Link to the episode can be found here.
00:00:00
>> CHEN: Welcome to the Excelability podcast. This is a brand-new series of conversations on success with people who happen to have a disability. Together we’ll uncover the attitudes, habits, techniques, and practices that enable these individuals to achieve astounding success.
00:00:34
>> LETNES: I was born legally blind with retinitis pigmentosa and cone-rod dystrophy, and going through life up to my college years, that’s when I was given the gift of macular degeneration. It was because I took a first step that was so hard, but I didn’t realize it at the time, that by doing that, and I unshackled myself from all safety and security that I knew, I knew I could do other things.
00:01:04
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Nobody hires social studies teachers who are blind because they don’t coach football. Challenges, you need to be challenged. You–the world is not a safe place, and you shouldn’t want it to be. I moved to Austin, Texas ’cause my buddy had a job for me selling door to door. A blind guy selling door to door, yes, the short film writes itself.
00:01:34
>> CHEN: Welcome to another episode of the Excelability podcast. I’m your host, Jack Chen. Today we have the pleasure of hearing from composer Steve Letnes. Steve has written and produced a number of albums of his own piano music. Recently Steve’s composing work has focused on the area of film scoring, in which he produces musical accompaniment to various movies. Steve is the only visually impaired composer in the industry.
00:02:03
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Steve has scored dozens of movies of various lengths, including one from Sony Pictures called “Santa’s Boot Camp.” Steve has gained a wealth of lessons, techniques, and attitudes that have helped him to achieve incredible success. I’m excited to share this conversation on success with you today. Please feel free to contact team Excelability to share your comments, questions, or feedback or to share your own story with us.
00:02:31
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): We’d love to hear from you. You can find information about this podcast and previous and future episodes at www.teamexcelability.com. That’s www-dot-team-E-X-C-E-L-ability-dot-com. You can follow us on Facebook at team Excelability or on Twitter, @teamxlability. Hey, Steve, thanks so much for being available and chatting with us today.
00:03:01
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): I’m real excited to hear what you have to say about the area of disability and success. You’ve had such an interesting and illustrative career, so thank you so much for taking the time out and being with us.
>> LETNES: Hey, Jack, it’s nice to be here.
>> CHEN: Awesome. All right, well, let’s get started. Can you describe your disability and describe for those folks out there who may not be already familiar with what it’s like to have your disability?
>> LETNES: Sure. Well, I was born legally blind, so the numbers were 20/200, and a funny thing was I was born, and they thought I had cerebral palsy because I had delayed growth.
00:03:38
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I had delayed everything. Nobody knew that I couldn’t see well, and so I didn’t speak at the right time or walk at the right time, and then it was my babysitter who informed my parents, said, “Hey, can you–maybe you should check this kid’s eyes out,” and they did, and poof, you know, that was the–that was the solution, and so I was born legally blind with retinitis pigmentosa and cone-rod dystrophy, and so, like, I could never drive.
00:04:07
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You know, I still–well, still can’t, and going through life up to my college years, that’s when I was given the gift of macular degeneration, and so I had to relearn as my sight diminished over the next few years, and I believe it’s tapered off, so there were almost, like, two stages of a Saturn rocket, you know?
00:04:35
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Like, first, you know, I was–it was–you know, I could function on 20/200. Like, I really felt like, you know, I could compete with people at 20/200. I had a few assistive technologies, you know, to help. You know, my friends, I had great people around me, but after I got macular degeneration, that was another level of development and relearning and adjusting to a new set of circumstances for my disability, so how that affects me day to day?
00:05:05
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I check for traffic. That’s high on the list. Here in Minnesota during the winter months everybody uses the skyways, you know, that are little walkways between all the buildings ’cause it can get 40 below, but I use it year-round, you know, because I don’t like walking through traffic, and I remember watching a video with you in it saying how by the time you got to work and all the traveling that you had to do, it felt like you’d already had a full day, and that spoke right to me.
00:05:37
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): How do I work efficiently? ‘Cause the human brain, we’re here to work as efficiently as possible, so whatever we want to focus on for the day, we want to get there as soon and as qui–and efficiently as possible, and so we make paths. We make safety paths that’s secure. How can we do that so we can save the energy for later?
00:05:56
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): And so I use skyways a lot, but as far as day-to-day stuff, I mean, I have assistive technology called Zoom Text, which is a screen reader and screen magnifier, so when I work on films, you know, I can zoom in closely and see what’s going on, and the iPad and iPhone has transformed how I live and work, and it’s a much easier strain–there’s less strain on my eyes because I have things read to me, and that just saves me, and that delays that daily exhaustion that we can feel depending on the type of work we have to do that day.
00:06:33
>> CHEN: And so for your eyesight, how would you describe what you can see right now?
>> LETNES: The best way I’ve managed to figure it out is if someone with good vision picked up a Ziploc bag, and it was slightly–and it was hazy, you know? It almost looked like it was from “Poltergeist.” Like, anywhere you looked it was fuzzy. That’s how the center of my vision is, and so I use what’s called eccentric viewing, so when I’m sitting across the table from somebody and I’m looking straight at them, it’s a blur.
00:07:07
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): They are a blur. I’m looking to the ether of humanity. It could be Shaquille O’Neal. It could be the Dalai Lama. I can’t tell, so I look to the left or I look to the right, and then I look back at center after I have honed in where they are by looking to the left or to the right.
>> CHEN:
And so you can’t make out someone’s face sitting across the table? You couldn’t recognize them, right?
>> LETNES: Not necessarily.
00:07:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You know, I would have to–I would have to be a little closer, and so that’s why, honestly, I listen to people’s gaits, like how they walk or a way to hear their voice and–you know, and then I can pinpoint them and then walk right there, and I’ve gotten used to people, friends who like to honk their horns at me ’cause I can’t see their cars, and so when they come pick me up, I know everybody’s car horn, and that certainly helps.
