Rick Abbott

A Rambling Path to Composerdom

As a child, my brother was a heavy metal guitarist and my mother a university piano professor. So each morning and evening, I was serenaded by those two sounds. Grungy, juggernaut riffs from my brother’s room, and downstairs, the cascading arcs of Chopin and Beethoven. It all swirled together in my head. 

I began to hear sounds differently, outside of genre. I desperately sought out music that combined different sounds to make a new one. In high school, I followed the trend, playing trumpet in jazz band while listening to Alice in Chains and Rob Zombie in my car. After I got a scholarship to play the horn in college, I quickly memorized our pieces so I could move on to making my own trumpet synth. It was during those “experimental” college years that my relationship with sounds deepened. While I constantly switched majors, then somehow found myself in law school, my focus remained on…sound.

For the past 17 years, I’ve also been an advertising writer and creative director, creating ads for M&M’s, AT&T, Jack Link’s, Macy’s, Popeyes, Jet Blue and countless others. While my job was to write, shoot and edit spots, it was also to find the right score. I quickly became the “music guy,” chosen to work with music houses and composers to nail down the job. After awhile, Mike Marinelli, CEO at Sonic Union, heard my music and told me he’d like to master my album (he’s done 3 for me at this point). Then Don Kleszy, editor of an M&M’s commercial I was cutting, brought me on to score the short film he was editing, “Pipe Dreams.” When I began hiring myself to score work projects, like the MARVEL cybercomic we were creating, it all clicked. I had never considered that one could make a living doing this, even though I worked with those who did, daily.

So yup, the way I came to composing took a rambling path. And I think this leaves me with quite a varied and unusual skillset. You can expect a texturally rich mix of sounds, often characterized by the use of an orchestral sound palette layered with – whatever fits the bill. I absolutely love composing and using sound design to profoundly effect viewers of a scene. I’m currently based in Miami, but am happy to work with clients anywhere people need new sounds.