An occasional blog by a jobbing composer, reflecting on both completed and ongoing projects.
I’m pleased to announce that AUK has released my soundtrack for Agaton Sax the Movie!
Available now from Amazon.
This project was a pleasure and an honour. After all, how many composers get to realise a brand new score for a 50 year old animation that was also Sweden’s first feature-length animation!
The film is available here.
The music relishes the best mickey-mousing style of classic cartoons, with a big heart and lots of action.
Very please to hear today that “There Used to be a Me” has won gold at the New York Radio Awards. Alfred Molina’s solo performance as Peter Sellers was incredible and it was a privilege to score him.
2021 has brought some interesting projects! These four are now released (or about to be).
There Used to be a Me is a tour de force performance by Alfred Molina as the many, many characters invented by the late Peter Sellers. The script had very specific musical requirements to evoke the various comedy connections. There were some challenges (like Medieval versions of Beatles songs) and delights (like a Ron Goodwin-esque title track). Molina carries it masterfully.
The Barren Author Series II is like the original, only bigger and better. This time Smith is an active character. That presented interest in the score, which in the first series was always from the Brigadier’s point of view. There is nothing like The Barren Author for not knowing where you are going next - musically and in the story. A real rollercoaster adventure.
Screaming Queens is a two-handed drama depicting Kenneth Williams and Fenella Fielding. Often bitter and cutting in tone, the scripted music was to be merely an introduction to each of the three scenes. I asked the producer for permission to add the lightest score in a few places and he not only gave me permission but loved the end result. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be much to make a difference.
Lastly, The Voices of Dracula is a collection of stories each read by a single actor. The perspectives vary, from the female victim, to Van Helsing and, of course, Dracula. The musical requirements for each were very different and I treated the stories as independent tales. This not only gave freedom to serve the story at hand but also kept distinction where there was obviously some overlap in the story lines.
A fifth project called Getting Better: The Birth of the NHS took up several months. I started preparation with the scripts in March and composed until early June, by which time I had composed all diegetic cues and almost finished 5 out of 10 scores. In spite of so much commitment, I walked away from the project, alongside the sound designer, as the creative differences with the controlling producer were too great. I had never left a project before but I remain pleased with my music, which I am repurposing into several music libraries, soon available to licence.
Earlier in the year I entered the Gil Soundtrack Awards. This was my entry:
Audible’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea is now available:
Made entirely during lockdown, I was honoured to be commissioned as the composer for this exciting adventure.
Some projects have been on the back burner for the last few months, while I composed for “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”. Today I finally opened the test copy of my A3 orchestral score for an amazing short film submission run by Gil Family Estates. Can’t wait to enter!
Today I finished my score for Audible’s new original audio drama of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, produced by Barnaby Eaton-Jones with full sound design by Joseph Fox. This was commissioned at the start of lockdown and required all of the actors to record their parts in isolation to one another, at home, using different equipment! The drama is divided into 5 exciting episodes. I have scored to the audio (rather than writing a suite of library tracks to be edited during production). The score has 161 different musical cues, totalling 141 minutes! Episodes 2-4 have all been scored during the last month. An intense schedule to say the least.
Sometimes samples are not enough and you need a little extra for a project. I often record clarinet and voice elements for my compositions. This next project will need panpipes and percussion. It is not that samples are not adequate sounds - they are just too tidy. This one needs to be a little rough-and-ready, so I will spend several days recording different instruments and compose music afterwards using the recordings.
These talented U.S. high school students recorded the ten parts for this arrangement while in lockdown, all using different microphones in different locations. The challenge for me was to clarify the recordings and then mix the tracks to sound as though they had been performed together, with the balance and nuance of a real performance, correcting and perfecting.
In the last few weeks I have composed 44 tracks for Episode 1 of a forthcoming audio-drama. An excitingly brisk pace of composition that has been very enjoyable!
I have also worked with an US High School, taking the home recordings of individual students and producing a beautiful ensemble performance.
Earlier this year, I composed two original choral works for competitions - one of which has been cancelled due to the lockdown and the deadline of the other has been extended. I'm also preparing the orchestral score for a short film competition that caught my eye.
