Author Interview: Tomh

This week in our series of interviews of AudioJungle authors, we meet…

Tomh (Tom Howe)

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, what do you do for a living?

My name is Tom Howe and I’m a student from the north of England. I’ve just finished school and am about to start uni, where I’d like to study engineering.

2. How long have you been composing music and what got you started producing?

I started composing about six or seven years ago. It all started with a £30 copy of Cubasis VST from the bargain bucket of a PC World shop!  Since then I’ve been collecting equipment and virtual instruments with any cash I have to spare.

3. Do you play any instruments? Do you have any formal music training?

I’ve had piano lessons for the last ten years now. I started off with a classical training, but by Grade 3 I’d lost all interest in playing piano, and was considering giving up. Fortunately my parents found another teacher, Steve Luck, who got me playing Jazz and Latin, and sparked my interested in music again. At the time, he was starting out as a composer for film and TV, and he’s recently won a Royal Television Society award for his work. That was one of the things that inspired me to start writing.

4. Could you describe to us your home studio and the equipment and software you typically use to produce audio?

All my compositions are based around VSTi samples, and I still use the Korg X5D that I started out with as my MIDI controller. My setup had been relatively basic until a few months ago – most of my tracks online were written with a pair of computer speakers as monitors. I recently made the switch over to studio monitors, buying a pair of KRK Rokit RP5s with a Tascam Fireone interface.

Regarding instruments, I use Kontakt 2 with the EWQLSO Gold orchestral library. All this runs on my Mac with Cubase Essential 4.

5. Could you tell us a bit about how you typically compose and then produce your audio? Describe your creative process.

My pieces usually start as an idea on the piano – I’ll record it before it’s forgotten, and then work on a suitable harmony for it. I then go an re-record the melodic idea properly once the harmony is in place.

I’m a big fan of the Retrospective record function in Cubase – often the best ideas come when you’re just messing around on the keyboard while your track’s playing.

6. What genre of music do you enjoy producing for and why?

I love writing for orchestra. There is something magical about it  – it has a huge dynamic range, and you can create very powerful and emotional tracks with it. I wish there was more demand for it in stock music.

7. What kind of things inspire you to create music? Do you have any musical influences?

My piano teacher’s advice to me, which I stand by, is that the more music you listen to, the better you will be at composing. I try to listen to a really wide range of styles. Music is very clichéd, and if you can listen to what the pros are doing, you can imitate their style. I was really glad when Spotify came out – now I can dive into any sort of music for inspiration.

8. What genres of music do you listen to in your spare time? Do you have any favorite bands or artists?

If I could only ever listen to 3 albums they would be:

1. Soundtrack to Pirates of Caribbean: Worlds End, by Hans Zimmer.  Zimmer is a brilliant composer, and his tracks are packed with action and grandeur.
2. Soundtrack to The Firm, by Dave Grusin. Modern jazz piano at its best! Memphis Stomp is a great track.
3. Freedom Fields, by Seth Lakeman. I’ve always had a soft spot for folk music – Seth’s become a hit in the UK recently and I love the complex rhythms you get in folk music.

9. What is your advice to other AudioJungle authors regarding how to create a successful portfolio of audio?

When writing music, start with the melody. If you have a good tune, the harmony will fall in place underneath it. If you start with drum loops or chord sequences, you’ll get so hung up over perfecting those four bars, that the piece won’t go anywhere. I have so many project files of great eight-bar textures or harmonic sequences that I just don’t know to extend.

Once you’ve written your pieces, give them plenty of tags and a descriptive title. The current search system is biased towards the song’s title, so make sure your title is a good description of your track.

10. What do you do to market your AudioJungle files?

I run a small site offering plugins for a videocasting program called BoinxTV. On there, I promote a couple of free tracks and provide links to AudioJungle.

11. What are your three favorite tracks in your AudioJungle portfolio and why do you like them?

My first track is Space Canyon. It’s the first piece I wrote after getting my KRK monitors, and I love the powerful sound created by putting synths through amp modelling. It’s all written with samples from the free NI Kore instrument.

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Second would be Tribal Sunrise. I’ve always loved African percussion, and I really enjoyed writing a piece that combines western orchestral scores with ethnic drums.

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Finally, I like Apocalypse. This was originally commissioned for a game that never got released, and it’s a shame it’s had no sales – but this is the sort of music I really like writing.

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12. Apart from yourself, who is your favorite AudioJungle author and why do you like them?

There is an amazing amount of talent at AudioJungle so it’s hard to choose, but at the moment I really like Bluegestalt’s work. He writes some amazing piano tracks such as Becoming. I love the way he pauses slightly before each piano phrase. It’s tempting to use a metronome on everything when composing because it makes it easier to edit, but his music sounds really free and expressive.

13. If you could change anything about AudioJungle, what would it be?

I’d improve the search features of the site – firstly, I’d make the search box more prominent on the home page, and I’d also make the search engine less biased towards track titles, and more centred on the words in the description and tags. There are so many gold nuggets on AudioJungle that never are sold because customers go for the hot sellers.

14. Could you tell us about some of your audio projects outside of AudioJungle? What have been some of your biggest audio successes so far?

Outside AudioJungle, I play in a Jazz band with some other students, which is a lot of fun. I haven’t been lucky enough to be commissioned on any external projects so far, but AudioJungle provides a great platform for getting your name known.

15. When you aren’t busy creating music, what do you like to do in your spare time?

I’m a big fan of video effects and editing – a camcorder to take part in VideoHive is next on the shopping list!

View / listen to Tomh’s AudioJungle portfolio.