Matt Morton -Composer (APOLLO 11, The Last Steps, Dinosaur 13)

The Sound Architect Podcast (TSAP)

(TSAP S03E02)

Sam chats with composer, Matt Morton about his career so far and working on the incredible documentary APOLLO 11 that uses archival footage to look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilots Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.
"When Matt Morton first learned he’d been given the opportunity to score NEON's documentary Apollo 11, his first thoughts were, how can I put such a momentous event in our nation’s history into music, and how can I make my attempt unique? The score the composer created went on to win him a 2019Critics’ Choice Documentary Award. The documentary only uses archival footage from the 1969 mission to the moon, so Morton deliberately decided to only use sounds and instrumentation that existed during that era, but still set out to make the music sound futuristic. The synthesizer was born in the 1960s, which the composer utilized heavily, to create an avant-garde sound.
“I looked at my music as being able to play the role of bridging the gap between 2019 and 1969. Even though I’m using dated instruments, I think it comes off as a bridge to modern people because I’m using modern musical idioms to communicate with them,” says Matt.
A distinct symbolic element that Morton included in a cue was a chopped-up sonogram clip of his niece’s heartbeat, which he says is a reminder to our currently divided nation that we possess the ability to triumph, when we choose to unite.
Please let me know if you might be interested in speaking with Matt Morton about his unique approach to scoring the historic Apollo 11 mission.
Listen the soundtrack: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Ck9i5FzBL19lNke88zDYw"
Special thanks to Callum Tennick for editing.

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