Robin Hoffmann

Scoring Session 101 - Part 3: Click Tracks

One of the most important factors to make a sure a scoring session runs smoothly is a proper preparation of click tracks. These are usually necessary to sync up the music with the images that you are scoring and also allow things like layering musicians on top of each other.

The most common way these days to generate click tracks on a session is to let the recording software (in most cases Protools) handle that. This means that the Protools Session (or Project) that you record your musi...

1st ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION - Line-Up Poll

If you have been following this Patreon closely, you might have read about that idea that I had a while back about holding regular dedicated recording sessions that allow us to try out certain things and most importantly will on each session give a couple of you guys the possibility to record some of your music.

The recent poll I did about possible financing models for this was quite inconclusive so I might be saving these options for later. 

I mentioned already that the most...

1st ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION

I'm very excited to announce the very first ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION for this Patreon Page. I don't think that anything like this already exists in this form so I'm even more excited to be launching this format. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, below are all the questions you might have and their respective answers:

What is an ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION?

From now on, my goal is to hold regular professional recording session...

Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.7 - M1 (Part 5) & M2 (Part 1)

Welcome to the final part of the composition walkthrough for M1. All other parts of thiis walkthrough are available here. 

Today we're going to finish M1 and will start with M2.

As usual, the entire track plus score sheet is attached at the bottom of this post. The movie without music is available here:

2020-09-07 08:09:04 +0000 UTC View Post

De-Emphasizing with Music

It is well known that music can effectively highlight things in a movie by placing a hit-point on it which is effectively syncing up a musical accent with an action or movement or any other important moment in the movie.

The lesser known ability of music however is that it can also consciously de-emphasize which in some cases is just as important as highlighting something.

The ability to downplay something can help in a scenic microcosmos but also help in larger story arcs.

...

Comparing Scoring Approaches Pt. 1 (John Powell & John Williams)

Since becoming interested in film scoring, I was always asking myself the question how different composers would have scored the same movie. There are a few rare instances of rejected scores being released or at least floating around online that give us a bit of an idea how drastically different approaches could be. For instance here is a rejected clip from Air Force One by Randy Newman who got replaced by Jer...

August 2020 Wrap-Up

I started a poll a few days ago and it created quite a bit of discussion. I received several private messages and phone calls from you guys as well as a few comments under the poll itself. Thanks for all your valuable input on that topic. In case you haven't voted yet, please go ahead and let me know what you think about that topic.

In general, it is pretty clear that this will be a tricky undertaki...

Gazing at the Night Sky - Composition Walkthrough Pt.3 - Bars 21 - 36

After the first 20 bars, we enter the first two statements of the main theme for this piece. I spoke in great detail about the thematic idea in previous parts of this walkthrough, so I'm going to focus more on the orchestral translation of it in this part.

As always we will use score reductions (including the most essential information). The score sheet is...

Let's Have an Orchestra Session!

One thing that I was thinking about a lot recently was that it would be awesome to have (regular) dedicated orchestra sessions for this Patreon page. Let's imagine, we would have a recording session twice or three times a year and what would be possible by doing that:

1. I could write dedicated pieces for this page, taking you all the way from inception to mixing as there wouldn't be any third party rights involved that prevented me from doing something like this. So the whole process w...

Red Herrings and Musical Jump Scares

The genres of horror and thriller movies are a quite unique cosmos when it comes to filmic devices but also regarding their scoring approaches.

They are one of the very few situations where techniques and devices usually only found in contemporary composition are tolerated without any question by a general audience. The goal to create discomfort and set our body into a state of tension and adrenalin rush is desired and a big reason why fans of this genre enjoy it.

Interestingly, t...

Vertical and Horizontal Musical Development

One of the most essential things when writing music is to create a dramaturgy. This means to create some sort of development of your musical ideas, ideally leading to a sort of climax at one point.

This can be compared to storytelling where you create an exposition (in musical terms: introduce your idea/theme etc.)  and build up your tension towards a conclusion or reveal or climax and often building down from there towards an end.

Of course, there are certain musical genres ...

One Minute Hero - My Mix Attempt

Yesterday, I posted the multitrack session for my track ONE MINUTE HERO which I recorded about five years ago in Prague.

I mentioned that this is a pretty challenging track to mix as it was recorded in a small space but would rather be a piece to record in a larger space. Getting it acoustically "to size" in the mix is actually a quite challening undertaking as simply slapping reverb on it will not cut it as many mic signals have early reflections that give away the room size.

Tod...

One Minute Hero - Action Piece - Multitrack & Midi

It's time to make things a little more demanding. Over the last couple of months I posted several multitrack sessions from my score for Pastry Party. As you might have noticed,the music was quite transparent and in spite of the added rhythm group, it is quite easy to get a decent sounding mix out of the tracks, also because the room very nicely supports the general feeling of that score.

