Ep. 50: Guest Host Isaac Brooks Interviews Garrett! (JW Pepper Week, Day Five)

Episode Description:

To mark both occasions, JW Pepper’s Isaac Brooks takes over the reigns as our first guest host, interviewing Garrett about his experiences as a composer and podcaster.

Featured On This Episode:
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Garrett Breeze

Garrett Breeze is a Nashville-based composer, arranger, publisher, and the founder of Selling Sheet Music.  His credits include film, television, video games, Broadway stars, major classical artists, and many of the top school music programs in the U.S.  Visit garrettbreeze.com for more information or to book Garrett for a commission or other event.

Isaac Headshot
Isaac Brooks

Episode Transcript:

*Episode transcripts are automatically generated and have NOT been proofread.*

Garrett, how long have you been an actual composer?

Where did it start?

Where’s the origin story for Garrett Breeze?

Well, this is funny, and I guess it tells you a lot about me.

But I first started messing around with this stuff in seventh grade, because I was a trombone player and I got bored.

because middle school trombone parts are the most tedious thing in the world.

It’s just a lot of whole notes, there’s not a lot of action.

You never get the melody, you know?

It’s like a cello part.

Yeah.

Maybe it’s gotten better.

I don’t know.

But at the time, it sort of started as this desire for me to want to play whatever I wanted.

And so I would either figure it out by ear or I’d write stuff down.

I’d start writing out stuff for me to play on trombone.

And then my orchestra teacher in the seventh grade was really encouraging about all this.

She was like, write me a piece and we’ll do it.

And so my first premiere was in the eighth grade with our little middle school orchestra.

It wasn’t even the full group.

It was just basically my friends and they would stay after and practice this little piece with me.

There’s got to be a recording somewhere.

I bet my mom has it.

But we’re going to find it.

It was sort of one thing led to another.

And her name was Carol Dennis.

That’s still her name.

But when she was married to Henry Mancini’s touring concertmaster, they had all these old, and this is crazy.

And at the time, I didn’t really get how crazy it was.

But my first copy jobs in finale were these old handwritten Henry Mancini scores that they had lying around at the house that they wanted put into finale to digitize and preserve.

So here’s little 14-year-old me trying to learn finale with these incredible scores from the tour basically.

What a great opportunity for someone just starting out in their career.

It was awesome.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, so that basically just continued.

In high school, I kept writing.

And the original sort of life plan was to do the Hollywood thing and be a film composer.

And long story short, I decided not to go that route and ended up doing a lot of arranging for choral groups, for show choirs, doing orchestrations and notation work for other composers.

And I just sort of fell into this behind the scenes role of a copyist, orchestrator, arranger, and it’s really suited me.

Tell us about what is Garrett Breeze usually writing?

And tell us about your method for kind of going into show tunes and like, what does that look like on a day to day for where you sit?

I’ve kind of struggled with the fact that I’ve spent so much of my career writing music for other people, getting commissions, getting requests.

I almost don’t know what I would do if left to my own devices.

If you gave me a million dollars and said, write whatever you want to write.

I mean, I honestly don’t know what I would do.

I’d have to think about it.

I’ll just take the million dollars.

Yeah, I mean, sure, I’ll do it.

I don’t know, that’s, I think, more of a product of the freelancer life than anything else, right?

I will say this, I discovered early on in my career that I didn’t really care what I was writing for, or who I was writing for, as long as it was getting performed.

That was the thing that mattered to me, was writing music and getting it in front of people.

It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a trombone quartet, or a choral piece, or an orchestral thing.

I just enjoy the puzzle of arranging and fitting all the pieces together.

It really is like a puzzle in some respects.

You have the original over here, and then you have the ensemble you’re writing for, and my job is to figure out how do I take all these pieces and make it work with what I’ve got.

And that variety is something that I’ve enjoyed, and just like the challenge of it musically is really fun.

I mean, some people would hate it.

Some people would hate writing pop music all day.

Some people have a very specific idea of what they want to do creatively, and I guess I’m just not that guy.

Tell us about Selling Sheet Music and your podcasts, and driving into the new space, and how that is a different workflow from arranging and writing music.

My original plan was to become one of those YouTubers, and I just realized after a couple of attempts that I hated being on camera.

