*The Legend Trip score I was really fortunate to work with Jason Satterfield on 'The Legend Trip' – he’s a director who has very firm ideas about where he wants the film to go musically – but we never converse in musical terms, he lets his temp track do the talking. Unlike some composers, I have no issue about working with a temp; I find it very helpful. It’s so difficult to put a musical mood or concept into words so I find it makes the process so much easier if the director just says ‘you know, I want it like that cue from ‘Seven’’ etc. However, although Jason chose his temp cues very carefully, he was always open to suggestions or alternative approaches so we were never ‘bound’ by the models– it was an extremely easy and enjoyable collaboration. The score was developed over a period of several months and was composed in chronological order. As the story takes place over various decades we decided, at an early stage, that it maybe an interesting approach to represent the different periods with specific ensemble, eg. the present day uses the full orchestral ensemble while the 70’s are represented by percussion and pianos only. The score was based on a central lullaby which was sub-divided into several motifs that were used as themes for various characters or situations – so, although it sounds quite expansive in places, it’s relatively economical in terms of the material being used. With regards to the way it was recorded, due to the very small budget we had to go with a VSTi/Live hybrid. The main body of the score was recorded using a combination of Miroslav Philharmonic and Vienna Symphonic sound patches and was produced using my small home set-up. However, there were portions of aleotoric music that needed to be developed for certain scenes and these couldn’t be reproduced to the correct specifications using the computer software; for these segements I went to The Tadpole Studio and engineer Simon Prothero, who I’ve known and worked with for several years. There we recorded the various live instrumental groups performing strange and unusual effects and the solo piano string melody that plays a prominent part in several cues; these elements were then dropped into the respective tracks. After all the gore and intensity of the picture I felt that it might be an emotional respite or release for the audience to enjoy a relatively up-tempo end credit song. For ‘The Bad Guy’ I was fortunate enough to work again with local acoustic artist Carly Tucker with whom I’d previously collaborated on a demo EP. We were basically chit-chatting over a drink one day and Carly played me part of a song she had written the previous week – my interest was immediately peaked as the lyrics and tone were very appropriate for a recurring character in The Legend Trip. Basically, her song became the chorus sections of ‘The Bad Guy’, I wrote a melody based on the ‘Main Titles’ for the verses and she penned additional lyrics. I didn’t tell Jason we were doing it and just sent it to him towards the end of the scoring process and waited for the reaction– I’m glad to say he was thrilled and surprised and it ended up in the movie. Granted, it’s not exactly Sondheim, but it is a pretty memorable tune and Carly sings it so beautifully; I’m just looking forward to being able to bring her onto ‘Still Life’, Jason’s new picture.