May 2021
Jon Opstad is a London-based composer, working across film, television, contemporary dance and concert music. His music often combines contemporary classical elements with electronics, merging acoustic instrumentation with both modern and vintage electronic instruments and techniques.
Recent work includes scoring the 10-part science fiction drama The Feed for Amazon, starring David Thewlis, Michelle Fairley, Guy Burnet & Nina Toussaint-White; 6-part BBC/UKTV crime drama We Hunt Together and 5-part BBC One period drama The Woman In White, starring Jessie Buckley, Dougray Scott, Charles Dance & Art Malik. Since early 2018 Jon has been the composer for the major Ubisoft video game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.
Jon studied music at Cambridge University and film music at the National Film & Television School. After graduating he began his career by working extensively as an additional music composer, programmer and orchestrator for a range of composers including Jocelyn Pook, Max Richter, Martin Phipps, Ruth Barrett, Sheridan Tongue and Richard Thomas, across many film, television and stage projects.
Let’s hear more…
MASA: Do you remember when your deep interest in music began? How did that then lead you into the industry and ultimately to where you are today?
Jon: When I was seven my dad played me two jazz albums that he had on vinyl, which happened to be two of the greatest albums of the 20th century – Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. That was like a musical awakening for me. We copied them onto tape so I could listen to them in my room and I listened to them over and over again and knew those two albums back to front. I wanted to absorb more and more music and just began to move outwards from there, spending all my pocket money on tapes, and later CDs, and getting music out of the library. There was a lot of music being played in the house when I was growing up by parents and siblings and I began learning classical clarinet and piano, but I also began teaching myself the drums to play in school bands, so from my early teens I was really mixing up classical, jazz and rock a lot. I went to my local secondary school where I grew up, outside Bristol, and the music teachers were good fun and supportive, but there wasn’t really anyone around who would go into what I wanted to discover about extended jazz harmony and that kind of thing, so I became quite autodidactic and tried to explore these things myself as much as I could. I remember hearing the jazz musician Julian Joseph talking on the radio about how classical harmony is built around the triad, while in jazz harmony you fundamentally add the seventh to that, and that switched on a bit of a light bulb for me and opened a bit of a door to me exploring different chords myself and I began to understand a bit more about the music I was listening to. Around my GCSE year the song “Sing It Back” by Moloko was playing everywhere, which is built around a four-chord sequence and one of the chords sounded really colourful to me, so I worked it out by ear and started experimenting with it in my own music. I asked quite a few people what the chord was and no-one classical could explain it to me. It was a couple of years later that I met a jazz musician who showed me it was an altered dominant. In a way that sums up a lot of the process of how I learned to compose – mostly trying stuff out by ear from music I heard, trying my best to work out what was going on and eventually finding people who could explain some of the gaps. I was also starting to experiment a lot with music technology at school after discovering an Atari computer with early sequencing software on it hidden in a cupboard, where no-one else was using it. I spent quite a bit of time working on music on that computer, creating my earliest compositions. There was also a four-track minidisk recorder there that I used, so I could do a bit of basic multitracking. There was no-one who taught music technology when I was at school. Everything I’m doing today basically began with those experiments and teaching myself, but in some ways I think that’s the best way as I’ve largely found a way of doing things that works for me. I later went on to study music at university and got a more structured education on the classical side of things. I think that mix of unstructured experimentation and more formal education has stood me in good stead.
Alongside the love of music, I’ve always had a love of film too. Again, it was my dad who introduced me to things. I remember watching Hitchcock films and being struck by the music of Bernard Herrmann. Quite a bit later, when I was experimenting with music technology in my late teens, Cliff Martinez’s score for Traffic had a big effect on me when it came out. I still think that score set a very high benchmark for electronic film scoring.
Towards the end of my music degree, I knew I wanted to combine my love of music and film and so I went on to study at the NFTS for two years, which was an amazing experience – certainly my best time in education. This very much set me on my path to what I’m doing today, although it’s never a completely clear path. It’s a difficult industry to navigate, especially in finding a way into it. I had around three years after graduating from the NFTS that felt quite a lot like scrambling around in the dark, not really knowing how to get to where I wanted to be, as a composer for drama projects in my own right. Getting there needs a lot of determination, passion and the right skills, but I think for everyone in this world it also involves those little moments of luck that light a spark for a fire to take hold. Although you then keep having to find new sparks and more fuel to keep the fire going!
MASA: Can you give us some insight into a recent project you’re particularly proud of?
The score that I’m probably most proud of from the last few years is from the Amazon sci-fi drama The Feed. The show itself wasn’t widely seen in the UK when it came out in 2019 – it was released on Amazon Prime in the US but limited to Virgin subscribers here in the UK. It was a large-scale dystopian drama across ten hour-long episodes, so it gave me a chance to explore some of the same territory as I had on the two Black Mirror episodes that I scored, but across a much larger canvas. There was a really wide emotional range to it too, from romance to thriller to dark horror. I really went to town on the score, recording with full string orchestra on all the episodes, loads of analogue synths and other electronics, electric guitar, percussion and voice. I’m excited that I’m finally going to be able to release the soundtrack album soon.
