Meet Corey Wallace

Today we’d like to introduce you to Corey Wallace.

Corey, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My road to becoming a film composer was definitely not a straight one. Growing up, I played sports and did lots of artistic activities like playing trumpet in the school band, performing in plays and singing in the choir, but there was no singular focus. My parents never forced me to play the piano, but they did nurture my musical interests. My Dad would play me old Jazz records as well as his favorite Country and Irish music. My Mom took me to many local concerts and to the library to check out Classical CDs. Around the age of 12, I composed my first pieces. Far from a prodigy, I plunked out melodies and bass lines at the piano, and I remember thinking how easy Composition is—just put music on top, on the bottom, and something in the middle. Naive, yes, but also some foolish wisdom in there.

My next step in Composition was while playing trumpet in the Jazz Combo at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The director of bands, Dr. Dan Brame, was a tremendous mentor to me, and with his encouragement, I performed all original compositions at my Senior Jazz recital. My time with Dr. Brame gave me a solid foundation in all genres of music, a survey of the history of Western classical music, and a strong understanding of music theory, and this academic head start proved to be very valuable in the years to come.

I wasn’t thinking of Composition as a career choice, so I went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an Engineering student. I knew that I wanted to keep music in my life, so I took Composition courses and played in the Jazz ensembles on the side. The school also had an orchestra workshop once a semester where students could have their compositions played by the student orchestra. This inspired me to write my first orchestral piece, and hearing the orchestra bring my music to life for the first time was a thrill I’ll never forget (and probably the feeling that I continue to chase the most as a professional).

Near the end of my second year at Wisconsin, I realized that I was spending more than half of my time on elective courses, and it finally clicked that music was what I was meant to be doing. At the time, I had scored my first student film, and the experience was so exhilarating that I knew it was my passion. Switching majors, however, was no easy task, and it was a decision that required extra years in school, a year off from school to work in order to pay for tuition, and part-time semesters to immerse myself in composition, orchestration, and score study. It ended up being seven calendar years before graduating, but it was one of the most fruitful periods of my life (and ended being the reason I met my wife).

There weren’t any courses on film scoring, music technology, or the music business, so even though I had supportive professors that helped me pursue film music, it wasn’t until I attended the 2007 ASCAP/NYU Film Scoring Workshop that I was in a room full of like-minded people. I had never met another film composer before, but I came out of that workshop feeling like I really belonged to this community.

The following year I chose USC’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television (SMPTV) one-year intensive program for grad school. I had more than enough opportunities to grow and to put my studies into practice, and it provided that same feeling of community among students, professional composers, and filmmakers who have shaped my career ever since. One of the teachers, film composer Christopher Young, gave me my first assistant job after school, a role that gave me invaluable insight into film music and the film business. The demo music I recorded during school helped me get scoring jobs as well as accepted to the 2010 ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in LA where I was awarded the David Rose Scholarship.

The most important part of the USC experience, to me, was connecting with student filmmakers. One of the shorts I scored was for a bright young filmmaker named Jamie Winterstern. We became fast friends and have been collaborating ever since. While Jamie was editing a feature film called Shadow People, he helped me get that scoring gig by using some of my music in the temp score and introducing me to the director Matthew Arnold. At the time, I was still balancing my own projects with assistant work for Christopher Young, but the following year Matt created a series called Siberia and invited me along for the ride. The series would get picked up by NBC for primetime which was a major milestone in my career. That was the day I became a full-time, professional film composer.

Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome was the general state of the film industry by the time I graduated from USC in 2009. I had grown up hooked on the great orchestral scores of the 80s and 90s with memorable themes and colorful orchestration, but this was not the primary aesthetic of modern film music. Hans Zimmer had taken over where John Williams once stood, and the opportunities for orchestral film scores had shrunk significantly with the proliferation of home studios, easy access to film scoring technology, and the reduction of mid-level movies and music budgets in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Although I had learned to compose at a piano with pencil and paper, the first thing we did at USC was go through a “boot camp” to learn how to use computer software for scoring. I felt like I had been built for a system that didn’t exist anymore.

The bright side of this challenge was that it forced me to develop other ways of producing music without the orchestra, ultimately making me a much more versatile composer. Out of school, I strongly pitched for recording budgets and used the orchestra whenever possible, but I also learned to embrace film scoring technology and use it as a creative tool in my own style. I always record live musicians when I score animation, but with other genres, especially horror/thriller, there is a huge range of sounds and styles that are effective.

