Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #39: Mastering the Score: Tom Third’s Fusion of Music and Art

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 39

Interviewee: Tom Third

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

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Jason: Welcome to the podcast. Today we’re joined by Tom Third. This guy has scored over 250 hours of film and television. Tom, you’ve been nominated for Canadian Screen Awards. You’ve done projects for HBO and all these networks. You’re that successful composer that when people think, oh, my gosh, I want to be like that guy, and you’ve got your own studio. You’re also teaching students at the university now and still maintaining a crazy schedule with the music that you’re writing for. I don’t really call that your real job or what you love doing? Anyway, thank you for joining us today.

Let’s maybe just rewind the clock all the way back. You’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. If you go back to when you were a high school or maybe when you were a student, did you think, oh, I want to be a composer. How in the world did you get from where you were as a teenager that probably knew everything and where you are now, where you don’t know that much? These students may know more about text than we do some days.

Tom: I think my story is similar to a lot of people’s. I had no idea that this was what was going to happen or where my career would lead. It was not the plan. I was always into music, obviously, and as a kid and played in high school bands and stuff, but I was actually streaming into an art career like graphic design or something like that. I went to art college, but I ended up studying film there, and I was still making music and then I got struck by lightning in a sense that I got a record deal really early on when I was young based on stuff I was doing on four-track cassettes. Not long after I graduated from college in the early 90s, I got a record contract to make electronica/ hip-hop/ trip hop records and that’s what I did in the 90s. My day job was working on film sets and stuff and doing all these other crazy odd jobs, whatever it was. Then I landed in commercials, writing music, doing jingles for 10 years. That was what started paying the rent. I was making these records and then doing jingles on the side, which was less common then, but I think it’s more common now for a lot of people.

I just edged my way out of that work into doing longer stuff so it went from commercials to doing short films to doing slightly longer films and then I got a television series in the early 2000s, and that’s where… I’m still doing that stuff. So that’s where I landed.

Jason: Well, and television series, that’s not an easy project. You’re probably under the gun more than almost anything with all of the episodes you have to do, right?

Tom: You are correct. It is crazy. When I started doing it, I thought, oh, it’s just like the films I was doing, but longer. I was really wrong about that. The pace is crazy. Everything about it is a bit hectic but that’s the good thing, too. Anyway, I thought it was impossible to work as fast as I do now, but you figure out how to do it. There are all kinds of strategies you just realize, oh, it’s like running the four-minute mile or something. People thought it was impossible, and then somebody did it. You get into that pace, and you learn how to write faster and trust your intuitions more readily and I’m addicted to it. It’s thrilling.

Jason: Now my guess is, what you’re doing now, there’s no way had you been thrown into that 20 years ago, you would have gotten eaten alive but all of the preparation and things that you did in the past probably prepared you to be able to handle what you’re doing now, right?

Tom: Yeah. But no, the first couple of shows were really challenging and really a struggle. I just barely got through them alive. That’s like every challenge, right? My first hard job is like that. It wasn’t like I walked in and went, oh, I aced that one. The first couple of shows were really brutalizing and not sleeping because you’re just behind and it was just really mad, but you get better at it.

Jason: If we were to be sitting in one of your school classes, the college where you’re at, what advice do you wish somebody would have given you back when you were in that stage of life that would have helped you maybe avoid some of the challenges you had to suffer through the hard way, maybe?

Tom: I think the big one, looking back on what I know I could have done better, which was 04:57 collaborate more, ask for help when I needed it. Now that I’m mentoring people so much, I think, oh, they’re doing exactly what I should have done, which is find people who already know how to do this thing and ask them how they do it. I think it’s as simple as that. It’s really seeking out people who have braved those waters already because I was younger and I was a bit of an egomaniac, and maybe that’s not changed, but I wanted to just do everything myself. I’m going to solve everything myself and rebuild this from scratch, even though it’s been done a million times before. I learned a lot, but it was trial by fire. I think I could have made it easier if I just looked around, but this is back pre-YouTube and pre-internet, almost. There are way more avenues now for people to just go online and watch a tutorial, which is what I do nowadays when I want to learn something.

