Last year, Transom published a slew of excellent articles about scoring stories. The series was called “Using Music” and it featured insight on scoring from some of the best — The Kitchen Sisters, Brendan Baker, Jonathan Mitchell, Andy Mills, and Pat Mesiti-Miller. This week, HowSound adds to the mix.

Neena Pathak, a former Transom Story Workshop student, scored a story she produced for Latino USA back in April. The piece is called “Sabiduria: Negotiating Identity in a Trans-Racial Adoption.” In it, Tom Molina Duarte talks openly about being born in Costa Rica and raised by white parents in the U.S.

I heard an early draft of the story and thought there was too much music in it — that the story was “wallpapered” with music nearly every second. While that’s not necessarily a bad approach to scoring a story, I believe the music could be used more effectively if it was brought in and out at particular points. Plus, it would be valuable to hear Tom’s voice in the clear, without any music, so that he could speak directly to the listener.

So, I reached out to Neena and asked if I could remix her story — take her original session and rejigger the music. Thankfully, she agreed.

I am very grateful to Neena for allowing me to put her story under the microscope and letting me rearrange what she produced. It’s not easy to let go of something you’ve created and let someone else reshape it — publicly, no less. Thanks, too, to the staff at Latino USA for granting permission to use the story.