{"id":208889,"date":"2022-07-19T16:10:39","date_gmt":"2022-07-19T16:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/?p=208889"},"modified":"2023-08-09T14:55:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T14:55:47","slug":"film-composer-showcase-marcus-manderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/film-composer-showcase-marcus-manderson\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Composer Showcase: Marcus Manderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;HERO SECTION&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#333333&#8243; use_background_color_gradient=&#8221;on&#8221; background_color_gradient_type=&#8221;elliptical&#8221; background_color_gradient_stops=&#8221;#333333 74%|#34d6b7 99%&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;||7px|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;60px||60px|||&#8221; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset3&#8243; box_shadow_horizontal=&#8221;-26px&#8221; box_shadow_blur=&#8221;36px&#8221; box_shadow_spread=&#8221;-28px&#8221; box_shadow_color=&#8221;#686868&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row column_structure=&#8221;2_5,3_5&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;Hero&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;2_5&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_image src=&#8221;https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Marcus-Manderson.jpeg&#8221; alt=&#8221;Film Composer Marcus Manderson Compozly Profile Picture&#8221; title_text=&#8221;Film Composer Marcus Manderson&#8221; align=&#8221;center&#8221; admin_label=&#8221;IMAGE: Add profile image here&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; animation_style=&#8221;slide&#8221; border_radii=&#8221;on|100px|100px|100px|100px&#8221; border_width_all=&#8221;5px&#8221; border_color_all=&#8221;#FFFFFF&#8221; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset1&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=&#8221;3_5&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_post_title title=&#8221;off&#8221; author=&#8221;off&#8221; date=&#8221;off&#8221; comments=&#8221;off&#8221; featured_image=&#8221;off&#8221; text_color=&#8221;light&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; meta_font=&#8221;|700|||||||&#8221; meta_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; animation_style=&#8221;slide&#8221; meta_text_shadow_style=&#8221;preset1&#8243; text_shadow_style=&#8221;preset2&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_post_title][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;TEXT: Add Composer Name Here&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_text_color=&#8221;#FFFFFF&#8221; header_font=&#8221;|800|||||||&#8221; header_text_color=&#8221;#FFFFFF&#8221; header_font_size=&#8221;62px&#8221; header_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;-14px||25px|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;0px|||||&#8221; animation_style=&#8221;slide&#8221; header_text_shadow_style=&#8221;preset1&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h1>Marcus Manderson<\/h1>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_button button_url=&#8221;https:\/\/compozly.com\/dafingaz&#8221; button_text=&#8221;View Profile&#8221; button_alignment=&#8221;left&#8221; admin_label=&#8221;BUTTON: Add link to Compozly profile here&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_button=&#8221;on&#8221; button_text_color=&#8221;#FFFFFF&#8221; button_border_radius=&#8221;23px&#8221; button_font=&#8221;|700|||||||&#8221; button_icon=&#8221;&#x24;||divi||400&#8243; button_icon_color=&#8221;#34D6B7&#8243; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; animation_style=&#8221;slide&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; button_text_size__hover_enabled=&#8221;on|desktop&#8221; button_text_color__hover_enabled=&#8221;on|desktop&#8221; button_text_color__hover=&#8221;#34D6B7&#8243;][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;SECTION: Q&#038;A 1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row admin_label=&#8221;Q&#038;A (1\/3)&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Podcast Episode&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/anchor.fm\/compozly\/embed\/episodes\/EP03-Composer-Interview---Marcus-Manderson-e1l9i3v\" height=\"200px\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Can you tell me about how you first got into film composing?<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve always been into music and I want to say it was well at this point, probably 10,15 years ago. A friend of mine was working on a project for B.E.T. and just asked for some background music and it worked out. Before that. I did a little bit of sync placements on TV shows, like &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1086761\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Keeping Up With The Kardashians<\/em><\/a>&#8216;, but I never really knew much about it until I started studying composing last year.<\/p>\n<p>I was also composing music for museum exhibits. I sort of fell into that just working for National Geographic and then that led to creating music for the Smithsonian. That was actually a pretty good deal until the pandemic and museums shut down.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been playing piano and keyboard in church for almost 30 years. So just bringing all those musical influences into the composing space, studying orchestration and investing in a lot of string and orchestral libraries is where I&#8217;m at now when it comes to music composition.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 2&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Who are your musical influences?<\/h3>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if you wanna call them the &#8220;Mount Rushmore&#8221;, but as far as film composers, Hans Zimmer and John Williams. I also like newer age composers like Clint Mansell. There&#8217;s just a lot. Because I am black, I like some of the black composers like Terence Blanchard and Kris Bowers. I listen to a lot of their soundtracks and follow their music to get inspired.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also composing trailer music now, so there&#8217;s a lot of trailer music composers out there. On the music production side, because I&#8217;m in Virginia I follow Timbaland, Pharrell, The Neptunes, Missy Elliot, and Teddy Riley. My dad is Jamaican, so Jamaica dancehall and reggae seeps into the music as well.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>You mentioned composing music for museums and trailers. How did you get into composing for so many styles?<\/h3>\n<p>I enter a lot of music composing contests &#8211; anything from sampling a 1980s record, to composing music for this picture or remixing a song. So leading up to the pandemic,<\/p>\n<p>I started focusing on those different aspects because at the time I really didn&#8217;t know what my thing was. To an extent, I still don&#8217;t know because I feel like I can do them all pretty well. I also started studying trailer music and I just watched a lot of trailers, listened to a lot of trailer albums and then put out my own trailer music album around and got feedback.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-208900 size-full aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Marcus-Manderson.jpeg\" alt=\"Film Composer Marcus Manderson Compozly Profile Picture\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Marcus-Manderson.jpeg 200w, https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Marcus-Manderson-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/compozly.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Marcus-Manderson-32x32.jpeg 32w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I put music out just to get feedback from composers, trailer music companies and music libraries. I felt like I was getting to the place I needed to get, so I started aligning with trailer music companies to pitch to trailers. A lot of it is just putting stuff out there on social media, distributing music to Apple Music and all the other big streaming players.<\/p>\n<p>I figure if I have a thousand things out there, one of them is gonna take off and hopefully not all a thousand, cuz I can&#8217;t do all a thousand at once, but you never know.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 7&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Do you have a common process for composing music across these different types of media outlets?<\/h3>\n<p>First I sit down, open the computer and open up Logic. I&#8217;m a template guy. I have a template for beat making. I have a template for trailer music. I have a template for composing. I did an independent film and when I talked to the film director, he just told me what he wanted &#8211; so I created a template just for that film.<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m working on a project, I&#8217;ll create a template for it. Otherwise, I have pre-made templates for composing, sync, beat-making. I have a template for making pop music. Sometimes I just open it up with nothing loaded and just start from scratch and see what happens. I tend not to edit while making music, which is a gift and a curse.