[Mark Burgess]

Mark, I had a brief listen-through of some of your stuff. Seems you veer more towards the textural than in-your-face thematic, but many textures to explore, for sure. For the approximations of orchestral music, have you used the same software for all of it, or have you changed gear over the years since 2017?

Thanks for listening, Thor. You’re right, I rarely go for obvious themes, with only a few exceptions. If there are themes, they are often buried motifs that come back in different forms, so you have to watch out for them. Like in Valentine Skies, and Cupid Conspiracy etc. But then there’s the elephant march, which is a deliberately Indiana Jones heroic theme.

The orchestra tech has evolved a lot since 2017, yes. The whole industry is better than it was. I am also more skilled at using it than I was. It takes a lot of twiddling to make a convincing performance. Every note has to be adjusted for phrasing. There are some things you just can’t play convincingly. I always write every part, like a real score, just in case I can persuade someone to play it one day 🙂

The David Attenborough was inspired by him series, and a couple of short film sequences that we put together. But these were never used for anything in the end…which is a shame, since i put a lot of work into those pieces.