Silas Hite is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and visual artist.
Early life
Hite began playing drums when he was eleven, studying with jazz drummer Mel Zelnick. He taught himself guitar and bass and sang in the choir at The Orme School. He later studied music, art and business at The University of Arizona. His music focus was in percussion performance and experimental composition. He also studied at the University's recording studio.
Career
Silas began his professional career at Mutato Muzika, a music production company owned by his uncle, composer and co-founder of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh. From 2003 to 2010, Silas scored and co-scored many films, television shows, video games, and commercials as an in-house composer and session musician. During this time he worked on many memorable commercial campaigns including "one of the most popular viral ad campaigns of all time," Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" campaign which won a Grand Clio and Cannes Cyber Gold Lion in Viral Marketing. Another notable collaboration was Apple Inc.'s Get a Mac campaign with 66 different iterations appearing on television and in Apple Inc. stores in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Japan from 2006 to 2009. The long-running popular campaign was named "Campaign of the Decade" by Adweek and won many awards such as a Grand Effie Award in 2007. In 2010, Hite left Mutato Muzika to become a freelance composer. He now works from his personal studio where he continues to score many films, television shows, commercials and video games. In 2013, Hite began a string of successful collaborations with artist and filmmaker John Herschend. Most notably he scored "Stories From the Evacuation", commissioned for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and "Discussion Questions" for Whitney Biennial in 2014. In 2014, he scored "Homeward Bound", an Emmy-winning public service announcement addressing homelessness in America. In 2015, he scored multiple episodes of "Chef's Table," a Netflix Original Series. Each episode of the series profiles a single world-renowned chef and features a classically based score. Besides composing scores, Hite is also a songwriter, producer, and performer, providing original songs for many of his projects. His songs have appeared in films such as "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist," Robert Williams' "Mr. Bitchin’", and "Circle of 8", and television programs such as Dance-a-Lot Robot, "Blue Mountain State", "Duck Dynasty", "Burn Notice", "", and "UFC Ultimate Insider". Hite teaches his own Commercial Scoring Workshop in partnership with Emmy-winning audio company iZotope and is often a guest lecturer at colleges and universities throughout the nation.
Visual Art
Although best known for his music, Hite maintains a busy art career showing his extremely detailed pen and ink drawings in galleries. In 2014, he was part of several group shows around the country including “The 2nd Annual Coaster Show” at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood, California as well as a solo exhibition at St. Catherine University in Minnesota. Earlier in the year Hite appeared in the February issue of art magazine Juxtapoz, talking about his art and music influences. His freelance illustration work appears in web and print based media around the world, including the L.A. Record.
