Hello music people 👋

Today we're featuring Paul Talos

From composing music for films, teaching music production & audio engineering, to mixing & mastering for other artists, Paul, has immersed himself in music 🎶

Read Time: 7 minutes 📰

The Setup

Gear List

Instruments

• Arturia MatrixBrute

• Sequential OB-6

• Korg Opsix

• Korg Wavestate

• Artruria MicroFreak

• Moog Grandmother

• Eurorack Modular System

• Ukulele

• Mandolin

• Violin

• Various Guitars

Recording/MIDI Gear

• Focusrite Red16Line

• Focal Shape Twins

• Avid Eleven Rack

• NI Komplete Kontrol S49

• Alesis 3630

• Mac Studio (M1 Ultra)

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

My name is Paul Talos and I’m a film composer based in Philadelphia, PA.

I started playing music about twenty years ago when I got my first guitar. I used to spend hours trying to deconstruct all my favorite songs until eventually I got the urge to write my own. It wasn’t long until my obsession with music expanded to include recording, production, sampling, and synthesis. Inevitably, I fell in love with the sound of analog synths and started this never-ending journey to build the perfect studio.

Aside from writing music for movies and commercials, I also teach music production and audio engineering at a local studio here in Philadelphia. When I’m not doing either of those things, I also occasionally mix and master music for other artists

What's the one thing in your studio you can't live without?

I'd have to go with my Eurorack modular system. I designed this rack for the purpose of creating cinematic textures and drones. I usually do this by sampling some kind of acoustic instrument (violin, mandolin, ukulele, vocals etc.) and running that through some pitch shifting, time stretching, and granular processing with a bit of reverb and/or delay at the end of the signal chain.

It's an incredibly versatile process that produces vastly different results depending on what you sample into it and is something I use in some capacity on just about every project I've worked on. And the best part is I never feel like I'm completely in control of what the instrument is doing. Every time I sit down with it, something unique and unexpected happens. Like the modular has a will of its own and I'm just along for the ride.

What's your process?

Working as a film composer, there's not really a single answer to that question.

Every film I've scored has been different, but the process usually starts by thinking more about things like timbre and texture, rather than melody or harmony. The more musical aspects all come later, but the most important thing in the beginning is putting together a palette of sounds that makes sense for the film. To do this, I might start by recording a bunch of ambient textures on the modular, or by putting together a template of software instruments in my DAW that I know I'm gonna want to use throughout the film.

For example, I scored a film called Turbo Cola that came out recently, which takes place on New Year's Eve in 1999. I had a lot of conversations with Luke Covert, the director, about the musical direction of the score and we ultimately decided to with a 90's-inspired electronic sound. This got me thinking a lot about the kind of technology that was available at the time and led me to try to emulate the sound of early digital samplers, with their high noise floor, limited sample memory, and rather crude file compression methods to get around this limitation. The score has a very lo-fi digital sound, with a touch of analog, which really went hand in hand with the setting and characters. It's a sound that's very specific to this film and probably not something I'll explore again anytime soon, but that's the whole point.

What works for one project doesn't necessarily work for another.

How would you explain your style?

When I first started writing and producing my own music, I was particularly drawn to the grittier end of the electronic music spectrum. Industrial and noise-based music was very influential in my early work, so when I decided to start scoring for film, it felt pretty natural to start in the horror/thriller genre and adapt this dark electronic sound into something more cinematic.

Nowadays, my sound is a bit more difficult to put in a box.

Like I said before, every film is unique and requires something different. I've had to expand my musical vocabulary to include not just synths and purely electronic elements, but also things like guitars, orchestral samples, and even some acoustic instruments you wouldn't necessarily associate with film music. Overall, I tend to focus more on creating music that serves a story, rather than trying to achieve stylistic consistency within my own discography.

Has this journey of building a hardware setup changed the way you think about music or life in general?

It's completely transformed the way I make music.

Getting into modular synthesis in particular was the real game changer. With modular, there's always an element of unpredictability. When working with a visual, that unpredictability can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to synchronization with the picture.

I struggled with this aspect of it for years until I realized it's much easier to simply record everything I do on the modular and cut away what I don't need. This process of working by subtraction rather than addition is something I've applied to every aspect of how I work. And it's made me less reluctant to try new ideas, knowing that not everything that gets recorded will necessarily make its way into the finished product. Something about that feels very liberating and takes a lot of the pressure off when you're still experimenting with ideas.

What’s your ONE tip on music-production or creativity?

Limitation is everything.

We live in a world where we have access to just about any sound we can imagine. That's a beautiful thing, but without imposing the right limitations on ourselves,

it's very easy to fall into option paralysis. Having an extensive setup is great, but I've learned that not every piece of gear needs to be used on every project. I've gotten much more interesting results by limiting myself to just a handful of tools and really extracting everything I can out of them.

A book/movie/article that fueled your creativity?

I recently finished watching season 1 of Severance and was totally blown away by the score. The main theme really has a way of getting stuck in your head, much like a catchy hook in a pop song. It's such a simple piano melody that gets reinterpreted in so many different ways throughout the show. All while staying out of the way of the story and drawing just the right amount of attention to itself.

Absolutely brilliant.

How can people find you?

Instagram

Bandcamp

Website

Paul Talos on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal etc.

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P.S. Suggest me (with a reply) a book/movie/article that fueled your creativity 🙌