Today we’d like to introduce you to Jared Forman.
Jared, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles and have always been interested and involved in music in some way from as early as I can remember. I started formally studying music when I was about 10 years old entering middle school. I started playing clarinet and bass clarinet in the band, then my private instructor also had me start learning tenor saxophone and introduced me to jazz. I also started teaching myself guitar in middle school and tried to learn drums. When I entered High School, I wanted to play on the drumline, so I told the band director that I played percussion during auditions. I really enjoyed playing and performing in the marching band drumline, saxophone in the jazz band, and other instruments during concert band.
While finishing high school, I was learning to be an assistant recording engineer and was mentored by my grandfather, Brian Friedman (Ike & Tina Turner). I learned everything from recording techniques and microphone positioning, to signal flow and how to use an EQ from him. I would help him set up, and he would let me run Pro Tools for numerous recording sessions, once I got proficient at it.
I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Music Industry Studies from California State University, Northridge, where I studied saxophone, was a featured soloist in the percussion ensemble, and found my love in composing and arranging. I really enjoyed writing music, but I had no clue how to “make it” as a composer. I decided to focus on the business side of music because I figured that no matter what I wanted to do in music, I should know the business side of the industry to understand the full picture and also avoid being taken advantage of.
I had no clue that my early interest in learning and playing multiple instruments led to my ease of arranging or writing music for each instrument. It all came very naturally, even through college. I had great sight-reading chops, so I often spent more time practicing arranging or writing music on my own than practicing my assigned repertoire.
After college, I started working in Television music licensing at NBCUniversal while continuing to assistant engineer for my grandfather in the evenings. I found that I actually really enjoy the business side of music, and I was good at drafting licenses and composer agreements. I am forever grateful to my colleagues in the NBCUNI office for everything they taught me, all the advice they gave me, and supporting my pursuit as a composer.
I also began working on and off with another mentor of mine, Marc Mann a prominent music producer and frequent collaborator of Danny Elfman. Marc brought me in to help out on Elfman’s music team for a few of films and boy did that change me. After getting to sit in the studio in front of 70 musicians while they recorded the score for a huge movie I was hooked, that is what I want to do.
I got into the Film Scoring graduate program at UCLA, but was overwhelmed with juggling work at NBCUNI, work outside of NBCUNI, and family about five classes in. I had started writing music for a couple of production music libraries, scored a national commercial campaign, and was offered the opportunity to work for and be mentored by composer Kevin Kiner. I dropped out of the film scoring program and began training my replacement at NBCUNI so that I could pursue the scoring stage.
Kiner is such a killer composer and just a great guy, I am very fortunate to have worked with him when I did as those turned into the busiest years of his career. We were working on six simultaneous projects at one point! (Including: Star Wars Rebels, Hell on Wheels, Jane the Virgin, Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Making a Murderer) I started as a music assistant, score coordinator, and computer tech, but very quickly started arranging, orchestrating, and writing music for all of his projects after just a couple of months. During my apprenticeship, I set out to learn as much as I could about the scoring process, build some credits, as well as pick up as much of Kiner’s candor and joy of writing music as I could during my 3.5 years working with him. He only liked to have one assistant, so the 60-70 hour work weeks always had me thinking of ways to optimize or improve our workflow.
During those long hours, I used to joke with an audio engineer buddy from college, Will Borza, who was mixing some of the scores we did, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a button that you press and it mixes for you?” We revisited that conversation later, and more seriously, when I was preparing to dive into a couple of films of my own and Will had started working as a mastering engineer with Howie Weinberg. I wanted the technical things figured out beforehand so that I could focus on the creative process while writing. Will had a theory on how to make automated mixing a reality and we started testing and iterating.
The prototype actually worked great with all types of music, despite being conceptualized for tv/film score! I remember when we imported a new song to test, and the mix that our automated mixing prototype instantly created was better than the mix that I did myself a couple years prior. We excitedly tried another song that was a completely different style and genre. It was good, but not great. So, back to testing and iterating. We got to the point where in order for us to be satisfied with the mix, we had to adjust a few things to achieve the sound we were going for. It was unavoidable and ended our prototyping phase because the tools we needed to achieve what we imagined just didn’t exist. However, this automated mixing prototype was still saving us 80% of our time!
We were certain that we couldn’t be the only people who wanted to simplify the technical aspects of mixing and mastering. So, we started to ask around to see if any programmer friends of ours could help build the tools we needed to make what we conceptualized. We enlisted the brilliant Houston Huffman, who gallantly offered to try and help. As a software developer with experience playing music, performing with a couple of bands, and dabbling in music production, Houston turned out to be the perfect fit to build the audio tools we desired and help execute our vision. Will and I could speak in audio/music terms and Houston could translate it to code to build the program.
Our team was assembled and I got wind of a MusicTech Accelerator that Capitol Music Group was hosting in partnership with Gener8tor (gBeta). Automated mixing piqued their interest, we were offered an interview, they responded very positively to our prototype, and we secured a spot as one of five companies participating in the program.
Since the accelerator, we have made incredible progress on a couple of products and have gotten some positive feedback from our friends at Capitol Studios, Universal Music Group, and various music professionals around Los Angeles. We originally set out to free up time by making our workflow more efficient, but it has grown into a company on the edge of launching its first product. We can’t wait to share some significant breakthroughs that the music community will love!
Great, 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 has been surprisingly smoother than any of us were expecting, yet at the same time, it is the most challenging thing any of us have taken on. The biggest struggle we face is that there is no precedent for what we are building. There is no reference material to improve upon except for various audio engineering techniques we’ve learned through our own careers (most of which have been in practice since the 1960s). Learning first-hand about the ups and downs of software development was a struggle at first, but we’ve learned to anticipate, adapt, and overcome every challenge we’ve faced so far. Another struggle we faced early on was our early decision to not take on any pre-seed funding
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about OSMIX Music – what should we know?
OSMIX Music is an audio software company developing automated mixing and mastering tools to help accelerate music and audio production workflows. We are excited about our unique position to challenge the status quo in audio and enable artists to focus on how technology can enhance creativity.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The ability to recognize and act on an opportunity, honesty, and passion.
I believe that hard work pays off and the harder you work, the more opportunities will present themselves. However, it is your job to recognize and decide how to act on those opportunities.
For me, honesty and transparency are the most important qualities in a person, especially in business.
And passion, if you don’t love what you do, why would you put any love into doing it?
Contact Info:
- Website: https://osmixmusic.com/
Image Credit:
Photos of Jared taken by Mark Maryanovich.
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