Jason: Yeah. I think a lot of times when we think we know everything, there’s definitely value in that struggle to figure things out but if you don’t have to struggle quite that hard, why would you want to as well.

Tom: Yeah. Within reason and there’s still a deadline and a delivery date, so, your clients and your showrunners and your producers, they don’t really care what you had to do to get to the finish line just as long as you get there. Period. If you get help or do this or whatever, they’re good with that.

Jason: What mistakes do you see some of these students as they’re coming out of school? If you think about all these people that are in the classes, not all of them are going to be composers. There’s just a variety of careers. I was a marketing major in school, and I think there might be two or three total people out of this hundred plus person graduating class that maybe even does marketing. What mistakes do you feel like people make when they’re thinking they want to do the music? Is it just they take whatever comes in their lap, or do they look, oh, this will pay the bills. They take that job and then they hate it forever and never do music. What mistakes do you see that are made often?

Tom: I think if anything, it’s letting… So, I know I took everything. It’s like this is just all the kinds of work I can do. This is music. I’m going to do commercials. Whatever comes my way, I’m doing it. That served me really well. I met a lot of people that way and built networks and bridges towards projects I might not have worked on otherwise. I still volunteer on a ton of things just to build a relationship. I think if anything, I see people that get a little bit too precious about the sanctity of their work, and that holds them back a little bit. 08:04 I think if you can find a space where you are pretty chill about collaborating and taking notes and criticism from people and letting some of that go, that really can speed up the process, I think. I certainly see composers who are way more talented than I am, no question, who aren’t working as much because they’re a little more precious about their work. They’re a little higher maintenance, we would say in the business. They need to be coddled a bit more.

I think as soon as people can let some of that go a little bit and be a bit more Zen, I think that’s one of the big steps. That was a big step for me. I didn’t set out thinking, oh, I need to become more Zen about all of this but when I did and looked back, I thought, oh, that was really one of the paths that helped me.

Jason: What have been some of the ways that have been the most effective for you building relationships, whether it’s meeting directors or music supervisors? If you’re a new kid in the school thinking, okay, I really want to go down the same path as Tom did, how do they go about that? Do they need to go spend a bunch of money on conferences? Where do you find these opportunities?

Tom: There’s a million ways to do this without spending a bunch of money. There’s so many meetup groups. I encourage people like… I’m a member of the Composers Guild here in Canada. All the stuff you would have in the states, the Songwriters League, I can’t remember the name of it right now, but those things. Join all those things. That is number one. I was not a joiner. I’m a composer for a reason, like a TV composer, because you work on your own most of the time. For me, that just suits the way I am. I’m just introverted, and I just like to focus and get in there. I was being harassed by the Composers Guild here, and I knew everybody. It was part of it. They said, you got to join. We got to join. We need people like you and so I finally did it. Then I thought, why did I wait so long to do that? I was hanging out with my fellow composers. It wasn’t about getting work so much, but it was about building up those social muscles and talking to people who had made mistakes and mentoring and learning from people who know way more than I do.

So that’s number one. That’s the number one thing I tell people to do is 10:32 find the collective, the groups, the organizations of like-minded individuals and hang out with them. Go for coffee, go for beer, go to shows, whatever that is, hang out with your peeps. Then the conference thing, film festivals, all of that stuff, yeah, that can help for sure. I think the big step is finding your tribe. Yeah, you know.

Jason: With the film festivals, for somebody who’s brand new coming in, do you just go and buy a ticket to a show? How do you get your foot in those doors to make it worthwhile going to some of the film festivals?

Tom: That’s when the conferences, I think, are useful. A lot of them have free tiers and stuff for people to just get in. There’s a lot of stuff that’s open to the public. You don’t have to come, you get a badge, you don’t have to buy the big fancy pass and all that stuff. Those things are good. Those are good schmoozy networking events. They’re social. It’s not so much about harassing the people up on stage and trying to hand them your card or something like that. It’s really about meeting the people that are there in the audience. That’s, I think, where a lot of the real energy goes back and forth. You talk to somebody, and this has happened to me. I’ve either moderated those things or been in the audience when it’s been some famous person up there or something, but just talking to your neighbor and going, what are you working on? Oh, I’m working on a movie. I’m a composer. Those things really do happen.

