Blog Introduction

Hello readers and welcome to my blog, let’s keep this short and sweet, I’m Amber, a composer currently studying the MSc (Hons) Music and Sound for Film and Games course at the University of Hertfordshire.

WARNING! If you don’t like Music, Films or Games then stop reading immediately, this blog is only for the passionate people that are dedicated to the world of music.

I hope you music fanatics enjoy my blog, let the fun begin…

So firstly, a little background information about myself, you may wonder why I’m such a geek when it comes to music, I’m a 90’s baby so I grew up on Disney, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Lord of the rings, Star Wars and more. Speaking of which, when Lord Of The Rings The Two Towers came out in the cinema, I went to go watch it with my mum, I was 4 years old, how I managed to sleep in my bed I will never know, those orcs were scary. 

The music in the films I grew up with was magical, it married the sound with the picture and I was instantly mesmerised, name any Disney film and I guarantee I can sing the lyrics to the majority of the songs in the film. A few of the films I grew up on have one thing in common and that’s John Williams, whilst I was watching those films, Williams was secretly brainwashing me to follow the path of music, it wasn’t long before I was paying more attention to the music than what was occurring on screen, that’s when I knew music was going to be a huge part of my life.

To continue to my musical journey, I began piano lessons at the age of 7 advancing year after year, completing all my grades right the way through till Grade 8 and yes, I had to do my Grade 5 Theory, thank goodness that’s over and done with. 

Learning the piano opened up my ears to the classical side of music and how most film music is based on classical scores. Have you heard of ‘Kings Row’ by Erich Wolfgang Korngold? It sounds very similar to a certain galactic space franchise theme tune *cough* ‘Star Wars’ *cough* I think Williams borrowed a few themes from the great classical composers knowing full well he could avoid a hefty lawsuit but who cares, he’s a living legend, we’ll let you off this time, John.

John Williams was inspired by other composers and he incorporated that inspiration into his compositions and I too do the same. After a few years of learning the piano, I became fascinated with different styles of music, especially the romantic and minimalistic styles of Claude Debussy and modern composer Ludovico Einaudi. Instead of sitting around learning other composer’s music on the piano, I started to wander off into my adventure and I began composing original piano pieces and that is what led me on the path that I am still on today.

When I first applied to study music at university, I had a lot of people questioning my choices, musicians don’t exactly have it easy, most of us are freelancing whilst working a part-time job on the side and as a woman, I knew my musical journey wasn’t going to be easy.

This leads to my next blog post that will talk about women in the music industry.

sources: EDWARD (2015) John Williams Borrowing from Other Composers, {Online Video}, 9 Jun 2015, accessible by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRU8cMp0Nk (Video accessed on 20th October 2019)