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;SECTION: QUOTE 1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#f2f2f2&#8243; custom_padding=&#8221;40px||40px|||&#8221; box_shadow_style=&#8221;preset3&#8243; box_shadow_horizontal=&#8221;-26px&#8221; box_shadow_blur=&#8221;36px&#8221; box_shadow_spread=&#8221;-28px&#8221; box_shadow_color=&#8221;#686868&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row admin_label=&#8221;ROW: Quote 1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;RGBA(255,255,255,0)&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;TEXT QUOTE 1: Add quote text here&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||on||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;center&#8221; header_font_size=&#8221;50px&#8221; header_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h1><em>&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep putting yourself out there.&#8221;<\/span><\/em><\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>&#8211; Marcus Manderson | Film &amp; Media Composer<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;SECTION: Q&#038;A 2&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; background_color=&#8221;#ffffff&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||21px|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row admin_label=&#8221;TEXT: Q&#038;A (2\/3)&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; background_size=&#8221;initial&#8221; background_position=&#8221;top_left&#8221; background_repeat=&#8221;repeat&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; custom_padding=&#8221;|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; custom_padding__hover=&#8221;|||&#8221;][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 5&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>In your opinion, why is it hard to find paying gigs frequently?<\/h3>\n<p>I think that there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity out there, but I think the big thing is just putting music out there. if you can&#8217;t physically go to places, the next best thing is social media marketing. For example, I see what shows up on my social media timeline and then reach out. Or I might read an article to find companies or artists and reach out to them by saying, &#8220;Hey, are you looking for producers or composers?&#8221; It might be doing IMDB research. So it could be a combination of all those things to get the ball rolling.<\/p>\n<p>Now at this point, instead of me searching for work, the work is coming my way. I&#8217;m starting to see it actually shift in that direction slowly where companies reach out to me and say, &#8220;Hey, this is a project that we think would be a good fit for you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 6&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Why do you think negotiating your price for composing music is so difficult?<\/h3>\n<p>I think because of the perceived low value of music. People can access music on YouTube or SoundCloud so they are like, &#8220;Why do I need to pay for this?&#8221; I see all sorts of horror stories for music creators who focus on the music but struggle to make a living.<\/p>\n<p>The people that I&#8217;m trying to reach out to are at a different level because they understand the value of music for their projects. Or if they&#8217;re an artist, we might work out a deal where a lower budget indie film will give me a film production credit as a way to offset the low composing budget. I think there are alternative ways to think about compensation.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 6&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>How do you evaluate what&#8217;s right for you as far as compensation goes?<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It depends on a lot of things &#8211; the project itself, the people working on it and the deadline before I even get to the price. If it&#8217;s a million dollar project, I might think about it a little bit longer. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I read a comment on Facebook where someone said there are three reasons why people work on a project. It&#8217;s because you want to work on the project, you want to work with the people, or you need the money. If it&#8217;s only one or two of the three, then you might wanna reconsider. If you can have a project that aligns with all three of those, then you&#8217;re good to go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Question 4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>What do you ultimately hope to achieve as a working composer?<\/h3>\n<p>I do work a 9-5 corporate job, but the ultimate goal is to be able to work from home and make music full time. I always say I&#8217;d rather work twelve hours making music than eight hours in a corporate job, because that&#8217;s where the passion is.<\/p>\n<p>So that&#8217;s the ultimate goal &#8211; to be able to take care of family through music by composing music for trailers, working with artists or combination of all the above.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Composer Interview: Marcus Manderson - The Compozly Podcast\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gPw6PjHzl1A?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=&#8221;Resources&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_text_align=&#8221;left&#8221; header_3_line_height=&#8221;1.5em&#8221; custom_margin=&#8221;|||&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;10px||||false|false&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h3>Resources<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/compozly.com\/dafingaz\">Marcus Manderson Compozly Profile<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLMt4G-SDOwF3UadWsKT5Nr9krOJi0UnXl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trailer Music YouTube Playlist<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/audius.co\/dafingaz\/albums\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Audius<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/songwhip.com\/da-fingaz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Songwhip<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/dafingaz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marcus on Instagram<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dafingaz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marcus on Twitter<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"gmail_default\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/dafingaz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marcus on LinkedIn<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;Q&#038;A 3&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;21px|||||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row admin_label=&#8221;TEXT: Q&#038;A (3\/3)&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; background_size=&#8221;initial&#8221; background_position=&#8221;top_left&#8221; background_repeat=&#8221;repeat&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; custom_padding=&#8221;|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; custom_padding__hover=&#8221;|||&#8221;][et_pb_social_media_follow follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=&#8221;facebook&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/compozly&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#3b5998&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221;]facebook[\/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=&#8221;instagram&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/compozly\/&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#ea2c59&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221;]instagram[\/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=&#8221;twitter&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/twitter.com\/compozly\/&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#00aced&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221;]twitter[\/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=&#8221;linkedin&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/compozly\/&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#007bb6&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221;]linkedin[\/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][et_pb_social_media_follow_network social_network=&#8221;youtube&#8221; url=&#8221;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC_3eFSVrLj5cYWx6K9C5kkg\/featured&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#a82400&#8243; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; follow_button=&#8221;on&#8221; url_new_window=&#8221;on&#8221;]youtube[\/et_pb_social_media_follow_network][\/et_pb_social_media_follow][et_pb_toggle title=&#8221;Full Audio Transcript&#8221; use_icon_font_size=&#8221;on&#8221; icon_font_size=&#8221;24px&#8221; admin_label=&#8221;TOGGLE: Add Audio Transcripts Here&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#f2f2f2&#8243; border_radii=&#8221;on|10px|10px|10px|10px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p><b>Can you tell me about how you first got into composing?