I think many people imagine that a piece of music just pops into a composer’s mind, complete and ready to write down. I mentioned Skempton’s process in an earlier blog, and mine is similar. For the Operations Room, the epicentre of the action, I wanted something exciting and adventurous, and decided to play around with Mission Impossible ideas combined with morse code rhythms and playlist harmony. The result? Well…

Somehow the influence is obvious, but the piece sucks. While the directness of the filmic style works when it’s serious, there’s too much obvious humour (or satire) in this for it to work in an exciting space (which MOD are designing really amazing changing lighting for).

So there you go, composers don’t always get it right first time, and the first sketch of this piece is still a “to-do” on my list…