ERIC’s Guest Series: Mitch Gardner
Hi, my name is Mitch, I am a media composer who has worked on international projects with broadcasters such as CNN and the BBC. I graduated with a BA (Hons) in Film Music in 2020 from Leeds Conservatoire and have had my music used in over 7 countries worldwide, from Australia to Finland, UK to the USA.
I went to University when I was 21 so it took me a few years to decide what I wanted to go. I knew that I didn’t want to do a Music degree that covered all aspects across modules across each year. I didn’t like performing which isn’t particularly a good start when you play Piano, Clarinet, Guitar and Drums! When I originally got into writing music for film in 2015/2016, I was buying cheaper libraries of samples to compose with that would assist with my writing a little bit.
The first libraries that I purchased were Sonokinetic’s Capriccio and Orchestral Tools’ Berlin Orchestra Inspire 1. These sounds helped to let me capture a more realistic orchestral sound which meant that I can then understand what I was able to currently write. When I purchased Capriccio, as this is a phrase-based library, I used a lot of the phrases to write quite an epic track to get to grips with it, using string runs and brass stabs to make a track called Adventure (now published on Lift Music as High Seas Adventure). With this I started to understand the needs from an orchestra, so with Berlin Orchestra Inspire 1, my other library (which is not phrase based and uses MIDI to determine which notes you want to play), I came across a segment of a Wallace and Gromit with no music and decided to challenge myself and write for this (this can be heard on Lift Music’s catalogue as ‘Little Horrors’).
With this I started to create a portfolio and to understand that I enjoyed not only writing this type of orchestral music, but also writing to a visual form of media. I then found the Film Music course at Leeds Conservatoire (was Leeds College of Music), which instantly grabbed me as a path I was very interested to go down. I then started my course here in 2017 and wrote more music in many more different styles! The first track I did whilst in Leeds was originally called Against the Clock, it was called this because I wanted to see how well I could write a 60 second track in the space of 24 hours, which felt like a mammoth task at the time. I was really happy with it and has now been released by Lift as ‘The Quest’. If you watch the Channel 4 series How to Build, you’ll hear it in the intro of pretty much all of the episodes in both series (not bad for a track that took 24 hours to write!).
Going on from there I started to outsource filmmakers either also at University or actively looking for composers. The first filmmaker I came across, Sean, wanted an original score for his comedic short film. This was 10 minutes in length and took about 3-4 months in total, but the benefit of doing this meant that I was not only finding ‘real world’ work, but this work could also go towards my university assignments, win win situation! I much preferred this approach to re-scoring (like I did with Wallace and Gromit), its so easy to either hear the original or listen to it to hear what the composer originally wrote. I did a few re-scores whilst at university of stuff such as Sherlock, Cosmos, Wonders of the Universe and Doctor Who, I am currently re-creating a few of these into longer pieces of music to be released. My Doctor Who re-score (called Dark Forces) was used in a detective show in the Netherlands, so I find it important that they don’t just sit there on a shelf (or a folder in your hard drive) and collect virtual dust!
Whilst at university I liked to take advantage of opportunities that arose, one evening in December saw me invited to a Christmas Party for a big trailer music house which have had music placed in trailers for films such as No Time to Die, Lion King and Black Widow to name a few. The party was great, but the AirBnB that I stayed in had a nice breakfast the morning after where I shared it with a filmmaker who was also staying in the same place. We got talking, exchanged details and he then said he was working on a project which is scheduled to be on the BBC in March and asked if I’d be on board to write some music for it. Of course I obliged and said yes, which I worked on every day until the deadline (alongside all of my University projects and my dissertation too!). With this came the Covid lockdown in 2020, just after the documentary aired. It felt like I peaked and I knew it was going to be a difficult time when next to nothing is being filmed due to restrictions. I then decided to just write TV and Film music without a picture. At the time I liked melodic percussive instruments (such as a marimba, xylophone etc) and because I was cooped up in my room with all my instruments and computer, I had no reason not to write tracks. I wrote 12 or 13 tracks in this style (majority are now published by Poke on their album ‘Circles in the Sky’) but projects ran thin as I expected. Graduating during a pandemic was not it, I had to move back home with my parents and get a job in a warehouse, so I then struggled to find much motivation in the days or evenings to create.
A collaborator whilst I was at University reached out in around November of 2020 and said that he recorded a feature length film when the restrictions initially eased that adhered to all guidelines. I thought it was a bold move and asked if I could see the film or the script, to which he then said he was going to ask me if I wanted to do the music. My first feature film, just after a lockdown!? I would have never imagined it to have happened then, but there we are. January 2021 came around and the second lockdown was in place, I was still warehouse-working at the time but on my days off I was writing for the film (and when my NHS app would ping meaning I’d self isolate). This continued up until June 2021 where I had written around 53 minutes overall, not bad for someone with writers block for what felt like forever! The film was finished as restrictions eased and was started to be put into film festivals and even won an award for Best Feature Film (no best score though, oh well!). After this, it then got a sniff of distribution for America on streaming services such as Apple TV etc, which then led for it to be available on the Sky Store and Amazon Prime in the UK, so its not done too bad!
At the start of 2022 I then had the opportunity to assist composer Tandis Jenhudson (BBC Civilisations, C4 Jeremy Kyle: Death on Daytime) on his project at the time, which was titled ‘Patagonia’. When he was looking for an assistant, he initially found a picture of me with David Arnold (composer of BBC’s Sherlock, Casino Royale, Independence day etc) from a tweet that was in a small interview I did at the time with my University as a graduate. He then found my website and listened to my stuff, we got speaking further about it and I worked on all 6 episodes which was a fantastic experience. The collaborative aspect is great when you can feed off of each other’s energy and come up with unique ideas that you can blend together to create something awesome.
I recently bought my first house and changed jobs into something more into the audio industry, so I am around like-minded people Monday-Friday whilst also being able to find the creative energy every morning to write either new music or work on existing music.
I find it important to create a routine so that you always stay motivated and can either prepare your creative energy to write or even use it before it is consumed by something else. My warehouse job always left me drained after a shift, so I could only really write on my days off, but i’ve found that my newest job leaves me inspired at 6am when I wake up and 5pm when I clock off for the day. Moving into my first house was difficult because of the change in routine, I didn’t write anything from April 2022 until around July 2022, so to be now going into 2023 more motivated than ever is a good place to be.
My goal is to publish at least 1 album this year, which I am yet to decide if it would be self-published or not, so lets see how this goes!
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Huge thanks to Mitch for being our first guest blogger!
If you’re working in the Creative Industries and want to write a guest blog, please get in touch at lucy@meet-eric.com 📲