Welcome to the next part of this series.
All previous parts are available HERE.
As usual, the audio file and score sheet are attached at the bottom of the page.
We're still in the first cue of the score, right after the tension build-up entering into the action sequence. The sequence without music is available here:
Depending on where your musical roots are, you might have stumbled across these three types of chords quite early on. Of course, they are most prominently used in Jazz music but depending on genre and era they are or were very present in orchestral scoring as well.
In the previous parts of this series, I was talking about specific locations in the world where you can record orchestras and my personal quality ranking of these.
In this part, I will not mention any specific recording services and locations as all the experiences I'm going to talk about in this part are experiences I wouldn't want to repeat and I don't want to ups...
2020-07-22 08:13:50 +0000 UTC View PostProbably one of my biggest revelations when learning to compose was understanding a concept that I at that time already had heard before and read about as well. But I couldn't really grasp the impact this simple yet strikingly important concept has on music before.
It is the concept of the scale-chord relationship.
In dry music theory it means that every chord implies a (set of) scale(s) and every scale implies a (set of) chord(s). But it is so much more than this and actually und...
2020-07-20 06:51:01 +0000 UTC View PostTrills and tremolos on string instruments can create fantastic shimmery effects or create a feeling of tension and unease. Both are of course part of the most fundamental playing techniques for these instruments and every string sample library nowadays includes them.
However, when making the transition to real players there is a fundamental problem that is often overlooked by inexperienced orchestrators and composers:
It can become physically impossible to execute these playing te...
2020-07-17 08:02:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe job of being an orchestrator for media music has changed fundamentally over the last decades.
While the job until the early 2000s was mainly blowing up handwritten sketches to full score or in some cases do some additional arrangement work, the overwhelming part of the job today is to transfer more or less complete DAW sessions to notation.
In a sense the job has reverted from blowing up sketches to reducing down multi layered and produced sessions.
Orchestration n...
2020-07-15 08:02:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Welcome to this new composition walkthrough series! As the poll I did a few months back was split between Hero and Gazing at the Night Sky, I decided to go for both. Also, I feel it might losen up things a bit more to alternate between two different pieces instead of plowing through Hero in probably no less than 20 parts.
If you have been around for a while, you will most likely have heard this piece already. I had the pleasure to record this live in February with the Staatskapelle Fran...
2020-07-13 07:31:18 +0000 UTC View PostThe media world can be an incredibly rough and unfriendly business. The competition is fierce and hire and fire mentality is extremely common. For people coming new into this world, it can be quite brutal and particularly when you are young and inexperienced (and unfortunately still true: female) you may often be target for rather abusive behavior.
This unfortunately is not only the case for composers but rather for every department. And while a lot of people in the industry are very de...
2020-07-09 19:29:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the next Multitrack Session for download from my score for Pastry Party. In case you missed it, I already spoke extensively about the recording situation and philosophy of this score in my last post about it.
This is the entire sixth take of this cue without any edits. As usual, the score sheet as PDF as well as the MIDI file are attached to the post at the bottom.
Again it is worth listeni...
2020-07-08 07:38:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe last ten parts of this series we spent discussing voicings from a purely theoretical standpoint that excluded writing these voicings for actual (combinations of) instruments in an orchestral context. However, this of course is an extremely important part of whether a voicing will sound good or not.
I tried to build this series by sequentially adding parameters that have an influence on the quality of a voicing. With taking orchestration into consideration the amount of new parameter...
2020-07-06 08:04:57 +0000 UTC View PostOne of my personal pet peeves are Youtube videos that are titled something like "8 steps to write like John Williams" or "10 Top Orchestration Tips" etc. Unfortunately, this approach has even spread towards more serious educational online outlets that claim to be crash courses in film scoring etc.
In fact, I cannot even count how many times in my own professional career I got emails asking something like "What are the most important orchestration rules?".
Of course this is not a p...
2020-07-03 07:59:50 +0000 UTC View Post
Welcome to the next part of this series. Without further ado, let's dive right into where we left off last time. As always, the recording and score sheet of the cue is attached at the bottom of this post, the entire film with music can be watched above and here is the scene we're talking about without music and with TC to give some orientation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGX-aUMquBA
<... 2020-07-01 07:41:44 +0000 UTC View PostWith June coming to an end, it is time again to look back at the past month as well as give an outlook on what is going to come in the next few weeks.
At least in the part of the world where I live things are slowly coming back to normality. Concert venues and live events are still in Corona mode but at least recording sessions even with full line-up are possible again in many countries of Europe.
You might remember that a poll about the "advancedness" of the content on here turne...
2020-06-30 08:13:31 +0000 UTC View PostIf you have been briefly following the composer's community on the internet over the last few weeks, you will have heard about the Westworld Scoring Competition that Spitfire Audio started. If not: a scene from the series Westworld was chosen to be scored with hardly any limitation with the first prize being the entire catalogue of Spitfire Audio's products worth more than US$20,000.
Last weekend the winner out of supposedly 11,000 contestants was announced and it seemed like at least t...
2020-06-29 07:20:11 +0000 UTC View Post
After my recent post about work process streamlining I got a few comments and messages asking about my personal work setup so I thought it might be a good idea to cover this in a dedicated post.
This place is a constant work in progress so it might look very different already in a few months but for now this is how it looks like.
When setting up a work environment, it is of course essential to consider your personal work profile and optimize accordingly. My personal work pro...
2020-06-26 07:48:47 +0000 UTC View PostIn the last two parts of this tutorial we were looking at different ways how to make the dominant side of a V-I cadence musically more interesting employing several strategies to substitute or harmonically enrich the dominant chord. In this part however, we're going to have a look at what ways there are to make the resolving side of this progression musically more interesting.
