Monica's Story

Monica has always been creatively inclined, she came to composing through her love of stories. Film composing drew her interest due to it's powerful involvement in story telling, the two composers that sparked her enthusiasm for this genre of music were John Williams and Howard Shore. Monica's parents supported and planted the seed for this passion to grow, as teachers and music lovers themselves they felt that all of their children should learn an instrument when they were younger as, not only would it be a good addition to a university application or Curriculum Vitae, but as a great skill enhancer. So Monica started the piano, just like her siblings before her. Both parents enjoyed a range of music and so introduced her to a range of artists and composers from Classical composers such as Mozart and Beethoven to more popular artists such as The Beetles, her brothers also introduced her to even more as they, like her, had been encouraged in their love of music and creative outlets. They played music from bands like Limp Bizkit, Chemical Brothers, Maximo Park and Placebo introducing her to a whole new musical world. This all kick started her love of music and allowed her to gain the skills necessary to go on and begin her career in a creative industry.

Monica's father kick started her love of stories, by reading to her every night from a very early age. Harry Potter played a huge part, she became obsessed by the books and has never stopped loving them. J K Rowling inspired her to try writing her own stories and when the films came out John Williams showed her how special film composing was. She discovered more books and more films that fed this passion for stories, the Narnia series by C S Lewis for one and possibly the most prominent one was Lord of the Rings by J R Tolkien. It was listening to Howard Shore's score for the films that she first entertained the idea of becoming a film composer. The full and complex orchestral scoring that created just the right tone and emotion for every scene inspired her. She was obsessed with the beautiful melodies and how the mood shifted so subtly to reflect the long and complicated story Tolkien had written.

From here Monica's love of music only grew. Film, stories, television shows and music created an escapist safety net for her as she grew and when se moved to secondary school she began to experiment with composing. Her first project where she discovered the joy of creating music was where her and a partner had to write themes for a superhero and villain, she realised this was an activity she enjoyed tremendously and proceeded to throw herself into every music project or activity whole heartedly thereafter. 

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The first memorable pieces she wrote were for her GCSE music coursework, she composed two piano pieces both with a scene in mind. The music was designed to act as film music but as she did not have the resources to create the scene it did not have a video to go alongside it. One of these Pieces "Warlocks Waltz" can be found on the Compositions page and was used for her portfolio that got her into university. At her interview the lecturer taking the interview had described it as an extremely visual piece even though he had not known the purpose with which the piece was composed, this confirmed for Monica that the piece had achieved its purpose and gave her confidence for the future of her composing.

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Every composition that Monica has written since has used this same process, while she will try and use different instruments and techniques, she still begins each composition by getting an image that she wants to covey. The image or scene will have a list of emotions that need to be expressed and will have a plot that will give the music purpose. For more description on this process in relation to individual pieces of work please check out the compositions page. Bluebell has information describing this process and the techniques that were explored in its creation while The Stags Gift has a short excerpt of writing that details the scene that Monica envisioned when she created it.