MATTEO ZINGALES
COMPOSER
Matteo Zingales is one of Australia’s most awarded and in-demand composers, writing evocative scores for film, television, documentaries and ad campaigns.
He takes us through his journey into the exciting and rapidly changing world of screen music, what inspires his scores and what he’s learned through years of creating extraordinary soundtracks
on crazy deadlines.
Kick it off, Matteo Zingales – what is your job and where do you work?
I work at Sonar Music in Fox Studios in Sydney. I’m a composer and also a director of the company. My job is to write music for film and television – moving pictures. I take the director’s brief and interpret it as my own, add in my own style and, you know, make the images come to life!
So your studio is at Sonar, you’re in there every day?
Yes, I have my own studio at Sonar Music, all my gear is in there. If I have to do any recordings I’ve got the live room and I’ve got my room. There are four other composers here full-time, which is great because you can collaborate and utilise everyone’s talents.
What’s a piece of score you’ve composed that you really love and we’ll pop a link right here so people can read the rest of this interview with a sweet soundtrack.
I’d say for non-emotional, the Fahrenheit credits cue, that’s pretty cool.
I’ve done some really good stuff for a documentary I’m working on right now. I’ve liked a lot of stuff. I mean you’ve kind of gotta do what the film wants. Sometimes you might do a film and you’ve got to just support the acting and the story – that’s pretty much your job. And to stay out of the way, most times.
Did you always love music? Were you from a musical family?
No! No one in my family was musical! Apparently when I was around seven or eight, I loved movies. My mum couldn’t get me away from them. But then what I realised later on, when I was 10 or 11, was that the thing I liked about films was the music in them. So like Indiana Jones, all those types of films, I just fell in love with the score as well. I thought ‘that sounds like a pretty good job.’
You were 10 when you knew?!
It’s not like from 10 I said ‘oh I’m going to be a film composer’, I just thought it sounded like a good job.
I think I had Suzuki lessons on a piano at the beginning of school... but I hated that after two years and quit. I kind of dropped music until high school. Then one day, when I was about 15, there was a Cuban festival down at Darling Harbour, and there was all this Cuban music happening. Apparently when I came home, I basically got my keyboard out and started playing Cuban music.
Really?
Yeah... just based on hearing it once. So my mum was like, ‘ok I’ve gotta get you in music classes.’
I bought a computer, then I started sequencing, back then there was like Cakewalk and all these programs that don’t exist anymore. I guess the equivalent now would be GarageBand, but you’d have all the inbuilt sounds, there was no system with sample libraries.
I would just mock stuff up.
I remember every weekend just being in my room composing. But for nothing. To nothing.
Making up my own things in my head.
Wow, so you were never learning other pieces of music?
Nup, it was always just making it up. I’d never read a note in my life.
The first time I did music seriously was Year 11 and 12. I did three unit music which had an extra component for composition. I kept writing music but I couldn’t read music yet. At all.
I got a piano teacher who was teaching me how, but even when I left Year 12 I could only read slowly and definitely couldn’t sight read. I could learn a piece slowly over time, but my understanding of sounds was all self-taught.
What did you do after school?
From there I tried to get into uni. I did my HSC in 1998 and applied to all the unis in Sydney. They all were like ‘look, your composition is amazing, come for an interview.’
But then they test you on your theory! The Con (Sydney Conservatorium of Music) was like ‘you can’t read so we can’t take you.’
I think that’s different now. But at that point I was like ‘oh, I can’t do music’. So, I took a year off and thought I might just do music on the side. I got a job at George St Cinemas, I painted with friend’s dads, travelled...did all sorts of stuff. And while I was doing that I kept learning and getting better at reading, getting better at it so I could try and reapply.
And there was never a backup? It was either music, or nothing?
Nup. Yep.
I wasn’t really academic. So then in 2000, I got into uni. I actually got into all of them.
Whaaaat, which ones did you get into?
