“Find A Mentor, But Really, Let Them Find You” 11 Insider Tips With Hollywood Composer Adam Lastiwka
“Some people can take the “get a mentor” advice to heart, yet have no idea how to approach it, so they send emails to incredibly busy people asking them for their time (to meet for coffee, answer all my questions). As anyone working successfully in any field knows, all we have is our time, and it’s something we must protect with fervor. The advice I’d give to anyone, is to become an asset. Why would you want to invest time in someone if first thing they do is try to take up your time and offer nothing in return? Yes, this sounds harsh, but you really must develop something that you do better than everyone else and highlight that…A mentorship should be a mutually beneficial scenario. You’re there to learn, but you also have to bring a lot to the table yourself, and when it works, it’s one of the most beautiful long-term career situations preceding your working relationships with producers and directors, which are collaborations that should be viewed in the same light.”
I had the pleasure of interviewing composer Adam Lastiwka (La-stoo-kah) who scores the Netflix pre-post-apocalyptic drama ‘Travelers’. Here’s what he had to tell us about his career, writing music and five things he wishes someone had told him when he first started his career.
What is your “backstory”? Tell us a bit about your early beginnings.
I started out as a totally aimless nerd with an interest in “computers” as the technology was evolving, but having only a surface-level understanding, I became fairly bored with them until a friend gave me some sequencing and sampling software. Despite having never played an instrument, something about the way the grids and patterns and sequences worked made sense and helped me develop an empirical and intuitive understand of how music worked. I’d try to use my limited understanding of the software to recreate music I was listening to at the time, which I think developed my instinctive “fearless exploration” attitude and a lot of funny — but functional — guerilla studio techniques. While the production end of things developed (I was creating lots of sampled textural and ambient music), I started to wonder about actually learning musical instruments. Around that time my grandfather unfortunately passed away, and it was one of the rare times that the entirety of my family lineage got together. I became aware of our very deep musical history and the mastery most family members had over various instruments — specifically my grandfather who was a carpenter by trade, but who also built, performed and recorded a Ukrainian variation of an instrument called a “Cimbalom”. Our last name also translates to a Ukrainian word for a songbird, which reinforced music as perhaps being something that really was in my blood. With this new inspiration I got very focused on learning instruments and finding ways to capture and combine them with the electronic ideas I had become fairly adept at creating.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your music career?
Haha, maybe not “funny”, but this was certainly a point of interest with my work. When I got an opportunity to teach guitar at an institution while i was still fairly young, I had taken to being mentored by two older teachers about the process (I greatly value the mentoring process beyond most types of education, but you must be wise in selecting your mentors). One day I had the unfortunate experience of overhearing them talking about how I doing nothing but creating “useless music”. It was hurtful at the time but also invigorating in a way. Sometimes you can use other people’s negativity to springboard yourself to a more positive place.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I really enjoy the process of working on the Netflix series “Travelers’. TV provides one of the most powerful growth and development experiences, as the time frame spans so long (potentially longer than any other storytelling medium in history) so you change dramatically over that period as the show is itself growing. That allows me to develop musical themes and concepts with a richness and depth that otherwise I might not get to explore. I still dedicate major amounts of my time in learning new musical concepts and ideas, so as consecutive seasons develop, I’m able to evolve the sound of the show by applying my new found ideas and techniques to the “old” music, as well as internalize the characters experiences and the overall plot.
I’m also just completing a trio of albums representing various genres of music I have been experimenting with in between scoring projects. The one I’m most excited about is a more aggressive yet spacey electronic concept titled “Come back to Earth with me” in which I tried to push the absolute limits of my technical ability. I feel like it enabled me to “level up” my work, as well as having created something unique and personal that i’m quite proud of. I used an enormous range of analog synths and hardware from my collection, while developing dozens of new programming, production, recording and editing techniques. My strongest idea from it was to look at sound simply as “energy” and with an indiscriminate ear towards its source, inspired by how the sound of an orchestra has evolved over hundreds of years in a very elegant way, being influenced by so many variables and involvement of countless collaborators spanning such an enormous amount of time. I think it’s trained my ears going forward to think in a more musically abstract way, less concerned with the “how” of a sound and committing more to what it achieves. It’s definitely helped me build the music with a more personal and self-defining voice.
Which people in history inspire you the most? Why?
