On Saturday, May 12, 1990, Jerry Goldsmith received an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts. A video of Goldsmith's commencement address is available to view on their website. What follows is a transcription of his remarks:
Thank you. I'm Jerry Goldsmith. Class of '90 also. Thank you Mr. Carter for the extra Academy Award. Glad somebody finally gave it to me! Shows what kind of taste there is back here.
When appearing before a group of students I am invariably asked, "How do we get started? How do we get our big break?" I really regret that I don't have an answer for that. As a matter of fact, upon seeing so many new names in motion picture and television credits, and after hearing their music, I would like to ask them how they got their big break. In my case, I suppose it was just being in the right place at the right time.
After I dropped out of college, which by the way makes today's event all the more important since I will finally get my college diploma. A fact, that is not looked upon lightly by my father who is attending today's ceremonies. Anyway, at the time of my departure from college, I was asked by a friend of mine to write the music for the experimental CBS Radio workshop. This was a program that was produced by the non-production employees at CBS Radio, all looking for their big break. I wrote the music, copied the parts, begged my musician friends to come and play, and it was a great success. The composer who regularly did the show had gone on to write the music for a commercial radio show. It was Dragnet, which at that time was only on radio. I don't want to say how far back I go, but yes. So it became possible for me to do the show on a regular basis.
Since these productions were auditioned by the various producers and directors at the studio, all in volved were hoping that these shows would be their passport to fame and fortune, but there was one catch. In order to participate in these discussions, one had to be an employee of CBS. Since I had one semester of typing in junior high school, someone suggested that I take a typing test and perhaps work in the script department or the mimeograph department. So, with a little help from the supervisor in charge, who just happened to be a producer of the workshop, I passed the test and was hired as a script typist. The next six months, I typed scripts, wrote music for the workshop, and courted the favors of the various secretaries, especially the secretary at the head of the music department. One day, she arranged a meeting with Lud Gluskin, then the West Coast Vice President in charge of music for CBS Radio and Television. I came to his office armed with a bundle of manuscripts and recordings of the workshop shows I had done. I made my appearance. He listened to some of the shows and thumbed through some of the manuscripts. I don't think he could really read music, but he seemed to give me that impression. I don't know. He seemed impressed and hired me right then and there to work in the music department. to
About a year after doing every conceivable job in the music department, from filing titles in the record library, to writing the score for dramatic radio broadcasts, I got my really big break. Live, dramatic television had come to the West Coast and with it the need for young and talented people who would work endless hours for very little money. I was assigned to write and conduct the music for a weekly anthology called "Climax". Each week a new production was done, and with it came a new score. Since in those days--it was in 1955--there was no tape, you would do the show live at 5 p.m. for broadcast to the East Coast, and then three hours later it would be played back to the West Coast in what was called a "hot kinescope," a sixteen sixteen-millimeter film that was quickly developed and then rushed to the studio so it could be broadcast. Therefore, the first rehearsal was at 6:30 a.m.
I'll never forget arriving at the studio, ready to start the orchestra rehearsal the first day. Placing my music on the podium, I noticed that someone had carved in its wooden surface the word "Experience". That really stopped me in my tracks. For what the hell was I doing there, ready to conduct eighteen professional musicians in music to accompany real-life movie stars and a drama to be seen by millions of people that evening? It was a very humbling experience. One that I have never forgotten.
I remember some years later recording a score for a motion picture, the director asked for a change in the music. I thought for a second or two, and then dictated the changes to the orchestra of a hundred players. Someone looking on in amazement asked, "How in the world did you do that?" "Simple," I said, "experience." That word carved in the wood of that podium still is vivid in my memory. It keeps reminding me that today's experience is only a preparation for the unknown of tomorrow. You know I remember we would be there hours and hours, and in between each piece of music, one would sit and wait for the next moment to play while the drama was continuing, and out of boredom because I had seen the show so many times, I would sit there with a pencil and go over that "exper…" and it would get deeper and deeper after five years. I felt like someone was trying to tell me something and I have learned that they were telling me the right thing.
We are so lucky to have chosen music for a career. Yes, it can be difficult, but the excitement and joy of what we create can and will far outweigh the disappointment that we will inevitably experience. Along with the wonderment of creativity, we are now witness to some of the most innovative technology now available to musicians. I remember some thirty years ago sitting with an engineer in front of a bulky mono-tape machine. The engineer, armed with a razor blade, hour after hour, tediously splicing away making intercuts in attempts to improve a piece of music. I then think back to just a week ago assembling the music for a new CD, the engineer sitting in front of a digital editing console, made 48 complicated intercuts and sequenced the album in a matter of four hours.
We are bearing witness to some of the most sophisticated and ingenious means of making music ever known. But with this dawning of new technology, we must be ever cautious that we are in command of these new tools and not vice versa. It's far too easy to touch the keys of a sophisticated new synthesizer, and hear some new magical sound and think that we are creating heavenly music. It's far too easy to step time a complicated figure into a sequencer, and play it back and think we are great virtuosi. Nothing will replace the education that you have received at Berklee and will continue to receive as you enter the professional world. The continual gathering of experience will make you the masters of these new machines.
I sometimes think that the people creating all this new technology think at a much faster rate than I do. For as you all know, the moment you receive a new piece of equipment, it is already obsolete. I laugh at myself when I think that five years ago, my first computer was an Apple Plus with 64k of memory and now I used a Mac 2 with a 40 megabyte hard disk, when I probably never realized more than .01 percent of the old Apple 64k.
My use of electronics is used ninety percent of the time in conjunction with acoustic instruments. Since I generally work with an orchestra of 75 to 85 musicians, samplers are not necessary. My use of electronics is to help me realize certain sounds and colors that cannot be reproduced acoustically. I someday envision the standard symphonic orchestra to consist of its normal four sections--strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion--to include a new fifth section, which would be the electronic.
I remember when midi was first introduced and the fun it was to layer five different synthesizers. The very success of that indulgence along with a full symphony orchestra, made for quite a sonic mess. Through my continuing experience, I learned to paint electronic colors far more simply and judiciously so that every electronic sound became something very special in the total musical fabric.
One of the problems I have experienced in combining electronic with acoustic instruments is the need to be in the hands of a competent mixer. While the orchestra can be balanced and nuances adjusted in the room, the levels of the electronics--since they are being recorded directly and not acoustically--must be balanced by the engineer. At first, recording the electronics and the orchestra simultaneously required me to mix down the music for proper balances after the recording was finished. With the continual practice and relationship with one mixer, I have been able to record my last few scores completely without having to mix down, thus getting a truer performance.
Again, I go back to the word "experience." This time it is the experience of my mistakes. As a matter of fact, as I look back on my career, it's my mistakes that have taught me the most. So many of us are so frightened when we sit down to work. We must be perfect. We must be different. The list of "musts" is so endless that it can paralyze our brains. We must learn to accept imperfection as part of the path to perfection, the latter being unattainable, but nevertheless, the constant goal. Through these imperfections we will grow. Once we can accept the imperfections that creep into our work as part of the norm, we can then release ourselves from that mind-numbing paralysis. Only my years of experience have given me that kind of freedom and that's why you must now begin to realize that your education is just beginning. You've been given the tools to work with. You've learned how to use those tools. Now you spend the rest of your lives perfecting their use for the unknown of tomorrow. Thank you.
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Thanks for sharing!