Composer Talk: Adam Langston on His Chilling Score for I’ll Play Mother

After looking at Adam Langston’s resume, it’s very apparent that he is a jack of all trades when it comes to music. Adam has done everything from arranging music for Disney World’s live Frozen Spectacular to orchestrating the scores for Roland Emmerich's White House Down. His latest project, composing the original score to Gravitas Ventures’ horror/thriller I’ll Play Mother. In the below Q&A he talks about everything from how he approached I’ll Play Mother to what musical instrument he frequents most. You can also listen to Adam's I'll Play Mother score here.

PH: Can you talk about your musical background? At what point did you realize you wanted to be a composer?

Adam Langston: I started out as a kid learning to play the piano, double bass and then church organ, having sung in the choir. So, fairly ‘classical’ as far as musical backgrounds go. Very early on, maybe aged 8 or 9, I was falling in love with film music and figuring out how to play it on the piano. I started making little compositions and arrangements for small groups of us to play. By the time I was a teenager, I was composing pieces of orchestral music, and I wanted to continue doing that. I didn’t get into computers or tech until university, and even then, I was initially pretty reluctant. I was lucky enough to study composition at the Royal Academy of Music, surrounded by some of the best musicians in the world, so why would I want to sit in front of a computer – this was probably my attitude on arriving there! I was the student handwriting all my scores and parts. However, I soon realized the huge and numerous advantages of using technology, and to this day I spend countless hours in front of a computer!

PH: Was there a specific film score that stood out to you when growing up that left a lasting impression on you?

Adam Langston: The first one was The Terminator by Brad Fiedel. Seeing and hearing that at a young age really did leave a lasting impression. Musically, the simplicity and emotion of the melody, and the percussive deep cyclical rhythms underpinning it, gave it a sense of inevitability, tragedy, and things I couldn’t express with words. But of course, the music expressed them. I still think that it’s one of the great film themes, and it adds immeasurably to the film, helping to make the violent sci-fi action feel transcendent.

PH: What would you say is your “go to” instrument?

Adam Langston: For playing music, it’s the piano. It pretty much covers the entire pitch range of the orchestra, in a single instrument. When it’s heard in certain types of music, I think it connects with a lot of people who’ve been familiar with it since childhood, maybe from school assemblies, or at home, in public places and so on. When it comes to composition, I’m not sure that a ‘go-to’ instrument is always desirable since different music has different needs. But if I had to pick something, maybe strings, because of the huge variety of sounds you can get from them; from a piercing solo violin to a big lush string orchestra. However, the true answer to this question is probably ‘the computer’.

PH: Can you talk about I’ll Play Mother and how you got involved?

Adam Langston: The film is a creepy mystery story about a pair of adopted siblings, and the toll taken on the family when weird and sinister events start to take place. I got involved with the film thanks to Brad Watson, the director, agreeing to listen to some ideas for the music that I’d come up with. This was after chatting with him at a party about the film. My first idea included a female vocal, to which Brad’s polite response was that he was trying to avoid that cliché! It wasn’t right for this. But luckily after that, I did the theme used during the montages in the film which Brad loved, and we went from there.

PH: How was your approach for I’ll Play Mother different than other projects?

Adam Langston: I approached the music largely from the point of view of one character, Cyrus, the adoptive father. So, I think that made it quite a focused approach. He is in pretty much every scene, and we see the story unfold mostly from his point of view. The cinematography by Dennis Madden is great, as is the production design by Ian Kerr. They helped to create a very strong atmosphere in the house where the film is set, which meant that many scenes worked well without music, and also meant that when we did use music, it could make quite strong contributions without ‘dwarfing’ the visuals.

PH: What tools, plugins, or instruments did you use in your production of I’ll Play Mother?

Adam Langston: I used Logic Pro to produce the music, which is probably the first piece of music software that I ever used when starting out. The score largely uses orchestral sounds and textures, but with some extra colors which felt relevant to the story. Percussion was a good realm to explore for these extra colors, such as resonating a full water tank with bells, and ‘playing’ metallic sculptures with a bow. An ensemble of kalimbas (or ‘thumb pianos’) and vibraphones gave a kind of subliminal ‘childlike’ aspect to some of the music. Finally, some interesting samples made by Hainbach of old radio test equipment, recovered from the scrap heap and on its last legs, made for some very cool and subtle effects. The re-recording mixers, Fred Englefield and Adam Daniel, also did a really wonderful job mixing the score into the film.

PH: You have worked with I’ll Play Mother director Brad Watson before on Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop. Because you already had a preexisting relationship with Brad, did that allow for more experimentation on I’ll Play Mother?

Adam Langston: It certainly provides a kind of ‘safety net’, in that we’ve done projects before so we know a little bit about what to expect. Brad knows what he wants from a score, and I want to be sure that I am providing that when I send him some music. My experimentation ideally is done before that, in the earlier stages, so that I can arrive at something that I believe is the best that it can be, and we can build on it from there. But it’s probably true that if I do get it wrong, the pre-existing relationship helps because Brad knows that at least I’ve done it right in the past!

PH: Not only are you a composer, but you are an orchestrator too. Some of your titles include Alien: Covenant, White House Down and 10,000 BC. Can you talk about your role as orchestrator and what that entails?

Adam Langston: Being an orchestrator is great. It’s a privilege to see the details of the composer’s work, and an honor to help them realize it with the live orchestra. It entails a lot of careful listening to the composer’s music and deciding how exactly to make it sound its best when the orchestra plays it, down to the smallest detail. I think it’s very important to be completely faithful to the composer’s vision and to help the individuality of the composer to shine through, particularly when it comes to texture, since that is such an important part of many current film scores. There is also a responsibility for making the jobs of everyone else who comes after you in the process, easier. This means no mistakes in the scores or layouts for the copyists; well-written and thought-out parts for the musicians so that they can play confidently and sound great on their first play-through; and good balance across the orchestra so that the recording engineer isn’t given a lot of extra work to do to balance the sound.

PH: Is there is a type of project that you would like to score that you have been given the opportunity yet?

Adam Langston: I tend to love all the projects I get involved in, and they feel like the most important thing you’re doing at any particular time. Any project where I get to work with great people, on impactful music, is a wonderful thing. I try to learn about all facets of filmmaking because it helps to see your place in the bigger picture. With that in mind, I think doing more projects that require on-set music would be fun and challenging. I’ve also always been a fan of ‘time-loop’ films (probably since seeing Terminator!), so one of those could be amazing to do, though I’ve done short films that would qualify. Something with crazy visuals? But really, I feel lucky to be doing this no matter what the project.