Becoming a freelance musician again after some 20 years has allowed me to branch out into putting my talents of teaching about film scoring to the test and having a go. First up is my entry for The Cue Tube Score Relief 2021 animation scoring competition raising money for musicians affected by the Covid pandemic.

Here is my score entry for the animation Spring (which can be found in its full length version with the original score on YouTube). Spring is another great animation from Blender Foundation and is used by permission, made available on a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. (CC) Blender Foundation.

And here is the Sibelius notation score video to give you a glimpse of the score as composed. The competition rules informed us of the instrumentation although composers could use electonics and non-orchestral samples, although I decided not to, as the winner will have their composition performed by the Northern Film Orchestra.

My usual role in film music and music for video games is working as a copyist or arranger, for example with the great duo Bob & Barn, who wrote the music for MediEvil. Here’s the story about how they re-created their original PS2 score for the PS4 reboot but I was brought in to arrange and produce the score and parts for the additional spiccato string session, conducted by my usual partner Steve Bingham around February 2019, with the game released at Halloween. Keep an eye out of another Colchester Institute alumnus Lizzie Gutteridge on period instruments – it’s a small (and spooky) world!