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah I\u2019ve always been into music and I want to say it was well at this point, probably 10,15 years ago. A friend of mine was working on a project, I think it was for B.E.T. and just asked for some background music. And I did it, it worked out before that. I did a little bit of sync placements on TV shows, like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and shows like that, but I never really knew much about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Until I started studying it last year. And then also over the years starting about 10 years ago, I was also doing music for museum exhibits. I sort of fell into that just through national geographic and then that led to doing some things for a Smithsonian. That was actually a pretty good deal until the pandemic and museums shut down.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yeah, there was a good run of doing music. And then behind the scenes playing as a piano player and keyboardist in church also before the pandemic, for almost 30 years. So just bringing all that into all those musical influences into the composing space and started studying orchestration and investing and getting a lot of string and orchestral libraries starting from the ground level of finding free libraries and then really cheap ones and then building up to a higher end and then everything in between.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Who are your musical influences? Do you have any sort of favorite composers, musicians, or even just favorite film scores that you kind of reference as being influential in your career?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, the obvious, like, I dunno if you wanna call them Mount Rushmore, but as far as composers, Hans Zimmer and John Williams, then like, I would say newer age, like Clint Manzel. There&#8217;s just a lot. And then just because I am black, I like some of the black composers<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> like Terence Blanchard and Kri<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s Bowers. I listen to a lot of soundtracks, and I follow their music. I get inspired by them. I&#8217;m also doing trailer music now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So there&#8217;s a lot of trailer music composers. I follow a lot of them and am part of a lot of groups online and then on the production side, because I&#8217;m in Virginia, Timbaland, Pharrell, The Neptunes, Missy Elliot, and Teddy Riley the producer. So it&#8217;s like all these musical influences. And then also my dad is Jamaican, so it&#8217;s like Jamaica, dancehall and reggae too. So all that sort of seeps into the music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>So you mentioned music for museums, music for trailer music. It seems like you&#8217;ve got your fingers in a lot of different areas. How did you get into each of those styles? Was it just opportunities that came your way or did you seek them out?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Composing for museums to trailer music, and I enter a lot of contests. So in 2020, I entered two music contests. And it could be anything from sampling this old, like 1980s record and making music out of it. It could be anything from here&#8217;s a picture, compose music for this picture, or here&#8217;s a video make music for this video.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It could be, remix this song and we have these vocal files and make your own music around it. So leading up to the pandemic, I wasn&#8217;t really focused on creating music because I played in church and that took up a lot of time learning songs by like other artists to learn with the choir and then perform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, the band on Sundays and things at church. So a lot of time was taken up with that when the pandemic hit and they went virtual and sort of got rid of the musicians. I started focusing on those different aspects because at the time I really didn&#8217;t know what my thing was. And to an extent, I still don&#8217;t know because I feel like I can do them all pretty good. So I just started last year. I got into the sync heavily and then towards the end of last year, I started studying trailer music and I just watched a lot of trailers, listened to a lot of trailer albums and then put out my own trailer music album around Thanksgiving and got feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I put it out just to get feedback from composers, from trailer music, libraries, and things like that. Say, Hey, you know, you&#8217;re almost there or whatever, like do this, do this, put out another trailer, music album around Christmas, got some more feedback. And then felt like I was getting to the place I needed to get and then started aligning with trailer music companies to now like pitching to trailers. So a lot of it is just putting stuff out there on social media, putting stuff out on distributing music to Apple Music, you know, all the big players then posting about it. Like, Hey, I got this album. I have concept albums for artists. So it&#8217;s so many things because I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s gonna be the thing that makes it through.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I figure if I have a thousand things out there, one of them is gonna take off and hopefully not all a thousand, cuz I can&#8217;t do all a thousand at once, but you never know. So really now, right now, just in the content creation space and that has afforded some great opportunities that I look forward to hopefully taking advantage of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What are some of your career goals as a musician or as a composer? Like what do you ultimately hope to achieve as a working composer?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I do work a full time, 9-5 corporate job, but the ultimate goal is to be able to work from home to be able to make music full time from home. Like if my wife says, Hey, let&#8217;s go to, you know, wherever for a week. I can still take my laptop, maybe a small keyboard or whatever, and still be able to make music out there and not really have to focus on a 9-5 job. I always say I&#8217;d rather work 12 hours making music than eight hours in a corporate job, because that&#8217;s where the passion is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that&#8217;s the ultimate goal. Be able to take care of family through music, whether that&#8217;s through like the trailers sync working with artists or combination of all the above.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Is there anything that you&#8217;ve done or maybe, you know, top 1, 2, 3 things that you&#8217;ve created that you&#8217;re most proud of as a composer?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are things that I have, I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m most proud of any of them, but there are things that have created opportunities and connections such as a couple years ago, such as\u00a0 I started doing piano remixes of songs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I would like pop songs or top 40 songs on the radio. And I would take the instruments off, keep the vocals, and then just do a piano, like a cover remix with the original vocals and that allowed some connections with some great artists and producers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then during the concept albums for artists, which is basically like usually five to seven tracks for an artist that I wanna work with and I just put it out, you know, on social media and share it with the world. And then I send it to the artists and their team. That&#8217;s allowed some connections to some great artists, usually traveling this year has been really big on networking and going out there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But of course, getting face to face with people and making those connections is needed and, and it&#8217;s missed in a lot of ways because of the pandemic. So I think people are ready to get back out there at some point. But it was great to at least be out there then, and meeting these companies, seeing these people and playing on instruments and things.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So with finding artists on Instagram, If an artist says something like ask me anything, or even like yesterday I found a new artist, liked the music they had and just sent them a DM. How can I send you beats? And then they sent the email and I sent them to music.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So really it&#8217;s just, you know, sometimes it&#8217;s just that simple. You see an artist, maybe not Beyonce, but the next Beyonce, you say, Hey, I like your music to listen to your stuff. Or even if you don&#8217;t listen to their stuff, just like, Hey, I saw this post. I really enjoyed it. Where can I send you beats in that case? It was a big artist over in Europe that the song isn&#8217;t out yet. It\u2019s a great musical relationship. For that artist in particular, she&#8217;s probably written to 10 of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So building a catalog there and then whenever her team or whatever is ready to put it out, hopefully that gets put out. But it&#8217;s all just from, you know, going on Instagram and, and saying, Hey, how can I send you beats? Where can I send you music? Are you looking for producers? Things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Do you have a general sort of way you go about creating the music composing for say an artist or trailer music or museum music? Is there any sort of common, like process that you follow across, all those different sorts of media outlets?