Peace in the Middle East

Last week I attended my first concert at Birmingham Town Hall. "The Middle East Peace Orchestra" performed a programme of music from the great traditions of the Middle East, including their own version of Handel's Messiah.

It was not only great to hear virtuosos performing music with elements from Jewish "Klezmer", from Middle Eastern "Makam" and from the classical Arab music, but it was nice to see Middle Eastern folk promoting peace.

Check out their website if you're interested and want to know more about them:
www.peacemusic.dk



After a few weeks break, I finally got back to work. On Wednesday the director of the Angels Saga, sent me the second episode, and what an episode it is! 20 minutes of impressive camerawork, good acting, and gripping plot twists.

It's great to be scoring the next episode, it gives me a chance to develop my themes from the first, and expand my soundscape under a more adventurous storyline. There are moments of suspense and action in this episode that will allow me to really open up my musical palette, and I can't wait for everyone to hear the finished score!

"Angels - Episode 2" won't be finished for a few weeks yet, but in the meantime you can watch a behind-the-scenes video below:



It's great to be busy again, I am churning out a hell of a lot of music lately, so please check out my SoundCloud account where you can hear all my latest compositions:
www.soundcloud.com/wendellscores
I will be uploading new music very soon!

New Adventures

Since work on the composition front has slowed down lately, I've enjoyed venturing in to new territory. The first of which is collaboration.

I have recently become active in the SoundCloud community, where I have come in to contact with a whole host of international composers. Aside from hearing and critiquing each other's work, many members collaborate together on pieces of music and make some truly inspiring sonic art. I have wanted to collaborate with another composer for a while now and SoundCloud presented me with the chance to do just that. Rui Martins, from Toronto, Canada got in touch with me several weeks ago and asked if I would like to collaborate on a piece. Rui had a strong musical theme, Middle-Eastern in flavour and ripe with potential that over a period of a month I thematically developed in to the piece you can hear in the player below.

Knights of Persepolis (Collab with wendellscores) by isle3music

The title came to me after the piece was finished as the music always conjured up imagery of Ancient Persia & Egypt while writing. The free form is typical of modern film music and the theme is developed, growing more and more powerful up to it's climactic ending.

I really enjoyed working on this piece, and it has helped to improve my orchestration skills greatly. I want to thank Rui for the opportunity, and I look forward to working with him again in the not too distant future.

Also, over the last couple of months I've been working with Hope Carney, a local singer/songwriter. I'm producing her debut EP and recording her songs at my house. So far it's gone really well, and you can hear one of her songs "Catch Me" at the following address:

hopecarney.bandcamp.com

Please take a listen and support her in any way you can. She's very talented and deserves success! More songs on the way soon...

In other news, I took a trip to London last month to see the Concert for Care at the Royal Albert Hall. David Arnold, the show's organiser, in aid of CARE international, organised a charity concert that featured some of the most successful film composers in the World today. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra brought to my ears the delightful repertoire listed below:

Independence Day - David Arnold

Cider House Rules/Chocolat/Emma - Rachel Portman

How To Train Your Dragon - John Powell

Chronicles of Narnia - Harry Gregson-Williams

The Piano - Michael Nyman

Love, Actually/World Trade Center - Craig Armstrong

Atonement - Dario Marianelli

Bright Young Things/American History X - Anne Dudley

There Will Be Blood - Jonny Greenwood

Much Ado About Nothing - Patrick Doyle

La Vie en Rose - Christopher Gunning

Astro Boy/The Usual Suspects - John Ottman

Memphis Belle/Shadowlands - George Fenton

The line-up also consisted of the very talented Imogen Heap, Paloma Faith, Ricky Wilson, Jil Aigrot and comedians Jimmy Carr, Ed Byrne and Dom Joly.

It was a spectacular concert that inspired and entertained me in more ways than one. Maybe some of you reading this were there too and were as blown away as I was. I can't find any decent high-quality recordings but you can watch a video of John Powell's How To Train A Dragon score below with a brief introduction by the composer.

While I'm on the subject of concerts, I also went to see The Houston Symphony perform Gustav Holst's The Planets - A HD Odyssey at Birmingham Symphony Hall, along with Stravinsky's Fireworks and Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony.

"Houston Symphony & NASA teamed up to combine a faithful rendition of Holst’s The Planets, with spectacular HD imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, Satellite fly-bys, the Mars Rovers, and animated compilations of planetary survey images (directed by Duncan Copp)."

A teaser of the concert can be viewed below. If it's coming to a city near you I thoroughly recommend attending the concert, you will not be disappointed. Clearly a lot of effort has gone in to the production and it's worth much more than the ticket price would have you believe!

Ikarus

Yesterday I finished scoring "Ikarus" Part 2 for the original sci-fi series Venus Rises.

Unlike the previous two episodes I've wrote music for, there's no theme in this score. As there was a lot of tension in this episode, I wanted to concentrate more on the mood and instrumentation.

The score's orchestral with only a few sweeps and sound effects. This time I added a piano, to beef up the low end and colour it with a different timbre to my usual trombone, double bass and timp sections.

It's really difficult to create tension for a long time in a score without it becoming boring and uninteresting. The characters were thrown out of the frying pan, and in to the fire in this episode, and rarely was there time for relief. So there's lots of tempo changes and rhythms to help combat this problem and my ultimate goal when creating a score is to: "Make it exciting, and keep it interesting."

