Michael Law

Hello, My name is Michael Law and I'm a film composer from Finland. I've composed music from 1998 and from 2002 to commercial projects. I compose to radio, television, motion pictures, games and internet. My website can be found here: http://www.michaellawmusic.com

Michael Law was born in February 1986 in the beautiful city of Helsinki, Finland, where he spent his childhood. As a child, Michael knew he wanted to do something in the movie business. He dreamed about a job as a director and an actor. He drew comic books and imagined they were films with real Hollywood casting. He enjoyed watching films and spent his childhood in the world of comic books and films. Michael became interested in composing music at the age of 12. He had the chance to try out his big brother's musical equipment and composed his three first musical cues to a cassette. "I played piano for three years and drums in the school orchestra as well as sang in different shows, but I never had the chance to create musically something on my own. I've always enjoyed creating things: drawing comic books, writing short stories and so on. I've even done a couple of amateur RPG's for my friends because of the free possibility to create whatever I want. Trying out my brother's equipment and composing music was a whole new experience to me. I've loved composing music ever since." Soon Michael got his first freeware MIDI sequencer/sampler, which he used to compose music scores for his own roleplaying games. "First, I got interested in game music. I had always enjoyed the work of Koji Kondo (Super Mario Series, Zelda Series) and Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy Series), because I had grown with my old 8-bit Nintendo. I composed lots and lots of different, simple themes to villages, characters and events which I made up myself." Later on, Michael started to explore the wonderful world of film music. "I had always subconsciously whistled legendary movie themes without well concentrating on them more than in the area of basic melodic structure. Something dragged me to listen more and more film music scores and dive more deeply to this new dimension of music. I started to educate things about composing by listening to many film scores and old classical artists, for example Tsaikovski, Grieg, Debussy and Stravinsky, and reading books about composing. Quickly I had many favourite film composers and scores. I was nearly shocked, when I realized that almost all of my favourite childhood film scores were composed by John Williams :) (Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Star Wars...)" Michael has been inspired by the music and talent of composers such as John Williams (The Terminal, Harry Potter, Minority Report), Hans Zimmer (Lion King, Gladiator), James Newton Howard (Unbreakable, Waterworld), Thomas Newman (Meet Joe Black) and Jerry Goldsmith (Total Recall), just to name a few. He is constantly practicing and composing both film and game music digitally, trying to bring the same magic and realism to his work that a real orchestra adds to films. To make his music sound more unique, Michael has joined with his childhood friend, composer Paul Houseman in order to create their own sampled instrument libraries aside the commercial ones. "Paul has been a great help to me in every way concerning composition and sampling by sharing his advice, knowledge and intuition of this industry. I recall that he actually was the one who introduced me in the art of film music a few years ago in the first place." Currently Michael is studying a four-year degree in the Tampere University of Applied Sciences' School of Art and Media, in the area of sound. The sound studies will give Michael a basis to work professionally in the area of film/tv/radio/theatre sound and music as well and teach about live recordings, theory of sound and much more! "I'm thrilled I got in! It's like my dreams are actually really starting to come true! It will be great to handle both music and sound professionally before making a jump into the big business :)"

My musical influences are mainly film composers, but one man from the game music industry has influenced me a lot. His name is Nobuo Uematsu. He's one of the reasons I got excited about film music as a kid. I was playing Final Fantasy games and thought that even though the sound wasn't so realistic, the themes and melodies were perfect for the games' atmosphere!! John Williams was also my childhood hero. I always hummed his themes. As I grew a bit older, Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams and Mark Mancina, who combinate live orchestra and electornic samples very brilliantly, became my main innovators. My other influences include Trevor Rabin, Thomas Newman and Danny Elfman, who have very unique styles and personalities, which I appreciate. Jerry Goldsmith, Basil Poledouris and Michael Kamen (peace to their souls) were very fine, big men. Poledouris was one of my childhood heros and Kamen did a great job with collaborating with different rock bands (apart from doing film music). James Newton Howard is my main influence in calm, eerie, strings/piano music, I love it! Howard Shore did a great job with the LOTR-trilogy. I respect his job very much. Finally, Tuomas Kantelinen is the only Finnish composer who's really made it to Hollywood films through Renny Harlin. He's a fine composer, I envy his luck in the business! :) So yes, I have a lot of influences! You're still with me? :D

I use Giga studio 3, Sonar 5, FL Studio 6 and Cool Edit Pro 2...