The Art of Music Preparation clinic at Musicians Institute, 4 Jun 2026 Highlights

On Thursday, 4 June 2026, ASMAC and the Emerging Professionals Committee hosted The Art of Music Preparation clinic for the Musicians Institute students. The event went from 5–7pm with a mixer for an hour or so afterwards. Panelists included Joseph Carrillo, Booker T. White, Geoff Stradling, Richard Bronskill, hosted by Tom Villano. MI kindly allowed ~20 ASMAC members to attend the student-only event as guests. This is the first of events we’ll host with the MI students. Great work by the EPC, especially Adam Bellotto and Avith Miracle who coordinated with MI and lead event organization.

Liz Finch and Milton Nelson put together a series of handouts that students could download and created the overall structure and outline for the event. These music preparation handouts are also available as web pages, now, on the ASMAC website along with other resources for music engraving, including links to some of the 20+ hours of past ASMAC event videos on music prep.

Below are highlights of the event from Adam Bellotto and Oliviana Marie.

Video of the event will be available, soon, along with the wonderful Music Prep event that Milton Nelson hosted for our Student Chapter a while back.

–Jeff Kellem
ASMAC 2nd Vice President

Highlights from Adam Bellotto

What’s the best color paper to use for a scoring session?

What do you do if you’re orchestrating a piece of music for a composer, and you find out they didn’t really write that cool flute flourish… they pasted in a pre-recorded sample?

How much should an orchestrator or copyist charge?

These are just a few of the topics mentioned at the recent “The Art of Music Prep” panel event, put on by ASMAC and held at Musician’s Institute in Hollywood. Booker White (Superman, Zootopia 2), Geoff Stradling (Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, Mad Men), Richard Bronskill (Andor, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) and Joseph Carrillo (Minari, Speak No Evil) were the guests sitting on the panel, each one a significant figure in the world of orchestration and music preparation. The discussion was hosted by Tom Villano, a professor at Musician’s Institute and a music editor with 40+ years of success in the industry (hits like Robocop and Breaking Bad).

After a brief introduction by Villano and ASMAC’s own Jeff Kellem, Richard Bronskill broke down the details of his own Sibelius template, giving attendees an exact look at his first steps in orchestrating for projects like Black Mirror. Afterwards, Tom Villano joined the guests onstage to talk about the ins and outs and the fine details of this part of the industry. What color paper? Somewhere between off-white a dim yellow – easy to read, but not so white that the light will be reflecting into the musicians’ eyes for several hours during a session. How much to charge? By the page, and a page is four bars, and if it’s a union gig, scale’s the lowest you’ll go (but negotiate up from there as much as you can). Stradling and White also hammered home the importance of booking as much union work — and as much work that’ll send you mailbox money (or passive income, or whatever you’d like to call it) — as you can.

The panelists also detailed some of their biggest foibles, and the times they’ve shown up to a session only to find a different composer in the room (turns out, the original composer got fired the night before). Afterwards, the hosts hopped off stage to mingle with guests, and the conversations continued even as everyone packed up and headed to their cars.

Everyone in attendance came away with new knowledge, a little fun, and a few hours spent learning from music industry veterans.

Oh… and what do you do when a piece was written with pre-recorded samples? Two options. First option is to spend the time transcribing whatever sample was used. Other option? Call the composer (or their assistant) – “hey so this sample in bar 60, should we use this note for note, or switch it out for something similar?”

Good information to have.

Tom Villano, Avith Miracle, Joseph Carrillo, Booker White, Geoff Stradling, Richard Bronskill, Jeff Kellem, Oliviana Marie, Annette Johnson, Bonnie Janofsky, Adam Bellotto

The Art of Music Prep highlights by Oliviana Marie

I had so much fun helping organize “The Art of Music Prep” event with ASMAC, the ASMAC Emerging Professionals Committee and Musicians Institute, spearheaded by MI alums Avith Miracle and Adam Bellotto.

Our incredible panelists included Booker White (Disney, Head of Music Preparation), Geoff Stradling (Golden Globes Music Director), Richard Bronskill (Orchestrator Mission: Impossible), Joseph Carrillo (Joy Music House) and moderator Tom Villano (Music Editor Matilda).

This wonderful team shared invaluable insider information about the industry, tips and tricks they’ve learned along the way and crazy stories about finishing cues at 6am and then recording them at 10am that same day! Richard Bronskill demonstrated his step-by-step process in Sibelius, from the first stages of receiving stems and MIDI data, creating notation, fleshing out orchestration and ultimately making parts that are ready to put on the stands of the musicians who will bring the music to life.

The panelists talked about creating parts that look the same across different notation softwares, printing and taping techniques, standard paper sizes in the studios, union orchestration rates, scheduling the cues in an order that makes sense, and much, much more.

If a part is done well, the musicians will attack it from the beginning and the first take will usually be the best take!

Music Prep is incredibly important and it was very exciting to catch a glimpse into their world.