>> CHEN: What a fantastic way to find an adaptation. That’s really unique.
00:08:01
>> LETNES: We got to do what we got to do to survive, man.
>> CHEN: Well, you know what? Now you know the sound of a horn for a BMW versus a Ford Mustang, so I’m gonna test you one of these days. I’m gonna send you an audio clip.
>> LETNES: There you go.
>> CHEN: So Steve, you’re a composer. Explain to us what you do for work.
>> LETNES: I write music for movies, so what that means is what they call underscore, so when there’s a production and a director and a producer and an editor, they all want to have music to support a story in your TV show or your film.
00:08:38
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): They hire a dude or somebody–or a gal to write the music underneath it, and that’s my role. I could write–for a two-hour movie I could write maybe 90 minutes of music, and it takes me a few months to do that, but I support the story on screen by providing music that helps set mood, tone, you know, prefacing a scene or the lingering emotions thereafter.
00:09:06
>> CHEN: So when the guy walks in the room with a knife, that’s when the big sound comes out. That’s the kind of thing you support?
>> LETNES: That’s right. It’s when super-low, low timpanis or a bassoon starts playing with some low cellos and bass, you know, accompaniment when some–you know, at least in the scene that you just described.
>> CHEN: Yeah. And where might our listeners have heard some of your work? Where might they be familiar with what you’ve done?
>> LETNES: I did a World War II documentary for the state of Luxembourg last year with director Michelle Tereba, and I’ve done several films from Italy, but this past year was a real boon.
00:09:43
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I’d worked on a family Christmas film called “Santa’s Boot Camp.”
>> This Christmas…
>> Looking good, Santa.
>> Something will happen that has never happened before.
>> Rosy cheeks.
>> News flash, kiddos. Santa isn’t real.
00:10:00
>> “Santa’s Boot Camp,” coming soon.
>> LETNES: After a couple years of shopping it around, we got picked up by Sony Pictures. It was just released, you know, just a short while ago all through North America, so it’s been fun having friends and family and strangers take photos walking through Walmarts and Targets and Barnes & Nobles and On Demand shots of people saying, “Hey, look what I found in my store,” you know? Which is really cool.
00:10:30
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): That’s–that is a really neat feeling, and then people turning it on the back and seeing that block of credits on the bottom and then finding your name and saying, “Hey, I saw you. I saw you,” you know, and so it’s really cute, and having the nieces and nephews like it, so if you got kids or if you’re young and you like family Christmas films, you know, that is a holiday film that will be an–what we call an evergreen film, so it will be out every year for years to come because it’s a holiday movie.
>> CHEN: That’s a great legacy to have and something just fun to have on your resume, if you will.
00:11:01
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Tell us why it’s important to have good film music.
>> LETNES: It’s about story, it’s about characters and both of their development. It’s how I can support the man and woman on screen to help tell their story, and sometimes that means music, and sometimes it also knows when not to have any at all. It’s all about story, but that’s why discussions with directors and with producers and with editors is very important.
00:11:30
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Communication is the biggest thing or one of the biggest things that will help you out in this business, is understanding someone else’s purpose, setting ego aside, and serving a greater good, a greater story.
>> CHEN: Communication, that’s such an important thing. Let’s rewind a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about when you first realized that you had vision loss and it made you different, and what impact it had on you socially, emotionally, or otherwise?
>> LETNES: When I was younger, I was very prideful, and so I didn’t want people to know I was blind.
00:12:04
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I was embarrassed about it. I was ashamed because, you know, of course, there was teasing. One of the biggest memories that I have was being in high school, and I was walking in between buildings at high school, and as I was walking into one building, I heard behind me–about 50 yards behind me I heard two dudes yell, “Hey, blind a-hole!”
00:12:23
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): And I turn around, and obviously I couldn’t see who they were, but I pretended like I did, and, you know, I gave them the finger, and I just walked in, and none of the other kids did anything, but, you know, I didn’t want people to know, and I didn’t want people to make fun of me, and so I hid it as best I could because I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle, and then I was surrounded by a lot of good people my entire life, and nobody ever told me, at least my closest people, that I couldn’t do anything. I knew I had issues, and I knew I had challenges, but I always felt they were achievable some way, somehow. I felt I could accomplish anything when I’m 15 years old because I knew the school that I had–or that I went to.
00:13:03
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I knew the friends that I had. I had a great family. I lived in a great neighborhood, and I was surrounded by people who never shot me down, but honestly, I really noticed I had issues, you know, when I got to college, when I came back to Minnesota, and I understood because, you know, here I was, you know, A, A-plus student in high school, and I got to college, and the workload was a lot heavier, and I stumbled through college probably able to read a little less than half of what I had to because there was simply not enough time.
00:13:35
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I learned what limitations there were in the world. You know, it’s not the real world. It’s still a, you know, happy, nice, little campus, but I started to realize, oh, my gosh, I cannot read 80 pages in a night because I have to take them down to the Disability Office and get them read for me on tape by my buddy, Jeremy Fisher, who would read these things, and then I would get them a few days later, and so it was a constant battle of delays, delays, delays, delays.
00:14:01
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): How do I compensate? How do I adjust to get through this college? Because I have–I had never had to handle this much work. I realized I have got to find ways to catch up just to get to where the rest of the world is, and then–you know, but then after realizing that, I got macular degeneration. Here’s how I learned about macular degeneration and that I knew my eyes were changing.
