Today we’d like to introduce you to Wesley Hughes.
Hi Wesley, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Originally from the greater Boston area, I am an East LA-based composer who primarily works in the realm of film and tv.
While music has always played a central role in my life, I had always assumed I would become a literature professor and specialize in folklore and mythology. However, I spent all my free time in college playing in Jazz and Funk bands and arranging music with friends. Halfway through completing my bachelor’s degree, I realized music was and is my end all. I realized what I really loved was telling stories through music and I could do that by becoming a media composer. I changed majors and went on to earn composition degrees from Hamilton College and Berklee College of Music.
After graduating from Berklee, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film music. New to the city and with a friend’s help, I started volunteering on student film crews as a boom operator and audio mixer. It was a first-class education in the film industry I never would have received otherwise. I was able to meet like-minded filmmakers and learned how to watch and talk about movies from filmmakers’ perspectives. It eventually led to my first few scoring gigs.
Over the course of my first few years in LA, I assisted a variety of composers and musicians on larger projects ranging from ad campaigns for Samsung to meditation music albums. Now, I currently pursue my own scoring work. My most recent film score is for Bishal Dutta’s “It Lives Inside” which will have its world premiere at SXSW 2023.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Oh, there have been many struggles, alright! However, I have spent the past several years gradually solving a single artistic problem.
I am a throwback, inspired by classical and film music of the 1920s-50s. With this background, I moved to Los Angeles with the intention of writing orchestral music, especially for animated projects. I was deeply inspired by the works of Don Bluth and Hayao Miyazaki and hoped to work on the next generation of great animated films.
I discovered early on that most smaller films have very different musical needs than what I was offering. They were in genres with which I had comparatively little experience and I couldn’t find any animated work whatsoever. I found myself in a serious predicament. I could either pass up the work I was being offered and wait for the perfect project to come along, or adapt and work in new genres. I chose to adapt.
I found myself quickly having to learn unfamiliar styles of music and relying on midi instruments instead of the live musicians I was used to working with. It was miserable work – I felt as though I was not writing the music I set out artistically to write. I realized how much I dislike working with midi instruments / sample libraries and became discouraged.
While viewing a block of shorts at a film festival, I had a breakthrough. In the process of watching hours worth of movies in succession, I realized I was most drawn to film music with live recorded elements. It didn’t matter how amateur-sounding the recordings were, to my ears, it just blew everything else out of the water.
I decided no matter what it took I would find a way to record live elements on every future project I worked on. I learned all about home recording techniques and began building my own musical instruments. It was far more satisfying to create and record my own sounds rather than having to rely on cheaper-sounding midi instruments.
As I continued to experiment, I found a home for the new style of music I was creating in horror films. Over the past few years, horror has become my main focus as a film composer. I love composing in all genres but horror has helped me have my lemons into lemonade moments as an artist.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a composer, I am best known for my work on drama, thriller, and especially horror films.
Right now, I am most proud of the music I am currently writing. I am pursuing a new style of composition which treats homemade instruments and samples in the style of old-school Hollywood music from the 1930s and 1940s. My hope is to create something evocative of the golden age of Hollywood that feels unique and *new*. Right now I am working on my first full-length album in this style.
Some of my recent feature film credits include Bishal Dutta’s “It Lives Inside” (Starring Betty Gabriel & Megan Suri, premieres at SXSW 2023), Kipp Tribble’s “Evil at the Door” (Starring Bruce Davison & John James), Kenny Yates’ “ReBroken” (Starring Tobin Bell & Scott Hamm Duenas), Leah Bleich’s “The Moon and Back” (Starring Nat Faxon, Missi Pyle, Isabel May, & PJ Byrne). I also served as the score producer for Matthew Gentile’s “American Murderer” (Starring Tom Pelphrey, Idina Menzel, & Ryan Phillippe) which won best music at the Boston International Film Festival 2022
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Personally, I have found it takes years to successfully develop mentor-mentee relationships. The best mindset to have is meeting new people takes time. Finding new mentors occurs over a slow, gradual period. You need to have realistic expectations for how mentors can help you versus what work you personally need to accomplish as a self-starter. Generally, I’ve had the best success seeking out multiple mentors at once so as not to expect the world from a single person – successful people are busy people.
If I were going to start from nothing and find new mentors for myself, I’d take stock of my personal circle of friends, family, and friendly acquaintances. Rather than relying on strangers to make an immediate investment in my well-being, I’d start with the people in my life already doing so. I’d accept that mentors don’t have to be experts in my specific field to help me, and pose the questions: “who is an expert at something I am trying to improve? Who do I have in my life who already has a vested interest in helping me?”. I would then look for an opportunity to reach out to them and schedule an informational interview over lunch. If they can’t help me, maybe they know someone who can and can arrange an introduction or referral. I would then extend outwards from people with whom I am already close to new contacts whom I can approach with introductions or referrals.
I think it’s always important to reflect on mentorship as a give and take relationship. What are you offering in value in exchange for mentorship from someone else? You have to pay it forward as well to build goodwill with your personal network. Many of the same principles above translate directly to networking in general. Start with the people already invested in you, use mutual goodwill to seek out help or referrals, and grow your network one person at a time over a prolonged period.
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Image Credits
PR photos by Ken Morris