However, I had some time left at the end of this session and brought a small fun piece to not let th...

Scoring Session 101 - Part 2: Session Preparations

When I had my first professional recording session with an orchestra at the age of 21, I remember being so nervous that I didn't really sleep for several days. The pressure of realizing that no matter what goes wrong, I was the only person to blame for was really incredibly high.

Fortunately all went reasonably well and with more experience in doing something like this the pressure level really falls to a point where enjoyment of a session exceeds the sheer terror by far. But one of the...

Orchestral Voicings Part 13: What is Balancing?

It is a life long study to develop a feeling and experience how orchestral instruments balance with each other. Especially when you are writing voicings it is essential to be able to balance these out so that there is no accidental element that sticks out or important tone that gets lostin the voicing.

The big problem with literature on orchestration and instrumentation is that they usually focus a lot on explaining the instruments and their possible playing techniques etc. but there ha...

Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.6 - M1 (Part 4)

Welcome to the next part of this walkthrough. All the previous parts of this series are available here. We're getting near the end for this first cue with this part.

As usual, the entire track plus score sheet is attached at the bottom of this post. The scene without music is available here:

https:...

Make No Excuses (in spite of Dunning-Kruger)

Being insecure and self critical about one's own work is part of most artist's life. Especially when you are rather inexperienced you might feel like your work might not be up to professional standards.

Probably every composer remembers the feeling they had when you are just starting out to  set foot into the world of writing music and realizing that you really know nothing at all.

Looking back at my own musical development, I was perfectly following the 2020-08-14 07:08:11 +0000 UTC View Post

Symmetric Scales (feat. Debussy and Messiaen)

Next to the more common diatonic scales there exists a type of scales that is known as symmetric scales or modes of limited transposition.

In many cases both terms mean the same thing but focus on different properties of these scales.

Such a scale is being constructed by dividing the octave into groups of repeating intervallic patterns.

For instance dividing an octave into 6 whole tone steps such as C, D, E, F#, G#, A#, C would be considered as symmertric scale.

Contra...

Gazing at the Night Sky - Composition Walkthrough Pt.2 - Bars 1 - 20

After talking about the thematic material and the concept of this piece in the last part, let's dive right into the piece itself today. As usual we're working with reductions here, the score sheet itself is attached at the bottom of the post.

Bars 1-9

2020-08-10 06:10:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Ambition vs. Reality When Writing Music for Media

Recently, John Williams gave an interview for the New Yorker and among many other things he hasn't worded like this before he also said:

"[...]What I can tell you is that these genuine, simple tunes are the hardest things to uncover, for any composer. When Elgar or Beethoven finally finds one—I hope you’ll pardon me if it sounds like Iâ€...

2020-08-07 07:56:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Orchestral Voicings Part 12: Line-Up Considerations

The size of the ensemble that we're writing for has an influence on how we voice chords and what kind of voicings work best. This is not only depending on how many different colors are available but also on how many individual players of similar color are present.

In the last post of this tutorial series I already mentioned that with smaller line-ups, it might become necessary to "borrow"...

Pastry Party - Boss Battle - Multitrack and MIDI Download

Here's the next Multitrack Session for my score for Pastry Party. As a thank you, I made this one also available for the $5 patrons.

As usual, score sheet as PDF as well as Midi file are attached below.

The patrons in the higher tiers already know the basic setup of this score from the Multitracks I already posted. For everybody else here's a brief rundown:

I recorded this one with an orchestra plus additional small band consisting of Drums, Percussion, Upright Bass, Piano, ...

July 2020 Wrap-Up

Welcome to another wrap-up where we look at the past month and what is about to come in the future.

This whole year has been very weird for all of us so thank you so much for your continuous support. I really appreciate that!

Over the last weeks I have been working on the score for a short film that I can't share too much about yet. However, I will cover the work on it in the near future here.

The most exciting thing for me however is that I will FINALLY be attending a scori...

Scoring Session 101 - Part 1: Recording Order

Recording with a real orchestra has some pitfalls that you should be prepared for. Especially when you're not having a lot of experience leading a recording session things can become problematic and stressful quite quickly.

You should be aware that there also is a quite significant difference between giving some feedback on your music in a shared session over remote connection and leading a complete individual session on your own.

If you're doing this the first time, I would stron...

The Advantages of Writing Score Sheets over DAW Production

If you have been following me for a while, you might know that my entire work flow almost always starts with writing a score sheet. 

When I started out writing music for orchestra, sample libraries were incredibly expensive and computers way too weak to run those libraries properly, at least when you were a student back in school as I was. So producing orchestral music in a DAW was no real option for me as the technical possibilities that were available to me back then were simply ...