There was too many things that distracted me, there were too many things I couldn’t get over, and I just wasn’t interested in that the way that I thought I would be.

So, what started as a YouTube channel sort of evolved into the podcast, and the reason I did it was, I just felt like there was so much stuff happening in the sheet music publishing industry that nobody was talking about.

I started my professional career right about the time that self-publishing was really becoming a thing.

And so, I just put together the first couple of episodes.

I just said, well, you were there.

I just said, I’m going to do one season.

We’ll see what happens.

And the reaction to it was really fantastic.

I mean, the feedback I got.

And the thing that really kills me even to this day is just the quality of guests that I’m able to have on the show and conversations that I’m able to have with people that who would never otherwise have taken two hours out of their day to talk to me.

But because I have this platform and it’s creating content, everything’s about content now.

It really has opened a lot of doors.

So even if everybody stops listening, I find it valuable just for me to talk to these people and pick their brains about stuff.

Right.

It’s like your own little MBA in sheet music publishing.

Where do you see your music going?

At this point, you’re now on Editor’s Choice at JW Pepper.

You’ve got a few published works.

Where would you like to see your personal career as an arranger, as a composer go?

I reached a point a couple of years ago where I had more than a thousand show choir arrangements in the catalog, and I really enjoy show choir, and I’m sure I’ll do it forever.

But because of the way copyright works, I don’t control any of that.

I don’t own any of that.

And so, I mean, I love it.

I love doing it.

But I’m starting to shift my attention just to more original works, trying to figure out, I guess, how to reach more people.

Show choir is a relatively small corner of the music education space.

That being said, there is a growing interest in commercial music with all types of ensembles.

And that’s something that I do want to be part of encouraging and helping with.

So I’m not sure what it means, but I just I see a greater acceptance for pop music and different styles of music in the sort of more traditional ensembles.

And I really think that is the future.

Maybe it’s just because it’s top of mind, but I went to the Hans Zimmer live tour last week.

And I was just really struck by the fact that here was an arena full of 13,000 people that were all just captivated by this instrumental music.

Of course, they were they were there because it’s music that they already recognized and loved.

And that’s sort of a different thing.

But even so, Hans has found a way to connect with people.

I think most composers would kill to get, you know, and I think just looking at composition more generally, it just seems so segmented right now.

You have like the music education composers over here, and you have the film composers over here, and you have you have the the art composers, you know, way up here in their ivory towers, and you have, you know, like everyone’s just sort of in their own little space.

And I think the future for composition is to just bring all of these people together and figure out like what is going to be the next thing that really resonates with people.

I think that’s going to be crucial for our art form going forward, because if we don’t find that, the AI robots are just going to flood the zone with everything else, and people are going to have an even harder time than they already are getting their music out there.

You know, with having the platform of the podcast and the music that you write, and just the ability to go and be a part of adjudicating and doing the show choir thing, what’s something in the industry that you would like to see change?

I think I’d like to see a greater partnership between the people creating the music and the people on the business side of things, the ones marketing it and distributing it, and calling those balls and strikes.

You know, there’s a lot of stuff as composers that’s sort of out of our hands, you know, once we put our music out there.

And it just seems like there’s this disconnect sometimes, between, you know, the publishers and these big corporate conglomerates, and then the independent composer that’s just trying to make a living.

And there’s different priorities for the two.

And I just think, I don’t know what that looks like, if it’s a more formal employment or some other kind of structure.

But this whole idea of, you know, I’m just going to submit what I have and hope they like one or two of the pieces and then get 10% or 5% of the sale price and just like say a little prayer that it does well.

I mean, that just feels really outdated to me.

I think the overall business model is kind of due for an adjustment.

And I think sometimes it feels like the creatives making the music and then the like, quote unquote business people are sort of living on separate planets.

Yeah.

And I think my approach at Pepper has always been get to know the composer, get to know what they specialize in and who they are and what their core market is.

because without knowing that, we could just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and say, hey, this is what we think is going to be great this year.

And so much of that has changed with social media, with the rise of self-publishing and everyone having their own website and having their own platform to say like, this is what I do best.

And I think having those conversations like that you’re having, you know, through your podcasts and calling people up and say, hey, I’m Garrett Breeze.

Please, you know, take a look at my music.

I think, you know, you’re a great example to our industry and those that are looking for a pathway forward.

So kudos to you.