The Con, Sydney Uni and the University of Western Sydney. I looked at all three. My mate was going to Sydney Uni already and he said ‘look... all we’re doing is like Mozart and Elgar.’ I asked ‘Oh, are they doing anything with film?’, cos it was all about film music for me.
And he said, ‘not really…’
I went to the interview at Western Sydney, they were talking about Pro Tools, and I’d never even heard of these programs! I thought that sounded pretty good. It was either go to The Con or go to Western Sydney.
I knew it was more prestigious to go to The Con,
but it just felt like it wasn’t what I wanted.
I’m not really a classical player, and I wasn’t necessarily good at performing either.
So I decided to go for the technology. The guy’s name was Julian Knowles, he was a great teacher.
Was it all smooth sailing?
About half-way through the second year of uni, I struggled a little bit with all the harmony classes and note reading and all that sort of technical stuff.
Were the other students there crazy good?
Well that’s the thing, there were crazy good players, great musicians, but not amazing composers. There was me and this one other guy.
My teacher asked me to do honours, but I didn’t want to do uni for another two years. It was two hours on the train each way which I just got over it. I finished uni in 2003, and then I had a year where I kind of was scared and I didn’t have anything to do, and I was like ‘why did I do a music degree?’. I went for a big trip around Europe with a friend. Before leaving, I thought ‘what do I have to do now?’. It was then I applied for AFTRS (The Australian Film, Television and Radio School) – apparently that’s where everyone met directors, editors, did stuff to picture, actually learnt how to do film music. It was the only course that I knew of, so I applied.
The application was INSANE. It was literally like doing a thesis on your own life. I gave them my compositions. I thought I’ll never get a call, because they take only four people a year. I was 23 at that point, and they only typically took people 30 and older.
So you obviously got in?
Yeah! I got a call back when I was in London. There was no such thing as Skype or FaceTime back then. They said ‘We’ll conference call you. We really like your music’. I knew that I had a pretty good chance because the application had said NOTE: have to be available in-person for interviews’. When I was in Tuscany I got a call saying, ‘you’re in’. And I was like ‘oh my god. This is the best. The best!’
I came home and started at AFTRS in 2004. It’s only a one year course. I met some great friends and composers, like James Lee who ended up orchestrating for John Powell on Happy Feet.
What came after AFTRS?
Then there was a bit of a lull again. I kind of knew directors and editors, but they were all much older than me, like in their thirties... so there was a good 7–10 years difference. It was hard to bond.
You finish school and then you’re in the world… but who’s going to give you something to compose? So I’m just sitting there twiddling my thumbs going ‘ok what do I do now? Who do I talk to?’
I was pretty anxious. I’ve been at this great school, I’ve learned lots of stuff, but how am I going to apply this? How do you become a film composer?
I got a call one day from my teacher at school. He said, ‘there’s this guy called Paul who needs some music editing done and I think you’re the one to do it’. I was quick on Pro Tools and I was more modern in sound, most of the other guys were classically trained and I was the only one that wasn’t.
So that’s what got you the job!
Yeah! So I called this guy Paul, and he was like, ‘yeah it’s Paul [Healy], I’m from Supersonic, come in and check this out’. So I went in and he said ‘I’m doing this show called All Saints, and we’ve got the music, we just need you to music edit to the pictures’. There’s
12-30 cues (NB: A cue is a music track) per episode that no one’s writing anymore. I said ‘yeah sure, I’ll give it a go!’... I’d never done it before!
Your first job out of uni was All Saints? That was a huge show at the time!
Yep. I was just going in five days a week, it took about five days to do an episode. It was a bit rocky at the beginning cos I didn’t know what the producers liked. But it was going quite smoothly, then one day it just started to get really monotonous. None of the cues were working for this particular storyline, and I was like ‘It’s not gonna work. I have to write something for this!’. So I wrote something – and it went really well. From then, I just wrote for every cue!
