Composer Philippe Rombi was a guest of the World Soundtrack Awards in 2024. At a public masterclass, he talked about writing for drama for over an hour with a Belgian journalist.

This is essential listening for anyone interested in soundtracks.

Meanwhile, we can’t resist this extract from another interview with Cinezik, where he talks about writing electronic music.

Philippe Rombi on electronic music

Some people have studied synthesizers since childhood, they live with this sound, it’s a culture. So I’m very humble when I caress that palette. I go into it with respect, I work on it seriously. I prepared myself like a painter prepares a palette, I prepare a range of things ready to use.

Over the years, I became interested in electronics and started looking for sounds. I have a lot of respect for people who make electronic music, because there’s no such thing as bad music. To do it well, you just have to work at it, you need taste, an ear and a heart, in all styles of music. After that, of course, musical studies, classical training, learning to write for orchestra, all that takes years of study and work, which I’ve done, but electronic music also requires work.

Once I’d seen the images, I started arranging the sounds in my little laboratory. There’s a piece where there are maybe 12 synthetic string sounds that I mixed, equalized, tweaked, to give a deliberately false sound, not like a sample of real strings, I wanted a new sound. Like an alchemist, I put myself in my own bubble.

The real aim is to find the recipe that works with the film, and that’s the challenge I like every time, whether it’s a comedy, a drama or a thriller, it’s to find the right color… when people tell me on leaving the film that they can’t imagine the film with anything else, that’s the best reward!

More Rombi interviews here (in French).