How I stumble my way through making music for my films
I never intended on making music for my own films, I had an interest in music, specifically synthesizers, but my goal was never to be like John Carpenter or something - I honestly didn’t think I could do it.
I’ve never learned how to play an instrument in school. I technically wasn’t given the opportunity to when all the other kids in school got to choose what instrument they wanted to learn. I was put in a remedial education class instead (I wasn’t a great student) so I missed out on that early chance of learning the basics of music (for the record, I would have chosen the violin because that’s what my older sister had chosen and I thought it looked cool.)
I also had a friend who tried to teach me guitar in high school but that lasted about a day - I still sort of find guitars kind of boring but I’ve been warming up to the idea again of learning how to play one.
What has always interested me was synthesizers - they can feel otherworldly in how they look and sound and for someone with a heavy interest in science fiction, I was hooked.
So as a hobby, I started with software in college, specifically garage band because it came free with my laptop. Years later I picked up a Korg Volca Keys for fun, but found I had no idea what I was doing. Searching around the internet I found this video series someone had uploaded from the “New York School of Synthesis” and aside from being wonderfully “80′s” it’s actually a really great intro to how synthesis works.
But what got me started in making music for my own films was a few back to back failures in collaborating with musicians which probably had more to do with me than it had to do with them, but for whatever reason it never seemed to work out.
But I needed music, so I started playing around with trying to make my own stuff and for the most part, it works. In the future I’m hoping to take some music lessons to gain a better grasp on making music, but for now I’ve been going with a some basic knowledge of synthesis and intuition (basically, I just playing around with stuff until it sounds good to me.)
Currently I use a variety of software (Straylight, Maschine, Cycles, Auras, Monark, Repro) and recently started using a few analog Synths (Moog Grandmother, Mother-32, and DFAM)
So, if you’ve made it this far and are curious what music made by a filmmaker who has no idea what he’s doing sounds like, you can listen to some of the score from my short film, “Children of Leto” here and I also just released an EP called “Music For Moving Pictures: Vol. I” which you can stream/download for free here (there’s also a limited edition cassette tape if you’re into physical stuff)
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