Fresh from Eva’s Diamond Music Final Mix, composer Roby Meola has talked to us about  his experience in composing the music for Ice Neal’s latest effort.

“I hope I don’t sound arrogant when I say it has been a straightforward process for me. And I must confess all the merit goes to Ice, who from the beginning has pushed me to the right direction. Her motto has always been: write something original that does not sound like Hollywood. She was very specific about the moods she wanted to recreate for Eva’s Diamond… “

Roby has composed different style of music for this project. “I have done something new, something I have never written before. Like this timpani ostinato that ended up being Miss Phillip’s main theme. I remember i was messing around with the keyboard while Ice was explaining the mood and feel. For a few days she had been asking me to use timpani and i must admit was not that sure about using timpani in that particular context. Even so,  i started playing something with the timpani samples as she was humming a few ideas, then stopped me, ‘that’s the one, that’s it!’ and there it was, the theme for Miss Phillips. One would think of a music for a old lady could be strings or piano based, not timpanis… but it worked beautifully”

“A similar thing happened when we were working on a very dark sequence of the movie. At that time i was producing my first sample library and i had made this out-worldly sound. Flipping through my own sounds collection Ice stopped me right at that particular sound, which is an evolving organic dark sound. She instantly loved it and asked me to use it for the sequence we were at. With no particular mangling, there it was, the sound was doing it all and working magically on the scene.”

And the same for most of the cues in the movie: “Ice was giving me great suggestions for moods, she was describing feelings and emotions. It helped a lot for the writing of little Diamond’s theme, which apparently is Ice’s favorite.”

[blockquote color=’#584e59′ ]“Ice is a very hands-on director, she knows what she wants and her best quality is she wants to do unique stuff, without following the herd. That unleashes creativity and makes my job as a composer very challenging and ultimately very rewarding”[/blockquote]