“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!

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.

Can you compare what equipment was essential to you towards the beginning of your career with what equipment is essential to you now?

In the early days reel-to-reel tape was essential, together with associated tape splicing facilities. I was using analogue synthesizers to begin with, and gradually as MIDI became more universal, I began using a Yamaha sequencer. It was several years into my career before I began using my first computer (an Atari 1040 running Emagic Creator software).

Today, the computer is very much the heart of the recording studio. Not only is it essential for the sequencing element, it is now the main sound-making equipment in the studio. Almost all the sounds I create now come from within the computer – from onboard virtual instruments or samples, or at the very least treating and shaping sounds from external inputs.

What was it like making electronic music twenty years ago, and how does it compare to making electronic music now?

For me, the major difference comes from the use of computer sequencing. In the early days I was playing everything in by hand and recording to tape. This helped to give me reasonable timing and accuracy as a player (although I’m not a classically trained musician). Today it is possible to rely on the computer to correct sloppy playing (!), but this in turn has freed me up to do things that just wouldn’t have been possible in the tape/playing by hand setup. The possibilities in production are now way beyond what they would have been in the mid 80s.

What have been the most significant developments in the field of electronic music since you began your career?

Definitely MIDI – which has completely revolutionized electronic music. It’s not all good news though – the ubiquitousness of MIDI means that electronic music is no longer a revolutionary sound! When Delia Derbyshire created the original Doctor Who theme in 1963, she was pioneering techniques that meant she was creating sounds no one had ever heard before. Today, it is much easier to make electronic music, but much harder to sound fresh and original.

More recently the computer has been the second revolutionary development. As processing power has increased, it has become possible to have a complete almost unlimited-track recording studio, with instruments, effect processing and ability to publish the music to CD or direct to the potential audience via the internet.

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.

I always hear people asking what will happen when Mac OS X runs out of version numbers after 10.9. Will we hit Mac OS XI? I don’t think so. I think Mac OS X will be dead before such a need arises. I’ve heard people refer to Snow Leopard as a “fresh start” for the Mac OS, but Snow Leopard is just a stall tactic, getting people used to the idea of scaling back. The iPhone OS (and by extension the iPad OS) is really the “fresh start” here. Apple is pushing the world into uncharted territory, and it’s up to those of us at the forefront of the technological world to keep up so we’ll be ready with a new vision when the rest of the world joins us after the paradigm shift.

As Gruber said, iWork on the iPad is a huge deal. They have essentially proven that we can throw out existing UI standards and invent something totally new that works better. It won’t be long before the rest of our digital lives get ported to the iPad as well, and even the content creators will be able to get through the day without sitting at their desktop. Imagine iLife for the iPad, with finger scrubbing in iMovie and a playable on-screen piano keyboard in GarageBand. After seeing what Apple did with iWork, it doesn’t seem so far off, does it? This is what Apple is good at, because they’re not afraid of change.

Change is in the air; the future of computing is happening now.

Once I was old enough to manage on my own, I bought a rack-mounted Linux server that I used for several years to host my web sites and various other things online. As time went on, I had to get rid of the physical server for various reasons. It didn’t make sense to keep around anymore, and I decided to move to an externally hosted solution. That’s when I moved to DreamHost. Despite being overall satisfied with DreamHost, there were things I missed about having my own server. I loved being able to set things up exactly the way I wanted them. I loved learning better ways of doing the same things, and putting them into practice. I even kind of loved when I accidentally broke something and had to scramble to fix it. There’s a lot to be said for the hands-on approach. Not only does it teach you a lot about the way these systems work, but it also teaches you a lot about the way these systems should work. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Wanting to return to that kind of environment, but not wanting to deal with the hassle of owning my own dedicated server again, I discovered Linode. Linode offers what are called Virtual Private Servers; essentially, a virtual server that’s yours to do with as you please. You choose the operating system, you have full kernel and root access, and you choose what gets installed, where things go, and how things are managed. It’s all the fun of having your own server with none of the downsides. Their web panel is incredibly intuitive and offers tons of convenient features. You can store multiple disk images and switch between them in a matter of seconds, for instance. I’m having so much fun with my Linode VPS that I plan on buying a second one just so I can experiment more freely. (Some of you may have noticed that the site has been off and on quite a lot over the past couple of days; more often than not, this is simply because I was playing with something on Linode.)

So far I have moved four of my web sites over to the new Linode VPS (including DannyStewart.com). Once things stabilize a bit, I plan to move the rest. In addition to web hosting, I have set up the VPS to manage email and chat services as well. It’s been an extremely invigorating experience configuring everything myself, and I look forward to seeing what else I can do with this wonderful little VPS. In the meantime, though, keep your head down and don’t be surprised if the site goes down or something just isn’t working correctly. I hope to have everything hammered out in the next few days.

UPDATE 1/26: I have now moved all of my web sites over to the new Linode VPS and sorted out the last remaining problems I was aware of. As far as I know, everything should be fully up and running at this point. Please let me know if you encounter any problems!