And I hope that this podcast goes really far and that your music goes really far as well because-

Thank you.

You know, not to toot a horn here, the trombone, you deserve it and so do others.

Well, I appreciate you saying that.

I think the problem has never been people’s ability to write good music.

Generally speaking, the problem is getting it in front of the right people and that is going to be a different challenge for everybody.

You know, there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution to that.

But there’s so much more music out there that’s amazing.

I think if we can find a way to get it in front of more people and to present it more compellingly, like, I don’t really think there’s an upper limit to how much this side of the industry can grow.

I’m sure there are more people that play an instrument now than at any point in human history, right?

There’s more people that can sing or, you know, whatever it happens to be.

Like, the demand, I think, can be limitless if we figure out the right way of putting it out into the world.

The demand for music is insatiable, really.

What would you believe to be, in 2024, a crucial trait for a composer to be successful in their career?

What I would say is figure out the skill that you do best, and then figure out what are all of the sort of related opportunities that surround that.

So, in my own case, the skill that I was better at than most was notation, and of course, now I’m back to zero with Finale, but that’s a different conversation.

But even in college, because I had been fiddling around all the way since seventh grade, I came into college already very proficient with notation software, and so that was something that I was able to use to get through the door and have opportunities that others didn’t.

There is arranging, there’s orchestrating, there’s composing your own music, there’s engraving, there’s all of these different jobs, or tasks, or whatever you want to call it, that surround this particular skill.

And I think once you establish yourself in one of those, that gives you the credibility to venture into other areas.

So maybe your end-all be-all is not to be an arranger, but if that’s your foot in the door, do the best that you can at that.

And then once you have that experience, it’ll be easier to sort of make that shift.

I like to explain it this way, you know, in the music business, everyone expects you to be able to do anything, especially if they’re a non-musician.

They just expect you to have all the answers, make it happen.

But if you walk up to somebody and try to pitch yourself for a job and tell them, I can do anything, they just kind of roll their eyes and go, yeah, kid, whatever, you know what I mean?

There’s this like chicken and egg thing where they want you to be able to do everything, but you can’t present yourself like you can do everything, because then you don’t seem credible.

Are you costing that much?

Yeah, exactly.

But once you’ve established yourself, once you have sort of a track record to back that up, it’s a little easier to start pitching yourself for other stuff.

So you said that you’re starting over back at zero with the imitation software.

How are you feeling about that?

Finale has always been a love-hate relationship, right?

because there’s things about the software that worked remarkably well, and there’s things that drove me up the wall, right?

I think in the long term, it will probably be good for the industry.

I think the mistake I made was only learning Finale, and not already being proficient at some of the others, because now, there’s not really a backup.

But that being said, I mean, I’m still running Pro Tools 11, that’s 10 years old.

I mean, I don’t think the announcement is reason to panic, because I think for most people, it’ll be a couple of years before you really have to switch.

I think everyone’s in wait and see mode too, because I may prefer Dorico to Sibelius, but if the majority of my clients and publishers and schools go Sibelius, then business-wise it’s going to make more sense for me to go that way as well.

I probably will just learn both, but I’m excited for the audio possibilities with Dorico.

Me too.

because that’s the thing I mentioned love hate, that was the hate part of Finale.

Anytime I would use a sample library in Finale, it just would get really finicky and it would crash all the time.

Honestly, I’m surprised Finale wasn’t able to sell the program because that autosave feature that they have in there, man, my Finale was crashing a dozen times a day.

It would save those files every time.

That autosave mechanism, whatever they did, I mean, they need to put that in every computer program in the world.

You get that terminal of death and you’re like, this is it.

because those files always came back.

Anyway, what were we talking about?

Oh, audio.

Yeah.

So I think because Dorico is sort of, I mean, I guess it’s almost 10 years old now, but because it’s so new, I think there’s going to be more potential for that to integrate with DAWs.

I’m sort of fingers crossed for the world when Cubase and Dorico can just talk to each other, because that will make so many things so much easier.

It happens now.

Dorico and Cubase do actually talk to each other, and you can send multiple stems over to Dorico and have it migrate in.

So if you have legato and pizzicato on a violin line, you can merge them together, and it will play it and notate it on the score as one continuous stave.

Yeah.

See, that’s the kind of stuff that gets me excited about learning a new software.

