Around July 2005 I wanted to dabble in music production so I bought myself the highly recommended EastWest Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra Silver. I had played around with an early version of Magix Music Maker a lot during school and college remixing such greats as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata but I wanted something different, something more like the film composers I grew up listening to. So using EWQLSO Silver and FL Studio I composed a remake of the music from the second level of Earthworm Jim 2 and sent it to a website called OCRemix, a website for game music remixes. I thought that for my first true non-loop based composition it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately the track didn’t make it onto the site because the judges were not too keen on it.

Not to long after the fall of Jim I came across a website that really caught my interest. Whomix, a website designed purely for the purpose of showcasing Doctor Who theme remixes. How could I resist! I created ‘For A Darkened People’, a remix of the theme in the style of my composer idol Danny Elfman. It went down a storm and attracted the attention of Rob Thrush who, at first, asked me about using it for a secret project he was working on. Intrigued by the project I agreed and he told me more about the production. Evil of the Daleks live on stage, fantastic! My PC then became my home studio that I have added to over the last 2 years.

So Evil was a complete success and The Dalek Masterplan was in the pipeline for October 2007. I knew that because of the score needed for this production I would need to make some serious changes to my studio setup. I invested a sum going into the thousands to upgrade and I now have a vast library of samples to choose from.

My current setup is based on my own built Windows based PC because I find Apple Macs to be less customizable/upgradeable...and I can’t play Oblivion on a Mac now could I! However I do have a program that makes Windows look like a Mac because I do love the way the operating system looks. The PC consists of an AMD 64 X2 4400+ Dual Core Processor, Asus A8R-32 MPV Deluxe Motherboard with Crossfire support, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro Graphics Card in case I fancy installing Oblivion again, 2 x 120gb Hard Drives, 1 x 320gb SATAII Hard Drive and a WD 35gb 10,000rpm Raptor as my boot drive for better performance. All this is installed into a Reserator1 V2 water cooled Antec P180 case for absolute silent running.

I have an EMU 1616m mastering grade audio interface sending the audio to a pair of Yamaha HS-50M bi-amp powered studio monitor speakers, which I had to get from Germany because they’re unavailable in the UK. Even though I can’t yet play the keyboard I have an EMU X-Board 49 midi keyboard because it is useful and I have occasionally recorded live! I also have a Logitech X-530 5.1 surround sound speaker system for watching DVD's and mastering in the 6 channel format.

As well as upgrading my hardware I also upgraded my software. I have kept EWQLSO Silver because it has an awesome church organ, which for some reason is missing from it’s bigger brothers. I have bought myself EWQLSO Platinum XP, Symphonic Choirs and Stormdrum 2 to get the score the Dalek Masterplan deserves all running through FL Studio. I did have Cubase Studio 4 but it is more tailored to live playing and the software proved difficult for me to use and was slow to work in.

In the photo above of my 2007 set up you can see my cue list for The Dalek Masterplan at the top and the script on the desk. There’s acoustic treatment behind the speakers and 19” widescreen monitor. To the right are various books and magazines (Sound On Sound is an awesome mag) along with the software boxes. To the left is a mic stand used with a condenser mic for the Whocast live review last night, the large cylinder is the water cooler and under the desk is the PC. Also in the photo is a Sony Microcassette Recorder and a Zoom H4 Digital Recorder.

I currently work as a sound designer, editor and music composer for Big Finish Productions and love the job very much.

My greatest ambition, as a huge Doctor Who fan, is to bring Doctor Who back to the cinema in the same way Tim Burton did with Batman. I would love to see a darker version of Doctor Who maybe finally telling the story of how it all began back on Gallifrey. Below are some film posters from an old college project allowing me to create my vision of Doctor Who. This work recieved a 100% score in my coursework and was kept by the examining board for several months!