MASA: You have many TV and film projects under your belt but in 2018 you also became the composer on the major Ubisoft video game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. What do you find are the main differences in scoring a TV / film project and a video game?
Jon: Rainbow Six is slightly atypical in scoring terms in that there is no music under the actual game action. The music is used almost exclusively in the menu screens and at the start and end of rounds to set the tone of the location and characters. So, in that sense a big difference for me is that in the game world I’m largely not scoring to picture, which is quite different to the drama projects that I work on, where I primarily work to picture. Also, Rainbow Six gives me a canvas to go a bit bigger musically than I would on a drama project, where the music tends to be more restrained. The game music has none of the constraints of scoring under dialogue, so there’s that scope to go fuller and often heavier. The music for Rainbow Six is very electronic, so it gives me a chance to let loose on that side of things a bit.
The team at Ubisoft are great to work with and even though the overall tone of the score is quite defined there is a lot of variation within this for me to explore with each new season, as the geographical settings and character backgrounds that need emphasising in the music are different each time. It’s always fun bringing these different elements into the music and setting each new season and event apart from the others musically.
MASA: Can you tell us anything about what you’re currently working on?
Jon: I have a few different projects going on. I’m scoring a feature-length documentary for BBC One which will come out later in the year, I’m working on more Rainbow Six, and beginning work on a drama score shortly. I’ve also been working heavily on new album material, which has been something that I’ve been putting a lot of time and passion into over the last few years, and which will hopefully be finally seeing the light of day soon.
MASA: How has Covid impacted your work? What has been put in place to overcome restrictions?
Jon: Covid seems to have had a big impact on the industry. From my standpoint it seems there’s been a dramatic drop in drama projects over the last year, which is just now beginning to pick up again. I’m lucky to also work in games as that industry appears to have been largely unaffected. My work on Rainbow Six has always been primarily done remotely. The home-schooling situation was a challenge as this had quite a significant impact on my work hours, as I’m sure it will have for many people. I’m in a very fortunate position compared to a lot of musicians, particular those who rely on live playing for their income. For many of them Covid has had a devastating impact on their livelihoods so I really can’t complain about anything in comparison!
MASA: What equipment, instruments, hardware / software do you find yourself using most?
Jon: I’m a big fan of analogue synths. I’m quite vocal about it on social media so I’ve probably bored a lot of people about it already! My pride and joy is my vintage Oberheim Four Voice synthesiser, from 1975. It’s a very rare synth – I believe the overall number made was in the hundreds – and it is just so full of character. I use it on most of my projects. I even used it on a period drama score – The Woman In White. There’s a cue in one of the episodes that is almost entirely the Oberheim. A passion project I made during lockdown was a recreation of the classic 70s track “Spiraling Prism” by Herbie Hancock, who is one of my musical heroes. The concept for this was to recreate the track using just the original vintage analogue instruments that Herbie Hancock used on the original, with no computer-based sounds at all, so I really put all the hardware synths through their paces for this. I also got the bass player from the original track, Byron Miller involved. It’s on Youtube for anyone interested.
Inside the computer I’m based in Logic, although I’ve begun using Pro Tools too recently for album work. I have the usual wide selection of sample libraries – Spitfire Audio really changed the game with that kind of thing – but I’m a big fan of creating sound outside of the computer. I put the analogue synths and other electronics to work as much as possible. For one of my scores a while ago – the BBC drama Thirteen, starring Jodie Comer – I set myself the challenge of using no samples or software instruments in the entire score. It was quite a challenge as it was more of an acoustic than electronic score, and there wasn’t a big music budget – just enough to record with six musicians. So I’d dug myself a bit of a hole really, especially across 5 episodes, but I stuck with it and it pushed me to do some experimental things. At one point I stepped outside my studio seeking inspiration and there was a rusty wheelbarrow in the garden, so I just wheeled it into the studio and began recording with it. It became quite a key sound in the score. I’m a firm believer that limiting your resources increases your creativity. I’ve never been one for massive Logic templates of sample instruments – I tend to start from a blank canvas.
MASA: And finally, what will you be looking for when judging? What do you feel makes a piece of work worthy of Music+Sound Award?
Jon: For me it’s all about what the music is adding to the story. What is the music bringing to the piece emotionally that isn’t already there in the filmmaking? Originality and avoidance of cliché are important too. Film and TV music is a constantly evolving art form - if audiences get too used to one type of music being attached to certain emotions then it becomes cliché. The best film and TV music can be a juggling act of balancing an audience’s expectations and associations musically while also bringing them something new and unexpected. But it’s all a careful balancing act. Being different for the sake of being different doesn’t often work. Fundamentally it’s all about the emotion and that’s what I’ll be looking for.
MASA: Jon, many thanks for this wonderful insight into your work and background. It is invaluable to the Awards having talent such as yours on the panel. All the best with the album and your other projects - we’ll all be watching / listening closely!
Find out more on Jon’s site www.jonopstad.com and do check out his fantastic recreation of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Spiraling Prism’! https://youtu.be/yIskO2q3c3I