The film I am scoring right now, I met the director at a film festival party. We were just hanging out. We had a lot in common and she knew somebody that I knew. I said, I want to do your movie, and now we’re doing it.

Jason: That’s awesome.

Tom: That face-to-face stuff really does help. I know for a lot of us musicians, we’re all introverts. We’re not necessarily the best promoters of ourselves, but that’s a muscle that you can build up. I swear, every time I go to one of these things and think, I’m not going to know a soul there, I’m going to feel like a jerk. It’s just like that party where you don’t know anyone.

Jason: Imposter syndrome. You’re not worthy to be here, right?

Tom: Exactly. Then you get there, you just like, Let’s do this. You get there, you walk in the room, and you realize, okay, I’m not the only person here that doesn’t know anybody. There’s a whole bunch of people here that don’t know anybody. All we have to do is go to the food table and start talking, and it just, the whole thing, opens up, I find. For me, that was terror. Going to a party where I don’t know anyone is just the kiss of death for me. I think I’m going to just die on the spot. I get there and then I know a ton of people, or I do within 10 minutes because there’s a million people in a similar situation.

Jason: Right. I think a lot of times people confuse sales or just talking to other people as being salesy. The fact, like you mentioned, that people are there, they’re all feeling the same way, and they’re probably relieved that Tom next to me opened up his mouth and said, Hey, I’m Tom. What are you working on? Just be friendly. I think everybody wants a friend.

Tom: 100 %.

Jason: My kids make fun of me sometimes because when I go on airplane rides, I love sitting next to new people and meeting interesting people. As awkward as it is when you sit down, you have that 10 seconds or 20 seconds where you can either be friendly with that person and they’ll probably talk your ear off for three hours, or they may not even look at you for three hours. It’s much more pleasant when you at least can be friendly and be a good human being and get to know somebody and care about them.

Tom: Just read the room. I’ll walk into one of these things and I’ll see somebody there on their phone. They’re scrolling. No one’s really on their phone at that moment, they’re faking it just like I am.

Jason: Get me out of here.

Tom: Yeah. You can go just find somebody that’s scrolling on their phone and say, hi, how are you? They will flip their phone down. I certainly do because you just feel like a jerk because you’re on your phone in a social situation. Those conferencing type things, I think they’re really pretty useful for meeting people. It’s a bit like planting a seed. It’s not necessarily like you get a job out of those things, but you meet somebody that knows somebody. The more you do those things, the more seeds you are definitely planting. I have people coming back to me 10 years later going, Remember, we met at that thing, and then we end up working together and you’re like, okay, that worked.

Jason: It’s funny how the seeds that are planted grow over time. I’ve got stuff 15, 20 years ago that I happened to put somebody on my phone, and then all of a sudden, they reach out and you… Sometimes I don’t even remember them, but they apparently remembered enough about that interaction that they reached out, which is awesome. Awesome. I think really, if you look at what you’re doing as a musician, you’re serving and helping other people solve their problems. When you realize you’re actually helping and serving, I think that introvert in a lot of us that’s scared to talk to somebody. It’s not quite as scary to open up that mouth when you’re helping somebody versus trying to push something on somebody that they don’t want.

Tom: I think that’s really observant. I think that is true. My experiences, in film and television, we’re in post production, we are the last step of the process. We do nothing really but fix, make things better. It’s pretty rare that the music spoils things. We’re usually making it better. We’re making the director happier. Everyone’s like, Wow, yeah. It’s all sounding so great now. They look at us like magicians, really. It’s a mysterious, ethereal substance that we work with, music. We just come in and spread our fair dust around and build a film score. Meanwhile, you’re not sleeping. I can say musicians are generally loved the world over but in the film festival context, the composers are like, well, the partiers and the bohemians, and we make all these fabulous film scores. There’s a lot of clichés attached to it. There’s no question.

