Madeleine Cocolas
Artist Interview. August 14, 2021.
Madeleine Cocolas is a post-classical ambient sound artist and composer based in Meanjin. She's released three full length albums, composed for film & TV and has also worked as a music supervisor on Emmy nominated shows such as Please Like Me and Dance Academy.
She has spent extensive time overseas in the industry, collaborating with artists, curators, dance choreographers and designers.
Ambient music
I think slower music is a style that has always resonated with me. I love lots of different music and of course not all of it is slow, but music that slowly expands and contracts really attracts me.
I grew up on a steady diet of synth music (think: Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michelle Jarre) and also loved Philip Glass from when I was a kid, and these styles of music sometimes require some level of patience when listening.
Over the years I have had a growing interest in ambient and slower format music and I am interested in the way people hear and listen to music differently. For example, some people view ambient music and sounds as ‘background’ music, which is totally fine (I don’t believe there is any correct way to consume sound), but I am increasingly interested in learning how to listen more deeply and I think that is translating into the music I write and listen to.
Working in music abroad
Personally speaking, my time overseas is just so hard to put into words. I made some incredible friends and I had so many key life moments occur in Seattle (getting married and having our first baby) and also NYC (having our second baby).
From a professional perspective it was just as important. When I moved to Seattle, I was leaving my music supervision job which was really hard to do, and I started from scratch in terms of ‘what am I going to do with myself’. Although I’d been writing music for years, I’d never considered it to be a serious pursuit of mine, so it was a huge transition mentally and professionally when I decided to put my head down and really start building a career in composition.
By the time I moved to NYC I was comfortable saying “I’m a composer”, which now doesn’t sound like a big deal, but being able to overcome imposter syndrome and being comfortable with myself felt like a huge achievement. Also in NYC, you can say something like “I’m a composer” and it’s just not a big deal as there are so many creative people there and careers in creative industries are openly accepted.
Meanjin/Brisbane music scene
I was part of the Brisbane music scene in the late 90’s through to the late 2000’s and honestly, it was really thriving!! I was in a bunch of indie and funk bands as a bassist and keyboardist, and the valley was a hub of activity.
Lots of weekends were spent seeing bands or playing at The Zoo, The Troubadour and Rics. Since I’ve come back I have different musical interests, so it’s hard to do a strict comparison, but it looks like some amazing new venues have opened up and I’ve absolutely loved immersing myself in Brisbane’s more experimental music scene.
Dots+Loops always put on incredible shows, as do Made Now Music and Oscilloscape. It seems like there are a ton of incredible musicians in Brisbane with a fantastic DIY ethos which is brilliant and absolutely necessary.
Music supervision for film and TV
Working as a music supervisor in Melbourne was an amazing job. It was a mixture of perseverance and good luck that helped me break into that industry. I feel like people really downplay how much luck has to do with things, but I like to be very open about it. I was very lucky.
Before working in that job, I was working in the legal industry (ages ago I was a lawyer), so I had a good understanding of contracts and license agreements which is an important part of the job, and I also had a pretty strong background in music, having played in a bunch of bands in Brisbane and Melbourne and also having a Masters of Music Composition by that point.
I actually didn’t know what a music supervisor was until I stumbled across the company Level Two Music in a google search and saw that they negotiated putting music into TV shows and films and I just thought, wow I really need to try to get in on that! I wrote to them telling them how much I was interested in working for them, and it took about 2 years of me occasionally checking in on them for a role to pop up, which is where the perseverance comes into it!
I took that opportunity with both hands and ran with it so that before too long I was music supervising my own shows, two of which (Dance Academy & Please Like Me) ended up being nominated for international Emmy’s which is an incredible achievement for everyone who worked on them.
Writing for theatrical performance
I absolutely LOVE working with choreographers! I think the connection between music and dance is immensely powerful and I am always in awe of dancers. The process for writing music for dance performances depends on how the choreographer likes to work.
I have worked with some choreographers who have already created the dance movements and then I try to fit music over the top of that (they may have been using temp music), and I have also worked with a choreographer where we were progressing the work together, so that I would send her bits of music and she would send me bits of dance, and we really collaborated to create a vision together rather than either one of us necessarily taking the lead. Some choreographers also prefer to have the score already finished so that they can use that as a template for their piece. The process can be very fluid.