Cody Westheimer Always Composed
Cody Westheimer is a noted film and television composer and a multi-instrumentalist. The Los Angeles resident currently runs New West Studios with his wife Julia Newmann, and has composed compelling scores for dozens of dramatic features, documentaries, TV shows, and games. Cody’s recently scored film ‘Conception’ starring David Arquette and Modern Family’s Julie Bowen is being released early 2012 and he is currently scoring the zombie flick ‘Detention of the Dead’ , starring Revenge’s Crista Allen and Glee’s Max Adler. Cody has also just been nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media award for his work on ‘The Mono Lake Story‘ for “Best Score: Indie, Short, Documentary.” The winners will be announced at the live award show November 17, 2011, Hollywood Music in Media Awards.
Who influenced your love of music?
It’s been a along process since I was a kid, my parents were very supportive of me learning music. My grandmother was very involved in the local music scene in Santa Barbara, which is where I grew up. And my dad, even though he didn’t read or write music or anything, he was involved with bands growing up. He had a great singing voice and played a little harmonica. My mom is a visual artist, so that kind of passed down to me I guess too, in a different form maybe. By the time I got to junior high and then high school, I was just very very involved with music. That was pretty much my main focus in life, both Jazz and Classical mostly, going through high school. Then I wanted to be involved with film, but I’ve always been a still photographer, just as a hobby, and film is kind of a merging of all my interest.
You play a variety of unusual instruments, what is the rarest instrument you play?
My rarest would probably be the shakuhachi, which is a Japanese bamboo flute. I guess I can’t call it rare because there is a whole sub-culture of people who play it and learn the sacred literature. I started studying that in college and out of all the instruments I do play, I play it the most formally. But I was classically trained on the Tuba and growing up I played a lot of jazz trombone. But shakuhachi has really been the instrument that I’ve kept up with the most besides keyboards of course, which is not rare at all.
Is there any instrument you can’t play?
Of course! I mean I could make a noise out of any instrument. For example, I know how a violin works but I couldn’t play a nice melody on it. I have a violin for screechy horror sounds. I certainly don’t play every instrument well. My thing is just to try to explore different sounds and so even if I’m not playing the correct sound on an instrument, I enjoy kind of experimenting around.
Out of all the instruments you own, which is your absolute favorite?
It would probably be a toss up between the shakuhachi and I certainly love the tuba! Any comedy film I’m working on, I try to sneak it in somewhere, because you can play it in such a goofy way. A lot of the odd instruments I play, I often use them as ways to kind of add quirk to comedy. But I really enjoy the tuba, and since I have a classical background with it, I can do some unusual things that aren’t typical of the instrument.
What are your biggest inspirations for writing scores?
It varies on the project; I try to find a personal connection to every project I’m working on. For example there was a documentary called “True Wolf” which is about this wild wolf who was rescued and saved and couldn’t be introduced back into the wild for a variety of reasons. I am a huge dog lover so that was a very easy thing for me to relate to. Now I’m working on a zombie film called “Detention of The Dead” and so I’m trying to get into the whole zombie culture, just to kind of understand where this film came from. So I try to just find a personal connection with everything I work on, for example, I wrote the music for the Tour De France this last year and I’m an athlete myself so it was very easy for me to connect with that and the write music to suit that.
Aside from being an accomplished musician and composer, you also run marathons, how different is the feeling of finishing marathons compare to finishing scores?
You know it’s actually kind of similar! I was thinking about this the other day, there’s this thing that happens like when you’re sketching a track in and your not really sure where its going so much, but your just going through the motions and getting the frame work down. Then there is like a pivotal moment that always happens and your like wow, I know where this track is going now and it’s going to be pretty awesome! I’m actually happy with where it’s going, and sometimes that doesn’t happen the first try, but you keep on working at it and eventually you’ll break through. It’s such a crazy feeling and it’s actually similar in training, you’ll have these break through moments, and your like wow I just did a 100 mile bike ride and averaged 20 miles per hour, I cant believe I can do that! And its crazy how adaptable your body is to what you can throw at it, and it is a similar process to composing, they’re very relatable. I just did the Iron Man race in Kona, Hawaii and it’s just the biggest rush of your life going down that finish shoot, its kind of like satisfaction bottled up and released.
You and your wife Julia run New West Studios in LA, is this just where you compose or do other musicians come record there as well?
Oh yeah! We have 2 studios, like his and hers essentially. We have a recording room and we definitely bring in outside musicians for our projects. We don’t typically record other people’s projects just because we are usually so busy working on our own, but we have done that a few times. We actually had a string quartet and other solo musicians. But more often then not I’m actually recording myself and so I have a little station in the live room where I can basically remotely control my computer and be my own recordist. So yeah, we have our own little operation here, we love it, but we both have very busy lives working, so it’s nice to be at least geographically close. We don’t see as much of each other as we like but at least were working at that.
When composing for a feature film, do you start writing the score before the production is finished, or does it have to be completed before you start?
It depends; I would say most of the time, with the budgets and time frames, Ill be working on the film after picture lock. Meaning I’ll typically be involved with helping them figure out where to place the music and what type of music to place. But typically I won’t actually be sinking my teeth into the project until they actually have the edit locked up. It does vary, if were talking about films like 20 million and up, you’ll hire a composer and they are yours for half a year. My job is a little different though, I mean I don’t get paid as much as those guys, it’s kind of an economical thing to some degree. The editors are so good these days at getting a very tight edit without the interplay of a composer before picture lock.
What are your dreams for your future and career, and where do you see yourself in 10 years?
That’s such a hard question to answer just because I’m very much on the mindset that I’m on a raft, and I can guide it a little bit, but for the most part I’m not in complete control of where the river takes me. I really do enjoy working on a variety of different types of films. I’m currently up for a Hollywood Music in Media award for this score I wrote for this great little film called ‘Mono Lake’, which is up in northern California and its certainly the most glorious film in terms that its not going to get an Oscar nomination and so forth. But its just really special for me because its depicted this small group of activists saving this amazing lake up near Yosemite, and I hope I never “out grow” those type of films. I really like doing sports stuff too, and I’m hoping to somewhat be involved with the Olympics in the near future. But to be honest I would like to get to that next step of films where you could be recording with an orchestra regularly and so forth. At the same time if I can just maintain being a working composer, making a living and doing triathlons and stuff like that on the side then that would be great. If someone told me that in ten years I would still be doing the same thing then I don’t think I have much right to complain.
Cody filmed his participation in the Kona Ironman World Championship race. He created and scored this video, which received 20,000 youtube views in about 9 days, it’s up to almost 25,000 now!
Written By: Cheyenne Henry