Jason: I think as I’ve been around the business longer, the more you realize, especially with TV series like you were talking about, there’s almost always going to be delays. The last thing that typically gets filled in is the music. Maybe you were supposed to have weeks, but I have no doubt you had days or hours probably to do a score. As a musician, I think you just smile about it, and you don’t sleep for a day or two and you deliver. I think there’s definitely appreciation when a director sees what… Or when they have to understand what you went through. I don’t think they actually understand what is taking place all the time, but there are some I think that do get it.

Tom: Certainly, on television, people get it. All of the deadlines get crunched in every department. Ours get crunched quite a lot because there’s a delivery right after hours, right? Everybody. There’s always that issue. Everybody is struggling and has issues and gets busy with stuff and whatever. You’re not always doing 100%. Sometimes that one wasn’t as good as that one, but I find the best showrunners, they know that because it’s the same with the episodes. Sometimes an actor isn’t fully on and all those kinds of things. It’s really like a family thing. If you do your best, this has been my experience. If you do your best and just give it your best effort, you did your best. We ran out of time. That’s fine. We get it. We’re on to the next one. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I find it quite a loving environment. Everybody’s kicking butt so you’re like the Marines there. Just everybody’s taking care of each other, and we’re going to get through this.

Jason: Absolutely. Interesting. Well, talk to me a little bit about how you end up teaching at the university? You’ve been doing film sports. I mean, you’ve won awards for 20 years, big deal Canadian Screen Awards and Gemini awards. I know you won a Volkswagen competition; I think. What made you want to come back and teach students? Did you have 30 students, 50 students, 100 students, 200 students?

Tom: It started small, and it got more and more. I graduated from the Ontario College of Art, your standard art school here in Toronto. They encouraged me to apply for a job – teaching sound. I had taken sound there, and that was mostly the work that I did. A position came up where the teacher that taught me, one of my mentors, John Tucker, he retired from that job, and I took over his job. I was 30. I was young and so not huge classes, 10 or 15 students or something like that. I just fell in love with that. Talking about work is like research. Having to articulate your process a little bit makes me a better writer, makes me a better composer, because I have to describe it to somebody who’s coming to me for answers, so I have to research. It’s really strengthened my writing muscles for sure. Anyway, I fell in love with that job and was doing it for a long time. Then I had to take a break after about 10 years but then I started mentoring somewhere else at another film school. Then I started at another university and just in the last couple of years. That’s like a music and film history class but wide open so that there’s no prerequisites. It’s not music students. It’s a lot of marketing money for architects, engineers, biomedical doctors, everything.

Jason: They’re taking up for a fun class then.

Tom: It’s a riot. It’s really cool. We get to just talk about art and talk about movies and what they’re into, but I bring them through the canon, and we come up from Max Deiner in the 30s and end up with whatever, John Williams or something. Talking about it, the more I pontificate about it, the humbler I get because it’s, of course, so much to learn. I’m better at my job as a writer and as a communicator. I think maybe that’s a bigger fringe benefit of that. Having to talk about it a lot has made me a better communicator with directors and stuff because I can make them feel more at ease with a process that is absolutely vague and crazy.

Jason: With limited direction given. I’m curious, this podcast is called the Successful Musicians Podcast. What would you say is your definition today, having been in this business for 20 plus years now, what would you call success as a musician for you now?

Tom: It’s a low bar as far as I’m concerned. It is. If you love music and you are playing, that’s a success. Even people that are really into music or I played when I was younger and then I stopped playing or something like that, I feel like, okay, well, that’s a plateau that you’ve reached but if you want to keep being in that joyful space, just playing is a huge part of it. Even just being a fan, to me, is just engaging with this art form. I’ve started jamming with old friends again on a weekly basis, something I haven’t done for ages because I thought I was too busy, and we’ve started doing that again. The transcendent joy of just getting together with a bunch of friends with no set list and we don’t play songs. We just wig out. There’s whatever old play, knocking on heaven’s door or something like that. A couple of really simple tracks but the joy of that is so profound. I come home from those sessions; I feel like I’ve been on the beach. I’ve had a vacation in Mexico for a week.