I love the work of Hellenstic Stoic philosophers like Seneca and Epictetus. Their ideas are so completely relevant today. They were in touch with the natural world in a way, that without these philosophies, is at major risk of becoming vestiges of our past. A lot of my lifestyle philosophies are derived and inspired from their school of thought.
Can you share 6 “non-intuitive tips” to succeed in the music industry? Can you explain?
Be of a singular mind and purpose at first. I felt early on the music industry wasn’t for me (this was amidst the digital revolution when everything started to collapse), but film and television offered a more collaborative medium and to be a small part in something big, so I immediately focused all my energy on that. I have benefited from being interested in it at a young age, as well as being far more technologically adept (having grown up parallel to its expansion) than many of my older colleagues who demonstrated some reluctance to adapt to the industry shift of things being digitally-based. I understood my work would be more at the whims of others — I can’t control who hires me, if there is a TV writers strike.but I’ve worked very hard to grow the aspects of it I am in control of. I suggest this singular focus at first simply because those who try to do everything tend to do nothing. Exploring is important but you really have to trust your innate instinct when finding what to focus on. To give something up as soon as it becomes challenging deprives you of ever seen the richness and depth it can offer.
Work a normal job until your art can support you, but find a job with an energy that contrasts your pursuant craft, or one that is symbiotic to it. For example, before I was able to sustain myself as I composer, I also sold studio recording equipment, so during the day I had the intense social exposure, I got to interact regularly with clients who I hoped to one day work for, and I developed a vast knowledge and appreciation of studio equipment and the engineering process. Working as a composer is incredibly solitary work, and thankfully I’m quite introverted and kind of a hermit, but the balance of working in a fast-paced public environment made me enjoy my solitary work hours, and vice versa.
Don’t blindly pursue what you want, look for things that give you meaning and purpose instead. What you want will always change, and even if you succeed in getting it, you may find yourself not only unfulfilled but possibly worse off depending on your expectations. If you pursue a craft or activity that fulfills you and gives you meaning, most other concerns beyond survival become secondary. To readdress both my first and second points, what gives you meaning by no means has to be your career, and the less concerned you are with this point, the more fulfilling it will be. Doing a lifelong craft that fulfills you but isn’t paying you a dime as you slave away as a sweaty stock broker provides far more enjoyment than always feeling anxious and belittled about having never made it. There is a poem by C.P. Cavafy titled “Ithaka” that sums this point up with much more grace.
Find a mentor, but really, let them find you. Some people can take the “get a mentor” advice to heart, yet have no idea how to approach it, so they send emails to incredibly busy people asking them for their time (to meet for coffee, answer all my questions). As anyone working successfully in any field knows, all we have is our time, and it’s something we must protect with fervor. The advice I’d give to anyone, is to become an asset. Why would you want to invest time in someone if first thing they do is try to take up your time and offer nothing in return? Yes, this sounds harsh, but you really must develop something that you do better than everyone else and highlight that. A composer-related example; in my case I became incredibly adept at troubleshooting technical issues, so I became the guy you’d call to come in to your studio to fix things. This was an easy shoe-in and I built many great relationships with very talented and high-level producers and composers simply because I was someone that could save them time. I also developed very advanced abilities in arrangement and electronic orchestrations, as well as playing dozens of instruments, which meant I could work very symbiotically with many composers who didn’t have the time or ability to flesh out their work to the extent it needed. A mentorship should be a mutually beneficial scenario. You’re there to learn, but you also have to bring a lot to the table yourself, and when it works, it’s one of the most beautiful long-term career situations preceding your working relationships with producers and directors, which are collaborations that should be viewed in the same light.
Don’t be domain dependant. Not in contrast to what I said about having a singular purpose, but in harmony with it. Don’t just read endless books about music and practice one instrument all day. Broadly read as much literature as you can and make sure it spans the entirety of human history. Find material that is worth re-reading. Develop hobbies and interests in things that are as far away from music as possible. You never know what might apply to domain transcendance and new creative ideas.. You’d be surprised how much music you can extract from boxing, looking at architecture, staring at an octopus, or doing complex mathematical derivations. Instead of dwelling on the difference in everything, try to find the similarities and see how your own in-depth wisdom from musical concepts can be adapted everything else.
