Benjie Messer

A month ago I wrote that I was being cut down to part-time at One Light Music, and hoping to use it as an opportunity to find something new, and to move my career forward. And it worked! I was just hired as an adjunct professor of electronic music at Phoenix College, the downtown campus of the Maricopa Community College System! My first Electronic Music I course will start on June 2 if enough students register- if not, I’ll start teaching in the fall. And work at OLM has been coming back too, so with those two part-time jobs, I should be quite busy enough.

Bad Cactus Brass Band seems to be avoiding Phoenix’s traditional summer slump. We’ve recorded two albums in the last month- a live traditional album, and a studio Christmas album. The live disc should be ready for release by the end of the summer, and the Christmas one will be ready by November. We also have a ton of interesting gigs coming up- see the calendar in the upper right.

I also got to arrange and transcribe horn parts this month for an upcoming Brit-pop album that’s being produced by veteran recording engineer Jack Howell at WilloDisc. That was a lot of fun- I’ll put up some audio demos soon. I haven’t done any composing this month, but I did finally buy all the software I need to produce music at home- Logic, Sibelius, and a bunch of great sample libraries. Hopefully when the next opportunity knocks, I’ll be ready to answer!

I did some songs for Spiritrax six months ago that only just got online now. Listening back now, they didn’t sound so great and I had to remix them, which is good- it means I’ve gotten better in the last six months. Anyway, they should sound acceptable now.

Vocals have been recorded for two more Spiritrax ditties:

I spent most of the last three months filling up Spiritrax with Christmas carols, and I’m SO GLAD “the holidays” are finally behind me for a little while at least. Most of them don’t have guide vocals yet, but I thought I’d mention them anyway, since a lot of people would know them. You can now see all my tracks at Spiritrax by clicking the Spiritrax link in the “Recordings” box on the left.

It’s been six months since I moved to Arizona. For the last four years in Boston, I was teaching elementary general music, basing most of my curriculum on my Kodaly training. When I moved, I decided not to take a teaching job, and instead to try to make a career of being a musician. I miss teaching a lot, but not enough to go back just yet.

Anyway, I’m definitely a professional musician now, and thought that friends and family might like to to check this site occasionally to hear what I’ve been doing lately. Let me know if it’s useful to you, or if it’s not. It’s been fun for me so far.

I now work at One Light Music Productions, Inc., and my job title is Composer/Arranger. I just had my six-month review, and my boss and I agreed that I was doing an excellent job. We create custom music for various clients, including a karaoke record label in New York. We also run two big websites: Productiontrax, which is a major player in the royalty-free music and media industry, and Spiritrax, which sells religious karaoke music.

I used to dream during college about being a professional composer/arranger, but I could never afford the computer gear that professional composers are expected to have these days. So getting paid to write music on someone else’s equipment is a real dream come true.