Examples
What I'm Currently Working On...
This is a sketch for a track I'm working on for Universal Music.
This track is for a 6 part series I'm currently working on for NHNZ (Natural History New Zealand). It's about 2 Canadian brothers who ride around China on some massive motorbikes, exploring the plethora of cultures and ethnicities that make up this humongous country. Very interesting!
BBC – The Making of Planet Earth – 2012
Snow Leopard - This animal is incredibly rare and elusive. It took the BBC's film crews over 7 years to finally capture a 1½ minute sequence and this clip accompanies them recounting this.
"Alex is professional to work with, gives great attention to detail and is incredibly creative in both sound and music composition. It would be a pleasure to work with him again!"
Granada / Nat Geo – Built for the Kill – 2004
This sequence began with a snowshoe hare running in slow motion on pristine white snow. It was beautiful, delicate, and slightly entrancing. Bit by bit a puma starts coming into shot and by the time the beat kicks in, the action switches to real time and becomes incredibly claustrophobic. One of my favourite tracks.
"Alex Stoloff is an inspired, original and dedicated composer with whom it has been my pleasure to work with time and time again. He is my first and last port of call when I need vivacious, dramatic and fitting music across genres, delivered on time and on budget."
Paris Connection – KPM / Channel 4 music library
I wanted to encapsulate Paris in this track, something which is pretty much impossible to do with a city that has so many facets, but I picked the more meditative side of Paris and added some more recent happenings and this was the result. It's a nighttime track, as you'd imagine.
BBC Worldwide – Signs of the Zodiac
Earth Kids - This piece was for a 12 part series on the Zodiac for BBC Worldwide. They talked about each sign of the zodiac in detail but also had experiments to show similarities and differences between the different elemental signs. The Earth kids were more playful, less prone to contemplation than say, the Water Kids, and I think this comes across in the music.
"Working with Alex on the music for Signs of the Zodiac was a real pleasure. We had a tight budget and demanding brief from our client. Our music needs were more than we could strictly afford and yet Alex managed to compose pieces that really worked, really strengthened our story and picture, delivered on time. He came up with musical solutions without prompting and worked very flexibly with us through post-production."
Granada – Crash Science
This series, produced by Granada, was all about machines and how men harness them. This particular clip of music was about the power that these machines could give but also how dangerous they could be and how, if used unwisely, they could actually end up killing.
"Alex Stoloff is one of my favorite documentary composers in the entire world. His creative use of both sounds and music creates exactly the right tone for a scene. I look forward to the privilege of working with him on documentary projects for years to come!"
BBC – The Making of Planet Earth – Polar Bear
In this sequence the BBC film crew used a heli-gimble, a camera mounted onto a helicopter that can shoot in HD from a kilometre away, to film a polar bear swimming through an ice-strewn sea. A truly awesome spectacle.
"Alex is always top of my list of composers to call...extremely talented, flexible and never phased by tight deadlines. I know I can rely on him to produce quality music whatever the demands of a schedule and he is always an absolute pleasure to work with."
BBC Wildlife on One – Crabs – Christmas Island crabs
A track written for the awesome Wildlife on One series. This track was meant to be mournful as it underscores the fact that Christmas Island crabs have a pretty hard life, get killed a lot and not many survive.
"Alex composed the music for my 'Wildlife on One; Claw Wars'. I often found it hard to describe what kind of music I wanted, but in every case, I knew when I heard Alex's tracks. He has a wonderful knack of finding the essence of a particular animal or scene, and writing music which 'lifts' every sequence. The music in 'Claw Wars' added humour, character, atmosphere and suspense, and really made the programme. Alex's music can be quirky, moving, humorous or surprising but is never predictable. He is great to work with, adding a huge amount of creative input to the project, and I look forward to working with him again."
Audio Sketch – Seascapes
This was actually a sketch for a programme I was working on that I never ended up using but liked. It was about deep sea divers discovering a tomb underwater, there was tension as they had limited air supply and were far from the surface. At the end of the sequence they discover the body of a child in the tomb, hence the musicbox.
"Alex is a joy to deal with - down to earth, efficient, creative and diverse. He creates some beautiful music, and always tries to get to the very heart of the music brief."
Personal Project – Grey Coat
I wrote this song when I was going through a difficult time in my personal life. It's about someone who I loved a lot and still do, and for me this song will always relate to them and what they meant to me. There is sadness, a melancholia.. but also hope for the future, hope that things will eventually take a turn for the better and ultimately work out.
BBC – Making Of Planet Earth
OK, I know I seem to be putting up a lot of the BBC 'Making of Planet Earth' tracks but I really enjoyed working on it and love the music that I wrote for it. This track was for an incredibly dark sequence in which one of the largest lion prides in Africa attack and slay an elephant within a herd, at night.. being filmed with special infra-red cameras. It's an incredibly brutal sequence, but very powerful.
"I asked Alex to re-score the music for the ten minute diary films that appear at the end of each programme in the major BBC landmark series, Planet Earth. Originally scored by George Fenton, these were now being edited together for the first time to make one 90-minute special for TX on BBC America. Alex was the perfect person for the job because he is such a creative and versatile composer. He came up with fresh, contemporary music for each film which exactly matched the mood required by the client. To boot, Alex is fast - he becomes totally absorbed in a job, working round the clock and keeping in contact with regular updates. I will definitely work with Alex again and am already looking forward to our next project."
Personal Project – Providence
This started out as an idea for a violin line that would be really uplifting and positive. My good friend Mivsam came in and we recorded the violins above a skeleton piano line. It then evolved and I recorded it properly at Toybox studios in Bristol which is run by my mate Ali, who is a very clever man when it comes to recording and mixing. Here's the result.
Granada – Built for the Kill – Rivers
This might not seem like a very 'wildlife' type of track but Built for the Kill wasn't a run of the mill wildlife series. This clip accompanied a sequence of bears salmon fishing, and the electro element is there to portray the mechanical nature of this. Awesome.
"Alex tells me I offered him his first real (paying) job. I remember a scruffy CD sitting on my desk, with a weird name on it. When I finally listened to it I was blown away by his originality. In a world where many producers used the same old big orchestral scores here was a hip one-man band who produced striking, cool music, that worked. I also thought that he’d be cheap and eager to please – and hired him on the spot. He definitely helped my show break out. Alex still produces great original and surprising music and sound design. He is always eager to please and he’s never disappointed me, except that he’s no longer so cheap. Good for him!"
What We Do
Pinpoint the exact needs of a project and deliver original and creative music on time and under budget.
About me
GetGoodMusic is me, Alex Stoloff. I’ve composed music for over 100 TV programmes & films, and am incredibly passionate about what I do. Sound is key, to me.