ANU Spaces Leonard Weiss - Newsroom - ANU

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ANU Spaces Leonard Weiss

Leonard Weiss
Meet Leonard Weiss, a Bachelor of Music graduate who recently won
an award for Best Original Music at the Lights! Canberra! Action!
2014 short film festival.
What do you do at ANU?
I recently graduated from a three-year Bachelor of Music degree
concurrent with a Bachelor of Science as well where Ive focused in

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computer science. Ive postponed computer science to do some

further study and investigate music and science and the combination
between the two of them then Ill come back to it fairly soon.
What is your favourite spot on campus?
Good question! Probably the willow trees next to Sullivans Creek
theyre just a nice place to relax. Otherwise the desks outside the
School of Music are kinda nice on a quiet day. You sit there and get to
relax.
You like it because
Its good to have somewhere thats a bit relaxed where you get a bit of
a break from it and you can still work and meet up with people but at
the same time you feel like youre not being beaten over the head by
a textbook. So its a good mix of both worlds.
If you were free for an afternoon, what would you do?
I end up doing a lot of music so Id probably be inclined to stay home,
catch up on TV shows, veg out. Otherwise catch up with friends if
they were free. I enjoy spending time around the lake, I play the
Carillon there so its nice scenery, nice relaxing place. Id probably
spend a few hours getting outside my normal work routine and just
relax.
Youve been busy in recent times. Tell us what youve been up
to?
Recently, after finishing the degree Ive been doing some music work
music admin and also conducting various groups around Canberra,
and I also wrote a short film score for the Lights! Canberra! Action!
Short film festival which then won best original score.
Did you ever think you would get into composing musical
scores?
Not really. Id kind of hoped so. From maybe when I was about 14 or
15 I thought it was fun. Its nice writing your own music. As much as
performing other music is good and conducting other music is
fantastic, writing something thats yours, you can turn around and say
well, it kinda puts a smile on my face because I wrote it and its
completely new and no one has heard it before. I never thought Id
win, I was just entering it for fun. Its good fun helping out friends and
saying yes Ill write some music for your film and Ill try and suit the
mood and whatever. But at the end of the day its really good to say
hey other people have also picked up that clearly this score fits and
its a really good feeling.
How did you get into writing musical scores? Did you just apply
to the Lights! Canberra! Action! festival?
Pretty much. Lights! Canberra! Action! was open to anyone, so I have
a few friends who studied film and Ive known them from when I went
to school with them a few years ago. So they sent me a message and
said hi were looking at writing a film and doing a recording or
whatever to get it in and could you write a film score for it? and they
explained the turnaround was 10 days for the whole thing. I said yep,
not doing much at the end of February. So its just knowing a team of

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good film makers and I was very lucky that they got to involve me in it.
Aside from continuing your studies, what would you like to do
next?
More of this sort of thing. Composition-wise, there are a few
competitions which Im hoping to enter before the middle of the year
and then Im overseas in June and July. Im being sent overseas to
conduct a choir in a film festival and then Im attending the World
Carillon Congress in Belgium for about 10 days. In between that Ive
arranged to meet with Dr Jeremy Thurlow at Cambridge and Im
performing a solo recital in Germany, so definitely lots of music
ahead.
What advice would you have for other music students wanting to
compose musical scores or go down this career direction?
My biggest bit of advice would be set aside time and actually do it and
when theres a deadline there, theres a deadline there and you have
to get something to it. One of the hardest parts about writing a score
in 10 days is at the end, your film has to be ready and it has to be
submitted and there has to be some music there. So at the end of the
day its crunch time. The easiest way to do it is just set aside an hour
or so per day and do try and make a regular time so you can sit down,
play around, keep experimenting, find out what different notes work
well together, what chords work well together and how you can
change them to keep making the piece interesting.
To listen to Leonards score, download it here.

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UPDATED: 4 April 2014/ RESPONSIBLE OFFICER: Director, SCAPA/ PAGE CONTACT: Director, SCAPA

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