00:14:27
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I was on a family trip, and we were traveling around Europe and stuff, so we went there, and when we were in Geneva, Switzerland, we were walking down a street, and my sister was walking out of a boot store ’cause she loved her shoes and she loved her capris, and so I was like–I didn’t want to have anything to do with going shoe shopping, and so I was walking ahead, and she was walking behind me, and in bike paths they have these three stanchions that stand up so cars can’t drive down paths in parks. Well, there were three stanchions, but as I was walking, I only saw two, and so I’m walking, walking, walking, and I turned my head ’cause my sister was walking into another store, and magically the center stanchion appeared, and I went, “Oh, oh, I didn’t see that.”
00:15:14
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): “I did–oh, my gosh, you know,” and I kind of flipped. I was like, “What, wait, why did–why didn’t I see that?” and I realized something was wrong. You know, it’s–lined up a whole new set of challenges for my 20s.
>> CHEN: Well, talk about some of those challenges and what you did to overcome them.
00:15:32
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): What attitudes, techniques, practices do you feel helped you in your 20s after realizing that you had macular degeneration?
>> LETNES: After you go through the self-sabotage and the disappointment, you know, then you learn who your friends are. You learn where your support is, and you learn quickly how to ask for help. So I had this insidious, insidious eye disease that was slowly taking more and more of my vision away, and each year or two I’d have to adjust again.
00:16:06
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): What that meant was slowly watching my world diminish not only visually but also in the world itself. I was going into self-protection mode. I was taking less public transportation. I was going out less. I was hanging out with friends less. I was working on music less. I stopped it altogether. I–my world shrank, and like a lot of people do, is we hunker down because we need security.
00:16:36
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): We need safety. We need to feel good somehow, some way as this thing is happening to us, but–okay, but then what? Because what the mind does is the mind gets tired of being tired. The mind gets sick of feeling like crap, so that’s when we learn to reach out. That’s how we learn to say, “Hey, look, I need help with this,” and so that’s–honestly, a big part of it was seeing who’s a true friend? Who could I come to for help? Who is gonna be there in my time of need?
00:17:02
>> LETNES: And I had plenty of friends to do it.
>> CHEN: A lot of folks who are visually impaired don’t have that same perspective that you have, that they get tired of it and they just got to push forward. Is there anything that you think helped you to have that perspective?
>> LETNES: I went into this kicking and screaming. I tried to do the right thing for the wrong reason. What I mean by that is most of my life I’ve spent in Minnesota, so what did I do in Minnesota?
00:17:30
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I established safety and security. I knew the bus routes. I knew the train routes. I knew the skyways. I had all my friends here. I had all my family. I was safe, and that’s what we need. We need–before we do anything to grow, we have to feel safe. We need a launching pad, but what happened was I fell in love. I was in a relationship for years. We’d lived here, and then she moved away. We were still together long-distance, and ultimately we both decided we had to live together to see if this truly was marriage material, so what did I do?
00:18:03
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I uprooted anything and everything that I knew, and I moved to Massachusetts, and Boston is–well, it’s not exactly user-friendly.
>> CHEN: Oh, don’t I know it?
>> LETNES: I mean, I–it was–it’s entirely different than Minnesota, but the truth is, Jack, I loved it. It was–people were friendly, helpful, a bit acerbic. There were a lot of wonky streets, lots of curves, but they had, you know, the T.
00:18:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I love Boston, but I moved out there, and I left everything behind me, everything I knew, safety, security be damned, for the sake of love, and I did not want to do it. Like, I knew it was the right thing to do, but I was kicking and screaming the entire way, but I had to do it ’cause I had to see was this the woman I was gonna marry? Well, soon thereafter we learned she wasn’t, and I moved away, but here’s the thing.
00:19:05
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I did the hardest thing in my life by moving out there for love. Then we came to a decision this wasn’t working, so what did I do? I didn’t move back to Minnesota. I said, “Aw, to heck with this. I’ll move to Texas.” I moved to Austin, Texas ’cause my buddy had a job for me selling door to door.
00:19:22
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): A blind guy selling door to door, yes, the short film writes itself, but it was so much easier to move to Texas because I had already done the hardest part by moving to Massachusetts first, and when a friend of mine, Nate, called me up and said, “Hey, you know, do you want to move back to Colorado? You know, how you doing?” he learned I was having kind of a crummy time, I jumped at that too. I’m like, “Hey, I’ll move to Colorado,” so each of these steps was easier, and what made that change, then, was I realized, “Man, I have been able to move across country several times, and each time it was easier. What’s the reason for this?” It was because I took a first step that was so hard, but I didn’t realize it at the time, that by doing that, and I unshackled myself from all safety and security that I knew, I knew I could do other things.
00:20:11
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): It took taking a large leap for the sake of romance to realize that I could do so much, so again, I–that’s why I say it’s the right thing for the wrong reasons.
>> CHEN: Awesome. I love the fact that you were bold. You took the step. You did something that you didn’t even think you perhaps could do, and it was hard, and it proved to be the best thing in the end.
00:20:32
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): What an awesome lesson. Steve, can you talk a little bit about in your younger years whether you felt your blindness would ever have an impact on your future success?
>> LETNES: I think when I was younger, I don’t think so. I really didn’t because at the time I thought I was gonna be a world-famous concert pianist, and that was that. Again, I had great support around me, and I, you know, wanted to play the piano, and I knew that through Suzuki I didn’t have to learn to read sheet music, and so in my naive world I figured I was set.
00:21:08
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I would just work hard and be a concert pianist and be the fastest piano player in the world, and, you know, I think Franz Liszt would have something to say about that. He was crazy fast. But only–it was only as I got older, as I went to college and I left, you know, friends and family that I realized, “Oh, my, I got some serious work to do,” and that’s where I felt I was gonna have some problems.
