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Music
Look at the sounds page find out how the beast sounds were created or read this article by Ben Bartlett that tells us about how he composed the music for Walking with Beasts.
A question I am often asked when talking about my work is, 'Do you get to see the pictures when you write?' The answer is, it would be almost impossible without them. However, what is obvious to a composer may not be so clear to an audience viewing the final result.
Viewing the pictures
The process starts like this. The director and I would sit together viewing a particular episode. There would be almost no sound at all on this, maybe some basic growls and thunderclaps, but overall a fairly mute experience.
As we worked through the episode, certain scenes would stand out as being in need of music. I then took away a copy of this episode and it was here that my work really began.
Pictures as inspiration
Another question I am often asked is, "How do you start?". Well, in essence the pictures are my inspiration. They demand a certain musical answer. Scenes may be slow and beautiful, or fast and bloodthirsty. The feel may be epic and emotional with music at the forefront, or delicate and sensitive needing music that’s almost imperceptible.
I always have an over-riding objective: narrative coherence. The glue if you like, that makes each scene link together to create the sense of a whole and a feeling that each scene is both essential and inevitable.
Musical glue
So how do I 'glue' things together? Well, to take an example, a scene of a mother and child might be accompanied by soft cuddly music. Later, another scene might depict the mother teaching the child the hard realities of life with violent or rhythmic music. To glue them together I make the two pieces have similar harmonies or melodies even though they are ‘dressed’ in contrasted sounds and rhythms.
I like to go further than this if I can. The scenes above might take place in a certain
landscape, so this gets glued in too. Or they might be separated by many years, although only minutes have passed in the actual episode.
Listen to Mother & Child clip from episode 3
A common theme throughout
Then why not link all the episodes? Why not find a theme that is common to all the stories in Walking with Beasts, to join everything together? It is this challenge that is the hardest and it requires planning and imagination. With Walking With Dinosaurs I discovered a feeling of epic grandeur. Large orchestral sweeps and sophisticated themes. The dinosaurs were on the Earth for a long time and they commanded their world with great power. This was my model for their music.
However, the 'beasts' were much harder to characterise. I realised that the ‘beasts’ were less refined than dinosaurs. "Think blood, mud and desperation" was my reasoning, so I wrote Hogs Blood to get me started.
It deliberately disobeyed all rules of sophisticated harmony. Simplicity was the key. It contained big blocks of sound that crash in uninvited. I used the orchestra almost like a huge pair of tribal drums hitting one section, then the other, and then back again. Crudely I even introduced a musical limp by removing some beats from certain bars.
My crotchets became hooves and my quavers became bristles.
I now had my musical DNA in place, the backbone. A crude system that could withstand many disguises and yet could remain coherent from creature to creature. I was now free to hang many new experimental sounds on this backbone.
Listen to the Blade Brothers clip
You can hear all the music from Walking with Beasts in the soundtrack, which is available at the BBC shop.
Read about how the sounds were created for the beasts.
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