Christmas is coming…

July 13, 2012 By

I know, I know…I’m crazy right!? Yes, you would be right in saying that, but I am in the middle of preparations for a christmas album. Some of you may remember that I blogged about an acoustic christmas album…and that is what I am now mixing and mastering.

I’m not getting the album ready because the summer we are having is more like November than July, although that would be fair enough. I am getting it ready because the programming schedule for Christmas TV, films and adverts is soon to be prepared. What better way to get in there early than get my album into the right hands in August? Winning!

So here is your taster, fa la la la laaa la la la laaaaa!

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Reverso by ArtFx

July 12, 2012 By

 

“LIVING IN AN AVERAGE BRITISH SUBURB, BARNEY DRIVES AN AVERAGE CAR TO AN AVERAGE OFFICE WHERE HE WORKS AN AVERAGE JOB. HE’S AN AVERAGE BLOKE, WITH ONE IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: HE LIVES LIFE UPSIDE DOWN.”

I’m always keen to watch new short films as they have a different approach to telling a story. An approach I find refreshing. I really enjoyed watching this. It had so many things I liked about it I’m not sure where to start. The idea is great, a normal guy who lives upside down, so simple but so effective. The music was very well done, captured each part of the film and enhanced it – good job Aurelien Marini! It just had such a nice feeling about it, they hooked me into their world and I was absorbed, always what I look for in any film – does it bring me into it’s world and absorb me completely? If it has then it has done it’s job!

I found this video on Short of the Week, a superb collection of short films, well worth your attention.

Filed Under: Film, Inspiration Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Score to an imagined film

July 11, 2012 By

Last week I posted about my new sample libraries arriving, which was very exciting. Getting a new sound in your palette breathes life into your writing.

I thought I would share a work in progress that uses these new sounds. It’s called Always Her. 

Always Her is part of the score to an imagined film. This imagined film is a strange love story between two unlikely people in the middle of difficult times. This track underscores the scene where he realises that she is the one he has always wanted and needed. Their paths have become irreversibly entwined, but for the greater good of both. Throughout the narrative I imagined that they were resisting each other, not in a sexual way but in a way that implied they were two parts of the same soul. Living lives in parallel, destined to join one another.

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#Photooftheweek

July 10, 2012 By

Journey Photo

The reason I have chosen this photo, is not for it’s composition, or tetxure, or anything like that – it’s for the fact it tells me a story (a simple one, but a story none-the-less). I think almost all of my fascination with images and photography is not for the practice of capturing the moment, but that it tells a story –  a picture tells a thousand words.

When I look at an image, I like to imagine what sound I would here and what music etc. With this image above I think I would here, pace, tension, isolation but with the hint of something bigger. Something like this:

This interest in narrative is ever present in my music. I try to tell a story with sound – Where are we? Who is there? What are they feeling? What’s about to happen? etc. This is the role of the film composer – we tell the story of the emotions, places, characters and time.

Film composers, like photographers and film makers, are story tellers.

If we take Sean Beeson as a great example. His music communicates stories so well. This particular one telling a tale of sadness, honour and beauty. I would like you to listen to this track and imagine what is happening on screen – what do you see? What picture would accompany this track?

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Doodling with Sound

July 9, 2012 By

Doodles

Some of you may or may not this but, I love to doodle. I put some music on, open a fresh page of my sketch pad and let the pen move around the page as if of it’s own free will. I am obviously not on my own when it comes to enjoying the art of free range penmanship. In fact, one of my favourite sites to visit when I need inspiring is Doodlers Anonymous the ‘permanent home of spontaneous doodle art’.

The reason that I am bringing this up on this fine July morning is it’s relevance to my compositional process. I see some incredibly important parallels between the way I doodle and the way I compose music. I may sit down with no plan as to what I want to achieve other than fun. Prepare my tools (pens or piano), and let my mood dictate the direction of the work. Recently I have composed a lot of work on the piano, which has almost all been exclusively doodling on the piano, “sound doodles” if you will. I decided to sit at the keyboard and just see what happens.

The beauty of both kinds of doodling is that after a little while you will end up with a piece of art that you are proud of. The pieces I have included below are ones that I am very proud of, they are part of my Piano Works Series, which you will here more of I’m sure.

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Nothing but Fun

July 6, 2012 By

Plain and simple, I’m proud of this piece of music and wanted to share it with you.

I had so much fun writing and recording it. It was a pitch for an advert for a very well known chocolate brand. They wanted me to capture a fun, exciting and interesting new world. Unfortunately it was not successful but in this business you never know what use a track will find in the future so it’s worth keeping them all.

Do you think it sounds like a chocolate bar? If so which one?

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Cliff Martinez – you rock!

