Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Cap.
Hi Alex, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started piano lessons when I was four. In spite of a strict Russian teacher in middle school, I stuck with it, most likely because I was allowed to play video games once I had gotten my piano practice in for the day (after doing my homework). I’ve also been blessed with a keen ear, which served me well under the Russian teacher’s unorthodox teaching methods of rote mimicry. That gift apparently had another unforeseen consequence – it wasn’t long before I wanted to learn the music from the video games I had been playing. In fact, some of my earliest memories of sitting in front of notation software (Voyetra MusicWrite) are of transcribing the theme to Banjo-Kazooie. I didn’t realize it at the time, but by trying to figure out the notes and harmonies that were playing in my favorite Nintendo games, I was essentially doing a rudimentary score study, which is something you’d do in a music course to better understand a style or composer. This, coupled with regular family movie nights, set the stage for my interest in multimedia music.
My initial plan, when I attended The College of New Jersey, was to be a concert pianist. But a high school friend asked if I could write music to his space shooter, and I soon after discovered the wild world of game jams and 48 Hour Film Projects. While I didn’t get into any of the piano performance master’s programs I applied to (they’re really competitive!), I was already starting to head a different direction. Due to the baptism by fire of writing music for the high pressure, fast-paced (but low stakes) game jams and filmmaking events as well as an independent study in video game music, I was able to see if this was something I wanted to do as a career.
I took five years off from school to do freelance composition, orchestration, transcription, and piano gigs. After unanimous advice from the mentors in my life, the next logical step was to move to Los Angeles. Getting accepted into the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music Master’s in Screen Scoring program was a good enough reason as any to follow through.
I am extremely grateful for the experiences and connections that USC was able to offer. But it was actually my previously mentioned freelance orchestration work – most of which was for composer Tim Janis – that led to my first feature film score job (Netflix film “Holly Star”) barely one month out of grad school. Initially, the job was offered to Tim, but since he was busy with his own projects at the time, he suggested we co-score it and split the credit. Eventually, he decided that his own projects were too important to take time away from, so he called the producer (Scott Taylor) and told him to just let me score it. As generous as that gesture was, I still had to prove myself. Director Michael A Nickles sent me a short demo scene for me to score and liked what I came up with, and the rest is history.
All right, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t always been an easy road, and I’m actually glad for it. If it had been smooth sailing from day 1, I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did from my mistakes earlier on in my career (and I’m still learning). For example, the whole “networking” thing doesn’t come too naturally for me. While I can spend hours at my studio writing by myself, this still is very much a people business, and it requires that you actually know people who you can work on projects with. “Networking events” are particularly exhausting for me, so I learned that the best approach to this for me was to get to know people on a personal level in smaller groups in casual settings. Another challenge was learning how to cater to the vision of each project, which each had a director behind it who had a different personality and style of directing. Some people are very hands off and have a high level of trust that what you produce will be what is right for their project. Others are very hands on, exacting, and can express their vision and how your work should fit into it in great detail. I’ve worked with people on both ends of that spectrum, as well as many in between.
Lastly, an obstacle I encountered early on was simply making ends meet in between projects. Since it’s hard to predict when the next gig will come and what its budget will be, I learned to get creative with building a work schedule that pays the bills even when nothing else is happening but is flexible enough to allow me to dedicate time should something new come up. To that end, I’ve been teaching piano lessons part-time, doing occasional freelance orchestration work, selling pdf guides through my YouTube tutorial channel, getting some music placed with libraries, and releasing some of my soundtracks on download and streaming platforms. I also receive royalties for streams of Holly Star on Netflix. If you’re not getting regular offers for scoring gigs, just as a practical measure, it helps to have more than one income source (plus savings, just in case).
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I write music for multimedia projects. These might be video games, VR, film, TV, a virtual or physical art installation, or maybe even a board game. I occasionally will also work on concert band and wind ensemble pieces, usually from middle school to high school or college level difficulty.
The most significant film I worked on is the Netflix feature “Holly Star” I mentioned earlier, which is a Christmas rom-com. More recently, I’m really happy with my collaboration with director Mary John Frank in “From Sea to Rising Sea”. This call-to-action about climate change is a VR film told in musical form with synchronized swimming and beautiful underwater scenes shot in the ocean.
In the video game world, I’m fond of my work with Dan Colman (Hot Avocado Games) on nostalgic, 8-bit mobile shooter “Task Attack”. I’ve also arranged the themes in that game into a medley for concert band. My Philip Glass-inspired vocal score to “Asteri” is also a personal favorite, along with VR adventure “Homeward Duck”, which is available on Steam.
In addition to underscore, I write songs for these kinds of projects. For instance, in Holly Star, “Here’s My Home” and “I Won’t Let You Go This Time” were originals written specifically for the film in collaboration with lyricist John Quick. Also, check out “Tales of Westen” on my website for some steampunk vampire western song-driven narrative!
If you want to learn more about my wind ensemble and concert band pieces, aside from the Task Attack Medley, I’d recommend Los Majeños (a middle school level arrangement of a traditional tune from the Peruvian Andes) or Coming Home to start with.
I enjoy the variety of working across media and genres – every project is a unique opportunity to learn how to adapt to a new set of needs and solve a different set of creative problems.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Anyone that knows me knows I usually take a long time to make decisions – even when making my next move in a board game. I carry this thought process into my professional work, attempting to carefully weigh the potential outcomes. Usually, this has led me to make safe decisions, but they’re definitely have been times that I consciously decided to take a risk. Most often, even when I take the risk, I am in a position to do so – that is, I know that it won’t be a huge deal if it doesn’t pay off, and some other benefit may come out of it even if indirect. Right now, I’m thinking back to when I was being considered as a composer on “From Sea to Rising Sea”. Writer/director Mary John Frank asked me (and the other composers she was considering) to write a short demo of the song. I did way more work than was asked for the demo. That could’ve turned into a wasted weekend for me, but instead, I got the job. And even if I didn’t get the job, the weekend wouldn’t have truly been wasted – I would’ve gained experience in quickly demoing a song concept and possibly had a new track that I could’ve added to my private demo reel playlists. A side benefit of having gotten the job after going above and beyond for the demo is that once the project actually got started, most of the basic groundwork of how the song would be structured had already been laid out in the demo, so I had a great jumping-off point. I think that equally important as actually taking risks is knowing when or when not to take them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alexcap.mx
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/alexcapmx
- Facebook: https://fb.me/alexcapmx
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexcapmx
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCqU-votIXSYUvWp4vAGywKA
- Email List https://eepurl.com/bPvKm9
Image Credits:
Brandon Smith, Cormac Joyce, Robert Bullington