Acknowledge the role of luck. Don’t internalize your success in a way that you wouldn’t internalize your failures. Understand that when you ask a successful person what attributes and habits made them successful, they will often tell you the exact same things that someone who has totally failed would say. The failures are just never acknowledged or given the same sort of attention. You have to be of the right mind to exploit lucky circumstances, and it usually takes a series of complex interactions and opportunities fully leveraged to turn that luck in to something, but you have to understand that positioning yourself is probably only half the battle. Someone with the right attributes or talent in the wrong environment, or who lacks the ability to adapt or change environments, will just not be exposed to those lucky opportunities. If you’re constantly blaming mistakes and failures on bad luck but are unable to attribute your successes to good luck, you might be doing it wrong.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I was very fortunate to have worked with the best mentor I could have hoped for, in a mentorship that spanned almost seven years. Shawn Pierce is probably one of the most brilliant TV composers I’ve ever met. His instinct and intuition to create functional, intelligent, and emotionally impactful scores is elevated to a level of mastery I will always admire. He was very gracious and generous, as well as patient with me, and since moving into my own career I have started to do as much as I can to work with younger composers to instill the values and principles I learned from him. With a shift in the industry and people seeking institutional educations as their sole means of guidance, a lot of the alchemical wisdom that comes from peering over a wizards shoulder while he works can get lost. I really believe, for all crafts, that is something we need to preserve.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
*Composition is philosophy. It takes a long,long time to develop, and you don’t need to rush its growth, but you always need to be testing it. The closest way to very quickly get towards something good is to simply eliminate everything that is bad and isn’t working. It’s hard, or impossible even, to know that something works one hundred percent of the time, but it’s certainly possible to know when something isn’t working. This carving process will most likely leave you with the remains of something far closer to good than otherwise. But it takes time.
*A somewhat apocryphal story, but when Michelangelo finished the statue of David, the Pope supposedly asked him “dude, HOW did you create this INCREDIBLE MARVEL of human capacity?” and he responded “I simply took away everything that was not David” — This hits on a few points for me. First: Concept. Developing a concept for your project is so vital. It’s when your instinct gets the most exercise, and your innate capacity to be a composer gets to flex. The concept becomes your guiding principle, your voice, your maxim. Do this first, and stick to it so you can fully realize it. This is how you grow and develop. Secondly: Stripping things away to their most basic functional utilization creates elegance. Sculpt the fat away until your work says as little as it possibly has to, just a hair before it could fall apart, and see what that creates! Find out what breaks things as an empirical way of discovering what makes them work.
*Read. Listen. Observe. Read more books, read anything worth re-reading. All the great literature, mythology. Religion, philosophy. Read more than you think is normal. Avoid the top 10 bestseller lists as your critical lens. The majority of that is just going to be noise and verbiage, and meant to be more or less disposable. If a work has been around for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of years, take heed to it as it has withstood time for a reason. When you listen to music make it mindful and effortful, don’t just have it playing in the background all the time as noise.
*Don’t worry about what’s going to happen, learn from what has happened and why it has persisted. If you can dispel the common neomanic attitude and look to the future, again with the lens of “What bad can be taken away,” your life will ebb gracefully from needless complexity and flow towards appreciation of simplicity and effectiveness. I don’t read the news, I’m very infrequent on social media if it’s not work related, and I discard my phone whenever it’s practical. I try to avoid the chaotic muddle of “What’s happening right now,” and just try to focus on a micro level of making each day the best, as it will naturally transcend the macro structure of my entire life.
*Take care of your mental and physical health first and foremost. Learn to rest, but not couch potato rest. Things like weightlifting (you must deadlift, always), slow strolling, yoga, reading a book, learning a new hobby, practicing an instrument, meditating, napping, hiking. These are rest activities, despite them not being totally akin to laying on a giant blow up unicorn in an infinity pool. They will make you approach your creative work with renewed vigor and profound efficiency. Experiment with your diet, and expose it to a lot of variability. The Greek Orthodox calendar is a pretty brilliant traditional method of eating. Some days you’re a vegan, some days you fast, some days you eat fish, some days you eat 96 ounces of raw steak. A lot of people don’t like to discuss mental health, but depression and anxiety are so common with creatives, and it’s dangerous not to acknowledge it. I go through lots of dark cycles and I’ve learned to work with and through it, not making any overly impactful life decisions in those times and doing whatever activities I can to work out of it. I think this might be counterintuitive, but it’s important to understand that sometimes it’s just part of the natural cycle of things and you need to okay with just letting it run its course. If you’re fixating on the need to be happy all the time, it’s only going to make you more miserable when you’re not, as the pursuit of a fleeting emotional state would require a very advanced mix of drugs to even sustain for a short period of time.