And the truth is I think most people only use a fraction of what the software is capable of doing.

I was really proficient in that particular thing that I did in Finale, but I probably didn’t use 90 percent of the buttons or the menus that were in there.

And so it’s not like you have to learn what every button and every plugin and every tool does.

But the truth is probably the tools you need are a smaller set.

And I think that makes switching a little more manageable too.

Garrett, tell us about who you are outside of composing.

What’s your hobby?

What do you do when you’re not doing music?

What is this word hobby you speak of?

So I live in Nashville.

I have a wife and three kids.

They are ages eight, six, and three.

So we are in the thick of small child parenting.

And that takes up most of the time that music doesn’t.

But I enjoy playing video games.

I enjoy going kayaking, playing frisbee golf, traveling.

My wife’s family lives in San Diego.

My parents live in Delaware.

So we just agreed when we got married that we were going to have to be that family that wasn’t afraid to travel.

You know, so and we were just going to force the kids to do it.

And I’m glad we did because they’re sort of trained to it now.

And that opens up a lot of opportunities.

So, you know, we can we can do a 12 hour drive to go to the beach or whatever, because the kids know how to handle themselves in the car.

Our family is the biggest thing.

And then, you know, we’ve we’ve got our group of friends here in Tennessee.

And, you know, we really like it here.

I mean, there’s a lot of outdoor stuff to do in Tennessee.

There’s a lot of concerts in Tennessee.

That’s probably the biggest thing.

All of the best acts come through here at some point.

There’s always a cool show that we can go to or a tour or something like that.

But mostly, mostly I’m just a workaholic and hang out with my kids.

Those are okay.

That’s fine.

We have to go kayaking together.

I have a whole armada of kayaks and we have some beautiful, where I live near Philadelphia, we have some beautiful streams and lakes.

I would love it.

Okay.

So, Garrett, could you give us a little insight into what your routine is as an arranger, composer?

Think about that young student that’s coming into the industry and they’re looking for those tips and like, how do I do it?

How do I do it?

How do I get started?

Like, what do you do?

When you’re doing this for a living, there’s two ways you can make more money.

You can raise your prices or you can work faster, because the more projects you can fit into a day, potentially the more money you can make.

What I’ve learned is mentally, there’s just certain tasks that take more brain power than others, right?

Like coming up with a melody, that’s very much a full focus thing.

Laying out the song is another one, right?

because you have to figure out the flow and what’s going to make the most sense.

But at a certain point, once you have things in the right place, it’s more about how quickly can you physically notate the ideas.

Once you have the chord structure set for the whole song, you have to go back and fill in that piano part, but you’re just following what the chords say, right?

There’s less thought that goes into that.

The other thing I’ll add is one way to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time is to have a collaborator.

In the songwriting world, it’s very common to have two, three, four songwriters on a project.

I would just say one plus one is not two, one plus one is five.

because if you find somebody that complements your skill sets, if you find somebody that’s really great at the thing that you stink at, with your powers combined, you can do a lot of really great work together.

There’s no shame in it.

Why would a work created by two people be any less valuable than something created by one?

It just doesn’t make sense.

So that’s something I think is hard for people to wrap their heads around.

And maybe it’s also because you would share in the financial side of that too, which is of course a whole different discussion.

But I think most composers want to get 100 percent loyalty.

Yes, they do.

And it’s not going to happen.

Sorry.

But again, like 25 percent of a piece that does really well is going to be a lot more than 75 percent of a piece that no one ever hears, you know?

So I think there’s a certain, I don’t want to say detachment that you need, but you have to be able to separate your personal feelings about your music from the business side of things because there’s a lot of just cold hard facts you have to deal with sometimes.

Garrett, who is your inspiration for composing?

Mine is Beethoven.

I enjoy a lot of his music.

Do you have anyone who inspired you?

I know it’s a little cliché, but I got to go John Williams.

When I was coming of age, that was the early 2000s.

That was such a golden era for movie scores, and that’s what I would listen to.

I’ve always been really drawn to powerful melody, and John Williams is the king of that, right?

I think when you have a melody that’s really powerful, you’re able to reach people that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

And then of course, as I got older and understood more of what he was doing from an orchestration standpoint, I mean, the respect only grew from there.

You got to get him on the podcast.

I have tried and his email is not anywhere.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re friends with John Williams.

