MRH: Something has happened in the past 20-30 years where we now accept and enjoy treated sound effects in music and scores as though they’re another group of instruments. Years ago, in rock, rap or electronica, for example, using record surface noise was a novel sound ingredient, but it’s gone far broader today, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on why what used to be experimental music or what used to be classified as music concrete are now acceptable ingredients in popular music?

EC: I think there are many aspects and ways to deal with this subject… All the libraries meant for composers are accessible to sound designers, and visa versa, and I think in many soundtracks we’re actually using both, and it’s very difficult to say what part of the score was sound design, and which one was score.

MRH: I’ve noticed that we’ve become more accepting of this marriage in any genre. If it’s a dramatic score, let’s say a simple character study, and you as a composer feel that you’d like to hear primal animal sounds, you can treat them in such a way that it’s like adding another layer of strings.

EC: Right, as part of the score. I do it many times. I used in the score for Tooth and Nail (2007) a lot of metallic sounds with animals – sound of mice, ax, metallic sounds that I recorded myself.

MRH: I wonder if we could talk a bit about surround sound. Since everything is at least in Dolby Digital 5.1, do you think of a specific sound scheme when your composing, or do you wait after you’ve written the themes and dramatic skeleton, and then start deciding how, if at all, to sonically broaden your score?

EC:  That’s an interesting question. I know some of my colleagues have been working in a studio with a 5.1 setup. In my studio I use stereo and a subwoofer. For me it doesn’t really matter… I don’t want to be bothered with technical aspects.

MRH: I guess the benefit is that what you’re writing has a kind of purity, and when you’re at the mixing stage with sounds playing against picture, you can then see whether or not it works, and you have the option of changing the directions of certain instruments and effects.

EC: The mixer and sound designer move things around anyways. I don’t spend extra time knowing it’s going to be changed or enhanced or mixed… I rather concentrate on delivering a high quality score than thinking about left or right or back [panning effects].