The Northwest is Alive with the Sound of Music!

RICHARD Bodgers always knew he wanted to be a composer. From the age of nine. It’s not every kid who can claim that. But Richard can.

And it’s not everyone who can claim to have composed music for global advertising campaigns and computer games, such as Sony Erickson, Lemsip and Tomb Raider.

And how many musicians can boast that their music eventually found its way on to top-rated TV like Lost and Desperate Housewives, via the EMI music library?

Richard can count himself among that elite band, too. He’s also written the music for over 1,100 TV commercials.

“I guess you could say I’ve been pretty busy!” smiles Richard, 34, sitting in the recording studio he’s creating in his Stockport home, which he shares with wife, Julie, and children Joshua, six and eight-month-old Charlotte.

Since launching his own company, Theme, 11 years ago, Richard’s business has gone from strength to strength. It’s about to enter a new phase, with the introduction of an on-line, royalty-free, music library.

“I’m setting up an on-line library in the next month or so, which will be a complete library of all my music – around 1,200 clips, which is increasing all the time as I add music from other composers, all cleared for use anywhere in the world. I’m really, seriously excited about this new venture,” he says.

“I hand out library CDs and people are emailing every week saying they want a certain piece of music from the CD, but with the on-line library I’ll be able to show them say 10 examples of music, and they can pick which suits them.”

And this month, Richard has also been awarded the accolade of being named Crew Of The Month by Northwest Vision and Media.

“This year has been my best year ever, there’s not been a week when I haven’t had work, and the phone is ringing all the time with people wanting to buy my music,” says Richard. “It’s great to know that people like what I’m doing, and being awarded Crew of the Month is another brilliant bonus.”

Music has always played a part in Richard’s life. He first started writing his own songs when he was nine, and just a few years later set up his first band.

“I was always a musician, the sort who played by ear as well as being trained,” he explains. “At school we started a rock band, which everyone loved, especially the roadies – because they had an excuse to get out of lessons!”

Richard then went on to study at Huddersfield University – as a concert pianist. Within a year, however, he realized he wasn’t concert pianist material.

“My nerves were terrible,” he confides. “I couldn’t cope with the pressure of performing. Added to that, I had so many hand strains and injuries, because you had to practice for five or six hours a day.”

Fortunately for Richard, however, the course he changed to was to carve out his future career – composing music for film and TV.

“I was able to apply the technical knowledge I had to an electronic format, which was brilliant . I got some fantastic results,” says Richard. And it’s those fantastic results which are now so much in demand by the TV world. Particularly commercials.

“When I started Theme in 1996, I began by putting my knowledge of writing rock songs to orchestral pieces. From there, I got a show reel of my music together showing the huge variety of styles I had,” explains Richard.

Getting his first big break wasn’t easy, but Richard was persistent, constantly knocking on doors.

“I became the most mythering sod you could ever meet! And I soon got over the ‘I’m sorry to bother you’ feeling – this was my business and I needed it to work. Besides, I knew that if I didn’t keep reminding people who I was and what I did, then they’d soon forget me,” he says.

Once agencies and production companies began to remember his name, however, they kept coming back for more of Richard’s wonderful works.

“The whole thing just snowballed really, I didn’t know what was happening! I was doing something that I loved, something I was good at, and people were paying me for doing it. – not always on time, but they were paying!” he laughs.

Richard’s first big break came when he won a contract with Time Computers, who were so impressed with the music he composed for their TV adverts, that they kept him in work with additional projects for over a year.

To date, Richard’s recorded music for around 1,100 commercials such as Toyota, Mercedes, Alton Towers and Vidal Sassoon. He’s also composed music for several art house films, some of which have gone on to win awards.

When necessary, he books studio space, but usually he works alone, at home, in the fully digital, analogue recording studio he’s built up from scratch. “I have the same sort of set up that modern day film composers use. The sounds are top quality, film score sounds, on a small basis,” he says.

With so much experience in commercials, Richard is used to second-guessing what production companies want. “Creatively speaking they want a piece of music by say, Jimi Hendrix, which would cost them £30,000 but they come to me instead and offer me £3,000 to do a Jimi Hendrix sound-alike piece!” he says.

Richard is given a brief to follow. Although as he confides: “Music is usually the last thing on their mind, so sometimes you get an almost finished version of an advert or a TV programme, and they usually have a specific idea about the sort of sound they want, which I give them. But if I’ve got the time and a better idea, I give them my version as well, and more often than not they go with my version!” he says.

One of the highlights of his career, he says, was working as musical director at Manchester’s Library Theatre in 2000, composing the original scores for Angels in America and The Glass Menagerie. “It was the best experience I’ve had so far,” he says.

“I was able to leave my studio and get out there for eight weeks, sit down at a grand piano and have the cast around me learning their lines, and the director telling me what he wanted, and I composed the music for their plays. I also got to work with humans for 12 months, which was fantastic, if a little grueling!

“It was the nearest thing I’ve done to composing a film score, and it’s made me really want to do a feature film in the near future.”

Although he still does commercials, Richard admits he’s ready for the next challenge. “A thirty second commercial only has so much to offer,” he says, which is why Richard has now set his sights on film.

“In my 10 year plan I wanted to meet directors of commercials who would eventually become film directors. But it hasn’t quite happened like that because those directors are still directing commercials! But I’m working on it!” says Richard.

And when Richard sets his mind to something, he usually makes it happen. So keep an ear to the ground – for the sound of something very special coming to a film score soon.

Contact Theme Music
To access Richard’s on-line music library, visit his website www.thememusic.net or telephone 0161 432 3113 and 07976 605 682.