And they knew it was you?
Yeah, Paul said ‘yeah this guy’s writing it now’. So I was writing original music for each scene of All Saints, from then on for like five years.
How did you find composing on a job for the first time? Were you dealing with getting a lot of feedback and having to make changes?
100%. You try not to, but you do take it personally! But now I’ve learnt to just let it go, you know. Sometimes you’ll do something brilliant and you can’t believe [the director] doesn’t think it’s good. Then you go away and rewrite it, and it’s accepted but you’ll still think ‘it’s not as good as my first option.’
But – sometimes they’ll be right, you’ll do something else and it’s better.
There’s give and take. I think that’s why a lot of people who were just musicians in bands or doing their own music can’t really hack going from that to writing for the screen. You have to be really adaptable to criticism and deal with constant feedback to your music.
You can’t have the attitude of ‘Fuck this, this guy’s an idiot, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
So had they just dropped the other composer?
No, actually the other composer was leaving as I came, that’s why they got me. It was really lucky for me. Super lucky. I wouldn’t have had a job for probably years…
It’s all just luck man! And my teacher telling this guy to ‘use this dude’. If my teacher didn’t say that or told him about someone else, I’d still be at home.
Luck and networking then!
From there I started to do TVC’s (TV commercials). You quickly realise that an ad job needs way more production value than film and TV music. In film and TV you can kind of mock something up, then get a cello player in and make it sound lush… you’ve got time. But with an ad, you have no time AND you have to make it sound lush. So, working with ads I really got my production chops up and then slowly, slowly you just get a better sound. Now, luckily with the training that I’ve had, I can get a really lush sound, really fast.
So what kind of rig were you working on back then?
I had a PC, and we used Gigastudio, which was a sample library with real orchestral instruments. Then, the guys had given me lots of sounds that they’d accumulated through the years, so that was a bonus. Some of these libraries were $10,000. There was no way
I could afford that. I was really lucky to be using their computer with access to all of these sounds.
I eventually saved for my own rig, to not be relying on them all the time. I forked out quite a lot of money, almost $30,000. It was probably $8000 for a computer, for a Mac G4, then you had to buy monitors, you had to buy sample libraries, it was gonna be another $5000.
Then there was a library I spent a lot of money on. Twenty grand. It’s called Vienna Symphonic Library. You pay this one-off cost and then they give you new samples and updates all the time. Celeste, glockenspiel, cellos; they’re well recorded and they have great articulations. They’ve updated their software too, so it sounds better.
There are new libraries now, where you have to spend more money, but that’s how I started, you’ve gotta start slow and build your way up.
So how did you come to be a director of Sonar Music?
Again it was lucky. Coincidentally, the company Supersonic broke up. So I was like, ‘Oh my god. I’ve got no job if they break up this company.’ I thought I’d have to go to another music studio. Then Antony [Partos] and Andrew [Lancaster] approached me and some others and asked if we wanted to put in money and start a new company, called Sonar. I was like ‘I have to do it, cos I love these guys.’ It felt right. And… we had so many connections. If we broke up, everything would’ve just fallen apart.
So, we found this place at Fox Studios. I was doing a few TV shows here and there, but I started working more and more with Antony. He was basically my mentor. So I went with him and he guided me with how to do things. And now we have Sonar! We just built our company from there – we’ve been here 11 years now. We’re like family.
Has that time gone really quickly?
I wouldn’t say that, no. Because you think about all the projects you’ve done and you go ‘wow, that’s a lot of jobs’. And, you know,
TV series go for multiple seasons and you just get on this roll, which is really nice.
You mentioned Antony was your mentor, what are your pros and cons of collaborating, versus working on your own?
When you’re by yourself you’ve just gotta get it done. You’re kinda in your own sonic world.
Schedule-wise it can be hard, but when you collaborate… it’s really nice. You feel half the pressure, because the other person
is taking the other half.