We have to differentiate between two fundamental approaches here. The first strategy would be to avoid going to...
2020-06-24 08:11:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's another track by one of you guys that I reviewed this month. Dave Gottlieb sent over a wonderful track that shows a lot of expertise and refined craftmanship. It was great fun having a look at that piece and diving deeper into it. Dave was kind enough to allow me to make the exchange that I had with him public. The MIDI file for the track can be downloaded at the bottom of the post:
Dave wrote:
I wrote "Sunflare" going for a traditional-sounding adventure-ish feel,... 2020-06-22 07:47:21 +0000 UTC View Post
For quite a few people it is unclear what is the difference between staccato and spiccato on string instruments. Even some sample developers aren't getting this right naming spiccato samples "staccato" and vice versa.
Both playing techniques describe short notes but have a fundamental difference in how they are created and also how they can be executed.
The main difference is the distinction between "on-the-string" bowings and "off-the-string" bowings.
With a staccat...
2020-06-19 08:02:57 +0000 UTC View PostIn a previous parts of this series, I was writing about about the intervallic approach to chord voicings, structuring them based on the consonance or dissonance degree of the inherent intervals. Through that strategy you can control the impression and also emotional impact of a chord quite specifically and I'd like to dive a bit deeper into this in this part.
I need to write a little longer exposition into this topic than I usually do but I feel that here it definitely is appropri...
2020-06-17 07:39:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the next Multitrack Session of my Score for Pastry Party. The score sheet and Midi File for this track are attached at the bottom of the post. The multitrack session is the unedited penultimate take of this track that we made.
As I mentioned already several times, I'm a big fan of musicians playing together as much as possible rather than stemming it down. One of the reasons for this is that every musician will find their role in the music way more easily if there is proper conte...
2020-06-15 07:52:43 +0000 UTC View PostWorking in a competetive creative field means to work as efficient as possible.
When budgets are tight and competition is fierce you need to find ways to make your working processes as streamlined as possible in order to still generate some profit from such projects.
But of course even more important are streamlined working processes on projects that have a tight deadline.
In any case, you should put a lot of focus on making things more efficient. Interestingly I see e...
2020-06-12 07:42:59 +0000 UTC View PostRecording orchestras in Eastern European countries has become an increasingly popular alternative in recent years to the "usual" recording locations. In fact, the exodus of recording in LA (and London) has a lot to do with productions recording more in such locations while also shooting movies has increasingly moved to these countries (with Prague being particularly popular).
The main reason - of course - is the financial benefit as recording in these countries usually comes at a fracti...
2020-06-10 08:00:37 +0000 UTC View Post
In the following parts of this series I'm gonna walk you through the scoring of the short film and its individual cues, trying to explain my reasoning of musical as well as scenic choices.
The first cue "M1 - Shoot Him!" opens the movie and lasts for about two minutes.
Here's a version of that scene without music and a visual TC for better orientation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGX-aUMquBA<...
2020-06-08 07:54:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe sound and esthetics of current film and game music has led to a common misconception with inexperienced composers and orchestrators about what is possible to expect when working with acoustic instruments. Particularly the bass register is often overestimated and leads to orchestration decisions that are rather counter productive.
Hearing low booms and sub bass punches paired with acoustical substantial sustaining low drones in scores often leads to the belief that the sources of the...
2020-06-05 08:08:43 +0000 UTC View PostIn the last part of this tutorial, I deliberately left out a concept that is commonly known as tritone substitution of dominants. Many people have a general understading of how to use it but the musical background on this usually is a little bit foggy. Also, the application of this concept in a more "film musical" context seems tricky, so I'll try to clear up a few things here.
After the vote about how advanc...
2020-06-03 07:33:52 +0000 UTC View Post
As you might know, the higher tiers of my Patreon come with a monthly written feedback on one of your pieces.
This month, Benjamin Goldman was so kind to allow me to share his piece and the dialogue we had about it.
You can download the MIDI and mp3 file for the track below.
Here's my feedback for it:
First of all: congratulations! This is a very well crafted piece and you captured the style very well. I like your use of colors which show a lot o...
2020-06-01 08:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostAgain, I think the first and most important thing this month is that I'm hoping that you and your loved ones are all safe and healthy.
As we all were anticipating when all this started, the creative industry (among many other branches) took a big hit worldwide over the last months. I keep reading more stories about artists and musicians who really lost most of their yearly income for 2020 and struggle quite a bit to make ends meet.
On the positive side, at least in big parts of Eu...
2020-05-31 08:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostAs mentioned in my Wrap-Up, I feel there is a lot of online education available for beginners, however there is in my opinion a gap of more advanced content for musicians and composers who already know the basics and want to sharpen their skillset where I personally feel this Patreon page fits in. However, I'd like to know your opinion on how advanced the content here should be so please cast your vote so I can provide better content in the future:
2020-05-31 08:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostIn the last parts we were already dissolving the common concept of stacking thirds in order to get a chord. In the last part we were having a look at intervals larger than a third so it seems consequent to look at intervals smaller than a third, which, effectively are only minor and major seconds.
This is where we crossover to a musical device called "cluster", which essentially are a block of several notes that are a minor or major second apart from each other played simultaneously. Ho...
2020-05-29 07:43:18 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm happy to announce that my score for Pastry Party now also made it to all your favourite streaming platforms:
https://album.link/qdqTtNDkM2qVm
Give it a listen!
2020-05-28 09:00:42 +0000 UTC View Post