We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christopher Morin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christopher below.

Christopher, looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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’m a self taught musician and started playing drums when I was 13. I would learn by ear listening/playing to Nirvana mostly, and making shameful attempts to play along to Led Zeppelin & Blink 182. Within a year or 2, I started learning riffs on my best friend’s guitar and got my own not long after. The guitar was just so much more practical to practice at any point day or night compared to a drum set stealing any sense of peace from anyone in the house. I think something that stood in the way of the learning process was that I’m from a very small rural town. I’ve come to really appreciate my hometown (Fonda, NY) and how it shaped me, but at least until Sawyer Fredericks won The Voice coming from the next town over, I don’t think anyone there considered being a musician to be anything to take seriously or that could provide a legitimate income, or anything legitimate at all for that matter. So it took a very long time for me to have the mindset that it was something that not only is legitimate, but actually has a very high ceiling in terms of accomplishments. So knowing what I know now, I would have held it in much higher regard earlier and put myself in a position to have more opportunities. I think the most essential thing to learning the craft is simply passion. I have very mixed feelings when people hear me play an instrument and say “I wish I could do that, I just wasn’t gifted” and there might be some truth to that, but people often don’t understand how many hours of being terrible it took until I could really hold my own. Just to play one 8 second part right could have taken me 9-12 hours of practice and a lot of pains in the early days. So other than my passion for it, I don’t think there was much or any physical skill given to me personally. If anything, the sensitivity to how much music has affected me since I was a child could be considered the gift.

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.

Although I am releasing post-rock instrumental music under the moniker, The Sound of Mountains, I am also now film scoring under my given name. I scored my first short film, ‘Dark Cloud’, which came out last November, just finished a 2nd short film in the final stages of post-production, and am now starting a 3rd. However, after about 7-8 years from age 13-20 of learning the basics on guitar, drums and a little piano, I really got into music in the summer of 2007 by having a few smaller 2 or 3 piece bands and eventually a 5-piece rock band in Upstate, NY. I wrote most of the instrumentals for the bands and have always heard songs as a whole in my head. I love to then go down the journey of building the pieces that either lead to what I’m hearing or something inspired by it. Since I began writing music, I have constantly been told that the instrumentals sounded like they should be a film. I also have loved film and film scores for a long time and they have definitely been an influence, but most of that connection seems to have been natural and unintentional.

I have made music that is quiet with a classical guitar and violin, up to wall-of-sound loud rock but one thing that is fairly consistent, regardless of dynamic, is that most of my compositions are intended to come off unforced. Along with that method, I have certainly used writing music as a method of self-medication for depression/stress/anxiety, which, by God’s grace have continually became less frequent since I put my faith in Jesus in 2011. However as I do write for myself, that motivation is shared with being for others too. The best thing my music could do is give someone else who is anxious a sense of calm, release, or provide a space for reflection that they were struggling to tap into. I’m most proud of anytime someone has said that it provided that along with the scores I’m currently doing. I know before I had any faith, those moments of where music nonverbally speaks to my heart kept me sane, you could say it may have even saved my life.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

As I mentioned before, being from a very small town, I picked up my life and moved to Los Angeles so I could break from 5-6 months of winter and be surrounded by a culture that really support musicianship. That, and it was one of the only places I knew other people at the time. It was an absolute culture shock being raised in a town of 800 people, living in smaller cities in NY like Albany & Saratoga Springs, to a single county with 10 million people. So to say it was uncomfortable is an understatement. However, I was able to see basically every band I liked on tour, many of whom never went to upstate NY, and eventually meet a lot of other people who were creatives professionally. That has been inspiring to realize it is within reach. Now I almost think everyone should make a big move at least once. It completely opens up your understanding of life and will help provide a lot more wisdom.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Coming from someone who used to suffer from major depression, I want to make music that has a therapeutic effect on the listener. As far as the film scoring part of my work, then for it elevate the nonverbals of those characters and scenes so watching it you are able to feel what you’d imagine the people on screen feel. I want the music to draw things out, as if it feels like things come alive inside of the listener that they didn’t know were there and they feel connected, like there’s something inside of them communicating back to compositions I’ve written. Then lastly, that I was agnostic and then came to learn about the gospel and eventually got supernatural healing from God from things I never was previously able to stop from burdening my life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoundofmountains
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesoundofmountains