Film Music

Andy Willson is a freelance film composer and music producer based in Swansea, UK. He started his musical career teaching classical violin in South England, but over the past 10 years, has built connections with film makers around the UK and beyond, many of whom he continues to compose alongside. During his final year studying Music at Southampton University, he completed the score to the short web-series Elfrida (2014).

In 2014, Andy became increasingly involved in a number of short film projects gaining success in international film festivals, including psychological horror “After Party“(2014), mental health drama “Antelope” (2017) and Detroit based “The Dreamcatcher”. By 2015, he was working on his first feature length score, MonkeyDribble Films’ “My Month with Mrs Potter“.

Originally specialising in fully orchestral scores, Andy has over the last few years in particular, significantly widened his niche to embody a fusion of synthesised production in his writing. When briefed to include a short piece of “club music” for the sign off of Ben Grace’s “The Not So Best Man” (2015), he used the opportunity to take a crash course on sound production and expand his knowledge of additive synthesis, further broadening his genrescape.

Arranging

Andy started to learn the violin from the age of 9 and the piano from age 12, which eventually stemmed into a deeply ingrained passion for classical music. During his teenage years, he taught himself to write and play popular music on guitar, as well as picking up the bass guitar, drums and mandolin. This interest in songwriting for different genres naturally moved him towards modern recording and music production for a diversity of instruments, as is evident in his 2020 production album “Piano Inspirations”.

During some of his own recording projects, in and around his years at Southampton, Andy discovered the vast world of arranging. He quickly found his knowledge of studio recording was far more suited to an orchestral setup than, for example, pop guitar and vocals in a studio. Alongside his passion for composing, he took to producing piano, string and even full orchestral arrangements for his undergrad peers, as well as for many of his own recordings. At the end of 2016, he started to work on a number of string arrangements for James Kirby’s 2017 album, “Foreign Land“.