Robin Hoffmann

Reharmonisation Part 1: Introduction and "Film Music Harmony"

I love musical harmony. Ever since I got really fascinated by music, I remember that I always was especially moved by certain harmonic constellations or choices in music. Songs that had a "non standard" chord progression quickly became my favourites.

This was also one of the reasons why it took me quite a while to appreciate classical music. I felt that it often was harmonically just too boring and permanent changes between tonic and dominant as heard in many overplayed works of the cla...

Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.13 - M4

Over the last couple of months, I have been asked a lot what the content on my Patreon is like and whether I could provide a "sample" of it.

As this cue is relatively short and can be covered in one post alone, I figured this would be the ideal way to showcase what these "Composition Walkthroughs" are like, so this one is publically accessible.

For the people who don't have access to all the other parts of this series, we're currently digging our way through the score for the shor...

What's the Big Deal With the Lips of Brass Players?

One of the first and most important things one (hopefully) learns as orchestrator is to avoid writing too many loud, high and long passages on brass instruments. This is especially relevant in scoring sessions as you basically only have a certain amount of "brass power" before the lips of the players will get tired and their playing quality will decrease or they will need to quit playing all together.

A few years ago, I arrived early at the scoring stage to deliver score sheets and pro ...

Musical Contrasts and Transitions

A few weeks ago, I wrote a lengthy article about one fundamental concept of music which is Tension and Resolution which applies in music from the smallest units to the largest forms.

A similarly important concept is the duality between musical contrasts and transitions. Interestingly, both dualities mentioned above are often overlooked by learning composers and orchestrators. The problem in general when you'r...

Poll: One Year on Patreon - What do you like most?

A few days ago, this Patreon page had its first birthday. When I started this whole thing a year ago, it was merely an experiment. I wouldn't have imagined how much it would grow in just one year and also how much content it already accumulated. Basically, I try to provide content on here, that I would have liked to have access to when I was starting out with my composing career.

Two weeks ago, I launched the first composition screencast which was extremely well received at least b...

Composition Screencast - Returning Home - Part 2

After the composition screencast was so well received by all of you, we'll do part two straight away this week. We will return to alternating between this and other content next week.

As I mentioned already, I will incorporate the suggestions that you had in future videos. This one was already recorded a few days ago so there's non of that in yet.

How Attractive is it for a Composer to Write Music for Media

When I first got fascinated by film music in the early 90s, it was a time when commercial film music was considerably different than today. Most scores for big movies were orchestral and were generally written with the attitude of writing compelling music that could often also stand on its own. To me, a big part of the fascination between the marriage of film and music came from the fact that two distinctively well crafted elements came together in a congenial way and were able to move me in ...

About the Live Composing Screencasts...

The positive comments about my live composing screencast from Monday are overwhelming and I'm really happy that this seems to resonate with many of you guys so thanks so much for the wonderful feedback, I really appreciate that.

I got many suggestions on what I could improve on them of which I find all very constructive and will incoporate them in the future. By now I have progressed quite a bit already with the piece and recorded alot of footage already so don't expect these changes to...

Cinematic Studio Strings - Why It's In My Template

With most of you people voting for some occasional sample reviews on this page and only one person really opposing, I decided to start off this irregular series with the quite well known Cinematic Studio Strings.

You can find information about the background of the maker and the library itself on the usual outlets so I'll save you from that and get straight to the point.

Cinematic Studio Strings (CS...

Composition Screencast - Returning Home - Part 1

I have been announcing it for quite some time now that I eventually wanted to do some videos of me talking you through my composition process. Until now however, either a rigid deadline or rights issues didn't make it possible to do so. However, towards the end of the year 2020 I found some time to start another composition that I had laying around for quite some time already  and always wanted to transform into a proper piece.

So here's the first composition screencast. I'll try a...

December 2020 - Wrap Up

Let me start by wishing you all a healthy, happy and productive 2021! For many people, last year has been a real struggle and I hope that things will become better in the months to come.

About a year ago, I launched this Patreon site, more as an experiment to see what would happen, but honestly I was completely blown away by the reaction. Seeing so many people joining here, including some colleagues who I admire for their own work is really mindblowing. So let me once again say a big th...

Maturing Voice as a Composer

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that in my own personal musical history, there are parts of me that wish that I would have gone to music university a little later in my life and not already at 20 years old as I actually did. I feel that some more personal and musical maturity would have helped me to take more away from this. But then again, what does it actually mean to "mature" as a composer?

This of course is an incredibly personal question and I only can speak from my own ex...

Only Three Days Left to Apply - 1st Orchestra Discovery Session

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas time. 

I just wanted to remind you that the application deadline for the 1st Orchestra Discovery Session where you get the chance to record your music with a woodwind quintet ends in three days. So if you still want to be included, you should hurry and follow the link above.

Robin

Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.12 - M3 (Part 3)

Welcome to the last part of this composition walkthrough for the cue M3. The previous parts of this series are available here.

As I will be going on a few days of Christmas break before returning with new posts, I decided to make this one available for all Patrons (also to give a little teaser of the higher tier contents for the people who aren't sure about it yet).

In this pa...

Berlin Symphonic Strings - Test Run

As people seem to have enjoyed my last sample test run, here's another one.

Yesterday, Orchestral Tools released their "Berlin Symphonic Strings" which is a sample set of a considerably larger ensemble than their current "Berlin Strings". As a lot of my template is based on Orchestral Tools samples and they offered a fair crossgrade discount for existing Berlin Strings owners, I didn't hesitate much. Also, it seemed to fill in some gaps that I saw with my current template.

Today, ...

