Diversified: A profile of multimedia musician Joe Miller 


by April Denée

Picture by Joe Miller

July 1, 2011

Joe Miller is a professional musician, but he sounds more like a wise stock consultant when he gives other artists his best piece of advice – “diversify.” While the Charlotte-based musician has played his share of band gigs, Miller says his greatest success has come mostly from outside the walls of bars, clubs, and concert halls.

According to Miller, local and regional bands have a harder time making a living and establishing a stable lifestyle for themselves, while freelance composers can create music on their own, have greater earning potential, and are allowed more freedom to choose how and where they live, work, and raise a family.

"Let's say you make $100 a gig with a band that would reasonably get two gigs a week. If you get out a calculator, that's only $800 a month,” said Miller. “Add to that, bands tend to break up, usually over petty things like relationships or egos. Full-time musicians need multiple skill sets to survive.”

Even before graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Jazz Guitar Performance from Winthrop University, Miller already was teaching private guitar lessons. And now, as an adjunct professor at his alma mater, he teaches jazz guitar and music technology, including a new film scoring course that debuts this summer.

In fact, since earning a Master’s in composition and music technology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., a large part of Miller’s career work has included studio recordings for television, film, and other media as a project sound designer and a stock contributor to ProductionTrax, an online music library.

"While pop songs are around three minutes long, production songs are usually 30 seconds, one minute, or five minutes, and mostly instrumental," said Miller. “Right now, I have a couple hundred production songs completed, but I don't even know where a lot of them go once they hit the music library.” 

But the few destinations Miller does know about are quite impressive, with stock music featured in a Barcelona television show, a London museum installation, a College Humor.com sketch, and commercial videos for Mohawk Carpet, Kain Label and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Miller has also been successful as a sound designer for specific projects, providing film scores for three feature films and six short films. The feature films include Land of Confusion, a 2008 documentary by director Jeremy Zerechak about a National Guard unit’s search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 

"It's important to do projects you respect and to protect your own artistic integrity,” Miller said about film scoring. “But the film is ultimately about the audience’s immersion and experience, not the music itself. So the emotional and stylistic content of the film has to be served by the music you create."

Last month, Miller also completed scoring for Bamboo Shark, a feature comedy by writer/director Dennis Ward about a group of student filmmakers who cast celebrity impersonators. And he’s currently scoring another Zerechak documentary about internet security called Code 2600, due to be released later this year.

Despite what might seem like a commercial - rather than an artistic - career, Miller said he not only derives artistic fulfillment from occasional jam sessions at jazz venues and his own solo projects, like an upcoming album of electronic and orchestral music, but he also finds art in the studio work itself.

"I think a ‘new music’ composition that’s abstract and unlistenable on its own is just as artistic as playing ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ for three-year-olds because that’s art to them,” said Miller. “Art is defined by the person who experiences it – which also means, don't expect your music to be art for everyone.”

Now, an adjunct professor and veteran composer, Miller encourages musicians to make new connections any way they can - like when he helped Zerechak purchase a microphone, which began their professional relationship -  and to start out with pro bono work to learn or sharpen new skill sets.

"When you’re freelance and you have no experience, the job itself is the compensation since you can get skills, experience, and credits. But once you have the skills, they’re valuable,” said Miller. “I'd be thrilled if just one person read this article and thought, ‘There's more I can do with my music.’” 

To learn more about Joe Miller and listen to some of his music samples, click here.