Where Do Great Ideas Begin?
Where do great ideas come from? For a composer, that question carries a little extra pressure. You may have only 30 seconds to make an audience feel something, remember something—or even want something. As legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy put it, “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” But translating emotion into music that actually connects with millions of people takes more than inspiration. It takes imagination, discipline, instinct, storytelling—and sometimes the courage to create something that may not work at all.
Few people understand that creative process better than Bob Farnsworth, founder of Nashville-based Hummingbird Productions, now celebrating its 50th year. In our conversation, Bob explains that when he composes for a brand or campaign, he isn't thinking only as a musician. He moves between the roles of musician, storyteller and psychologist, considering both the story being told and the emotional response the music needs to create. Bob also tells the hilarious story of his very first commercial assignment, when a client asked him to create something “different.” Bob certainly did—and was promptly thrown out of the agency! But the experience taught him an important lesson about balancing originality with the needs of a client, and his next project went on to win awards.
Perhaps most fascinating is Bob's understanding of the extraordinary relationship between music and emotion. In his TEDx presentation, he demonstrated how the very same film footage can feel joyful, poignant or downright frightening simply by changing the music underneath it. As Bob asks in our conversation, “Which are you going to believe? The picture or the music?” That ability to influence what an audience feels has served him throughout a career spanning commercial music and film. And while a commercial may require telling a story in only 30 or 60 seconds, film composing presents an entirely different challenge—sustaining themes and emotions across much longer sequences and sometimes working under intense deadlines with a team of other composers and musicians.