So if you can’t come up with an idea, you know someone else will. If you both don’t come up with an idea you start to stress, but at least you’re two men in a boat rather than by yourself.
Obviously you have to compromise a lot. Sometimes your co-composer will come up with a better idea than yours, so you build off that. Collabs always sound pretty cool too. You can throw more ideas at it than when you’re by yourself.
So collabs sound really different person to person?
Yeah, so the good thing about collaborating with Dave [McCormack] for example, is that he’ll be very hands on with guitars and live stuff. I’ll come up with some really cool chords and he’ll go ‘oh I’ll play that on guitar’, and then that becomes something new. Whereas I would never have thought of using guitar... I might’ve just used a piano or strings.
We’re quite fortunate [at Sonar] because we have a mini family here, so it’s nice to come to work, it’s social. You can go ‘oh have
a listen to this’, ‘does this work?’, ‘oh yeah I love that, but change this’… whereas working from home was quite isolating.
Is piano your main instrument?
Yeah. Piano is good because it plays everything in the orchestra. I think that’s why a lot of composers work with piano. A guitar can’t really, it doesn’t have the range. I mean it can play every note, but when you play a chord on guitar, it’s not the chord that the orchestra can relate to. With a piano, you kind of know ‘ok, from this middle C to here, that’s like flute’s main range’, so you can play the melody with the piano. Piano can go lower than a double bass. When you’ve got more instruments, you get a smoother sound. When you’ve got less strings it’s a harsher sound. But it can also be a more intimate sound, so it depends on what you’re going for.
What are some of the biggest ways that the industry has changed since you’ve been composing?
Heaps. Oh my god. Firstly, the turnaround on a project is heaps quicker, you have to work way faster.
There are a lot more music producers at home, garage producers I like to say, that can get a really good quality sound straight out of their bedroom. It’s the same with song writing. Like Billie Eilish and her brother [Finneas], working out of a bedroom.
When I started there was no such thing as stock library music. At all. Like, there was music that people sold, but library music was in its infancy, and it was all terrible production quality. Unless it was a really low budget project, they’d hardly ever use it. Now everyone’s going for it and the quality is crazy – they’re doing full orchestral records. And it’s cheap. But it’s not bespoke to the project. It’s never going to be. So you don’t get the right feeling.
Another thing that’s changed is budgets, here and there. The budgets for commercials in the 90s used to be probably three times as much.
The other thing is that there weren’t as many big music houses. On a job there could be five other houses pitching against you. So you could be writing a demo and thinking ‘oh I’m demo-ing this’, but it’s actually gone to five other studios… every composer in Sydney
is demo-ing it.
Briefly, what’s the process of a TV show?
Usually we firstly get scripts to read, but sometimes you get a different idea of what it’s gonna be like. It can throw you. I like to just see the cut – a rough cut’s fine, you get the feel of timing. In terms of a music brief, a lot of editors now use temp music – and they want something with a similar feel. Sometimes they use our music from a previous job! So then, the question is, is that temp music working? Is it hitting the right emotion?
With films, pretty much, the director is god. With TV, the producers are god. What’s really important is that you have to work out who’s calling the shots…because you basically should try to tailor your music to their preferences… otherwise it’s just a rewrite hell.
Do you have any advice for any aspiring film composers? Or any musicians wanting to move into scoring for picture?
It’s great and really important to have rapport with filmmakers and creatives. I was never a huge mingler, I’m probably more of an introvert, and most musicians are – I’m a bit better now. Networking in a creative space is one of the hardest things to do.
Learn to do it. Learn to schmooze.
You kinda know who you wanna work with, but a job’s a job. Sometimes you have to work with people that you might not click with.
But that doesn’t mean the job doesn’t go well. Other times you click really well and they keep coming back. Those are the kind of relationships you want.
