A working life: The music producer

I stare blankly at the huge and impenetrable grid of knobs, dials and buttons in front of us. "This is a lovely, old analogue Amek BCIII console," says Alex Pilkington fondly, a bit like a farmer introducing someone to his prize cow.

Mounted on a trestle table below two computer monitors and flanked by a couple of matt black speakers on stilts, his mixing desk dominates the attic room like a church altar. Beyond, sunlight streams through a window, outside which a tractor trundles across a ploughed field.

"It has eight inputs and 16 outputs," he continues. I nod, inwardly wrestling with a sudden urge to twiddle all the knobs at once.

An Introduction To 'Production Music' By Pete Thomas For Sound On Sound

The business of TV and film is changing fast, and production or ‘library’ music is becoming ever more important. One of the UK’s most experienced production music composers explains how to get your foot in the door.

What we now call ‘production music’ has been through various stages of evolution. Its origins are probably in silent movies, when cinema pianists and organists would watch the movie and supply a live accompaniment. At first, they would use bits and pieces of music, either from memory or collections of sheet music, but very soon volumes of specially composed or arranged incidental movie music were published, with cues arranged and categorised to fit the various screen actions or moods. Perhaps that is why this extract from Krommer’s Double Clarinet Concerto is such a well-known tune!