Today we’d like to introduce you to Rani Sharone.
Rani, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
For the sake of time and interest I won’t give the Chunk from the Goonies answer. In a nutshell my twin brother, Gil, and I got bit by the music bug when we were 12 years old. I picked up the bass/guitar and he gravitated towards the drums. We were obsessed and didn’t really see us doing anything else with our lives. Our parents saw our dedication and supported our noise making. Things really started to come together when we both got accepted to Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LACHSA). That was a very formative time for me. In addition to starting a band, the Fratellis, who later became Stolen Babies, ended up playing Danny Elfman’s (one of my biggest influences) birthday party at his request, I got hugely interested in composition once I was turned on to 20th century classical music, electronic and film music. On top of that my love for Horror/Sci-Fi movies and special effects led me to get an internship at a Hollywood fx shop my senior year where I focused on the mechanical side of things, namely animatronics and stop-motion animation puppet armatures. Juggling between touring, scoring gigs, and getting steady work as a machinist really lead me to where I am now. I met a lot of artists at the shop who aspired to be writers/directors and now hire me to score their projects. One thing really did lead to another.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Relatively smooth but I had to really put myself out there to get gigs. I learned early on that things don’t always go your way and that’s just life, so in this industry you have to cast a wide net and eventually you’ll catch some breaks which is what started to happen for me.
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
When I first picked up the bass and guitar I was really into bands like Primus, Fishbone, Oingo Boingo and Mr. Bungle who ended up being massive influences on Stolen Babies. They set the bar for my brother and I as far as how technically proficient they all were on their instruments and their ability to implement so many different styles of music into their sound. It made us very open minded and interested in hearing what influenced our influences. So we dug deep and discovered a lot. Suddenly hearing our favorite bands made sense knowing where they came from. We would jam for hours and hours a day and played everything from jazz standards, fusion, funk, ska, reggae, and metal. We absorbed everything we heard and it became a part of our vocabulary. Little did I know how well that would serve me now as a film/TV/video game composer because I’m always being asked to write in various styles. From there I got really into bands like Depeche Mode, the Cure and Cocteau Twins which further blew my musical world wide open and were the main motivation behind starting my current dark electronic solo project Thrillsville. Once symphonic music came into the equation I continued to study and write like crazy. I spent a lot of time in concert halls as well seeing the LA Phil and the LA Chamber Orchestra among others almost religiously.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to do it all again I think I wouldn’t be as hard on myself as I was. I was my own worst critic and expected myself to write like the composers I idolized straight out of the gate and that’s just not how things are. You have to start somewhere and I didn’t really understand that process. I can think of two pivotal experiences for me that really validated I was on the right track and people were starting to recognize my voice as a composer. First was getting accepted to the Sundance Film Composers Lab in 2010, and the other was when world renowned virtuoso violinist Hilary Hahn performed a piece I wrote for her as the encore to her recital at the Walt Disney Concert Hall back in 2013. The sense of accomplishment I felt that night still lives with me. In retrospect I wasted so much time comparing myself to others and I’m so glad I snapped out of that way of thinking. Everyone is on their own path with their own story. I’m finally at peace with where I’m at and where I’m headed.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ranisharone.com
- Email: itsthrillsville@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsthrillsville/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itsthrillsville/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/itsthrillsville?lang=en
- Other: http://itsthrillsville.bandcamp.com/
Image Credit:
Nate Pennington, Kim Hansen, Tiffany Sharone
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