How to Fiddle Hollywood’s Tune

Those of you who still have a TV in your home, and a hope it’s a very few indeed, might be interested to check out the CBS Evening News broadcast these days. Not for the news, mind you, just for the music that introduces it.

A few weeks ago I wrote an email on recording the new music for CBS News. Well, it’s now out there for the world to hear.

If, for some reason, you want to know what I had to say about that recording session, you’ll have to get over to my site and look it up under ‘Violin Secrets.’

More interesting to some of you may be what it takes to make a living as a free-lance recording violinist in Hollywood.

Well, unless you are closely related to Steven Spielburg, it’s pretty much a given that you have to play the instrument at a fairly high level, that’s number one. However, if you are a gifted gabber, and the contractor in question is not a professional musician, which is often the case these days, you can lean more in the direction of fairly rather than high.

All this means is, what we call ‘politics’ – a little euphemism for ‘favoritism’, in this case, can be found anywhere where results are not measured by a stopwatch.

On the other hand, if you have any socially frowned on habits – you can use your own imaginations – you had better be an amazing fiddler if you want to work at all.

Again, all this means is, you’ve gotta fit in with the pack. Having extraordinary ability on the violin will give you a little wiggle room to exercise your eccentricities, but not much. There are too many other very capable violinists wanting your nice, warm chair.

So what are the great ones like, the ones that are called year after year by virtue of their merits, that earn more in their royalty check than a ‘titled chair’ player makes in a major symphony orchestra in a year?

They are terrific players. They are socially well adjusted, comfortable with themselves, and a pleasure to be around. They have rock-solid rhythm and intonation. They ‘read’ like you read about. They’re quick to take direction, and they get the gist of things, pronto.

In short, they are my colleagues and I am honored to play with them.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. A few of them ordered my course. It’s my hope that they found one or two things in it worthy of thinking about on the next John Williams picture. If you aspire to join such an orchestra, you would do well to order a copy now and see what this veteran thinks is im