Scoring Session 101 - Part 6: Recording 2

One of the most important things when recording real musicians is to be efficient and precise when communicating with them.  Having a clear vision of how things should sound is great but if you are unable to communicate this to them, it's not going to be a particularly pleasing end result.

It of course helps to have a knowledge about orchestration and instrument's specifics as the musicians will most likely have more respect if they realize that there is someone who knows what they...

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Only 2 Weeks Left

Just as a little service post, there are only 2 weeks left to apply for the First Orchestra Discovery Session 

If you want to have your music recorded with real musicians for no additional fee, you should check it out. Follow the link above to learn more about it!

Three Christmas Themes - Score Sheets, Dorico Files & Midi

Last year, when the world was still normal, I spent some time towards the end of the year to work on three Christmas pieces. The purpose for that was that I wanted to try a few new things in my Mockup template and I had these themes stored away for quite some time already, so I finally wanted to give them a proper treatment.

This also fell together with some free time that I had in the last few weeks of 2019 where I also wanted to dive deeper into mastering Dorico which just a few weeks...

How I Made a Sustainable Income from Writing Music

I actually was going to write an article about another topic today but then stumbled across a discussion on the internet where someone who according to himself works for more than 30 years in the industry gave what you would call an anti-pep-talk to up and coming composers.

In a nutshell according to him, success in the industry is exclusively based on luck and all available jobs and positions are taken already so don't waste your time trying to start a career in the business. He also s...

The Contrabass Lowest Register and Its Limitations

Modern film (music) loves low frequencies. With the advent of certain standards and capabilities to reproduce these frequencies in the cinema you hardly have an action movie where the subwoofers are not used excessively. One could even say that we live in an "age of bass" which can of course also be observed in main stream music and clubs. There are several physiological reasons for that which we will talk about in another article but for today, I want to focus a bit on the implications this ...

Tension and Resolution (feat. Gustav Mahler)

One if not even the most fundamental principles of western (tonal) music is the duality between tension and resolution. This principle can be observed within smallest musical entities like motifs or chord progressions up to the largest extents of musical works like hour long operas and symphonies.

Music that doesn't follow this basic structural duality can quickly either feel disorienting or plain boring. But this whole concept goes much deeper and even has a philosophical side to it th...

John Williams - Home Alone - "House Theme" - In Depth Analysis

Welcome to the first part of Score Analysis where we take apart small sections of famous film scores and have an in depth look at them.

Today, we start according to season with the score for Home Alone. Personally, this score has been incredibly influential for me and I remember as a kid sitting in front of the TV and recording the score cues on casette tape when the movie was on.

From my earliest attempts at writing music to this date I have been particularly fascinated by what I...

"Treading Water" Between Hitpoints

Scoring a visual very often means to sync up the music with so called "hit points" - moments where music and a visual/acoustic event from the scene fall together. 

One quite common and rather useful way to work on such a musical cue is to lay out the structure and sketch the important hit points first. Afterwards you would write the musical material that connects these hit points.

There is however a danger in this procedure that can be very often seen and heard with inexperie...

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Now Open for Application

As I announced a few months ago, I want to make this Patreon page not just a one-directional platform with me throwing all sorts of stuff at you but want to make this into a more "immersive" community.

The long term goal is to be able to hold regular orchestra sessions from the money this page generates and always invite a handful of you guys along to record their own music.

I explain the entire idea in more detail 2020-12-02 09:06:44 +0000 UTC View Post

November 2020 - Wrap Up

It is time again for a monthly summary and looking into the near future for this Patreon site. I hope you're all well and healthy. At first of course, thank you for your ongoing support, I really appreciate it. Also, welcome to the few new patrons from this month!

As the past few months have already shown, it seems like the growth of this Patreon has stopped. However, I didn't do much to spread the word about it beyond my own social media channels and I haven't seen the advert for my pa...

Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.11 - M3 (Part 2)

Welcome to the next part of this composition walkthrough. The previous parts of this series are available here.

In this part we will cover the next section of the Cue M3 - Car Chase.

As usual, we will work with score reductions. Today it is a little less "condensed" as usual as there is just so much going on in that section. The full score, Midi and Audio File of the entire cu...

New Brass Library - Test Run

For the people of you who are interested in sample tech you might know that I use Berlin Brass as my main library for brass with a bit of support from JXL Brass and Cinematic Studio Brass. However, yesterday, I got a new brass library that I had on the radar for a while but never really had a closer look into as the demos were not really that representative. I took the plunge nevertheless. 

I have to admit, it has been a while since I have been impressed that much by a sample libra...

The Composer's Solitude

Being a composer for media is a dream job for many aspiring young musicians. The prospect of writing music to visuals, potentially being able to work with live musicians and creatively expressing oneself through music and even being paid for that seems very tempting. 

As I mentioned several times already, it is hard to express the feeling that you have when you stand in front of 90 musicians who bring your music to life for the first time. Of course that is not the only way to enjo...

Notation and Engraving for Scoring Sessions - Part 3 - Parts

In the last part of this ongoing tutorial series, I was covering the notational conventions of score sheets for scoring sessions. Today, we will focus on the individual instrument's parts.

Strictly speaking, creating parts for the individual instruments is not the job of the orchestrator but of the copyist so the job of the orchestrator usually ends with the de...

Scoring A WAR WITHIN - Part 1: Introduction

In 2018, I wrote the score for the Danish/German/Czech feature film A WAR WITHIN. 

The movie is set during World War I times and deals with a rather specific detail of Danish/German history. As you will know, Demark and Germany are neighboring countries. However, during the times of WWI, the southern Part of today's Denmark was German territory as a result of war between both countries a few decades earlier. However the people living there mainly identified as Danish. During WWI ho...