Music composer for media - Mattias Holmgren.

At the age of 10 Mattias started taking lessons at the piano, but it wasn't until age 15 he really embraced composition. Mattias found interest in the drums, composing music and performing with bands like Embracing, Naglfar, Tired Tree and Azure. At an age of 17 in 1995 he released his debut album with Naglfar called "Vittra" which immediately received great success and led to more releases with his other bands. Embracing "I bear the burden of time" was recorded and released in 1996, and the following year saw the release of Embracing "Dreams left behind".

Early 1998 he begun studying composition and arrangement for orchestral, jazz and pop/rock music and begun writing music in a wider area of styles. This year he also participated on the Azure "Moonlight legend" album and played drums for Darkside Cowboys "Disclosure II" CD.

Finally in 2002 after releasing his first solo album under the name Tired Tree he resigned from the job as project engineer at SEMKO in Stockholm and decided to start his own business, producing audio for the entertainment industry. With focus upon game audio Morningdew Media was born. The company name comes from one of the songs from the Embracing 'Dreams left behind' album which he recorded in 1997.

He got in touch with a new canadian game development studio called Evillusion and begun working on their game Eon of tears, which was based upon biblical events like Soddom And Gomorrah. At Evillusion Mattias had the role as audio director/music composer, and also did post-production sound effect mixing for E3 trailers and ingame scenery. After about a year Evillussion was put on ice and Mattias continued working with other shows and game studios producing quality themes and sound design for shows like Umeå Höstljus, Kulturnatta and Skellefteå Tillväxtgala. He produced mobile ringtones for the Indian company Cornershop Entertainment.

The following years also included productions and studio recordings with different artists from Umeå, and he also contributed with some work for a antidrug compilation CD. He did a remix/cover of the Moody Blues song "Blue world" for a compilation CD called Higher and Higher - a tribute to the moody blues released by Mellow records.



In 2004 Mattias begun studying design in Skellefteå while working on music for a few game projects like Sprint Madness, Furiae and Rightous Battles. 2007 Ice Game Studios got in touch and Mattias started working on the orchestral fantasy scores for their game LEGIO which will be released early 2010.

You can read more about the creative procedures at Mattias composer blog.

How do I work - how do a composer for media think?

It all comes down to the foundation - the melody.
Sometimes it takes 5 seconds to come up with the notes, and another day I need alot more time to get things going. I keep a library of notes and sketches of basic ideas from which I quickly can grab some stuff to get moving. ie. action-cues, drama-cues, adventure-cues. It can be a series of notes or chords, maybe a scale which brings a certain cinematic emotion, or just a description of grouped instruments which work well for a specific music piece. But most of the time I just sit down with the basic piano and improvise, to work out the basic melody and work from there. I often place a clear image inside my head of what I'm trying to reach for (or what the client have told me to reach for)...almost like painting. It is a meditative state which brings the real magic.

Composing music - is about reaching out!
So when the melodies are found it is time to make the arrangement, to make contrasts and build interest.