All in Music Production

The Creative Spaces of Film Composers and Mix Engineers

I'm basically in love with Spitfire Audio's samples, the textures and colours they have captured over the years have been essential in reaching my audiences and telling the right stories effectively within my film scores. It was during my usual online scout for new samples for my next projects when I stumbled across a series of videos they had published known as Creative Cribsand I wanted to share it with you guys.

Given their outreach with film composers all over the globe, they (Spitfire Audio) have been able to get an inside look at many composers studios and give us a pretty comprehensive tour. I have embedded my three favorites below and hope you guys will take the time to check them out as well as taking a look at the vast collection Spitfire have posted...

Visiting Sony Pictures

I recently took a trip to Los Angeles and had the opportunity to visit the Sony Pictures lot with my buddy in Culver City and wanted to share some of pictures I managed to take (we were prohibited from taking too many) and highlights from my time there.

I had initially gotten a little frustrated with myself as I was a little unprepared and after knocking on many of the studio doors (including Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions) and being told I needed an appointment, I came to realise I really should have reached out to these guys before I left for L.A. - I guess the excitement of finally visiting the United States and particularly California was a little overwhelming for me which lead me to be slightly unorganised about the whole thing; you can imagine my excitement when I was told yes I could visit Sony, and yes, I could take a look at the scoring stage as it was not being used that morning...

Francis: A Look Back In Time At My Very First Film Score

How much should you give away? How much do you expose yourself? Should you open yourself up for criticism? Should you hide your art away?

Music, and any art come to think of it, is an incredibly personal thing. There is a reason people won’t show you that paining they have been working on for the past two months, why that poem just never seems finished, and why film composers can be late on their deadlines ;).

It’s all about exposure! It’s fairly human to talk your way around things, get yourself out of sticky situations, and let’s be fair, talk utter bullshit at times; but when you play a piece of music to someone, or unveil you latest painting, suddenly you are naked, open to criticism and in many cases, at your most vulnerable as both an artist and as a person.

I’ve listened to loads of music from various fellow composers  and what I find interesting (although never comment), is just how much that specific piece, written at that specific time is actually saying about the person, it’s very personal…

Film Composer Junkie XL On Film Scoring, Deadlines, Hans Zimmer & His Studio

Who remembers the opening raining blood scene from the 1998 movie Blade? I certainly do as Blade was an important movie for me as a then youngster at a time when the the big screen was just starting to fascinate me. Until yesterday, I had been totally unaware that the music from that scene was composed by Junkie XL and licensed for the scene; cue his initial interest in becoming a film composer.

Seasoned electronic music producer-turned-film composer Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL is being discussed more and more now in the film music world, what with his recent and ongoing collaborations with Hans Zimmer at Remote Control Productions for movies such as Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and of course his amazing solo work on Divergent and 300: Rise of an Empire, but it occurred to me that I had never really taken the time to look into his work.

Yesterday while doing my usual scout, I stumbled across a Collider interview with Tom (below) and found myself immersed in hearing about his start as both an electronic music producer and his transformation into a film composer. I found it humbling to hear that for him, at the time of entering the film score production circuit, his tracks were at number one in several countries and despite this, he took up work as an assistant for the likes of Harry Gregson-Williams to gain a better insigne of just how scores are produced in Hollywood, an amazing level of dedication and respect for an industry he clearly admires…

49 - 88 Keys (But Which Keyboard Do I Buy?)

I should imagine there comes a point in every contemporary composers career where a larger MIDI master keyboard is required, for me that day came this week. I had been flirting with the idea of upgrading for some time, but what with the vast volume of products available on the market and just sheer size of a full format keyboard in general, I found myself trawling through the internet and never really coming to any sort of conclusion on what the best solution would be.

I had been using the M-Audio Oxygen 49 for the past two years and found the assignable faders and pots very useful, especially when working with sound design and electronic based composition. The synth action keys on the other hand and general lack of them were beginning to frustrate me.

Most modern orchestral sample libraries contain patches called ‘key-switches’, essentially this enables the composer to change the articulation of the loaded instrument during the performance at the touch of a piano note; These notes are usually placed outside the playable range of the instrument. In other words, should the composer be using a solo cello for example, using a key-switched patch would provide the ability to switch between a sustained and pizzicato note articulation at the touch of key instead of having to move to a different track with the pizzicato articulation loaded in order to play that part of the composition. This makes playing ‘live’ much more of a possibility and is a great way of adding realism to your sampled instruments. I found that using a 49 key MIDI controller made using these patches very difficult to use as I had to hit the octave button down on the keyboard every time I wanted to change articulation, a frustration which is no longer an issue with an 88 key controller…