00:21:33
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I got a degree in social studies education, and there were two problems that I learned with that. One, I didn’t have any idea what a workload was gonna be like for a new teacher creating lesson plans and syllabus, syllabi, and teaching four to six classes, some of them AP history. I started questioning, “Can I even do this job?” and then the other part was nobody hires social studies teachers who are blind because they don’t coach football. [pause]
00:22:05
>> CHEN: And you’ve mentioned this several times, so I wanted to make sure I touched on this topic. You’ve mentioned people a number of times, people and support. Can you talk a little bit about the people in your life that have supported you and in what way they were supportive? ‘Cause I think it’s such an important concept.
>> LETNES: Because our lives–as people with different types of disabilities, there are parts of our lives, not all parts of our lives, but there are parts of our lives that are simply harder than others.
00:22:35
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): What we have to understand is when we ask for help or we’re getting support from people, bear in mind that we’re not gonna get the exact support we think we should be getting. We are only going to get support from people who know how to give the way they know how to give. We need to be mindful of that. So what does that mean?
00:22:56
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): When you go to State Services for the Blind, that governmental organization is gonna have a certain few paths that they believe are the way they can help you, and you have to take that for what it’s worth, and when your friends are there to support you, you have to understand you can’t get mad when you need to go grocery shopping, and they can’t do it for another three days. You know, they are gonna help you the way they know how. My parents do the same thing. You know, they support me the way they know how, which is why support has to come through many different threads, and different people provide different kinds of support, just like the normals out there, man.
00:23:39
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I mean, we all have different friends that we go to for different reasons. It’s no difference. We just, you know, use it in our purposes to help facilitate our challenge, our sight challenge or our physical challenge or our–you know, whatever our challenge might be. You need to figure out how people are gonna help you by learning how to ask because at the end of the day, if people aren’t gonna help you, get rid of them.
00:24:00
>> CHEN: Mm-hmm.
>> LETNES: Just dismiss them outright. If you are afraid of asking someone for help because they might give you grief or they might not want to or, you know, it’s–just remove them from your life because there are plenty of people that will, and remember, there are far more good people than bad people in this world. The evidence bears it out, as we are all still here.
>> CHEN: Phenomenal wisdom there where you’re right.
00:24:30
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): If you’re gonna ask someone for help, you got to accept them for what they can give you and then build that network to be able to find more people who can help in the ways that you need it to fill in the gaps.
>> LETNES: But also, I have a close friend named Nick Worth. He keeps me grounded. He gives me so much crap. When I tell him about, “Hey, I got a movie coming out from Sony Pictures,” he was like, “You really think people are gonna see that thing?” and what he does, he is my comic relief.
00:25:00
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): He is the one that keeps me grounded ’cause the other way that people help you is keep you grounded and don’t walk delicately around you. You want people to treat you exactly the way they treat everybody else, and what that means is people need to stop holding your hand, and you need to stop asking them to hold your hand because what that turns into is its own kind of discrimination. We want to be treated equally like everybody else. Well, guess what?
00:25:26
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): That means there is good and there is bad that comes with this, and the way we are going to flourish in this world is to understand and how to–know how to navigate both avenues, good and bad, and so what my friend Nick does, he would die for me. I’d only kill for him. I wouldn’t die for him, but he would die–no, he’s–he’s a good guy. We–you know, we would–we hang out a lot. He is–he’s got so much wisdom, but what he does is he gives me grief, and he messes with me, and it is the best because he’s one of the few people in this world that doesn’t treat me any differently, and so that is why I love that guy.
00:26:10
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I’m normal. I’m–when I’m with him, I’m like everybody else, and that is a great feeling that we should all want to have around us.
>> CHEN: You know, you got to stand on your own two feet. Everyone else in the world does it. You got to stand on your own two feet if you want to be treated like everybody else.
00:26:49
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): So Steve, how did you get into music, and did that present any challenges for you at the time?
>> LETNES: Well, there are two levels of music in my life. I’d say younger was more piano stuff and development early on, and then there was also the film music side.
00:27:02
>> CHEN: Let’s start with the earlier one first ’cause we’ll get into the film stuff, I think, a little bit later.
>> LETNES: My parents were musical people. My mom sang. My grandparents sang. My grandfather played the organ. My father was a 12-string guitarist with an operatic voice. He’s amazing, and so my parents were pretty musical, but, like, my father is a pastor, and so using his voice and using his guitar in outdoor ministry was a part of the gig, and so they always knew how important music was, and so when I was four, I could finally get some fingers working somewhat nimbly, and I, you know, got tired of biting toy blocks and playing with trains, you know, they said, “Well, let’s put him on the violin.”
00:27:44
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): So–and since I couldn’t see well and we knew that now, they put me on the Suzuki method, which is all about ear. It’s all training by ear, so you learned all the “Happy Farmer” and all those, you know, Suzuki books up through book six. I did the violin for several years and then moved to piano and then just continued that and then learning, you know, their Chopins and Rachmaninoffs and Tchaikovskys and Debussys and Kabalevskys, you know, through junior high.
00:28:09
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): What changed it for me was playing at a talent show, and so I was gonna play my Rachmaninoff piece, “Prelude in C# Minor.” “Prelude in “C# Minor.” [pause]
00:29:05
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): This was my first foray into playing in front of my peers, and it opened my eyes to what the power of music was and how you could share and take people on a journey and play with their emotions too somet–you know, and that’s [inaudible], but I was 15, and that’s when I really understood how important music was gonna play a role in my life, and music then changed from recitals and playing Rachmaninoff pieces to writing my own.
00:29:34
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I started writing music and putting out CDs in my teen years.
>> CHEN: So Steve, how does someone who’s visually impaired learn to play pieces when you can’t even read the sheet music?
