Composer
Website: matthewfeder.com
Most recent: Asteroid
For composer Matthew Feder, his lifelong love for music and playing guitar eventually led him to the world of film scoring, which presented a unique challenge that he describes as “a puzzle to crack” that he’s pursued ever since. Most recently, he co-composed the immersive short Asteroid, which marks the fifth collaboration between co-composer Chris Beck and director Doug Liman and the third for Feder, who worked on Road House and The Instigators prior.
For Asteroid, he and Beck arrived at the musical tone through trial and error. “We first tried a futuristic, sci-fi, spacey kind of approach, and it was cool but made the characters feel a little too polished,” Feder says. “It didn’t fit, because the characters are a ragtag group of strangers who are rough around the edges. So we used electric guitar to symbolize that and infuse the score with a kind of rebellious DNA. It was used throughout the whole film, and there are moments it’s not recognizable as a guitar.”
Feder said he enjoys sharing creative control and combining his sensibilities with another’s in the co-writing process, and points to the challenge of co-composing the docuseries Arnold with Beck as a project that informed his growth as a musician. “We wrote over three hours of music for it, and I learned a lot from that project about always looking for ways to make the music more cohesive and think about the larger story.”
For those starting out, Feder says fledgling composers should seek out ways to finesse their craft and learn to trust their instincts. “It applies in any field: your instinct is what defines you as an artist, and the sooner you can hone that, trust it, and move forward with it without complicating your music too much—that’s how you’ll find your way,” he says. “And less is more. A lot of aspiring composers tend to overwrite.”
