A Brief Introduction to Founders of 19 Sound Will Ward & Jack Wyllie

The creative driving force behind 19 Sound is the cross pollination of music and sound design.

It comes from years of musical experimentation and sound manipulation by its founders, Will Ward & Jack Wyllie. Their ultimate aim is to bring music and sound together as one in order to discover new ways of creating and listening. 

Will started his sound career the traditional way. He was as a runner at Lipsync Post before joining Tamborine Productions as a Sound Editor in 2008. Learning the trade he quickly became aware of the potential opportunities ahead. Wanting greater creative freedom and more flexibility to allow his career to develop the inevitable soon happened. Will decided to take the leap and go freelance, naming the new venture 'Studio 19 Sound'. During the following few years, as well as working on commercial branded content, he turned his passion for music and DJing into a successful parallel career, with regular gigs, releases and performances across Europe and the USA. He also found the time to host a regular radio show on Resonance FM.

Will Ward

During this time Jack was working as a multi instrumentalist and composer. Along with co-founder Duncan Bellamy he writes, records and produces the music for his band Portico Quartet. They have released four studio albums and just finished a global tour to much critical acclaim. Along the way they have won various awards including a Mercury Music Prize nomination, as well being named jazz, world and blues albums of the year in both Time Out and Crack Magazine.

Jack’s musical reputation has enabled him to work on a number of collaborative projects with artists such has Joe Newman of Alt J, and Jamie Woon.

He is also member of the improvisation group Szun Waves and has released a series of experimental improvisations using saxophones and oscillators with artist and composer Adrian Corker. He is currently working on a cross-cultural collaborative release, creating music that spans both London and Dakar. In addition to all that he regularly hosts a show on Netil Radio playing ambient, electronic, jazz and experimental music.  Music is most certainly part of his DNA.

Jack Wyllie

In 2012 Jack and Will, along with Duncan Bellamy, formed the group Circle Traps. This quickly gained the attention of the music press. They were included in Warp Records “Bleep 100 tracks of the year” and released a string of EP’s on Lex Records, Five Easy Pieces and Opit Records, as well as playing at venues as varied as The Royal Festival Hall, Servants Jazz Quarters and Berghain in Berlin. 

Their first commercial film collaboration was back in 2015. Fable Films were producing a portrait piece about the Zimbabwean endurance adventurer Sean Conway for Canada Goose, directed by James Morgan. Jack was signed on to write the music and Will was asked to create the sound design and deliver the final mix. This new way of working together came very naturally to them given they had previously collaborated artistically, not to mention Will’s years of industry experience. They quickly realised the potential for growth and decided to push forward with “19 Sound”, simplifying the name previously given by Will and building on the existing foundations.  

They moved into their first studio, dedicated to audio post production, in Hackney Wick. Then in mid 2017, they took a great leap forward and moved into London’s creative centre, Soho! As part of a new kind of creative collaboration they decided to take the opportunity of cohabiting an office and studio with Fable Films. The same company who had given them their first opportunity to collaborate together were now enabling the growth even further. Whilst 19 Sound work autonomously they also collaborate and act as an in house facility for Fable Films. 

Since their arrival in Soho, a new member has joined  the team. Oscar Kugblenu. With over 21 years Audio post production experience under his belt, gained while working at established award winning facilities such as Wave and GCRS, Oscar was the perfect person to take 19 Sound to the next exciting level of its development. 

With Oscar on board, Will and Jack can fully focus on the creative side of the business, whilst Oscar has the freedom to focus on developing the companies overall business strategy & development, while also using his extensive project & financial management skills to make sure deliveries are met on time, and on budget, as well as managing  all requests, and dealing with rates, deals, and all those everyday financial queries that inevitably arise.

In the last 12 months alone the guys have worked on 3 narrative short film pieces (one of which is being screened at Cannes this year), worked on commercial projects for Adidas, Conde Nast, Fred Perry, Nike, Hennessey, BBC, Trainline, Audi, L’Oreal, Goodwood, Virgin, Worldpay, Hackett, 3 Mobile, Sainsburys, Smirnoff, Grants Whiskey to name a few.

If all that wasn’t enough they have also been busy working on their first VR project in collaboration with one of the industries biggest players. 

Working as a collaborative team, 19 Sound are able to approach every job as it comes. Here are some of the previous music and sound design projects that they have worked on. 

Scrapping the old way of running and managing audio sessions as well as the audio post facility itself. The small scale of the team allows them great agility to adapt to a wide variety of budgets, and schedules. This makes them particularly well suited to branded/digital content projects.

To find out more, and discover how 19 Sound could be the perfect audio partners for your project, email Oscar on oscar@19sound.com or visit the website www.19sound.com.