When growing Moss is a good thing: This one-man outfit is scoring some high profile projects while looking to align with a larger studio - Audio Today & Tomorrow - Jason Moss

Post, April, 2002 by Christine Bunish

LOS ANGELES -- Jason Moss is proof that, often, talent is all that it takes to be successful. A young solo composer struggling to get heard in Los Angeles, Moss appears to be reaching the right ears with the open for 2002's Super Bowl XXXVI and projects for the NBA'S Phoenix Suns, Lipton/Matika Tea and the Fox Network's promo department to his credit.

Although Moss has only been in LA for 18 months and doesn't have a corporate infrastructure and cushy client amenities behind him, his talent, drive, passion and experience -- he's already been in the business for a decade -- speak for themselves. Moss's MossManMusic (www.mossmanmusicbiz.com) handles score to picture, underscore, song writing, sound design, arranging, producing and music supervision for spots, promos and programming. Moss netted six Telly Awards in 1999 for original music and won another Telly the following year.

Moss prides himself on his diverse skills and range of composing styles. He plays guitar and some keyboard and bass and also sings, but he is the first to admit that he can't do it all. He teams with other players and arrangers to get the "authentic" sounds he's after for a particular project. "I've done some of my best work writing and working with others," he says. "Putting several talented people together really elevates the experience." A New Jersey native, Moss began playing guitar and writing songs at the age of 10. As a young teen he moved with his family to Caracas, Venezuela, where he discovered Latin music. Those rhythms remain a big influence in his work to this day.

Moss returned stateside to finish high school and enroll in New Jersey's Ramapo College. Internships included Elias Associates and Sutcliffe Music in New York City, where he was exposed to top-quality work and an emphasis on client services.

GETTING STARTED

With the idea of becoming a big-fish composer in a small pond, Moss left the New York metro area and joined a buddy heading to Arizona in 1994. Moss landed a job as an Internet researcher at an interactive educational broadcasting company, which soon gave him the opportunity to write children's songs, score to picture and underscore. By the time the company was bought out and ultimately closed, Moss had become its music director.

Finding himself out of a job, Moss freelanced for Arizona advertising agencies and TV networks, and was taken under the wing of Cliff Sarde, the top composer in the Phoenix market "Cliff was doing the biggest spots in town and was a recording artist too," says Moss. Although he was now doing some of the biggest jobs in Arizona, Moss longed for national spots and TV work he felt were available only in New York and LA.

Moss arrived in LA with an introduction from one of his best friends in New York to Fox Sports sound designer and audio engineer Richard Becker. Becker told him that a new open for the pre-game show NFL on Fox was being pitched but there was no budget for music. Moss agreed to work on spec with Fox's in-house animation department which had created a compelling sequence featuring alien robot players. He composed a theme that had an "Crystal Method-electronica feel with its own twist" and sound design by Becker. The open has kicked off the series for the past two seasons.

PLAYING THE SUPER BOWL

The project formed a strong relationship with Fox Sports, which ultimately led to the Super Bowl open which Moss calls "a phenomenal learning experience -- but challenging. They wanted the sensation of walking down Bourbon Street but with a very atmospheric and dark Fifth Element feel," says Moss. He combined live instruments and sampled horns and accordions to craft a score that clearly evokes The Big Easy yet has a techno flair. Jerry Garszva was the sound designer for the open with Charlie Aguero the lead graphic artist for Fox's in house animation department and Christine Edwards VP of music for Fox Sports and music director on the project. Moss typically scores to QuickTime movies. His home studio is "very software-based. I made fun of people like me in college -- the keyboard geeks. Now I'm proud to be a full-fledged geek and proud that Emagic and TC Works have decided to support my career with their equipment." While Moss says everything in his studio "stays in the digital domain so it's clear and pri stine," he adds that he injects "the human element" into each project so things don't sound sterile.

Moss uses a Mac G3 running three different hard drives. He scores with Emagic's Logic Audio Platinum software. "For what I do its quality and consistency is just as good as Pro Tools," Moss declares. "Logic Audio has so much to it: MIDI, VST instrument capabilities, score functions." A TC Works PowerCore card runs proprietary plug-ins for effects, mastering and EQ -- which Moss says have "taken my sound to another level" -- off the card itself instead of off the computer's CPU.

Other software Moss favors includes Emagic's ESI, EXS24 and EVP88; Waldoff's Wave and Attack and Wave's Gold Bundle. His studio is also outfitted with a Yamaha 01 V digital mixer running into a Hammerfall 36/96 digital audio card, a Roland XP60 synthesizer Akai samplers, Grace Design pre-amps, Neumann mics, Hamer and Yamaha guitars, Sansamp and Line 6 guitar processors and TASCAM 24-bit DAT players.