my older brother goes to messiah college.
this is the last year i would be able to go
to csehy but i'm not going to be able to
make it this summer. i hope you do!

Glad you liked the Backwash soundtrack--I think I had a bit more of a head-start to work on the score (2 months) than you did, though I was working on two soundtracks at the time (not a smart thing to do--just ask the late Jerry Goldsmith). The other soundtracks on my album are all 1-3 week endeavors. I saw that your score was nominated--I'd love to give it a listen and hear what you put together. Do you have MP3s of your music?

Music training--if you don't count the few months of piano lessons eons ago: none. Not a moment of musical training at all--just countless years of listening to thousands of soundtracks (and, well, *only* soundtracks). I compose and (try to) play by ear and (being a math addict) I've taught myself enough practical music theory to get by, though there's much, much more I need to learn.

I used Cubasis SX for the music sequencing, and a variety of VSTs for the individual instruments. A majority of the instrumental VSTs are from GPO--even some of the brass. It's really all about how you mask, layer, and mix the poorer quality samples that are in GPO. I decided to ditch GPO's reverb filter for some better (though still free) reverb plugins. More demanding on the CPU, but a better (though more temperamental) and more realistic sound if mixed carefully. The percussion, some of the strings, some of the choir work, and the French Horn samples all come from E/W Symphonic Libraries ( http://www.soundsonline.com/ ). In fact, the French Horn samples I used to prominently play the Backwash Main Theme are available in one of E/W's demo libraries (nothing like getting an instrument from a $1000+ library for nothing but shipping & handling, eh?). E/W's StormDrum is amazing, and a cornerstone of any good percussion library, though mixing StormDrum with GPO is a colossal challenge sometimes.

Other than the aforementioned VSTs, I used random samplings from various SFTs, some softsynths, and even just WAV files I dropped into the mix. I used GPO alone for quite a while, but I learned long ago that you can't rely upon a single library, as convenient as it may be. And there's lots of free stuff out there too.

Hope that (overly long diatribe) answered your question(s). Do send your music my way--I love to hear work from fellow GPO users.