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, first I sit down and open the computer, open up Logic. I&#8217;m a template guy. I know some people are, you know, opposed to templates, but I&#8217;m always changing them like literally almost every day. But I have a template for beat making. I have a template for trailer music. I have a template for composing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I did an independent film earlier and I landed that from another project that I put out online on Valentine&#8217;s day. And when I talked to the film director, producer, he just told me what he wanted. And I created a template just for that film of like, he just really wanted to focus on the dramatic side of things, more like piano strings style.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I just created a template for that project. So usually if I&#8217;m working on a project, I&#8217;ll create a template for it. Otherwise, I have pre-made templates for those things, composing, sync, beat-making. I have a template for making pop music and then sometimes I just open it up, nothing loaded and just start from scratch and see what happens.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Is there something that stands out to you as being unique to yourself and your music and the way that you compose music for all the different media outlets that we talked about?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think coming from more of a church background playing every Sunday with some of the best musicians. I&#8217;ve heard live and some of the best singers come from the church side of things. And that was over 25 years of like almost every Sunday, doing that and just absorbing those sounds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And there would be musicians who would show me something every week and they&#8217;d be like, check out or buy this music and listen to it. So there would be things that I would learn. That sort of creeps into the other stuff, like the pop and the composing. And then, like I said, all the other musical influences, the reggae dance hall, Jamaica stuff, the, the pop influences the being in DC, you know, the whole just Virginia producer being inspired by that whole sound.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I try to incorporate that into my music and that comes through, but just having that background of all those different musical influences sort of makes me unique. And, and then some people tell me that I create fast. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a good thing and can be bad, but I tend to create quickly when possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tend not to edit while making music. While composing at NAMM, I went to the Spitfire audio booth.\u00a0 In about 10 minutes, I created a 30 second piece. I posted it on Instagram and shared it like this, for our audio team. And they were like, you&#8217;re fast. But yeah, it&#8217;s a gift and a curse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What upcoming projects are you working on now that you&#8217;re excited about that you&#8217;d like to share?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finished a lot of projects. I tried to finish a lot before NAMM, one being the independent film that&#8217;s been placed in a couple of film festivals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They&#8217;re doing the film festival sort of circuit, there are trailers. I did one, I was up till about three or four this morning working on a trailer. So I have a couple more trailer requests in my inbox and am going to travel again next month. Just for networking and vacation out west again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So looking forward to that, no set sort of projects. I might have just landed a good deal to produce a great artist from networking, from another connection that I had. So hopefully that&#8217;ll be something and that I can work on over the next few months. But just really trying to work on a lot of music, putting it out there and hopefully something will come back and then sync pitching to a lot of sync stuff, music for television movies, video games, things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep putting yourself out there, whatever it is, do the work. And then. Put it out there because we do the work and no one sees it. It doesn&#8217;t mean anything, but if you gotta do the work and then put it out there, and for me, the work is already making music for an artist or already making music for a project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even if it doesn&#8217;t land on that project, there may be a similar project that works. There may be a sequel, prequel, you never know, or there may be someone who was inspired by that project to make a similar project. And the music you already created can work on that. So there&#8217;s no one way to sort break through, get opportunities. It&#8217;s just putting your stuff out there and then letting people know what you do, cuz if they don&#8217;t know what you do, then they can&#8217;t work with you to get you to do that. So put yourself out there and see what happens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Why do you think it&#8217;s so hard to find paying gigs frequently? From your own opinion, like why do you think it&#8217;s hard?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think that there&#8217;s a lot of opportunity out there just finding how to get to those opportunities. And then if someone works on a film, you know, this month, that might be the only thing they do for the next two years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So you gotta find like 10 of those to get like a year&#8217;s worth of work together, unless you&#8217;re already up there with some of them, like some of the composers I mentioned earlier. So a lot of it is finding those opportunities that are not necessarily paying financially, but that could be finding a new filmmaker, who&#8217;s working on a film and, maybe you do a good deal with them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then a couple years later, they&#8217;re working on another film and the next thing you know, they&#8217;re doing video games or Disney or Hulu or whatever type of film. So just finding those creative people there, there are great outlets for it. And then also in the sync space, which I would say there is less friction there than finding those opportunities to land musicals and like those TV shows and movies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think the big thing is just putting stuff out there. if you can&#8217;t physically go to places the next best thing is social media and, and unfortunately not everyone is comfortable with sharing to that level social media. So if you can&#8217;t personally do that, then maybe work with someone who can be your social media marketer or someone that can, you know, you can give them the, the range to your account or whatever, and, and they can do that right now. That&#8217;s the best way, just because of the pandemic. So there are some great opportunities to go places in person, but there&#8217;s also, you know, like a barrier there because there&#8217;s, you gotta get a flight, a hotel, you gotta pay for food for a week or weekend or whatever, or you gotta, if you&#8217;re not flying, you gotta drive somewhere or somehow get to the place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So even a lot of those conferences, even now, have a virtual component where you watch and stream some of the presentations. It is different, but still it&#8217;s accessible. So there are those options, but yeah, the biggest is really just putting yourself out there and you know, hoping for the best.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like I might say, let me see what shows up on my social media timeline and then reach out. Or I might read an article and, and find some companies or artists and reach out to them and say, Hey, are you looking for producers or composers? For any projects it might be some IMDB research. So it could be a combination of things to sort of get the ball rolling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then at some point, cause I&#8217;m starting to see a little bit now where instead of me going out, searching for work, the work is sort of coming my way. So it&#8217;s like, Hey, you know, we need music for these trailers. If you wanna work on something, Hey, you know, we&#8217;re working with this artist. They want some tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I&#8217;m starting to see it actually shift in that direction slowly. And those are other companies that like to reach out to you and say, Hey, this is a project that we think would be a good fit for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>I&#8217;m just curious, like what other companies or people you&#8217;re working with for that particular instance?