I was really lucky as I was able to tap into the pool of clients that Antony, Andrew and Paul had at Supersonic. I didn’t have to do as much chasing. That’s what’s so great about having the collaboration. For example, I was recently on this one huge job that I just couldn’t compose in the time allocated... and I’m fast. I had to delegate and co-compose some sections. You have to learn how to collaborate and juggle.
Do you find it hard to work across multiple jobs simultaneously and bounce between different creative headspaces?
Yeah, my method is to focus on one. I mean you can’t always do that... because something will come up, but most of the time I like to dedicate a day to the one project. Not so much now, cos I have producers who schedule my time, but when I started I worked every weekend for five years. Like, every Sunday I would be nine hours in my room. Composing. Because I had to get the show out. So much of the time you are at work is filled with meetings – briefs, progress reviews, final mix sessions etc.
What’s inspiring you lately?
You know, I still get inspired by a lot of art music, avant-garde music, more concert pieces. Classical composers obviously, they have really interesting stuff… it might even be like four bars that I go ‘oh what did they do there’… and try and check out what they did.
Film composers I’ve always loved, but I listen less to film music now than I used to. I used to listen to it all the time. It’s probably because I want to have my own voice and you don’t want to accidentally copy something that they’ve done, and subconsciously go ‘oh I’ve heard that before’.
There are lots of films I like musically… I was inspired early on by a lot of Thomas Newman. He composed American Beauty… Meet Joe Black. Shawshank Redemption is one of my favourite scores. Dances with Wolves’ score by John Barry, that’s a beautiful score. That’s one of my favourites. The only movie i’ve ever cried in!
Then you’ve got the classics like John Williams, Star Wars – and every Spielberg movie you can think of – he’s done. Hans Zimmer. I mean they all have beautiful pieces. But, Hans Zimmer has teams and teams of people. Which is a different way [of doing it].
You have to be really good to be able to put all these people together and make one epic product.
You have your orchestrators, engineers, mixers…everyone has their people.
Also - your taste changes as you grow older. Evolves. Like, I used to like some of Danny Elfman’s stuff. But now when I listen to it i’m not as excited. I remember seeing Men in Black for the first time and the, you know, “nen nen nen nen nen nen nen” . I thought that was a pretty cool riff with the cellos, but now when I hear it it does nothing for me.
I kind of see how Hans Zimmer works as well, some of his big orchestral riffs are actually very rock-y, like if you transposed to guitar it’s a similar vibe. Whereas John Williams you can’t really do that – his stuff’s much more sophisticated in orchestration obviously. It’s also the composer’s taste, the director’s taste, a lot of directors like minimal. Some directors like heaps big bombastic music.
You know it’s funny, one of my favourite films is No Country For Old Men… there’s hardly… there’s like two cues in it. It’s such a great movie that it can hold up without any music.
Another great score I love is Fargo, by Jeff Russo – beautiful score. Just gets this tone of… as soon you hear it you think of that film.
I love Arvo Pärt, he’s a composer from Estonia. The piece that everyone should listen to is called ‘Fratres - For 12 Celli.’
For the gear heads, tell us about your rig now? Or is it a secret...?
There’s no secret! It’s how you compose, it’s how you put sounds together, what you use and what you think is working together. Everyone has their own sound. But I would say, to start from the ground up.
I love using UAD products, which is Universal Audio plugins. We used to use Waves but we find that the sound of the UAD is much better. Sometimes we use a combo of things. There’s not really any sample libraries I’d go, you know, ‘this is the ONE!’. They all do their own things. Sometimes you buy a sample library and it sounds really good by itself and then you try and combine it with instruments and it doesn’t work at all. It’s really frustrating, it’s just made for itself. Really good libraries know how to blend.
I would just tell aspiring composers to listen to music really carefully. It’s all about dynamics and how the instrument is played.
It’s all about the feel!
Yeah the feel! The vibes! Vibey.
Check out Matteo’s soundtracks or follow him on the gram.
Interview Haylee Poppi
Edit Grace MacKenzie
