I love music. I enjoy listening to it, playing it, but most of all I enjoy creating and composing it. I like to tell stories and share ideas and with music I find the tools to do both.

I have always loved film, and media in general - even taking a Media course at College rather than doing music. However this was with good reason: I was told once by composer Michael Price (BBC's Sherlock, Hot Fuzz and many more) that if you want to be a film composer, then you should surround yourself with film makers. This is what I had already done, and something I will continue to do. Whats more, studying film production and being with film makers enhances my understanding of the process and my skills in pre-production, production and post-production increase my knowledge of how to make a film, which helps me make my music work even better with films.

 



I began composing music on my keyboard, this was quite basic in terms of technology, but it made a good sound and I had always enjoyed playing the piano. The only downside to this method of composing was the lack of tracks I had to play with. I could only create 5 tracks per tune - meaning 5 seperate instruments. This made the music I had created seem a little too light and underwhelming. Also the storage space on my keyboard left little room for experimentation. Nevertheless, I created many themes, tunes and other pieces of music on my keyboard and some still remain either on it or in my head. 

 

It was quite a few years before I discovered Sibelius, and got really interested in this software and how it works. I eventually started composing with Sibelius, inputting ideas straight from my head and learning to compose by ear. By using Sibelius I also learnt quite a lot about music theory. With Sibelius I had the opportunity to explore a massive range of instruments, articulations and techniques and created many great tunes. I still use Sibelius to this day for writing up scores. This is extremely useful when you want musicians to play your music live. My only negative for Sibelius was  the sounds of the instruments. Realisticly speaking, the instruments sound fantastic and give you a pretty realistic idea of how your music would be played. However, as good as it is, it still doesn't sound real - sounding almost too perfect sometimes. A 'real sound' is something you can only really ever achieve by recording music played by real musicians - not computerised sounds. However, this is not always an easy thing to achieve. Sibelius is fantastic though and I do recommend it. The sound of the instruments are good and can demonstrate your creative capability to someone who is listening to the quality of the composing, rather than the quality of the instruments.

 

My next endeavour into the world of musical composition was to Logic Pro. After saving up for a good iMac, I purchased the then current version of the Apple's popular DAW (Digital Audio Worksation) software: Logic Pro. I had spoken to composer Kevin MacLeod asking for his advice about software and this was what he had suggested. It was what I had wanted anyway, but knowing he had used it reassured me that it would do the job. 

I got a small midi keyboard to fit in my room and then began using it to compose tunes in Logic using Logic's sounds. They sounded good, but reminded me of Sibelius still. Another thing Kevin MacLeod had suggested to me, was to get EW/QL Symphonic Orchestra Gold. He told me this was a good place to start and so after researching it, hearing some samples on the internet, and after lots of wondering and thinking, I purchased the Platinum version of this product - and honestly, I am glad I did. It sounds fantastic. If you are at a stage like this, and are wondering what sound library to get, then I definitely recommend getting EW/QL Symphonic Orchestra.

Using Logic is a different way of composing compared to how I composed with Sibelius, but it works really well and makes my brain work in different ways.

Thanks to Sibelius being able to export in Midi format, I can in fact import Sibelius files (as Midis) into Logic and use my new sound libraries to make my older Sibelius pieces of music sound even more realistic and fantastic.