"Made on a Mac" composing seminars at Hollywood / Santa Monica Apple Stores

Larry Hopkins recently gave well-attended seminars for Apple Computer at the Grove Center in Hollywood, CA and the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA. The show opened with Larry's arrangement of Bach's Italian Concerto (3rd movement). This arrangement uses vintage synth plug-ins made by Arturia and Logic's Ultrabeat drums. This Switched-On Bach style was accompanied by a synchronized visual presentation. Larry created the presentation using Roland's Motion Dive video software. It features very sophisticated three dimensional computer animations content from Digital Juice. Click here to take a listen. Bach Italian Mvmt3.mp3

After a brief introduction of Larry’s movie, TV, Video Game and performance credits, the audience was treated to a "History of Sound Effects" discussion complete with audio/visual examples of each movie shown as the full theater production followed by a dissected SFX seen in Final Cut Pro software.

Then Larry began to show the features found in Apple's Logic Pro 7. After describing the basic functionality and specs, Larry began to explain the EXS24 software sampler that comes with Logic. Larry then used the EXS24 sampler to play Tchaicovsky's Russian Dance from the "Nutcracker Ballet" using samples and software tools from the Vienna Symphonic Library. Click here to take a listen. Hopkins Trepak VSL.mp3

Next, a discussion with live audio examples of Logic's other virtual instruments (including Ultra-beat, EVP88, EVB3, EVD6, ES2 and Sculpture).

Following this was a discussion on movie dialogue restoration using Apple’s Soundtrack Pro. Then Larry began to describe the hardware in both the Hopkins Entertainment studio. This included fire wire computer audio interfaces from Presonus, MIDI controllers from Novation, video capture cards from Aurora, MIDI control surfaces by JL Cooper and SATA hard drives from Acom Data.

The entire seminar wrapped up with Larry playing the finale to Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" (including another Motion dive synchronized video). Click here to take a listen. Firebird.mp3

It looks like there may be more of these seminars coming at other Apple stores. We'll keep you posted.


Source Music for the Finale episode of ABC’s "Desperate Housewives".

Larry Hopkins composed, performed and recorded source music for the Episode 223 “Remember” in which character Betty Applewhite sits down to enjoy her piano and is close enough to hear Melanie Foster in the next room trying to convince Betty’s son not to break up their relationship. The music supervisor placed the famous “Song with Words” for solo piano by Mendelssohn as temporary music. The difficulty in composing this piece in the same style was there is an overhead shot of Betty playing where her hands are seen playing specific notes. So Larry used his composing and piano playing skills to try to stay in the style of Mendelssohn and match Betty’s hands! Larry used his favorite acoustic piano plug-in called “Ivory” from Synthogy” to compose and record the cue.


Larry Hopkins assists Alan Howarth in the production of Alice Coltrane's latest album.

Larry Hopkins recently assisted legendary composer/ sound designer on Alice Coltrane’s latest album. Larry and Alan pulled out many of their audio engineering and mastering skills to produce the sound heard on this wonderful World Beat release.


Larry Hopkins composes for Associated Production Music’s latest music library.

Larry Hopkins recently completed 100 music trailer library cues for Associated Production Music. These cues are composed within the Film Trailer genre. Larry composed a huge amount of orchestral cues. Ambient synthesizer sounds and slick new percussion grooves were used to ad variety and a fresh new sound.


Cinematic Score for "Jak X" PS2 video game for SONY

Larry Hopkins composed the cinematic musical score to the SONY Playstation 2 video game  "JAK X" from Naughty Dog released by SONY Computer Entertainment of America. Although earlier games in this series (Jak & Daxter 2, Jak 3  - scored by Larry Hopkins) were all story generated role-playing games, Jak X is a racing game and a role-playing game at the same time!  Since this game has lots of racing in it, one of the characters (sports announcer G.T.Blitz) broadcast’s need lots of fast paced, techno ESPN style music. Other cinematic movies in this game let Larry Hopkins stretch his orchestral scoring skills.

Be sure to visit the Press page of Hopkins Entertainment. You’ll find downloadable PDF files of Larry Hopkins latest press release and a biography. You’ll also find quotes about Larry’s career from people that have worked with him, Press Reviews of his music, Media Interviews, Awards and affiliates.