It’s just so therapeutic just to be in that space where you’re truly in the moment. It’s the same for me when I’m writing quickly for television, but you get into that psychological space where you’re really, truly living in the moment. There’s no past and there’s no future. You’re just in the zone. It’s pretty profound. I think it’s one of the big reasons people play in the first place.

Jason: That’s some great insight. That’s something that not very many people have said, but I think binding that joy in, just playing and having this blank canvas to enjoy. A lot of times I do think people get too busy or too worked up in their whatever the thing is that’s taking the majority of their time and thought. I’ve heard people say, take a 10- or 15-minute walk, and that’s one of the most therapeutic things and best things you can do for your health. I think for sure; music is probably even better than taking that walk. If you just put yourself at the piano or the guitar or whatever it is you play and enjoy it, I’d be curious to know if there’s any studies out there that show the health of people that have taken 15, 20 minutes a day to enjoy the music instrument and to see if they outperform or are just happier in general. It would be a really interesting study.

Tom: I bet you would agree. Right off the top of our heads, does it feel like it’s healthy and therapeutic? Yes. There’s no question. Why would we keep doing it? It could be snowboarding. It could be a million things or gardening, or all these things’ people do. It does activate a part of my brain anyway that it’s like, I don’t get to it any other way. There’s no other way to get into that state. I think a lot about when I was playing music as a teenager and hearing chord progressions for the first time, I remember some of those moments. I remember hearing the blues for the first time when I was six or eight or whatever it was, and how mind boggling that was. It was like seeing the color blue for the first time in your life. I always think about, well, what is it I can do in my playing or my writing that will rekindle that emotion, that discovery of sound or a chord or melody for the first time in your life? It’s less frequent, of course, as you get older, because you’ve heard a million kinds of music, but it still happens to me. I’ll still see a film or hear a record and go, that is completely new to me.

Jason: Well, and then we start getting older and we start forgetting things, and then it still feels new, I think, sometimes to us, right?

Tom: Yeah, exactly.

Jason: It’s interesting. A lot of the piano that I do, I’ve done a lot of sheet music over the years, and I would say my biggest audience is that older lady group that are almost retiring. It’s interesting to see how many people, when they don’t have to do the work and maybe they’re not as busy, how many people return back to the piano or whatever that instrument was and have that desire to tap back into creativity. Unfortunately, I think it’s a shame that we can’t figure that out when we’re in our 20s and 30s and continue that habit from a health standpoint.

Tom: I think a lot of people are. There’s this thing in the arts that’s performative. We have an expectation that if you’re going to play or play publicly or something, that you’ve got to be so good. People are afraid to pick these things up again. If anybody’s on the fence about this, just do it in private or whatever it is you need to do to just get back into it again. You don’t have to tell anybody you’re doing it. Just play in secret.

Jason: I did a concert a couple of weeks ago, and it was my favorite thing of the night. It was fun interacting with the audience. We had about 50 people and we had dinner. But at the end of the night, this guy came up, and he’s probably in his mid to late 50s, and he came up to me and he said, I wanted to come because I got your easier piano hymns book. I’m not a good piano player, and I’ve been able to sit down and play out of that, but he said to me, this is what really just blew my mind. He said, I love that you messed up at the beginning. During your songs, it gave me hope that I can do it too, and made me realize, you know what? If even these great people that are supposed to be the performers and professionals mess up, then it’s totally fine for me to mess up, too. It just was like a game changer for him but for me as an artist, I was embarrassed, I guess, that I really messed up on a pretty bad song. It was not good.

