You've Already Heard My Work

For the last few years, a few people have asked me the same question: where did he go?

I went quiet on purpose. I moved states, stepped back from the noise, and spent the time building. Not resting, building. And here is the strange part: even while I was gone, you were probably still hearing me.

If you watched a certain film on Netflix, laughed through a prime-time show, or caught a jingle you couldn't quite place, there is a good chance the music was mine. For more than thirty years I have written scores, songs and sonic identities for film, TV, advertising and animation, and most of the time my name stayed off the screen while the work did the talking. I preferred it that way. The work speaks louder than its author, and I was glad to stand behind it.

So why speak up now?

Because somewhere along the way the way I see my own work changed, and I think it is worth writing about. I stopped seeing a song as a job that ends when the invoice clears, and started seeing every piece I create as an asset: something that can be owned, protected, and can keep paying off long after the session is over. A melody is a moment. A catalog is a business.

That shift turned me from a composer into something harder to label, a creative who also runs the business of what he creates. It is the reason I built Zooparky, where a story becomes owned IP, from the first note to the final frame. And it is the space I want to explore here, out loud, for the first time.

This is a thinly populated crossing. Most creative people would rather not think about rights, contracts, catalogs and recurring revenue, and most business people cannot sit down and write the thing that moves an audience. I have spent a career with one foot in each, and I learned that the interesting work happens exactly where they meet.

So this is where I have been, and this is what I will be writing about: how creation becomes an asset, what I have learned building one, and the odd, rewarding life of doing what you love while refusing to let it become something you can no longer afford to love.

You have already heard the work. Every now and then, I will tell you the story behind it.

Pull up a chair.