By Niy Birden
It is a widespread idea that the mind of a composer is often a rambunctious and claustrophobic one, with numerous do-overs and second thoughts. It is especially difficult when making something for a designated medium or even, for another person. Strangely enough, this understanding can also be applied to psychopathic killers. But according to Andrew Hollander, things really aren’t that complicated. With having enough context and musical ambition, plus a little luck-finding the perfect balance between the “colors” of a score and a hinting script was enough to craft the subtle sounds for My Friend Dahmer, a daring and even funny coming-of-age autobiography about one of America’s most interesting serial killers.
Q: Okay, so for starters, this may seem a little bit weird to ask, but I know that music is becoming more digital now- there’s so many apps and different DAWs- so I have to ask, do you play any instruments?
A: I do, no-clearly that’s not a crazy question, I do, I play a bunch of instruments. I mainly play piano and any sort of keyboard instruments, but I play a bit of guitar, bit of drums, you know.
Q: I notice there aren’t really any leads to your origins. What got you specifically into composing, and how did you get started in the niche? Also, which came first, songwriting or film composing?
A: They came at more or less the same time, funny enough-when I started playing music,I was like, I think 12 or 13 and I was in a bunch of rock bands…
I started writing, some song stuff, some instrumental stuff, but I felt like-I always loved movies, so film scoring always kind of intrigued me, and then after college I moved to NY. And I got hired for this really low-budget indie film to score it, but they also needed some songs, so I also ended up doing both on that film. And it kind of just set me on that path, I was always doing things pretty much in parallel, sometimes I would do-and still do- a score and songs, for a film, but I was always working with different artists and bands on records and scoring films. Like certain years I might be busy with one more than the other, but I always liked just working in both worlds. One was never…neither of them was ever peripheral, both were really important to me and really inspiring to me. And so, they seem to be very parallel paths to me.
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