Meet Guillermo Silberstein | Composer & Sound Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Guillermo Silberstein and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Guillermo, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I was working at 20th Century fox/Century City at the time and for some reason we where instructed to not initiate new work so for almost a months I didn’t have anything to do and only had to commute an hour from Pasadena, sit at my desk for 8 hours doing nothing and leave. I am just a workaholic by nature so I thought why not open a company.

One inspiration came from looking around the office building and saw how outside there where all these mansions from people who worked in the Entertainment business and at the same time looking inside the office and seeing all these small 1980s looking cubicles and thought that maybe I should work towards a new goal. I have been meeting all these people that where part of the Entertainment business at different levels and no one stood out as being more clever or smarter, it seems like its related to taking a chance and having the right connections.

That was one inspiration but I think its mostly thanks to having grown up in Venezuela where so many migrants from all over the world came with almost no money and open up their business and made a nice future for themselves . I tried opening my own business when I first arrive to Los Angeles 15 years prior but I didn’t have any experience. Just wanted to open a business but later closed it. I had the enterpenuer spirit but its just at the time there was very little info about this concept. ITs either be an employee or be the employer (large company).

Once this seed was implanted into my mind I immediately thought about my friends and the work I do outside of the film studio which is music and sound design. Every day after work, and for about 4-6 hours during a period of 15 years I worked producing music at home for music libraries for TV shows and also did musical sound design for a few movies which is where I got to work with my friend Freddy Seinfeld and decided to do our own music library business but later pivoted to Software and sounds for fellow composers. That ended up being three jobs!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I create music for Film and TV thats based on different genres. Having worked in a big Hollywood studio made me aware of the clients goals and deadlines as filmmakers look towards the approval of these studios while at the same time creating unique art they love and feel passionate about. This fine line between art and commerce leaves filmmakers a little uneasy on just how their art will be taken by both the studio and audiences. Ive learned to understand what works or what doesn’t in a movie or show without stepping on their creative toes.

Ive recently did a new LEGO Batman short and I am stoked on how cool the graphics look. Working with this level of animation is humbling and so happy I can do the music.

Id like to claim effort for how I got where I am professionally but it’s also part luck and just trusting your instincts. I arrive in LA on a friends couch and in a week, due to some random circumstances, I was the assistant of one of the top music producers of the world helping out on a few bands I listen to growing up. One day that producer told me he will leave the country for a long period of time and that night I saw an ad in Craigslist looking for Spanish speakers who knew Pro Tools and the next day I was hired on the spot at a small 8 person studio. At first it was doing Spanish audio Quality Control but quickly I started working on many American TV network series. I had to work double and triple time shifts due to the amount of work, even weekends. Plus id still use any time I had to work on my music. That studio grew and I was managing over 100 people that dealt with all types of the filmmaking process and recently that studio won an Emmy and does a lot of the high end TV shows.

I might have learned to just keep at it. Being as productive as fast as possible without sacrificing quality. It’s aiming at finding the sweet spot of having a professional level product completed at the shortest time. Competition is very tough in this field so being on top of your game is always a must, theres simply no excuses. This level of professionalism wasn’t a thing I saw anywhere else.

This has helped me also in my other businesses like Pulsesetter-Sounds where we have to create software and sounds used by composers all over the world.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
The beauty of Los Angeles is that it has beaches and mountains with everything in between. I have friends from South America who loved seeing Rodeo Drive and all the opulence LA has to offer while others prefer nature and history.
Id show a lot of people places like “Chamo” in Pasadena where they serve authentic Venezuelan food and drinks.

I would show my best friend some of the famous areas in LA shown in major movies. I would start by driving early the morning through Mulholland Drive and Sunset avenue while showing the famous bars and music venues where many famous rock bands played back in the day. We would end up in the Hollywood Sign and Griffith park and later eat lunch at a restaurant near the beach like Paradise Cove. Then we would go to the Santa Monica Pier and Universal studios to do the tourist thing I normally dont do but secretly want to. For the LA nightlife we would go to Highland Park Bowl to have a few drinks and play bowling in this cool retro 1920s place.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to give a shout out to my parents, my wife and friends who made everything possible.

My dad encourage me to follow my own path. He told me how his family made him study and follow a career he didn’t want to do so he encouraged me to do my own thing, whatever that was.

Thats why I decided to stay in USA and move across the country after my studies in the east coast and stay on a friends couch in LA so I could pursue what I like the most; the world of Entertainment. My wife was also monumental in the transition as she left everything behind and helped me see this new change as an amazing adventure. Id also like to give thanks to all my friends and colleagues (too many to list) who some way or another helped me out. They were very encouraging and helped me see how to become better at what I do. It was awesome having a nice network of fiends and colleagues that were both very professional and cool friends in the cut throat world of the Entertainment business.

Website: https://guillermosilberstein.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pulsesettersounds/