>> LETNES: Thank you, Mr. Suzuki. I never knew a world where I felt like it was a setback that I couldn’t read sheet music. One, my parents nor my teachers never admonished me for not being able to read sheet music.
00:30:00
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Obviously, I’m blind. Who’s gonna–who’s gonna ridicule a blind kid about not reading sheet music? I’ll leave that to other ignorant musicians later in my life who would admonish me for it. It was all the Suzuki method, learning the right hand, learning the left hand, and then putting them together. Whenever I heard pieces, and so ever–from an early age, I unwittingly, unknowingly, whether I knew it or not, I would listen to something and be able to pick it up and play it. Whether it was dream theater tunes or metal tunes, I could just pick up and listen to anything, play it, but that only came through practice, and it’s nothing that you or I or anybody else can’t learn.
00:30:41
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You just have to learn how to listen, and then you can pick up stuff ’cause as you do that more, you can pull things apart, you know, and so that’s why, and so my entire life I’ve never felt shortchanged because I couldn’t read sheet music. Honestly, I felt bad for people reading sheet music because they’re tied to paper in front of them, and all their eyes can do is stare at this paper while their hands move, and they look like these weird creatures that can’t move.
00:31:08
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Like, their shoulders are stuck in this vise and their hands are dancing all around. Their feet are flailing. They look like they’re in trouble, Jack. [pause]
>> CHEN: How do you write for a medium that’s p–that’s mostly visual images as someone who’s visually impaired? How do you write that music? What’s your process?
>> LETNES: I zoom in a lot.
00:31:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I listen to stuff. I mean, a lot of–honestly, a lot of films will lead you through voice itself, just inflections form people’s voice to get. Sometimes I might miss a wink in a certain scene that a director might want what they call a hit point, so they might want an accent on a certain twitch, but generally I do have some vision, and so I can see when scenes change. I can see the pacing of a film.
00:31:57
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I can hear the urgency, or I can hear, you know, the cadence of people talking, but I feel like most of the story is carried a lot through dialogue anyway, and so a lot of that stuff is manageable, but I will still speak to an editor and a director and say, “Look, are there any key areas that you want me to hit that are very important to you?” get their perspective, their thoughts on it, and thus they’re a part of the process. Of course, they should be. You know, they put it in the film, and they watch it, and if they’re not happy with something, well, they just let you know.
00:32:33
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): So chances are you’re not going to miss anything because you’re not gonna be allowed to.
>> CHEN: So it’s built in that you’re not gonna miss it?
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Correct.
>> CHEN: Can you describe how your disability influenced your film scoring career, whether needing to overcome it or serving as a driver of your work or some other influence of your success?
>> LETNES: There are two areas that are still a challenge, but I feel like I’m compensating because of my vision.
00:33:04
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Because I do not see well, I can’t read sheet music, and one of the biggest lessons in scoring for film is learning from the masters, learning from John Williams, learning from James Horner, learning from Korngold, learning fr–you name it, and that means listening to film scores and writing them out as you hear them and then comparing them with the original sheet music.
00:33:32
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I can’t do that, and so how do I compensate? That’s again using my brain. That means listening to music and doing my best to recreate that on my computer and then compare that and then give that to somebody and say, “Hey, how close do you think I am?” I have to compensate because I can’t transcribe. I just have to keep listening and keep practicing and, honestly, creating my own sound ’cause ultimately, I don’t want to sound like John Williams.
00:34:01
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I want to sound like Steve Letnes. But the other part is, is being sight-challenged, guess what? Everything takes me longer to do. There are just some things that take two to three times as long, so in music, when I got into this, everybody was telling me, I was hearing from everybody, “You got to be able to compete by getting things on time, and you’re gonna have short windows to get your material in to whomever you are beholden to,” what they call deliverables, and I was scared to death that I was gonna fail in film because I can’t compete on a time schedule.
00:34:36
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I just can’t, or that’s at least what I thought when I got started because what did that mean? That meant there is no waiting, and most industries aren’t gonna wait for you, so what do you do? Are you gonna complain about it or shrug your shoulders and go sit on your couch and grab some Crown Royal and sit in the dark, or are you gonna jump out there and say, “Look, I’m gonna give this a go?” And so what that meant was understanding your tools, where things were, creating templates, as in here’s an established starting point with the–all the instruments I know that I need.
00:35:11
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Now I can go, and so it means finessing and harnessing the power of your tools better than anybody else, and then it means being challenged by different directors who will say to you, “Hey, I’ve got this many projects that need to be done by this date. Can you do it?”
00:35:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): And in this business you say yes. It doesn’t matt–I mean, unless you are woefully ill-equipped to handle it, in this business the only way you’re gonna get anywhere is by saying, “Yes, I can help you.”
>> CHEN: Love that sentiment, always say yes. Now, kind of dovetailing right there, you had a project where you had to score 30 films in 11 days. How in the world did you get it done, and what did that teach you?
00:35:59
>> LETNES: When I got through that gauntlet, I knew I could compete with anybody. That was the hardest, hardest thing I had to do because I had never been challenged like that in my life, let alone in a new industry. These were short films, so they were, you know, five to eight minutes long, but I had 30 of them in 11 days, and not only did I have to write the music for them, but I also had to do the editing of the audio, and I had to mix it, and so I had to do all of these things, and so what I did is I gave myself a time.
00:36:33
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I said, “All right, I’ve got to do four of these a day, and I’ve got to get through all those,” and then I had my templates built up for how I was going to mix them. Well, I didn’t get much sleep, I’ll put it to you that way, for 11 days, but what it meant was I am giving myself free range to write whatever I want. I didn’t care what the director’s notes were. I didn’t care what they wanted me to do.