I apologized even before it was a request somebody had done. I’d written this tune, if you took Moonlight Sonata from Beethoven and I thought, okay, what if I were to score a scene where Beethoven’s losing his hearing? It got this Moonlight Sonata, but it had multiple sharps and some flats, and it just sounds really cool. I just finished it three days earlier and it was not polished at all and then to the point where I’m appalled, everybody loved it. What was funny is that it was their favorite thing that I got comments from people on. I did a terrible job of performing it. I think a lot of it made me just remember that people love the flaws as much as the perfection. I think sometimes we as artists and musicians, or even probably in film, think we’ve got to have it be perfect. The fact that we’re human and we aren’t perfect is the trait that actually draws an audience or fans or makes it seem real. Even in the film, I’m sure you’ve had songs that you’ve done and you’re like, oh, there’s a bad note, but it might be the thing that made people love it even more.

Tom: I couldn’t agree more with this that there’s so much energy on that boundary between keeping it together and going off the rails a little bit. It’s a pretty exciting place to be when you see a jazz band quartet playing or something. It’s all just a bit unhinged, and it’s pretty amazing. I’m never happy just because I’m a hand ringer. I’m never happy with anything that I turn to.

Jason: It’s never polished and ready. You just want, Give me 10 more minutes or another two hours and…

Tom: It’ll be there. Exactly. It’s like, Okay, it’s ready when it’s ready. Then a year later, I’ll go, it seems okay. I think we could ask Con Zimmer, right, were you happy with that score? He’d go, No, I’m sure. Maybe, who knows? It could very well be that, no, I didn’t get this done. I didn’t get that done but as an audience, we don’t necessarily know that. You mentioned imposter syndrome earlier. That’s never gone away for me. That’s just like that is the state of affairs. I’m never going to make it. I’m never going to be satisfied. That’s one of the things that keeps me going. I want to try and do it better each time. I don’t know if I am or not, but the desire to do that is driving me for sure. I could look at the last one and it’s like, oh, I could mix that better. That melody is weak, something, something, something. There’s always a thing.

Jason: As I’m listening to you talk, I can tell that you love doing the music and just love that process and the journey. Even though that journey sometimes is a little bumpy and rough and you even use the word suffer. I’ve heard people say, you need to do what you’re passionate about, or what’s your passion and figure that out, and then you won’t work another day in your life. I heard the other day the word passion actually means to suffer. What’s so funny is when you find that passionate thing that you love to do with your music, it probably doesn’t feel so much like suffering it. The journey to enjoy that thing is, if you’re willing to suffer for that thing you’re doing, all of a sudden now that’s probably where we find a lot of the most happiness and enjoyment and things that we maybe are most proud of is that discord and the dissonance and the hard things that we went through means so much more than that perfect performance maybe that happened.

Tom: In the grand scheme of things, it’s there. That for me, it’s hard. It’s crazy work. The hours are long and it’s challenging but in the grand scale of suffering, work or what I’m teaching in a marking paper or something like that, that’s drudgery. That’s drudgery, I get it. That’s suffering. Writing music, and I say this often, even on the worst days, can I possibly complain about this? No.

Jason: I know we’re getting low on time, but what advice would you have for the composers in working with directors and maybe helping bring the best out of that director? Have you got any examples or what advice would you have to better work with directors?

Tom: There’s a bunch of things. You approach with an open heart, for sure. The director whose project you’re about to work on, knows more about that film than you ever will, particularly if they’ve written it. They’re bringing family experiences into it and all this stuff. I try to learn some of those things, like where is this coming from? Why are you making this? What did you want to say about it? We talk about film, we talk about the movie, and the story that’s being told. That’s really the job in the end. Your job as a composer is just part of the storytelling team. The camera people and the costume designers and the actors, everybody else is part of this team, this storytelling. So that’s the number one concern. Your music doesn’t matter. I find sometimes when I’m working with less experienced directors, they want to talk about the form of the music and get into the nitty gritty and talk about instrumentation and all those kinds of things. I always beg off all of that stuff. Let’s not talk about that. Let’s just talk about something we both share. Let’s talk about emotions and what you want the audience to be feeling, and let’s just talk about colors.

