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Meet David Mann of David Mann Music in Santa Monica

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Today we’d like to introduce you to David Mann.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I was a late bloomer in music. I didn’t start playing an instrument until I was 16, but from the moment I started it became an all-consuming obsession. I started learning electric guitar and was really into heavy metal. Sabbath, Ozzy, Metallica, Maiden, the whole lot. Electric guitar became classical guitar. Classical guitar became piano. By the time I was 22, I had already composed my first piece for symphony orchestra. I had also found my specialty – film music.

When I was still an undergraduate, a second passion emerged – music technology. While taking a class in psychoacoustics our teacher wanted us to learn basic computer programming so we could design our own experiments. A light bulb went off. Now I had a way to answer all those questions that none of my teachers could answer such as “How many scales exist in the universe?”, “How many chords exist in the universe?” and “Why do certain chords and scales carry certain emotions?”. I started writing number crunching algorithms to solve these problems. I had also begun a lifelong journey of trying to answer all the big questions of music, a journey I am still on today.

After graduating I knew supporting myself as a musician would be difficult so I took a job as a computer programmer. This was during the internet boom. The day I quit the company I had over $125,000 in stock options. I moved to L.A. to attend graduate school in film music at USC, which had the top program in the world. Like many who rode the dot-bomb wave, my stock quickly plummeted to zero. However, I didn’t care because I was on a new high. I was at the best school, surrounded by the best musicians, and every two weeks I had the opportunity to hold my baton in front of an orchestra at Paramount studios.

When I graduated, I was sure that my success as a film composer was all but guaranteed. I thought I would take off my cap and gown and immediately stroll across the red carpet to pick up my Oscar. However, things didn’t go as planned. After working night and day as a freelance composer for five years I was still struggling. Something had to change. I decided to pull the eject switch and move to Hawaii and get as far from L.A. as possible.

Hawaii was no vacation either at first. Although it was a tropical paradise, initially for me it was a very lonely place, and I still struggled to earn enough money to live. I seemed to make friends and enemies in almost equal numbers. People could sense my broken spirit. However, a light emerged when I got hired to teach at a private school called Kula. Suddenly my talents were valued. I was treated as ‘Ohana’ which means ‘family’. The students loved me because I was both a great teacher and a great surfer. My healing process as an artist began. I decided to stay in Hawaii for two more years and ride this wave of new found success. I became the classical music DJ on the island and had my own radio show. I played guitar in a belly dancing group named “Gypsy Rose”. I was the piano teacher, the guitar teacher, the math teacher, the computer science teacher, the everything teacher. After my Hawaii journey was over, I wrote five-part piano suite called “Rains of Kauai” which captured the emotional spirit of my adventures on a remote tropical island.

When I got back to L.A. I resumed my journey as a film composer, but also took on a new role, that as a music technologist. All my years of trying to solve the unsolvable problems of music had turned me into a bit of an expert in the realm of computer music algorithms. Numerous startup companies began contacting me who wanted to create programs that would allow ordinary people to compose music.

Today, my life is a combination of my three great musical passions – composing, piano, and music technology. My lifelong goal of creating a seamlessly integrated approach to music that combines these three areas is coming to fruition. Recently, I succeeded in creating a program called Composer Bot which writes music which is so emotional and lifelike that listeners could not tell it was written by a computer. That program will soon be featured in a documentary, and also is being merged with another product that will have medical applications.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Definitely I can answer that question with a “No”.

I got a late start in music. What I lacked in terms of getting an early start I made up for with hours spent in the practice room. Sometimes after a fourteen-hour day of classes and work, I would go into the practice room from 12 midnight to 1am just to make my daily practice quota. One summer, while working 40 hours per week, I would drive down to the campus after work and practice from 8pm till midnight every day. While still living in San Diego, I heard there was an amazing composition teacher living in LA named Thom Sharpe. I enrolled in his class and drove to LA twice per week to attend. This was my first exposure to orchestral writing.

In my first incarnation as a composer I worked night and day. I was sure that the key to success was to work hard, and that I did. Sometimes I would compose from 6AM until 12 midnight just to meet a deadline. However, the financial rewards were not there. I often had no food in the house and no money to buy it. At least once a month a missed a meal purely because I didn’t have the resources. On many occasions, I would go out to dinner with friends without a dime in my pocket. I would watch as others feasted, ordering one bottle of wine after another. Even though I hadn’t eaten that day, I didn’t want people to know about my situation and I had no money, so I didn’t order anything. At the time, I thought it was a badge of honor that I had so much will power. After five years however being a starving artist eats away at your soul. Now I advise musicians who are starting out to put food on the table first.

In Hawaii, I thought I could escape my problems. It is true that some problems disappear when you change your surroundings. However, many come with you and these are things that are either part of your character, or part of human nature. It’s a good experiment because you learn to separate which is which. The problems that came with me, such as my financial struggles, were ones that I knew I had to face head on. I remember working as a bus boy at a fish restaurant in the town of Hanalei on the island of Kauai. I was told by some young punk 18-year-old kid to take the bloody fish pans out of the freezer and hose them off outside. I stood there in the dark (you have to understand that when you are not in civilization dark means BLACK) with the hose in hand thinking, “Not so long ago I was holding a baton conducting the best musicians in the world. Now I’m holding a hose and washing off this bloody fish pan. What am I doing?”. I got fired from that job. When things started to turn around, the net takeaway was that sometimes we fail at things because we are setting our sights too low. We can’t succeed at low things because we are not designed for them. When we set our sights higher, that’s when we find the people we are meant to be with.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
My business is unique because it combines three very different sub specialties in music – composing, piano, and music technology. I don’t think there’s any person or company in the world that integrates these things in quite the same way. For example, I might write a program that creates a book of piano exercises and then use that book to teach my students. Or I might write a program that generates a hook that I use in a piece of hip hop music. The possibilities are endless.

In recent memory, there have been some real high water marks. Through chance I met a band member from one of the greatest rock bands of all time. To my surprise he asked to take composition lessons from me. He is an amazing student with a very humble attitude. In my mind I thought, “I should be taking lessons from him!” That provided me with a level of encouragement and validation that I have never felt before.

Also, my computer music algorithms have been finally ALIVE. No longer do they just spout out lists of numbers. Now I can give a piano performance where the computer is jamming along with me in real time. Or I can be playing the piano and hand my iPhone to a member of the audience and they can play an amazing solo with no prior experience. Recently, I wrote a program that composed a cello piece which listeners could not discern was written by a computer.

What were you like growing up?
Up until fourth grade I was kind of a space case. I always felt like I never knew what was going on. In kindergarten, my teacher said to my mother “If David doesn’t pay attention he is never going to learn anything.” Everyone is getting up now. Everyone is starting an activity now. He got a sticker. Why? I couldn’t understand the basic day to day mechanics of what was going on, even though the teacher probably explained it a million times. In fourth grade, I met my nemesis. A teacher who really was out to get me. If I even flinched I got a mark. I was just a kid but I sunk into a very serious depression for several months.

I decided to change. I was going to prove to her that I was just as good as the others. I went out with my mom and started buying nice clothes. I stayed up late working on my 4th grade projects, sometimes well past midnight. I turned in all my work and then some. I started getting A’s and A plusses. Unfortunately, now I had become that Poindexter kid who annoys everyone.

Generally, I was very precocious. I loved airplanes and knew the size, weight, speed, altitude, and thrust of just about every airplane ever built. I created sophisticated robots out of Legos. I also loved drawing.

Now I’m all grown up. And guess what Ms. Kindergarten Teacher? I learned something.

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