Interview with the composer and music producer Will Martins

Please introduce yourself to the readers and how you first got into making music.

My name is Will Martins, I’m a composer and music producer from Brazil and I started making music when I was 12 years old. I remember the day I got my first guitar (which I still have it) and kept trying to imitate every melody I could in only 1 string. After I watch the movie “School of Rock” I knew that music was my thing, and since then I never spent a single day without thinking or making music.

What kind of training have you had?

I always liked to study deeply the things I’m interested in, and with music couldn’t be different. My background is a miscellanea composed of taking guitar and singing classes when I was still at school, playing with bands were my daily practice, and later when I figured that I wanted to make music my life I step up and got certificates on Audio and Acoustics, Music Theory and came to Los Angeles, where I got my degree on Film Scoring at UCLA Extension. Today I keep studying by working on different projects, but in the near future, I have plans to make a Masters in Music.

How did you come up with the idea of producing music?

As I said, making music was on my mind forever, but the idea of putting my hands on producing came up during my senior year on Advertisement College (something around 2012–2013). I had bands coming to me asking for help to produce their songs and albums. So far I just had experience writing and composing my own songs, but when I notice I could not only help other people to make their music sound better but also make some money of it, I was all in. From there, I never stopped producing music and just got more interesting projects, from bands, artists, commercials, films and tv shows.

What has been your favourite(s) project(s) to work on so far?

Wow, that’s a hard one. I feel I had different projects throughout my short (but intense) career. I’m gonna cite 2 from the top of my mind. First, composing for the short “Sky Over Your Shoulders” from the great director Luis Maximiano is one of my favourites. The freedom he gave me to paint his story with my music was fantastic, and the short went on screening everywhere, from Cannes to Hollywood, which provides me with a lot of opportunities in my career. Second, I can’t mention making the original music for the TV Show called “Sound a Porter” from E!Entertainment channel. Making the music for that program was one of my biggest schools since I had to make more than 80 songs in around 2 months for the 12 episodes of the show. Learning to work with my limitations, budget and mainly a tight deadline made me grow a lot as a professional.

How did you get the gig(s)?

Both projects I was working as a full-time Composer on Mugshot, an award-winning music production company in São Paulo-SP-Brazil.

If you had a chance to work alongside anybody who would that be?

I have always loved animations, cartoons and animes. I always tell my wife that my dream job would be composing music for the TV Show “Family Guy” or “American Dad”. I just love Seth McFarlane, he’s a huge inspiration to me.

What projects do you have coming up?

Nowadays I’m part of the creative team at Radium Media on Hollywood. The founders Brad and Kevin are just monsters in what they do and working with them is like having a class on music production and entrepreneurship every day. We have a lot of projects lined up from original series on Netflix to album records from great artists. This next quarter promises to be one of the best yet on Radium So far, and I’m happy to be part of this.

Do you have any advice for young music makers like yourself?

Yes. If you love music, don’t wait up, start it today. Don’t hold yourself on “how I’m gonna do that?”, you will find the answers, the people and the skills along the way, put your intention and start working, the path will reveal itself.

Where people can find what you up to?

I have my official website(s): www.will-martins.com and www.iwilmusic.com

The later is about my electronic music project called IWIL.

Thanks for the opportunity of sharing a bit of my journey. =)