What started as being resourceful had turned into a big part of my musical personality, helping me find my unique voice and style. Starting out, I didn’t have a lot of money to buy commercially available samples, so for my early horror films, like Behind Your Eyes, I made a lot of the sounds myself. With household items, a cheap microphone and a computer, it’s possible to make a lot of great sounds. Good or bad, the sounds were at least unique and authentic. Over the years, I’ve built a bigger and better toolbox of digital and analog equipment for sound creation, manipulation, transformation, and sometimes mutilation! My first love will always be the orchestra, but I’m happy to be able to offer filmmakers alternative musical solutions that fit their story and their budget.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I compose and produce original music for Film, Television, and Commercials/Trailers. Of my work, you can currently stream the entire series of Siberia as well as the indie films Artik, Be Afraid, Oxenfree, and The Hybrids Family. As a composer of additional music, I’ve also recently contributed to the film The First Purge as well as the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Snowpiercer, and Quantico,

I think I’m best known for writing music that comes from a strong point of view and has a lot of personality. My goal is to always make music that is special, so I’m always looking for that sound, theme, or texture that is going to make a score unique and give the picture a sonic fingerprint. This has led me to work most often in Animation and Horror/Thriller genres, films that generally encourage the score to make strong, dramatic statements and be very active in the storytelling.

My orchestral music is known for being melodic and colorful, as well as very aggressive and biting when necessary. Much of my orchestral work has been in scores to over 40 animated short films, including the Hollywood Music in Media Award-nominated score for Misguided and the Student Academy Award Winning film The Wishgranter. Other orchestral scores include the family-fantasy feature film The Hybrids Family which won Best Score at the 2018 Oniros Film Awards.

My Horror/Thriller scores are known for their intensity and unsettling moods created through a hybrid approach of orchestra, custom sound design, synthesizers, and audio manipulation. I love how technology has enabled me to push these genre scores beyond the orchestra into new sonic territories. Projects include scores for NBC’s Siberia, the groundbreaking Virtual Reality Sci-Fi/Action short Agent Emerson, and the gritty horror film Artik, a score that I’m proud has garnered 5 Best Score Awards at film festivals.

Hollywood doesn’t always work this way, but I’d like to be known for having a chameleon-like versatility. I love working with many different types of people, stories, and musical genres. The variety is what keeps this job exciting and keeps me growing as an artist. I’m proud that in a one-year span, I was fortunate to write a period Jazz score for the documentary Beyond the Bolex, a custom sound design score for Artik, Animation scores ranging from sweeping orchestra to rock, and also contribute synth-driven action music to The First Purge.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
This is a tough question because I can only confidently speak to my own experience in moving to LA at the time I did. Although technology has become better at enabling film composers to work from anywhere, I definitely received the most opportunities starting out due to my physical presence in LA. Being at USC for grad school was a huge part of this, but hands-on learning in a composer’s studio, making contacts at industry and social events, and being available to physically meet for coffee or lunch have all played huge roles in my career development. I’m not sure that I would feel the same sense of community if I was living somewhere else. This might not be as important to some, but being here pushes me to be better, to hustle and work harder.

I’ve also found that collaborations with directors are much more positive when they can be present in my studio. The physical presence makes the scoring process more personal and productive. Many of the world’s best musicians are here in LA, and just like with directors, I’ve found the recordings to be best while in-person. It’s certainly possible to record musicians remotely around the world and here in LA as well, but for me, something special is lost that process. I scored an animated short film called Rivet Busters, and the directors used temp score from The Incredibles. They wanted that type of sound, so I said, “Why don’t we just use those players?”. It seems like something very simple, but that was made possible by being a part of the film scoring community in LA.

The biggest problem facing newcomers is the housing shortage and sky-high rents that seem to restrict industry access only to those who can support themselves while paying their dues at internships and low or no-paying jobs. I know that the industry is doing better at paying those at the bottom of the totem pole more fairly, but it still seems like there’s a gap in the cost of living and what a newcomer can expect to earn in a saturated market. I think I would still recommend that somebody start their career here if they can, but not if they’re coming out “cold” and expecting to make enough money to stay here for an extended period of time without support. Sure, anything can happen, especially here, but it’s not the safest of plays. Without school to act as a halfway house, I think it would be best for somebody to exhaust the resources of their home town or country before relocating permanently, and I think coming out initially for a short period of time, like a summer or six months to a year, can also be beneficial. In that time, it’s possible to make positive contacts that can lead to future work without being sucked dry financially waiting for those prospects to bare fruit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.coreywallace.com
• Phone: 3104038601
• Email: coreywallacefilmcomposer@gmail.com
• Instagram: @corey.composer
• Facebook: @composercorey
• Twitter: @coreycomposer

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