July 5, 2012 By

I can’t help but respect Cliff Martinez and his work. In a business where the need for big orchestral (sometimes overly brash) scores is largely dominant, he has managed to carve himself a niche where subtle, pulsing, Steve Reich-inspired electro does nothing but enhance the delicate beauty of a film’s story and characters. This respect in enhanced even more by the fact that he explores the sound world so vastly using instruments like the Cristal Baschet and bass steel drums. Having studied music from a more ‘sonic/experimental’ viewpoint, composers who utilise less traditional instruments really appeal to me. (Also check out Johnny Greenwood’s score to There will be Blood where he uses the unusual sounds of the Ondes Martenot)

For those of you new to his work, a good place to start with Cliff Martinez’s music is Solaris and his recent score to the brutal and beautiful film Drive.


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Glassworks and Pan Drums

July 4, 2012 By

It’s a good day today – my new sample libraries that I ordered arrived. I am always up for expanding my palette of sounds and keen to try new things, so I thought I would stray from the well-trodden route of orchestral instruments. For this I would need Soniccouture! This company likes to explore new sonic realms and capture bizarre sounds, which for a film composer is like a kid in a sweet shop! After spending an hour or so listening intently to their demos I settled on two of their sample libraries:

Glassworks - a collection of glass instruments, and Pan Drums - like reversed steel drums shaped like UFOs (pictured)

The main reason I chose these is because I obviously liked them and also because they would fit well into my writing style. As I like to use patterns, interesting percussive sounds like this are incredibly good and making those same patterns sound new and exciting. You’ll have to stay tuned for my pieces of music using these instruments. In the meantime, check out this demo!

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#Photooftheweek

July 3, 2012 By

Window

One of my all time favourite things to do is to stare out of a window, I know it makes me sound a bit simple but I really think it is an essential part of the working day. To help you understand I want to cast your minds back to school – you are sitting in your maths class (next to a window), it is a beautiful day outside, the sun is shining, a cool breeze blowing through the partially open window next to you and your teacher is droning on about quadratic equations. You try your best to stay focused but the sound of birds is getting louder, the cool breeze pulling your gaze from the nonsense on the board to the beautiful view out of the window. In one slow movement you turn your head to face the window, but enough so you may feign the “thinking” face. Seconds pass, minutes stroll by, and before you know it you have daydreamed your way through 20 minutes of Maths and had a great time. (Just in case you haven’t realised, I wasn’t a big fan of Maths, if it helps you understand replace the subject title with whatever subject you disliked at school) This doesn’t exactly support my ideas of making it an essential part of your day but it helps you to understand where the fascination comes from.

Now I have explained, I think that you can forgive and hopefully appreciate my love of windows and blue skies. I am lucky enough to have an incredible 8ft window in my studio to gaze out of whenever I please, and funnily enough some of my best ideas pop into my head when I am daydreaming through the glass. Which makes me think that it was and always has helped me to digest my thoughts better. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is feeling a bit stuck/bored/tired, find a window and gaze – you need breaks, and this is the best one of all! You may not notice it straight away but it will help you feel refreshed – call it a power nap for the brain.

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Not quite the score to ‘Lost’ but it will do!

July 2, 2012 By

I’ve just added this new set to my Soundcloud account. I know what you are thinking, ‘Awesome, Rich just uploaded some new tracks!’ – and on one side you would be right, I have uploaded tracks, but these are actually almost 2 years old so they are not new. I have had these tracks festering in my iTunes account just waiting to be heard for quite some time now, and it is about time that they were, heard that is.

I wrote them on request for the very talented music supervisor Vikram Gudi, it was Vik who got me my first sync with an online Hewlett Packard video, and then again with a video for Tandberg, and he was also heavily involved in the very successful advertising campaign for Cathedral City Cheese. Now, you may be thinking, ‘What has this got to do with Rich’s new upload?’. Well, all these three syncs used my track All is Not Lost…

 

There’s a funny story behind this track: A few years ago I was scoring a film called Gorilla My Heart and the director emailed me asking for a track that sounded like the Lost score by Michael Giacchino. Having not ever seen or heard the show I was at a loose end, so rather than checking out what the music actually sounded like I imagined what it would sound like. In my head the main characters were lost in life rather than lost on an island and they needed an uplifting score for those emotional moments, maybe even a montage (which Lost happens to use all the time). So, as you can imagine, the track was never used as it was nothing like what the director wanted – so it lay dorment on my hard drive, waiting for the opportune moment to spring to life.

A few years later, after All is Not Lost had had it’s day, I did as I always do, I asked Vik for a project (I love a good project) and he said “Give me a load of tracks like All is not Lost“… a month or so later I produced the album Another Moment Closer.

This album is quite hard to describe, but I would say it is a collection of instrumental electronic-guitar-pop tracks designed to inspire, uplift and be enjoyed. After a very long winded introduction, I give you, Another Moment Closer by Richard Pryn. Soon available to buy on iTunes.

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