Come on, John.

Reach out.

Yeah, I don’t know.

I’ve always tried to write music that is appreciable.

Is that a word?

I’ve always tried to write music that the average person could understand and feel a connection with.

Right.

I don’t think it does us any good to like ignore the audience in what we’re doing.

I don’t think that helps anyone from a practical consideration, but also like the point of music is to connect with people.

I mean, I call it the dad test, right?

Like if my dad who knows nothing about music can listen to it, and appreciate it, then I’ve done my job.

No shade to my dad.

Yeah, no shade.

So Garrett, obviously you’ve had quite a few episodes so far on the Selling Sheet Music Podcasts, and we hope for many more seasons to come, and many more amazing guests in our industry.

What are you hoping that from our conversation today and future episodes, you’re hoping that your listeners are going to be able to get from your podcasts?

That’s a great question.

I want people to be able to go into music clear-eyed about what they’re getting into.

Even just my degree, it took me a long time to find my degree focus.

I eventually landed on commercial music, and it was really interesting because I would go and talk to different members of the faculty.

I’d go and talk to the trombone professor, I’d talk to the music ed guys, I’d talk to the composition faculty and so on.

And everyone sort of had their justification for how their degree program would help me get to where I wanted to go, right?

And it wasn’t until I understood what I personally wanted to get out of it, that I was able to make that decision.

And so what I tell people that are considering going into music, you have to think about the kind of lifestyle you want to have first, like outside of music.

What do I mean by that?

For example, if you’re the kind of person that really needs to have roots, to have a home and be in your bed every night, then touring is not for you.

You might be the most amazing performer and you could get any touring gig you want, but if you are going to hate living on the road, then you’re not going to be happy.

And I think life is too important to just get any job in the music business just because it’s music, just to, I don’t know, prove a point.

But going along that thread, I also think there are ways to make a living in music if you know where to look.

And I think that’s not something that’s adequately taught in schools.

And so in these conversations with guests, I’m trying to pull out of them, the things that I wish I was taught in school.

And a lot of it I was taught by mentors and that sort of thing.

But it wasn’t part of the curriculum.

I learned much more after class talking to my professors than I did from the classes themselves.

That’s just kind of, and I don’t know, there’s maybe no way around that, right?

because music is such a unique, but just the way technology and everything is these days, it’s really democratized the whole industry.

And so if you have the talent and you have the vision, if you’re able to be self-motivated and determined and focused on whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, like there’s a way to get there.

You know, I’ll say one more thing too.

I think it’s very interesting that as everything has gotten more digital, that sheet music has only grown in prominence.

I think it’s fair to say that there’s more sheet music out there than has ever been.

And there’s more composers composing music than there has ever been.

And there’s just something about it that really connects with people.

And so I think highlighting that with the podcast is something that I’m wanting to call attention to because I think certainly on the business side of things, it sort of gets written off because in comparison to other sides of the industry, it’s not as many dollars, right?

JW Pepper is not making the kind of money that Spotify is making.

But that doesn’t mean, well, maybe they are, I don’t know.

You tell me.

But I just think the world is changing, technology is changing, who knows what AI is going to do, but people are always going to want to perform.

People are always going to want to create music themselves.

And I mean, sheet music is one of two ways to make that happen.

So there’s always going to be a place for it, and there’s always going to be a demand for it.

It’s just a matter of figuring out your place in all of that.

But Garrett, you are carving your place.

And it’s great to be a part of the podcast and just see you thrive.

And it’s always great to see a new episode land in my notifications.

And it’s really exciting.

I learn a lot.

And I know that there are plenty of others that have just said, oh, I love that podcast.

So hopefully we’ll get to see some merch soon.

We want to hear more episodes, but we want merch.

Give us a hat.

Give the people what they want.

Is that what they want?

Well, thanks for doing this.

It was a little weird to have the script flip like this, but it was fun.

And it was great to not have to plan content for an episode.

So there’s that too.

There you go.

No, but yeah, you’re such an important voice in the industry for advocating for composers.

So thank you for all that you’re doing.

And this whole week of Pepper episodes has been really fun to produce.

So I’m hoping that listeners can get a lot out of that and take advantage of the tools that Pepper has.

Thanks, Garrett.

It’s been fun.

Thanks.

See you.