Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Peter Howard. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Peter, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I can honestly say much of my skill set originates from before my leap into film scoring. I was a singer/songwriter for years – as one can probably imagine, the skills involved in songwriting overlap significantly with the skills required to write songs. It actually wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles in the winter of early 2023 that I decided to make that transition.

At the risk of sounding reductive, I think something that could’ve sped up my journey would’ve been to just have *done it* earlier. I’d waffled around with the idea of scoring for years before I finally began to do it, and I imagine if I started dabbling seriously at the age of 20 or 21, I’d be even further along in my career than I currently am. While I think the musicality I gained from songwriting smoothed over the learning period significantly, the ability to analyze and translate a scene into music is something you can only really learn by doing it, and it’s the most important skill in the scoring universe, in a way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a composer for scored media originally from San Antonio, TX, now residing in Hollywood. I take films in their post-production stage and I breathe life into them using the power of well-placed music. I like to take a zoomed out approach to my scores, incorporating sounds from a variety of genres, and married to none, and after honing my craft, I think I’ve carved out a unique voice in that space.

Last year I finally scored my first feature, which was a surreal experience. It’s an absolutely titanic amount of work, but it’s worth it once the final picture is completed.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Finishing a project, without question – scoring films can get incredibly granular, and that moment when you zoom out, sit back and listen to the finished music with the film and it just “works” makes the toil and the late nights worth it. I’ll never forget the first time I finished a long-form project – Terry Spears’ “Broken City” – the writing period was so intense, I felt like I had blinders on for the entire six week period of writing, arranging, recording, etc. The amount of work was such that I barely had time to do much else, and I’ll never forget how accomplished I felt when I first watched the whole film from start to finish with my completed music in it. It was an entire feature film with 50 minutes of MY music in it, and it added quite a bit to it!

There’s absolutely nothing else like that for me. I assume it must be like that after any large-scale creative endeavor is completed – it’s an all-consuming feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment without compare.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

This whole response will probably sound a bit pretentious, but I do feel it’s true. I think many outside the creative community fail to understand the power of the “creative impulse”. Most creatives/artists I know really do work primarily just for the satisfaction of having created something. Regardless of their career circumstances, I think most creatives base much of their personal happiness around their ability to manifest something artistically meaningful to them, and they can’t just *stop* making things. Creating is a deeply personal process, and to pretty much every creative I know, that impulse feels incredibly primordial and physical, almost like hunger or thirst.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aldensounds.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aldenph1996/