Danny Stewart

I have just uploaded two remastered tracks from my score for Wall of Shadows. The film was recently remastered, and the director requested an updated score. The two tracks which have been revised are “The Outside World” and “Revelation.”

“The Outside World” was actually referred to as “too epic,” and the director requested that I tone it down a bit for the remaster. I’ve changed some of the chords around to produce a more unsettling effect, and changed some of the instrumentation to make the piece less full (using solo strings instead of ensembles).

“Revelation” now also uses the new instrumentation for the reprise, but retains the original chord arrangement to give a stronger sense of resolution for the end of the film. Additionally, the initial percussion has been changed from the timid snares to a more powerful booming atmospheric drum.

Finally, the entire score is now available completely free from here. Enjoy!

I’ve just finished uploading two of my latest Doctor Who themes to my music site. Beyond the Farthest Star was done a few months ago but not publicly released until now. Temporal Flux is a brand new mix that I just started (and finished) tonight. Enjoy!

I was going back over some old emails the other day, and I rediscovered an email interview I did with Dominic Glynn back in 2006 for a school project. His answers are interesting so I thought I would share them here.

How did your career get started?

I started by forming a band with friends at school. I was the keyboard player, and saved up to buy myself first an electronic piano, an electric organ, and eventually my first synthesizer. A few years later the band ended up with a record deal. As so often happens in the music industry, though, the deal came to nothing and we never got our record released. Meanwhile, I was pursuing other work as a composer. My first paid job was writing electronic music soundtracks for a pest control company who made their own corporate promo and training films. I used the music from these (and other demos) to send off to the producer of Doctor Who, in a search for work. After a couple of attempts, these proved successful, and I was offered work as a freelance composer for Doctor Who.

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So, Apple’s tablet has finally been unveiled in the form of the iPad. John Gruber made a post over at Daring Fireball that got me thinking. You should read his post before you read mine.

There are some things he said that resonated with me; more than anything, that “the iPad is what they’ve been building toward all along” and how they’ve invented a totally new UI paradigm with the iWork apps.

Someone on Twitter said the other day that “this is the end of the desktop OS.” When I read it, I thought it was overdramatized, but after thinking about it, I see what they’re saying and I agree with it. This truly marks the beginning of a change in times. Not long from now, the mouse will die off, to be replaced by a keyboard/touch interface. The iPad is the start of that, and I think it’s a pretty big deal.

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The more observant of you may have taken notice of some changes around here recently. Although the site has once again undergone a visual refresh (something I am very pleased with this time around), the biggest changes are happening behind the scenes. For the past eight months, I have been hosting my web sites with DreamHost. Overall I have been pleased with their hosting service, with the occasional exception of some issues with downtime and sluggishness. All in all, it’s easy to recommend DreamHost to someone looking for a shared hosting solution. Their web panel and the services offered for the price are difficult to beat. That said, I have always been a power user, used to hosting my own web sites. Even in my early teens, I maintained web sites on my dad’s IIS server.

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