00:37:01
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I said, “Look, you are asking so much of me. I’m gonna do whatever I want, and you’re gonna be okay with that because we need to get through this. You need my help. I said yes, so it’s up to me to pull through and to deliver,” so what that did, though, was gave me carte blanche to play with any type of music I wanted from techno to metal to orchestral to quirky to jazz, whatever I chose to put into them based on what I felt the story called for, but getting through 30 films, when you’re forced to do something, you will realize the different types of skills that you have or the different shortcomings that you have, and that’s what you want.
00:37:44
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You need to be challenged to figure out what you’re good at and what you’re not good at so you’re either not wasting time working on something you shouldn’t be or you’re able to sharpen that knife, sharpen that focus into the areas that you can have a bigger impact on, which is why challenges–you need to be challenged.
00:38:05
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You–the world is not a safe place, and you shouldn’t want it to be.
>> CHEN: Let’s drill down back to the time when the director called you and said, “Hey, Steve, this is what I want you to do.” What was that like? What was going through your mind? Because I’m sure a lot of us have been in the same position where we’re faced with a challenge and we have fear, so tell us what it was like for you.
>> LETNES: Well, I was scared to death. This guy who did it, his name’s Ken Feinberg, he is the guy who I ended up scoring the feature film with, wink, wink.
00:38:34
>> CHEN: Ah.
>> LETNES: Wink, wink, people. He was a Hollywood actor. He’d been on shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Star Trek,” “Charmed.” He played a lot of bad–bad dude roles, and he’s a big dude and one of the sweetest people I know. He was my in, and he was giving me a challenge and an opportunity to prove myself, but I was–I was just–I was scared to death. Up to that point I’d only written for just a couple little, short films, but then what do you do with that fear?
00:39:04
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Do you sit there and continue to be fearful, or do you get involved, and then do you start working? ‘Cause what happens when you start working? Well, the fear goes away because your mind has to focus on what’s at hand, so once I got that challenge, I was nervous for a few days while I was waiting for these files and then watching them pile up and pile up and pile up, and I had to buy more hard drives because these files were huge, you know, and I got really nervous. I just–I just–one step at a time, one at a time, just chunks, chunks, chunks, just take bit by bit, and you can just hammer through almost anything just one at a time, one step at a time.
00:39:38
>> CHEN: I love the fact that it’s really about finding efficiency but also taking that initial fear and saying, “Hey, it’s just a feeling, and I’m just gonna go for it.” That’s what’s gonna get you to that hard challenge and then get you past it, so show you can do it anytime.
>> LETNES: Because the alternative is pretty awful.
>> CHEN: Absolutely. Steve, working with directors and editors, has your visual impairment been a help, a hindrance?
00:40:04
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): How has it come up, and how have they responded to you when they find out that you are visually impaired?
>> LETNES: This is something that I generally don’t even bring up for as long as possible, and it’s not out of fear. It’s just it doesn’t matter, one, because they’re not writing the music, and so they’re not really concerned about–that I can’t see to transcribe music. They don’t care what my process is for music itself.
00:40:30
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): At the end of the day it’s about the product, so so long as I can deliver, they could care less what’s wrong with me, quote-unquote, because at the end of the day all they care about are the files you send them when they asked you to send them, and that’s what I like about this business. As hardcore as it can be, as awful and bitter and conniving as it can be, it can also be quite glorious and beautiful and uniting and celebratory and thrilling.
00:31:03
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): They’re too busy telling their story to hear yours. [pause]
>> CHEN: I know. Well, that’s what you want, right? You want to be part of it. You don’t want them to be focusing on you. You want them to be focusing on what they do and you helping them do what they do better.
>> LETNES: Yeah, because what you’re doing is you’re selling yourself to them to work on their movie. It’s about merit and what you do to achieve that type of reputation, that’s your reputation as someone who’s easy to work with, who is a great communicator, is friendly, who you want to be stuck in an editing bay with or on a mixing stage with, and who writes cool music for you that serves the story.
00:41:44
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): That’s all that matters, and then it comes out, “Oh, you happen to not see all that great? All right, well, I guess I’ll have someone pick you up at the airport.” It’s here nor there because what you’ve done is you’ve established yourself as someone who has demonstrated competency if not brilliance for the sake of the greater good, and that’s what people want.
00:42:09
>> CHEN: Steve, is there anything in the beginning of your career potentially related to your disability that you didn’t know that you wish you knew and that has been helpful for you throughout your career?
>> LETNES: Knowing how many people there are out there that are willing to help you if you just ask.
00:42:26
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): What I’ve learned through my years, especially in a support business such as what we call post-production–so after the film’s been shot, you know, it goes to be picture edited and music mixed and music for it, and what I learned was at the beginning–was I was kind of afraid to ask a few questions here and there because I was so new. I was so green, but as I started to get on forums and talking with people, I noticed there wasn’t a–necessarily a snarkiness when people asked a question.
00:42:59
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): There would be snarkiness and fight-back when people had a very sharp opinion, but that’s what you get anywhere, but when people had questions and when I started to reach out and ask questions, people were more than willing to assist me, and there could be several reasons for that, but what I learned was that this music community is a big family. As much as we’re fighting for jobs, you know, sometimes against each other, we really want to share our knowledge, and man, it feels so good to be surrounded by so many people who are like, “Oh, what’s your problem with your computer?”
00:43:37
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): “Let me help. Have you tried this? Have you tried that?” and it’s all because I just opened up and said, “Look, I’m new. I’m green. I have some questions. Can you help me?” and more people will help me than not, so honestly, I wish I would have started to ask questions sooner.
>> CHEN: Yeah, you got to be willing to ask questions, absolutely. You know, many young workers today feel stigmatized if they bring up their disability, as you’ve been talking about.
00:44:03
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): They may feel that they don’t even know how to talk about it. Do you have any advice for folks who are struggling with that issue?