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I can&#8217;t name &#8217;em all, but there&#8217;s a trailer music company that I connected with earlier this year and they send out trailer opportunities. There&#8217;s one called hard drive HRDRV, which has, it&#8217;s basically like a subscription record label where you pay a monthly subscription and you have access to like 3000 members, artists, singers, songwriters, producers, video, filmmakers, graphic designers. And then they also have a side of their company. That&#8217;s called catalog club where you can land placements on TV shows, video games, movies, things like that. So working with companies like that at focus on the sync side of things, and then reaching out to artists directly on social media or if I wanna work with an artist, let&#8217;s say, I wanna work with Drake. I created an album for Drake and I put it out there, which is what I did. And I have about seven of those for different artists that I wanna work with. And my producer name is Da Fingaz. So I put out this series called Da Fingaz Beats for Drake. And I have to figure beats for usher to Da Fingaz Beats for like Rick Ross, since I have about seven or eight. And I might sit down one week and say, okay, I wanna make music for this artist because I&#8217;ve always wanted to work with them or they&#8217;re big right now. Or I think I can do something with my sound and their voice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then I just make the project for them. And most of the time, of course, they&#8217;re not gonna hear it, but it could be this person. There&#8217;s another artist out there who&#8217;s inspired by Drake and they think they&#8217;re the next Drake. So it&#8217;s like, okay, well, if you&#8217;re the next Drake, I have all these ideas for Drake, but since you&#8217;re the next Drake, here you go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So yeah, really, it&#8217;s just putting out for me much of the last two years specifically has been putting out content and now it&#8217;s really working that content to showcase to people what I do and and putting them in places where people can access them and be like, okay, you have this range of music creation that you can do or things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Why do you think that price negotiation for music that you&#8217;re composing for a project is so difficult?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think because of the perceived value of some people, you know, they can access, literally for free, like on YouTube or SoundCloud and things. So some people are like, why do I need to pay for this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it&#8217;s getting harder for me, and I see all sorts of horror stories for music creators to focus on the music when they&#8217;re like, okay, how am I gonna make a living off of this? And of course there are people that are doing it once they get to that level. And it&#8217;s almost like knowing all the horror stories, cause there&#8217;s way more horror stories and there are success stories, so why even bother going into that lane?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think there&#8217;s just people that think the value of the music is low, but the people that I&#8217;m trying to reach out to and connect with are more at a different level where they understand the value of music for their projects, or if they&#8217;re an artist, you know, they might work out a deal where it&#8217;s like, a lower budget indie film will give me a film production credit. So that&#8217;s my first credit as a film producer, as a way to sort of offset the low composing budget. Which is great, cause it&#8217;s like my first credit on IMDB for film production. So I can now say I&#8217;m a film producer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I think there&#8217;s other ways to think about compensation. So if, even if it&#8217;s not money, if it&#8217;s like, Hey, if you&#8217;re a filmmaker, I&#8217;ll work on this project if you help me edit three or four reels of my music. It&#8217;s almost like the barter system, or if you&#8217;re a graphic designer, I&#8217;ll work on your project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you design some graphics for my next album or my next project or whatever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>With these projects, it seems like the budget kind of just varies widely, right? So do you like kind of have a balance between sort of doing things that are not free, but you get a credit, like you were saying versus like something that&#8217;s maybe like, you know, a high paying like project, like, it seems like you kind of toggle between a lot of different opportunities. How do you evaluate what&#8217;s right for you as far as compensation goes?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of it is well it depends on a lot of things. Like the project itself, the people working on it, the deadline, and before I even get to the prices, do I really wanna work on it? There are some things I take into consideration. Like if it&#8217;s a million dollar project, which obviously I haven&#8217;t landed yet, you know, I might think about it a little bit longer, but I saw a comment on Facebook where someone said there are three reasons that people work on a project and it&#8217;s because you want to work on the project or you want to work with the people or you need the money. And if you can have a project that aligns with all three of those, then it&#8217;s a definite go for it. If it&#8217;s like two to three or one of the three you might wanna consider, but if it hits all three of those, then, then you&#8217;re good to go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that&#8217;s a good way to sort of gauge. You know what you like, and don&#8217;t like, if you don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s like, Hey, if things come your way, just say yes, for a couple months, six months, some people say yes for a whole year to everything, just to see what happens. It&#8217;s definitely a lot of work. A lot of, for me, just a lot of sleepless nights until I can get to that point where I can do that full time and end up getting sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_toggle][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; fullwidth=&#8221;on&#8221; admin_label=&#8221;CTA: Sign Up&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.3&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#06A59A&#8221; collapsed=&#8221;on&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_fullwidth_header title=&#8221;Are you a music composer?&#8221; subhead=&#8221;Join the composer community by quickly creating your free Compozly profile&#8221; text_orientation=&#8221;center&#8221; button_one_text=&#8221;Create my account&#8221; button_one_url=&#8221;https:\/\/compozly.com\/register&#8221; title_tablet=&#8221;Join the Compozly Community&#8221; title_phone=&#8221;Join the Compozly Community&#8221; title_last_edited=&#8221;on|phone&#8221; admin_label=&#8221;BUTTON: Create my account&#8221; 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color: #000000;\">If you were ever a fan of the Nintendo 64, you most likely spent hours and hours listening to our spotlight composer\u2019s music on loop, whether in Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Banjo-Kazooie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Banjo Kazooie<\/a> or Banjo Tooie, and even that infamous yellow cartridge, DK64. Grant Kirkhope is someone who defined the sound of my youth, and still today, going on 30 years old, I replay the above classics even if just to hear that iconic music and those Rare (now Playtonic Games) sound effects. In 2016 he scored the very popular Ghostbusters game, while the movie did not fare as well. In 2017, Grant scored the modern 3D platform and spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee, along with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Starting with a project of converting the music from the SNES Diddy Kong\u2019s Quest to the Gameboy game, Donkey Kong Land 2, then jumping right into the still-classic Goldeneye on N64. Kirkhope\u2019s first credits are among some of his most notable titles! He has had no trouble getting work as a composer for video games, as he rarely (haha, get it?) takes a break. Below are a mix of interview questions he\u2019s received and answered over the years to give you more insight into this musical genius!<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Graeme Norgate asked Grant to finish scoring Goldeneye 007, so that Norgate could focus on the music for Blast Corps. In this process, Grant learned how to get the music and sound FX into the N64 hardware. After working on 007 for a bit, his work was noticed by Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles, who re-assigned him to work on Project Dream (also known as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Banjo-Kazooie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Banjo Kazooie<\/a>) with David Wise. After this he worked on Perfect Dark, Banjo-Tooie, and more popular N64 titles! On July 14th, 2008, Grant, in frustration, resigned from Rare to become a freelance composer, as the company was bought out by Microsoft. This buyout led to much less love and care being put into their titles, as many members of the smaller teams that worked on those games from 1995-2000 had left previous to Kirkhope. He then ended up at Big Huge Games (acquired by 38 Studios) until May 24th, 2012 when the entire staff was laid off. This time off gave Grant the opportunity in June 2012 to play some live festivals with former band mates Little Angels. In August 2012, Grant moved to Los Angeles get deeper into film scoring, and less than a year after that \u00a0in June 2013, he signed with one of the top composer agency\u2019s Gorfaine\/Schwartz Agency. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Here are a handful of interesting questions compiled into one super interview. Enjoy!<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: How did you become a video game music composer? Was it more by chance, or was it something you always aspired to do?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Definitely by chance! I'd been playing in lots of different kinds of bands for 10 years or so since leaving the RNCM. The last band I played for broke up and I was left with nothing to do. Robin Beanland was already working at Rare and suggested I might have a go at what he was doing. I was down to my last bit of money and he recommended a synth module, a keyboard, an Atari ST and a copy of Cubase. I started writing some pieces and sent five cassettes to Rare over the course of a year and heard nothing back. Then, out of the blue, I got an interview and they gave me the job!<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: <\/b><b>What lessons did you take away from it that helped you on future projects?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I didn't really have time to think as I was moved from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GoldenEye<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> before it finished and onto <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Project Dream<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which eventually turned into <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Banjo-Kazooie<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Have you collaborated with other composers on scores or do you work alone?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I do really prefer working alone for the most part, but it's just not possible today, the games are far too big to take it on alone.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What was the first week on the job like?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hehe! Tuff! When I first arrived I was given <\/span><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mobygames.com\/game\/donkey-kong-land-2-diddys-kong-quest\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Donkey Kong [Land] 2<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the <\/span><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/ocremix.org\/system\/gb\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Game Boy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to do. I had to convert all of <\/span><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/ocremix.org\/composer\/id\/100\/dave-wise\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dave Wise<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">'s tunes from the <\/span><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/ocremix.org\/system\/snes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SNES<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> version. He showed me how to do it but it was all in <\/span><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hexadecimal\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hex<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. I thought I was going to have to resign, as there was no way I would be able to do it!<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What is the process of converting the music from the SNES to the Game Boy like?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">It was tricky. In that time, Rare did all their Game Boy games in hex, no MIDI file or anything. I was like \u201chow the hell am I going to do this?\u201d So, Dave Wise came across and showed me how it worked (very quickly) on my first day, and it was really hard. I actually said to Robin \u201cI\u2019m going to have to resign, this is too hard, I can\u2019t actually do it\u201d. However, he said to ask Dave back tomorrow and write down every step that he tells you to do. So, I did this, wrote down every step-in order (like number 1, press Alt 4, number 2, type this, etc) in real parrot fashion and then I kind of understood it then. Heck, I quite enjoyed it in the end, and thought it was quite fun to get the music to work on the Game Boy. So yeah, I liked it in the end, but the start was super scary.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: To get the attention of Rare, you sent in five tapes to the company over the course of a year before you heard back. How close to quitting were you after tape four? Any advice for those who may be facing a similar situation?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Ha! I really had no idea whatsoever about trying to get a job. I'd never tried to do it before, I'd always been playing in bands, etc. Because Robin Beanland worked there and because we'd been in bands together, I didn't really consider trying to get a job anywhere else. He spoke so highly of Rare that I just wanted to be there so badly. I remember I did apply to Eurocom in Derby, but they turned me down flat! I was getting a bit worried by tape 4... hehe. They never replied at all... not even a \"thanks, but no thanks\" letter. I really was down to the last bit of money I'd saved up from touring. I was on unemployment benefit and I applied for work training at a tiny games company called Twilight Games in Harrogate. They took me on for the 6 weeks and actually did offer me a job at the end of it, but I'd literally just got the job offer from Rare.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I think breaking into the industry now is very hard. I guess the best way is to try and get onto some kind of intern job; we have two guys here at BHG who are very good indeed. Just trying to get a job as a composer is the hardest of all. I always tell people to make sure they are good sound designers as well. Despite the fact I'm known for being a composer, I have always done sound design on the games I've worked on. I like having the variety.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: One of the things you like to drill into aspiring composers is that they need to have range, they need to be able to produce pieces in all sorts of styles. You've spoken before on working within the technical limitations of older platforms, but have you had any particular challenges in embracing certain musical styles? How often have you been presented with opportunities that test your range?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I really can manage most styles of music, apart from dance music, I'm pretty terrible at that! I got asked to write in a lot of different styles for the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pi\u00f1ata<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> games. It was great fun, getting to write 20 second snippets of music was just enough before I ran out of ideas (as Dave Clynickalways used to say!)... hehe! I think both of those games tested my range. When I was asked for some cool jazz for the Penguin (I think), I got Robin to do it. He did a great job, but I think I managed the rest!<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What were some ways you prepped for the <\/b><b><i>GoldenEye 007<\/i><\/b><b> score? Did you and Graeme Norgate study <\/b><b><i>GoldenEye<\/i><\/b><b>\u2019s film score or other 007 scores to get the style down?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nozzer (Mr. Norgate!) and me did listen to all the Bond theme songs constantly during composing for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GoldenEye<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. He started the game and was doing <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blast Corps<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> before I got the job, then, when I started, he asked me to take over from him on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GoldenEye<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as he was snowed under. I listened to the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GoldenEye<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> soundtrack quite a lot too, it was fantastic to get to use THE Bond theme. I didn't finish that game, so Nozzer returned to finish it off, as I got dragged off by Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles to start work on <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dream<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I did do some sound design on that game, but I think it got replaced in the end.<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What is your advice for writers block? What is your experience with it?