Award-winning Composer, Simon Franglen Geeks Out About Gear - a podcast by Other World Computing

OWC Host, Cirina Catania, talks with world-famous composer and producer, British born, Simon Franglen, who started out as a musician and record producer, and soon began working with composers such as John Barry on the soundtrack to “Dances with Wolves,” David Fincher’s “Se7en,” and David Cronenberg's ”Crash."He produced the vocals for"Moulin Rouge"and programmed on the “Bodyguard” soundtrack. And his collaborations with artists over the years include the likes of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Celine Dion, Luciano Pavarotti, Toni Braxton, and Madonna. 



James Cameron’s “Titanic,” sailed him to a Grammy Award for Record of the Year as producer of “My Heart Will Go On,” and Golden Globe, Grammy Award, and World Soundtrack Award nominations for the theme song from that same film, “My Heart Will Go On.”He worked alongside James Horner for many years as arranger and score producer. When Horner tragically died in 2016, it was Franglen who completed his score to “The Magnificent Seven”



All in all…he has over 400 major credits in genres ranging from English Grime rap, to classical and everything in between.And his latest works are equally stunning, with ground-breaking 3D audio mixes for installations in the U.S., Europe, and China.



Cirina caught up with him during a recent trip to his studio in Hollywood and they geeked out about his gear and his workflow, including his love for all the OWC equipment that has stood loyally by him for many years! It was an enlightening conversation!For those of you who are interested in creating music, Simon shared his process we are happy to pass it on to you! Stand by this is going to be fun!







In This Episode00:01 - Cirina introduces Simon Franglen, a composer and producer of film and classical music.04:28 - Simon talks about the various monitors he uses in his studio in Los Angeles.08:46 - Simon explains the advantages of using Pro Tools in composing and why he prefers using it over other platforms.12:59 - Simon shares how he has tons of analog equipment but prefers the flexibility of working digitally.17:31 - What did Simon like to do when he was five years old? At what age did he fist become interested in being a record producer?20:01 - Simon talks about the Bollywood film, Brahmāstra.24:11 - Simon discusses the interesting experience he had working with international composers in making The Birth of Skies and Earth.30:24 - Simon describes the workflow of producing projects with their convenient setup of working remotely.34:03 - What is some of Simon’s favorite OWC equipment and how does it make his workflow more efficient and seamless?41:44 - Follow Simon Franglen on his social media accounts, and visit his website, www.simonfranglen.com to learn more about his amazing works.



Jump to Links and ResourcesTranscript



Simon Franglen is in town. He's in Los Angeles not much longer, however, and I think we wrangled him because I heard from a little bird that you use OWC equipment. Of course, since this is OWC Radio, I would be remiss in not speaking with you, right? Hi, Simon.



Hi, how are you?I'm good. I'm very good. Simon, you're in Hollywood. Can you do me a favor? Can you kind of look around the studio you're in and tell our audience what kind of gear you're using and a little bit about your process. I know you have a current project you can't talk about. You can't talk about the one you're working on now. But perhaps we can use the example of the 2019 release of The Birth of Skies and Earth because that was a huge project, and perhaps we can talk about how you managed that one?



Well, if I look around from where I am, I'm looking at a 55-inch OLED main monitor, which I moved to use touchscreens, and I'd like backlighting, so they don't sort of blast your eyes out, especially late at night. And then that's feeding into a 28-core Mac Pro 2019 with 384GB of RAM and 32TB of OWC RAID internally.



Oh, that's awesome.

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