It's quite difficult to get back in to the style of writing I've always used for Venus Rises, as I've had a few projects in between. Ideally, I'd like to work on one project at a time. Nevertheless, I always enjoy writing for this series, it's really helped hone my craft and gain confidence in my scoring abilities.

"Ikarus" Part 2 is not available yet, but you can watch Part 1 at:

www.venusrises.blip.tv/file/2656183/

For all the latest updates and information about the series, please visit:

www.venusrises.tv

To hear my compositions in high-quality please visit:

www.soundcloud.com/wendellscores

Angels

Last week I scored the short film "Angels" directed by Saeid Samimi. I've wrote for Saeid before for a short film called True Identity but I enjoyed scoring Angels a whole lot more!

Saeid really wasn't sure what type of music would fit with his film. He wanted something epic/heroic but scary in parts. My score unintentionally ended up sounding like John Murphy's score for 28 Days later.

I've been presented with plenty of opportunities lately to write in a more modern style. I think the music locks with the imagery really well and I can't imagine any other style of music fitting. You can view the finished film below:

I can really see this film being made in to a drama series for TV, I really hope that happens! It's one of the best films I've worked on this year :)

New Direction

For the last few months I have been working on the main theme for a new web series, Dark Frontier: The Original Series.

I've worked for a couple of years now on all things Dark Frontier related, but musically have always took the orchestral route. So naturally I wanted to take a new direction with this new series of Dark Frontier.

I rarely take the non-orchestral approach but it's important to broaden your style of writing now and again and there's nothing challenging about writing in the same style all the time.

In keeping with this different approach, it's the first theme I've wrote, for a title sequence I haven't seen! Casey, the director, will be working on the visuals over the next few months, putting the images to my music and it was really liberating to be able to compose freely for a change, without thinking of hit points.

It's great to have creative freedom in my work, and it's the third Dark Frontier theme I've wrote. I wanted the following ingredients in my theme:

- Vocals and voicings of SubVision's Farscape theme

- Electronic style and pacing of Yoko Kanno's Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex theme

- Dark, primal/tribal percussive elements of Danny Elfman's Planet of the Apes (2001) score

It's one of the most original compositions I've ever wrote and I loved writing it! A lot of work has gone in to this theme. Casey and I have been sending each other ideas back and forth for months and from what little preproduction I've seen the music's really going to fit the style of this new series. It's dark, it's gritty, it's unique, and it's something I'm proud of!

I can't let you hear it yet as filming for this upcoming web series will start later this year, so I'll post a link to the title sequence when it becomes available!

For all the latest updates and information about the new series, please visit:

www.triple-fictionproductions.net

Freefall

I've spent the last couple of weeks scoring "Freefall" Part 2 for the original sci-fi series Venus Rises.

I really enjoyed scoring this episode! Like "Crossroads" Part 2, my score to "Freefall" Part 2 is orchestral/electronic and quite percussive, with a few synth patches from my microKORG. I've started studying quite heavily in the art of orchestration and was able to apply everything I've learnt recently in this score. It is once again, the best piece of film I've had to work with. Stunning visuals, great acting, wonderfully constructed sets and a variety of interesting camera angles make this series a pleasure to work on.

This score took much longer to write than the first episode I scored partly because I really wanted to do a good job of it, I didn't want to add anything but my best music to blend with the amazing visuals on screen.

I wanted to do a really good job of this score, and I'd like to think of it as one of my best scores to date. Like the previous episode I scored there's a strong theme throughout the score, this time a short three-note ascension on the strings playing col legno. I used to meander through my scores, compositionally, but I've now realised that establishing a strong theme early on gives me a lot to work with in later cues, where I can manipulate the theme and add variations.

I'm overjoyed to be working on Venus Rises, it's brought out the best in me. I can't wait to score the next episode!

"Freefall" Part 2 will be released in July, but in the meantime you can watch the other episodes and find out much more about the series at:

www.venusrises.tv

www.facebook.com/venusrises

P.S. In other exciting news, I recently purchased Spectrasonics Omnisphere and I'm looking forward to putting it to good use in future scores!

Reclamation

Yesterday I finished scoring the final episode of the mini-series Dark Frontier: Operation Deliverance.

This final score was my first entirely orchestral underscore of the series and included cues and motifs heard in previous episodes whilst ending musically like the shows' main theme, for a sense of closure.

I always strive for a better score than my last one, but "Reclamation" was tough to write for because it's the finale, and the conclusion to the whole series, and I felt a strong pressure to deliver the best score yet!

There's quite a lot of dialogue but there were a few moments during the CGI sequences where I could really go to town with the orchestra and write some exciting passages of music.

I really enjoyed working on this web series, each episode had a unique feel to it which allowed me to write a unique score each time. I got a lot of experience in orchestration and writing to picture from scoring this series. When I watch and listen back to earlier Dark Frontier episodes I see how far I've come in such a short space of time and how the more experience I get under my belt, the more I evolve as a composer!

I will be writing the main theme for, and scoring Dark Frontier: The Original Series later in the year, where I will be departing from the orchestral sound that has accompanied my previous work with Triple-Fiction Productions. I'm taking a new musical direction that will be percussive, electronic and industrial in style!

Here's a short teaser: