Category Archives: Getting The Score

My worskspace

This is my workspace. Although I use plenty of music technology, my writing room is set-up to have lots of space for good old-fashioned paper. It is as rich, bright and energetic as possible with my one small window. I used to like it darker but...

Four-Part Stupidity

I read on an online forum that a composition “teacher” (if we can say that about this person…) told a pupil that four-part writing is useless and to forget all about it. It has nothing to do with composition. All I have to say to t...

Beauty is in the Details

Being a film composer is not just about the epic film scores. In reality, it’s mostly not. Your craftsmanship at musical story-telling is in large part made up of what you do during those small moments. So today we’ll take a brief look ...

Comforting Skin Scoring Session Video

Hello, hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day. The film I scored a while ago called ‘Comforting Skin” had a run at Slamdance recently and is now heading out to a variety of other festivals, getting some well-deserved attention. Here...

John Williams and Me (on the Maestro’s 80th birthday)

My original Star Wars album from 1977 My first musical love affair was with John Williams’ score for “Star Wars”. I remember clearly lying down in my mother’s living room as young lad of 8 or 9, chin in hands, listening to the...

How Big?

John Williams can go big, no doubt about it. It’s always his big score moments in correspondingly big scenes that people talk about, but from my vantage point as a film composer, I am just as fascinated by his skill at going big on what may seem ...

Tips for Getting Into Film Scoring

I get asked this more and more often, so I thought I would write a short blog post about this subject. My career is starting to take off, so I feel that I can actually share my thoughts on this subject with some certainty and hopefully help those wh...