Exploring new depths with Edinburgh based composer, Jamie Wilson.

This is beauty.

INTERVIEW

DD: First time featuring an artist doing film scores. Very interesting! After hearing the Tron:Legacy soundtrack, I’m opening up a lot more to the film scoring world. How are you?

JW: I’m good thanks. Yeah, that score had some sumptuous synth sounds on it! The sound FX design was the most inspirational aspect of that film for me though; Is it normal to get chills from the sound of a Lightcycle being activated?!?

DD: Daft Punk always delivers, on their own time. What got you interested in doing the orchestral music?


JW: Film scores opened me up to the world of orchestral music, they are a great way of acclimatizing towards a field of music that is often seen as irrelevant or inaccessible to those outside. Speaking from my own path of discovery, we tend to have narrow preconceived views of what certain types of music are, and they generally conform to how popular culture presents them. For instance, I used to (still do!) listen to a lot of instrumental progressive rock & metal, but I “wasn’t interested in electronic music” because I “didn’t like clubbing, it’s all four to the floor”. I was then exposed to interesting electronic music and loved it, but “definitely still wasn’t interested in classical music!”. That is completely crazy, the constituents of ones personal taste in aural excitement can be found within any field or general genre of music, and that includes orchestral (or “classical”) music. This notion tends to be hardest to realize or accept with orchestral music because we are almost entirely surrounded by works composed by works composed before the beginning of the 20th Century. Our interest is caught by what is culturally relevant today, once held, we may then be interested in the roots of the movement. I don’t see a lot of kids getting into popular music by discovering “this crazy band called The Beatles”. Classical music is also “taught” in schools, if you want to kill the childish awe and infatuation with something, that’s the way to do it! So yah, that’s my long winded soap box way of saying that I got into orchestral music through the accessible door of film music. It helped me realize that there is no general difference between our various sound type categories of music, they are only there to help arrange CD cabinets in a more orderly fashion.

DD: If you could score any movie what would it be? This could be an imaginary film that you have envisioned..

JW: Definitely a Sci/Fi film (must include spaceships….). One that would allow for interesting combination’s of electronic and acoustic sounds, and, in which the music would become part of the extraterrestrial vista. Star Wars and John Williams are pretty much responsible for most things in my life!

DD: Are you in school learning how to produce this kind of music?

JW: I’m musically self taught, until September this year that is; at which point I will be attending the Royal Scottish Academy to study composition. I have never really got on with the education system before, but in this case I think it will be a fantastic environment to work in. I plan to apply what I learn to my electronic work as well, many ideas!

DD: I would be so down to collaborate with you sometime! When my computer isn’t broken..

JW: Yeah man!

DD: What do you plan to do musically for the remainder of 2011?

JW: I’m working on an electronic/orchestral/guitar track right now that I hope to finish by the end of the year! 😉 a few others of similar vein in progress too, hopefully I can get them together properly and release something. I’d also like to finish my piece for string quartet. Slow progress on all fronts however!

DD: Any last words to all those reading?

JW: Meshuggah seem as good a note to go out on as any, cheers!

 

http://soundcloud.com/jwilson/

 

– jimijaxon

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