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I've had it loads of times, but I really can't offer any advice. I've spent days looking out of my office window at Rare and not written a note. It's tough when you're an in-house audio guy. You just have to write and write and write like it's a conveyor belt. That's why I like to do sound design too; it's a nice break from composing and good fun. I think when it gets really bad, I try and listen to some music that I really like and let it get me going again.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What are your thoughts on the evolution of video game music going from 8-bit to full orchestral scores for some modern games?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I think it's a good thing, it has to evolve. I do agree that back then you had to write a good tune as you had very limited resources and the tune was everything. It's easy these days to write lots of big chords and ambiances without actually having much musical knowledge. For me it's all about the harmony and melody, people like John Williams are unbelievable. I mean, how many of his tunes can you sing back right now? Probably all of 'em... Incredible!<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: What was the transition of going from playing in bands to working on video game projects like for you personally?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">It was amazing! I think I spent like 11 years of my life from 22 to 33 playing in bands. It\u2019s all I did. I never got a job. I lived with my mother thinking I was just going to be a failure playing in crappy bands forever. By the time I was 33, I was just playing in cover bands in my local area to make a living. So then my friend, Robin Beanland, he played in one of the bands I played in. He was putting together these little demos off of computer music. And he said, \u2018I\u2019m gonna try to get a job.\u2019 I just ignored it thinking it was nonsense. And then one day he announced that he got a job at this company called Rare in the UK. I never heard of them. About a year and a half went by and Robin said, \u2018You know, Grant, you\u2019ve been on unemployment benefit for about 11 years. Don\u2019t you think it\u2019s time to get a job?\u2019 I asked what I could even do, and he responded, \u2018Why not do what I do?\u2019 He recommended some gear for me to buy so as to write some tunes I thought would be appropriate for video games. I sent Rare five cassette tapes over the course of that year. I never got a reply. Then out of the blue, I got a letter asking me to come in for an interview. I sat down with David Wise and the general manager and I got the job. I couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">To be working at a company that was so prestigious, it was\u2026 I mean, it made the news in the UK that Nintendo bought half the company. For me, going there was like doing to Disneyland. It was just incredible.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Could you go into more detail about the 2010 transition from Rare to Microsoft? How did that affect you at the time?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">That\u2019s a tough question. I think at the time I was pretty pissed off. Tim and Chris (Stamper) left the company shortly before I left. I kinda felt that the magic had gone at that point. It was such a fantastic experience, and for me to see it not do as well for whatever reason was hugely upsetting to me. I never thought I would ever leave that place. I thought I\u2019d be there forever.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Microsoft bought Rare for a reason. They wanted to get broad appeal content onto the original Xbox. We couldn\u2019t possibly create enough games to completely champion the broad appeal content. We just didn\u2019t have enough staff to do that. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grabbed by the Ghoulies<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> came out and there was a massive backlash from all the Nintendo guys who didn\u2019t want to hear from Rare anymore. It just went downhill from there.<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">A lot of internal fighting started before Microsoft got interested. It was an undercurrent of unhappiness. I loved everything about Rare, and I couldn\u2019t believe people were speaking badly about it. I think Microsoft bought something that was on the way down and they didn\u2019t know it. Then they compounded the problem.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">On the walls, we had framed pictures of all the games we worked on. There was a huge Nintendo tapestry in the foyer, like 20 feet tall. But then Microsoft took it all down. They took all the pictures off the wall. They took the tapestry down. It was almost like they didn\u2019t want to be associated with what Rare did in the past.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">We were used to being an agile company. You might have a meeting to talk over what to do and just do it. With Microsoft, if you had an idea, then you would have to send it up the chain and wait a week. When you\u2019re dealing with a bunch of hippies, that production line way of doing things doesn\u2019t work.<\/span><\/p><p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Q: You have stated that video game composers could do a movie score as well as any of the current film composers. Why haven\u2019t you jumped into the film scoring industry yet?<\/span><\/strong><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">No one has asked me! Part of the reason why I moved to Los Angeles was so as to try and get into the movie industry. I am actively doing that. I\u2019ve done quite a lot of short films so far.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seeing that they\u2019re making a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mario<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> movie, I would love to do that. I kinda feel like I\u2019m the only guy in the Western world who has touched <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mario<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I had just done <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mario + Rabbids<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for the past three years. I\u2019ve got all the cinematic sequences for it. If you put them together, it would be a movie.<\/span><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I would love to work on some movies, but at the same time, I do love working on video games. I wouldn\u2019t want to stop that. I\u2019d just like to do a bit of both. That would be great.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Some feel that video game music is underrated from a certain point of view. From your perspective do you think there's an issue with video game music recognition?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Video game music is getting bigger all the time. My son's 14 and an avid game player, but he doesn't really listen to anything apart from game music. His playlists are all game music. At his age you're normally getting into pop music or something like that, but he isn't. He loves Undertale, thankfully some of my stuff too! I think it's definitely changing. <\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">My generation has a lot of people that haven't really played a game, but once you go down a generation it gets less like that. Everyone you know my son's age or even into their 20s has played a game; it's seeping into culture everywhere. You get these live concert tours all the time, selling out venues all the time. It's a real big thing now; even Classic FM votes in stuff like Banjo-Kazooie! Game music is played on the radio, it's getting everywhere, so I think in some respects video games still do melodic themes very well. I think of movie music and it's not as prevalent as it used to be; I think of movies and the music can be very big and epic but not always memorable or remarkable. So it's exciting but you can't remember a note of it.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">In video games you can usually remember the tunes, as you might be in a level a long time and hear it a lot. So you've got to make sure the music's not repetitive and getting on the player's nerves, and make it likeable. It's a hard task. I remember when I first worked at Rare, Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles constantly trooped out the Mario themes and said 'these tunes can play for three hours and you don't get bored of it.' You've got to do that, and it was hammered home day after day, so we had to learn that skill or get fired!<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Video game music is a wealth of diversity, and there's so much of it. People love it, too, it's everywhere. I think people still think it's a bit of an underground thing but I don't think it is. It's permeating everywhere, you hear GameBoy sounds in dance music, for example. It's completely embedded into the culture. I think it's super cool when you hear those references in pop, rap, whatever.