>> LETNES: Here’s the deal. The best part or one of the best parts about having a challenge or being disabled is when you ask people to do stuff, what are they gonna do? I mean, you’re s–you’re right in front of them. Here’s the thing. It’s a whole lot easier to tell somebody no over the–over texting or over the phone than it is to their face, so, like, when I go shopping and I ask for help, people–you’re only gonna get two types of reactions 99.9% of the time.
00:44:36
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You’re gonna get people who say, “Oh, you can’t see? Well, sure, yeah, here. Follow me. I’ll take you–I’ll go grab it,” because they’ve done it before. They’ve seen it before, plus it feels good to help people. Remember, you’re also helping them whether they want to admit it or not. You’re also helping them because people like to feel good, because they feel proud that day, and they get to eat that cookie at the end of the day because they helped somebody out.
00:44:58
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Or the other version of them helping you is they are so dumbfounded as–because they’ve never dealt with it that they are putty in your hands. In that instance, you have to know what to say and what to share with them, and that comes through competence, through speaking with friends. If you can’t have open conversations with the closest people to you, how are you gonna have it from a stranger who’s looking to hire you? Which is why you n–it’s best to practice feeling good in your own skin. You have the responsibility to yourself to know how to ask what you need from family, from friends, and ask them to treat you equally.
00:45:40
>> CHEN: Steve, is there someone with a disability who you most respect, and if so, what can we learn from that person?
>> LETNES: There’s two. The first person is my father ’cause my father, for a long time, was a pretty significant stutterer. He couldn’t talk, and he wanted to be a preacher, so if you can imagine somebody getting up in front of a congregation who can’t give you the sermon.
00:46:07
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): He had to work incredibly hard to work on that stutter, and it was hard for him, but it took him years to do, but he figured it out. When you hear him now, he doesn’t stutter or stumble or stammer over any of his words whenever he’s in front of a congregation. It’s actually quite amazing. It’s the holy spirit working through my father.
>> CHEN: There you go.
>> LETNES: And the other is a friend of mine who came into their disability late.
00:46:34
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Her name is Katie Worth, and she’s married to my best friend, Nick. She has Guillain-Barre, and what Guillain-Barre is, it is, like, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that removes your ability to move, essentially. You are paralyzed. Some people recover, and some people don’t. She has had to, for years, learn how to walk, learn how to use her hands.
00:47:06
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): For a while she couldn’t even hold her own baby. She was in her 30s when this happened, so she had 30 years of living and working and having a family, and everything’s great, and all of a sudden, surprise, she wakes up one morning, and she can’t move, and that was terrifying, and we were all very concerned, and we all still are, but several years on, you know, after she went through a process of figuring out, “Okay, what the heck am I gonna do?” she couldn’t work, and she had a whole lot of challenges, and Nick had a whole lot of challenges, and they still do.
00:47:41
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): They still do because she still is experiencing this massive challenge that she didn’t have a few years ago, and what did she do? She got a better job than the one she had before because there’s no way in heck she was gonna spend the rest of her life feeling sorry for herself.
00:48:01
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): She went and got it, and she did, and so she’s making more money. She’s happier with her position, and she’s considering moving to different areas, but that came from hard work, hard work, and it’s a challenge she will have, probably, for the rest of her life, and so I have kudos to her because she didn’t have her entire life to get used to something. She had a big Christmas surprise in May that devastated her body and her family, so those are two people that I really look up to.
00:48:32
>> CHEN: And your confidence, I’m sure, in facing your own challenges and the kind of things we’ve been talking about here, I’m sure, help keep her on the straight too as well. You know, one of the things I most admire about you, Steve, in just our short number of conversations is how confident you are despite all the challenges you have, so what’s the growth moment that happened for you to help you to get to that point? ‘Cause it–you’ve got this ability to just see things for what they are and then just live life.
00:49:02
>> LETNES: When we are learning hard truths, the problem is it gets real sad sometimes learning hard truths because then we realize, “You know what? Nobody does care about me as much as I care about myself. Nobody is gonna be able to help me the way I need them to help me, exactly the way I need them to. Nobody’s gonna do this. Nobody’s gonna do that for me.”
00:49:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): “The world doesn’t work like this,” and the only sad part that will then stem from that after you realize that is what you then do with that to then say, “Hey, I know that nobody cares about me the way I do, so I got to work a little harder. Oh, I know this is how my friend Sophie helps me. Okay, well, this is how she knows how to help me, so I know where she goes,” and we build this collage, you know, and it’s always moving.
00:50:06
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): It’s this moving collage of people, of personalities, and we know where to–how to ask them, and we get to then adjust based on the hard truths we learned in the first place, and that’s pretty cool because most people who don’t have a challenge might not ever learn this stuff, and so because we are forced to have to understand hard truths, that is nothing if not an opportunity to harness what that means and make that work for us.
00:50:46
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Our entire lives are based around making the way things can work for us so we can lead fulfilling lives with love, with friendship, with purpose, with drive, with clarity and peace of mind.
00:51:01
>> CHEN: That’s beautiful. You know, Steve, one of the great things also about you is that you really want to make a difference in other people’s lives, and you’re launching this awesome new project. I’d love for you to tell folks about it.
>> LETNES: Oh, yeah, there’s a–it’s a working title, folks, but it’s called Blind Ambition Project. As I work in music and as I learned and as I’ve started to achieve certain levels of success–not all of them, but I’ve been able to work hard enough to get to a certain level in the industry, and I continue to move forward.
00:51:35
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): There are lots of exciting projects ahead. As I have discovered what has worked for me, I want to help others find what works for them, and for me that comes through art and specifically through music, so this blind music project, what I’m going to do–or what I’m doing–actually, I learned this.
