Feb 13, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
First Statement of a Theme When composing a piece, present your main musical idea for the first time in the clearest direct and most unobscured way to your audience so it is actually being perceived as important and remembered for further appearances where it might be...
Feb 6, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Shared Chord Tones A very commonly used concept in film music to write chord progressions is the concept of shared chord tones. Basically you could treat every chord as a new tonic and find the next chord by moving to a chord that shares at least one chord tone with...
Jan 30, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Stylistic Diversity in One Film Even though the genre of film music allows a pretty wide variety of stylistics close to each other without feeling weird there are definitely limits to how far you can stretch the musical diversity in one film. This also includes to not...
Jan 23, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Composing Melody First vs. Composing Chords First Neither composing chords first and then finding a melody on top of them nor the other way around are optimal composition principles. In both ways you’re lacking ultimate control over what you’re writing. For example...
Jan 16, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Musical Contrasts Musical contrasts can be a great device to write exciting music. Music that puts contrasts next to each other like soft/loud, low/high, solo/tutti, complex/simple etc. can feel very exciting and lively. However, there are two things to keep in mind:...
Jan 9, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
V-I Cadences and Extensions Final V-I cadences in important form sections (e.g. like the end of your main theme) can start to sound quite pedestrian and boring especially when they occur very often in the piece. Of course, the quality of a V-I cadence is one of the...