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Game music goes from massive orchestras to chiptunes, right from top to bottom. It's all great. My son loves Undertale and that's chiptune stuff and he adores it, and he also loves orchestral parts in Super Mario Galaxy. I feel that video game music has re-introduced people to instrumental music, because people are so used to songs with vocalists. You remove that and you've just got the melody, no hook line to catch onto, so it has to be a good tune. Parents have 10-year-old kids saying they want to see a symphony orchestra, because they're playing game tunes. For me that's fantastic.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Did you work on any other games between GoldenEye and Banjo?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">No, that was it. I just worked on GoldenEye, then one day Tim Stamper (who was the boss of Rare) and Greg Mayles (who was the lead designer) showed up and just said \u201ccould you please play your GoldenEye music\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I was like \u201calright, I\u2019m gonna get fired because they think it\u2019s crap\u201d. So, they sat listening, I played the tunes and then they said \u201cright, you\u2019re gonna come work on Dream with us\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">To which I was like \u201cyeah, that\u2019s fine, just need to finish on GoldenEye\u201d and they were like \u201cno no, you\u2019re finishing GoldenEye right now\u201d.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">So, I moved to the barn where the Dream team was and started working with them.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Speaking of Project Dream, could you dive more into that? Was Banjo originally going to be on the SNES?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Yeah, I never worked on the SNES, just the GameBoy and N64. So originally it was gonna be on the SNES, then just about when I switched to Dream it got switched to the N64. It was going to be a very Zelda like open world 3d exploration game, then I just changed to Banjo.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: How did you approach the sound and music palette for Banjo-Kazooie?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I thought that Banjo-Kazooie were very odd characters, being opposites (like Banjo\u2019s a bit dumb and Kazooie\u2019s a bit snazzy and sarcastic) so I tried to get the music to match that.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I hit on the idea of this tritone thing. It\u2019s the furthest point in a musical scale, so I wondered if I could work it in somehow.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">At the time, I\u2019d been listening to quite a bit of Danny Elfman, and so that kind of gave me the idea for the direction here. I just stumbled upon it really.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">And as it worked well, I just used it through both of the games.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: I love how when you venture into different parts of a level, the music changes in style but stays the same notes-wise. What was the inspiration behind that move?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Yeah, we did the whole channel fade thing. When I first got to Rare, Greg and Tim were very keen for me to play the Lucasarts games (especially Monkey Island) since they loved said games a whole lot. And in the early Secret of Monkey Island games, they had that channel fade thing working like in FM synthesis; not quite MIDI files but just using the FM chip on the sound card. They loved how it worked with the IMUSE system and said they\u2019d love that to work in Banjo. So, when you wander around, the music would change (same tune but a different arrangement based on the area).<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">That meant I had to work out how to make that happen, figured out how it\u2019d sound in my head and then have the coders figure out how to get the software to support it afterwards. Hence all the music for one level would be in one MIDI file, and different channels would play to change the feel of the song in different areas.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Donkey Kong 64 now. What was it like composing music for that game? Obviously, you had a lot to live up to given the great soundtracks in past games.<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Yeah for me I guess I was doing Banjo-Tooie, DK 64 and Perfect Dark at the same time\u2026<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">It was a hectic time that was.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">So, my main thing was to try and keep DK different from Banjo-Tooie. Wanted to make sure it didn\u2019t sound the same.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">And in general, I always thought DK was a darker sounding game. David Wise\u2019s Donkey Kong soundtracks are amazing, but they are quite dark. So, I felt I made DK 64 a bit darker than Banjo, with the toy factory level being quite haunting and the spooky level being quite haunting too. That and Gloomy Galleon.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Q: Could you talk about Perfect Dark? How did it compare to scoring for GoldenEye since it was a spiritual sequel?<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I thought that was different. It was more electronic. The X-Files was very big, and I kept thinking of that and Blade Runner when composing. I mixed orchestra and synth back then, and I tried to make it as good as I could. I really enjoyed working on it really.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Speaking of spiritual sequels, what was your thought process during the composing for Yooka-Laylee, the Banjo Kazooie cousin? You worked with David Wise as well on this correct?<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I think with Yooka-Laylee, the very first track I wrote (the jungle track which they put on Kickstarter), I wanted to make sure that had all the bits from Banjo-Kazooie rolled into one. For the rest of it\u2026 well hopefully I\u2019m a better composer than I was back then, so I tried to keep the best bits from 1 and 2 while adding some new stuff to mix it up.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">David Wise and I have been friends for a very long time, so it was very easy to divide up the music here, and it was obvious which bits would be Dave and which would be me here. Don\u2019t forget Steve Burke did music here too.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">So, we all had a bit of a chat about it, and it was just obvious that since it was in a Banjo style, I should handle the majority of the music. However, for the next games Playtonic do, Dave might do more or Steve might do more, depending on the type of game.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">But yeah, because it was a very Banjo like game, it was very easy to work out the bits I should do and the bits Dave should do there.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Q: Who is your favorite composer? Video games or film.<\/b><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">I guess video game wise that\u2019s a tough one, but movie wise it\u2019s John Williams. He\u2019s a great one. Like, I\u2019ve listened to his three Harry Potter soundtracks over and over. They\u2019re my textbook that I learn from, he\u2019s such an amazing composer.<\/span><\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Just for fun, here\u2019s a couple video interviews with Grant!<\/span><\/em><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AtaZ5csXxpc&list=WL&index=11&t=0s\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AtaZ5csXxpc&list=WL&index=11&t=0s<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KuZadavWE1I&list=WL&index=10&t=0s\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KuZadavWE1I&list=WL&index=10&t=0s<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p><p>\u00a0<\/p><p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">INTERVIEW SOURCES:<\/span><\/em><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/ocremix.org\/info\/Composer_Interview:_Grant_Kirkhope\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">http:\/\/ocremix.org\/info\/Composer_Interview:_Grant_Kirkhope<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/gamingreinvented.com\/interview\/lets-interview-banjo-kazooie-and-mario-rabbids-composer-grant-kirkhope\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/gamingreinvented.com\/interview\/lets-interview-banjo-kazooie-and-mario-rabbids-composer-grant-kirkhope\/<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/07\/feature_ex-rare_composer_grant_kirkhope_on_breaking_mario_and_following_in_koji_kondos_footsteps\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/07\/feature_ex-rare_composer_grant_kirkhope_on_breaking_mario_and_following_in_koji_kondos_footsteps<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendoenthusiast.com\/2018\/12\/19\/interview-rare-grant-kirkhope\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">https:\/\/www.nintendoenthusiast.com\/2018\/12\/19\/interview-rare-grant-kirkhope\/<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[71,70,22,25,77,67],"class_list":["post-208889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-composer-showcase","tag-composer-showcase","tag-compozly","tag-film-composer","tag-film-composing","tag-marcus-manderson","tag-music-composing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - 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