I definitely admire the people who have massive setups with everything at the ready from the get go. On a big project, the template gets built as I go and so while it takes longer to get started, when it gets to the end, I can really put my foot down without having to hunt through hundreds of patches because I know everything I want is probably going to be close by. I don’t run a standard generic template with hundreds of tracks on startup, I personally find that very intimidating. I do have one small (and portable) 15” screen that I really just use for video playback (or internet!). I just found that having multiple screens on left and right was not good ergonomically for me. Anything smaller and you need the magnifying glass. I have one 42” 4K monitor which might sound nuts, but at that size, you’re able to take full advantage of the screen without having to use resolution scaling. I stopped using multiple screens years ago. I’m in the process of transitioning everything over to M2 drives, but currently my samples are spread out over 3 M2 drives, and 4 SSDs, with an additional drive for system only, an additional drive for projects, and an additional drive for cloud storage, for which I’m primarily using Box, and Dropbox. I’m running one PC, using either a customised version of Reaper, or for legacy reasons, Cakewalk Sonar. We’ll be here all day if I go through my record collection! In no particular order, Mychael Danna, Jesper Kyd, James Horner, Hybrid, Yoko Kanno, Led Zeppelin, Alan Silvestri, M83, Jóhann Jóhannsson. That said, I do have some go to artists that I like listening to in downtime. I just think it’s important to try and keep an open mind. I’m generally not listening to other soundtracks when searching for inspiration for my own work, just on the lookout for things that grab my attention, it can be a cool rhythm, a new instrument, even in genres of music I wouldn’t normally choose to listen to. One can often end up in YouTube/Spotify black holes but you find some interesting things along the way. I often start with an artist I like and then just see where the algorithm takes me. YouTube - Related Videos, and Spotify - Related Artists! These two features alone are incredibly useful for finding inspiration. Where do you find your inspiration? Can you share any particular music or artists that influence you?
It was from that point I started building the groundwork necessary to being a composer, doing as many projects as I could whether it be library music, commercials, games or films.
I then worked and travelled for 3 years, teaching English in Japan before going to the University of Southern California’s film scoring program in 2009. At the time they had a Media and Applied Music course (which has since been amalgamated into the composition program) that I studied on for 4 years. The idea of music as a career wasn’t something I thought about until it was recommended to me by a teacher at school that I apply to music university - the Royal Academy of Music being where I ended up. Can you share your musical journey with us? When did you first start scoring to picture?
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