Arts
Making music for Hollywood from his room
You don’t need to have studied music to be able to make it. Just ask Hirushan Maddumaarachchi. Unassuming and unorthodox, Hirushan is an example of what it means to really follow your dream on your own path.
You don’t need the ‘fancy stuff’ to do what you love to do: Hirushan in his studio cum bedroom. Pic M.A. Pushpa Kumara
We sit down with the 28-year-old to find out about his journey; taking a risk and leaving his 9 to 5 job to create music which would find its way into motion picture advertising for movies like ‘Captain Marvel’, ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’, ‘Hobbs and Shaw’, ‘Bumblebee’ and ‘Shaft’.
When we meet Hirushan, the composer gives us a tour of his studio; a simply furnished bedroom with his monitors and equipment taking up the most space. But it suits him just fine; as you don’t need the ‘fancy stuff’ to do the real work he explains.His parents have long given up trying to coax him to get out more and his friends have stopped wondering how he can spend a month cooped up in his room, or what he actually does for a living. Hirushan himself is unfazed – after all, he’s doing what he loves.
While music wasn’t always on the mind of the former sales marketer, it was always around his home and family. His grandmother was a back-up singer for film soundtracks and his more musically inclined cousin even worked on his own beats. Surprisingly, it was art that came to Hirushan naturally. “I didn’t like learning music much,” he thinks back to the keyboard classes his mother coerced him into taking. He preferred to play what he felt and heard and even learnt to play the guitar “all wrong” or rather complement his left handed playing.
Before he was fiddling around on his cousin’s software (which he accidentally broke the first time) Hirushan was an avid gamer. Ironically, it was playing videogames that directed Hirushan to where he is now. “I always loved movie music.” But it was the theme music of the game Metal Gear 2, by Harry Gregson-Williams, the composer behind the Shrek franchise and The Chronicles of Narnia that intrigued the youngster. “It blew my mind. I remember wondering how I could do something like that.” Always one to figure things out on his own, Hirushan knew he wanted to try his hand at creating this type of music as more than just a momentary fascination.
His parents didn’t discourage his new ‘hobby’ and even bought him a keyboard. Growing up as a kid of the 90s and early 2000s, Hirushan’s education and exposure in the subject was nonexistent until he began utilising the internet. In 2013 he got his first gig as a request by his cousin’s husband; composing the music for the stage production for the Agatha Christie murder mystery “And Then There Were None” presented by Cold Theatre 7. “I said ok but I had no clue about what I was doing.” This was also the first time anyone including family and friends would hear his work.
Despite not being able to read music and having only online videos to learn from, his work, though he now looks back and shudders at the low quality, was well received. Thereafter he provided the music for several other productions he tells us from his swivel chair. Behind him are a few comic book memorabilia with Batman making up the majority of it. Growing up as a fan of the DC universe, his own inspired themes for Man of Steel (2013) and Justice League (2017) were well received online, the latter which earned him more than a 100,000 views online.
But the occasional production wasn’t enough to satisfy Hirushan. In 2016, he took a bold risk and gave up his job to make music professionally. Backed by his hesitant yet supportive parents, the transition was and still is more psychologically taxing compared to his other more musical and technical challenges. “I knew I wouldn’t earn a dime,” but he made up his mind to find his space and make his way in the community. The constant doubts together with the experience of going up against more experienced composers to get his music picked for a placement and his lack of learning resources or musical experience made his dream especially challenging.
He is thankful to the internet for everything he’s learnt, from the online videos to finding other composers and publishers. He started writing for his current publisher back in 2018 which led to his very first movie trailer placement ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)’. While Hirushan considers himself lucky he isn’t quick to sugarcoat the process of getting to that spot. “You need to grow a thick skin,” he says, a constant reminder of the demotivation he is presented with despite people hearing his music being used in major films.
It also means being patient, networking and interacting with other composers online and hoping that someone will give your work a few minutes of their time. Not to mention the expensive software and equipment one has to invest in.
But his efforts have paid off. Custom pieces like the Nutcracker come with detailed briefs, while others give him only a few hours or days to come up with the end product. But the pressure doesn’t end once he shares it with his publisher. It’s only once the final trailer/ TV spot comes out that he knows whether his music made the cut. And it’s only if his music is selected that he even gets paid; a reason why many give up after a few years.
His last placement was in August. So what does a composer do when he doesn’t have work? He keeps making music. “When you do get a placement people are watching you, to see what you’ll do next.” That combined with his naturally ambitious curious mind means he is always busy, either making new music or listening to it and exploring genres he is unfamiliar with. With an industry that demands a new sound all the time and his lack of experience in the scene, Hirushan has to get creative. A requirement for “machinery sounds” for the album of Bumblebee took him to his mother’s kitchen. Little did he think that his composition that included the sound of a knife against a grill would make it onto the film’s album.
Having tasted success in such a short time still hasn’t solidified his place in the industry. In Hirushan’s eyes, it’s still a learning curve, a shaky, lonely route but one that he ironically feels at home in. Rather than scaring him off, the doubt and pressure have found him likeminded friends within the music community, it being an especially isolating experience being an Asian in the Hollywood music composition industry.
For more of Hirushan’s music find him on Twitter at @HirushanDM or instagram at @hirushandm