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I'm sure you've had this experience: you go to a party, a meeting or seminar, or maybe just an informal gathering of people — friends, work colleagues, folks out in the world. Inevitably there is one person there who stands out, the center of attention, clearly the most confident, smartest, most successful. How did this person get to be that way? Blessed with talent, charisma, and brains, they go through life winning every game they play, it seems.

If you are one of those people, congratulations. But what about the rest of us? How can we hope to compete and succeed in their world, maybe even become a bit like that someday? Let's take a look at a few charismatic successful people I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the years, and then talk a bit about what we can learn from them.

The first composer I ever...

I'm sure you've had this experience: you go to a party, a meeting or seminar, or maybe just an informal gathering of people — friends, work colleagues, folks out in the world. Inevitably there is one person there who stands out, the center of attention, clearly the most confident, smartest, most successful. How did this person get to be that way? Blessed with talent, charisma, and brains, they go through life winning every game they play... it seems.

If you are one of those people, congratulations. But what about the rest of us? How can we hope to compete and succeed in their world, maybe even become a bit like that someday? Let's take a look at a few charismatic successful people I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the years, and then talk a bit about what we can learn from them.

The first composer I ever...

I got my start recording score music for episodic television a couple of decades ago, when the personal studio trend was just getting going in a big way. Among many others, I engineered music for the ABC series thirtysomething with composers Stewart Levin and Snuffy Walden, and then Northern Exposure with composer David Schwartz. Both started out in fairly modest home studio settings with simple gear, and as the shows and composers gained more success, their studios became more sophisticated. They wrote some of the coolest music I've had the pleasure of working on, and I still remember those experiences fondly.

So, I am way familiar with the "standard" model of how most television scoring is done these days, based on multitrack production techniques, using Midi and audio tracks. Each part is carefully crafted and laid in, one at a time, until it sounds complete. Mixing might be done right...