers Competition for the 1st film he ever scored called “A Warm Winter”.