It’s really an abstract conversation, but really trying to get to the heart of how you want the audience to feel in each moment versus nerding out about music or treating it like a rock video, and they’re going to put in their favorite songs and that thing. We talk about stories. I find the more you talk about a story, I think the more directors are open to that collaboration because that’s how they feel. They’re trying to serve the story just like we are.

Jason: That’s interesting you say it that way is just getting into those emotions because that director, they wouldn’t be doing that film. I guess it might happen once in a while, but most of the time they care a lot and care deeply about how people are going to feel. I’m not sure that the camera or even the actor sometimes connect on that emotional level as much as maybe they should. I think music, though, that’s the key to finding that right sound is understanding how the director wants people to feel. That’s brilliant. Yeah.

Tom: It’s the big guns. At the end, you’ve got a movie with tent music, whatever it is, Hans Zimmer half the time and you’re replacing and reinventing all of those things. We’ve really got our hands on the levers of people’s emotions. This is the moment we’ll be watching frame by frame now. That’s where the timpani hits or the trumpet does that solo or whatever it is. People are crying and like, okay, you know what? I did it. We got it in the right spot. I think that’s… I don’t know. There are all kinds of nitty gritty stuff, but never underestimate the director. I see a lot of composers think, oh, I know what they want. I know how to score this. I know it’s going to be right for them, and they’ll do it. It’s not right. It’s not what the director envisioned, and they didn’t figure out what those emotions were and how to convey them. Not necessarily like, do we need cello here? Violins here? Whatever. It’s more about just that emotional stuff. Those are the most important conversations I find.

Jason: Awesome. Last question for you. What is the best advice that you feel like you’ve gotten over the years to help you be successful in this music composer world that you’re in now?

Tom: It comes to mind, something my mom used to say to me, which was, 37:42 let your conscience be your guide. It has nothing to do with music, but I think about that a lot, behaving ethically and with kindness and generosity in all of this. In the end, the music and the movies, everything that we work on, our records, it’s all going to turn to dust, I think but the relationships that we’ve forged with the people that we collaborate with, that’s truly important to me. I realize now more than ever. Half the time, it’s to show good or it’s to show bad. I don’t know. The people I’m working with are amazing. They’re like family. I love it. They love me. It’s great. We’ve worked so hard together. That’s the stuff I’m taking away from everything. It’s so cliché, but the journey is half the… Whatever. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. What am I trying to say?

Jason: Enjoying it while you’re on that journey because it may not be pleasant for part of the journey, but being able to learn to enjoy it and love it along the way is key to being happy and just in life in general.

Tom: Building up those relationships that are often sometimes they’re sticky at first where it’s a bit sticky, where it’s out of odds creatively or something and it’s like, how do I make this work? How am I going to make this work? When you figure that out, to me, that’s as big a deal as figuring out the melody that’s whatever. The relationship with the director, to me, is definitely part of the key to the puzzle of the whole reason for doing this thing.

Jason: I think that director helping that director be proud of what they’re putting out is the key to getting that second job or the next job with them, too.

Tom: There’s no question. All my business is repeat business. I work my tail off on somebody’s film. I just give it 110 % and if it works, then they’re happy. They’ll come back.

Jason: Some great words of advice. Tom, thank you so much for sharing your time. I could keep talking with you for another hour or two. We should definitely catch up another time but if people want to go learn about you and your music and check out some of the projects you’re working on. Is there a website you’d like to send to? Where should they go? We’ll put this in the show notes for you as well.

Tom: Yeah, it’s just tomthird.com. It’s basically where everything comes out. If people search my name, all the nonsense comes out as far as I can tell.

Jason: Awesome. Well, thank you again for just sharing your experiences and advice. I know you will have helped multiple people that have listened to this down the road, whether it’s in the future as well. This is going to be around for a long time, and I think you’ve definitely left some gold nuggets and words of wisdom that will help a lot of people. Hopefully, if this has impacted you, share it with others that you know are in the music business or just need to hear this interview because this has been a great one. Thank you, Tom.

Tom: Thank you. Real pleasure. I had a great time.

Finding success and fulfillment in the music industry is possible. Looking forward to seeing you in our next episode.