00:52:01
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): You never–like, it’s like in acting. It’s you don’t talk about what you’re trying to do or what you’re going to do. It’s always about what you’re doing, and so what I am doing is putting together a project where I invite persons with sight challenges, and it will be more persons with different physical disabilities in the future, but I am inviting persons with sight challenges who’ve got some musical chops but because of being on disability, not having the money because a lot of us don’t work, so we don’t have money or a ton of it, and we don’t have the connections.
00:52:37
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I want to bring in persons with sight challenges into a studio where I surround them with professional engineers, professional producers, professional studio musicians to bring their piece of music and pull out the life, the depth, the breadth of what is in their mind and put it into digital form to send out into the world.
00:53:03
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): The thing is, we’re gonna film it, and we’re going to build a documentary out of this, and I have got editors. I’ve got producers. I’ve got people all over the country, even some places around the world who have signed on to do this project that, yes, this is a great idea because what I believe is that when you can achieve something, in this instance a song, an example of what you can do, and–here’s the crucial part, being a part of the decision-making process the entire way, to then have a product at the end of the day that represents your vision in your mind that is now outside of yourself, that not only did you craft behind a mike or behind a keyboard, but you also sat in that booth with the engineers and discussed the decisions to make your song yours, and that builds confidence, and it’s confidence through experience, and once you have experience comes wisdom and the ability to understand, “Hey, I love this music thing.”
00:54:08
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): “I want to continue this,” or it says, “Hey, I got this one music idea out. I’m really happy about this. I really like what I’ve done, but you know what I want to do next?” Dot, dot, dot. You know, get people to a decision to where they want to go next.
00:54:24
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): This is simply a stepping stone to see where you want to go, but I believe through the act of decision-making and creation to establish a final product that you can then do what–with what you will, an idea, and I already have people in the industry who are interested in hearing this. We can talk about distribution. What would you like to do with your song? And there’s a whole other area that you can be a part of discussing where this project goes, where your piece of music goes as we film it, you know, make a documentary out of this.
>> CHEN:
And how do people get in touch with you and/or find out more information if they’re interested or if they know someone who might be a good fit for that project?
00:55:01
>> LETNES: Folks, just email me. My regular email address will be just fine. It’s stephenletnes@gmail.com, and that’s S-T-E-P-H-E-N-L-E-T-N-E-S@gmail.com. My last name spells Nestle, N-E-S-T-L-E, L-E-T-N-E-S.
>> CHEN: I love that. Steve, we’ve been talking a lot about disability and success. You’ve had a lot of awesome things to say. Any final thoughts on the topic for our listeners out there?
>> LETNES: You got to be busy.
00:55:31
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Find ways to reach out, get out, be involved. One of the biggest problems that we have that is as insidious as my macular degeneration is is the creeping feeling of sedate comfort. The only, only reason why I have gotten anywhere in the entertainment business is because I got out of my place, and I went, I reached out. I connected.
00:56:00
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): I contacted. I networked. I shook hands. You could be the best banjo player south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but nobody’s gonna know it if you’re stuck on your porch just playing the thing. You know, nobody’s gonna know the great orator that you are if you don’t go out and give speeches, you know, being a public speaker, doing presentations somehow. You only get better at that, but your talent is not the first thing people look at. It’s the third. It’s the fourth.
00:56:29
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): The first thing they look at after they know who you are is if you’re a decent human being that they can spend time with, that you’re kind, that you want to think of solutions, and so that comes–that’s just a part of the gig, but the only way to do that is if you get out and reach out to the people who know the people who know the people. You get out of your comfort zone, and you get into other people’s comfort zones.
>> CHEN: I like the way you put that, getting into other people’s comfort zones.
00:56:58
>> LETNES: I am nervous saying this, but it’s a difficult place to navigate when you’re starting with a stacked deck, and–but that’s okay because what opportunity do we have in front of us than to think differently all the time? And that is a feature that people want in their workforce. How do directors want music in their film? They want somebody who’s gonna think about it differently because I’ll tell you what.
00:57:30
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): Everybody else who seems to be writing for film is perfectly sighted. Apparently I’m the only dude who’s got low vision who’s scoring films, so, like, I have something different to offer because this is all about selling yourself. Okay, yeah, I–I don’t see all that great, or I don’t hear that well, but here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I do in school. This is how I adjust because you’re–because good managers, people who know how to hire people are looking for people who are gonna help their business out, and what do we do but think differently all the time?
00:58:07
>> LETNES (CONTINUED): We have to think out of the box all the time, and that is something that is special, that is wanted, that is needed, that is necessary, that people want around them, so honestly, as much garbage as we have to deal with for being challenged, disabled, whatever word you use, we got a chance to do things differently, and I think that’s pretty cool.
00:58:31
>> CHEN: Steve, thank you so much for taking such an immense amount of your time out to speak to us and for sharing such great wisdom for us. I really look forward to chatting again. Thank you again for sharing all of your thoughts.
>> LETNES: Hey, thank you so much, Jack. It was a pleasure speaking with you today. I look forward to doing it again.
>> CHEN: This concludes our conversation on success with film composer Steve Letnes.
00:59:00
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Steve has shown us that not being afraid to ask for help when needed, not shying away from doing the hardest thing first because then you know you can do anything, and always saying yes to all the opportunities that come your way even if you’re not quite sure that you can do it have enabled him to achieve incredible success. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and that you’ve learned a tip or two for your own life. Please feel free to contact team Excelability to share your comments, questions, or feedback or to share your own story with us.
00:59:34
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): We’d love to hear from you. You can find out more information about this podcast and other resources by visiting us at www.teamexcelability.com, on Facebook at team Excelability, or on Twitter, @teamxlability. Thank you, and have a blessed day.