The strings are the only instruments in the orchestra where by default several players share the same part. For people who come from a DAW background and who are transitioning into the "real orchestra" world there are a few things that need to be taken care of which normally doesn't play a huge r...
2020-09-23 09:14:07 +0000 UTC View Post
After we went through the first cue of my score for HERO in a series of compositon walkthroughs, it is time to have a look at the recording. As usual, you're not just get...
2020-09-21 07:53:07 +0000 UTC View PostStarting out as a composer for media, you very often have the problem of not finding video material to score to either practice your skills or showcase your abilities. As a solution to this problem, many composers tend to use scenes from blockbusters or at least quite big movies as video material...
2020-09-18 07:38:53 +0000 UTC View PostOne factor that is often overlooked when constructing voicings for orchestra is the dynamic degree that it is going to be played in. The same voicing played in pp can sound very different in ff and by that I don't just mean louder.
In fact, it could happen that a perfectly fine sounding pp ...
2020-09-16 08:14:56 +0000 UTC View Post
In this part of the composition walkthrough for GAZING AT THE NIGHT SKY, we're having a look at the section with the contrasting B-Theme.
As usual, we're gonna work with score reductions here, the complete score sheet is attached at the bottom of the post.
The previous parts of ...
2020-09-14 08:19:39 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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...
2020-09-11 08:06:33 +0000 UTC View PostIf 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 som...
2020-09-09 08:16:21 +0000 UTC View PostI'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 que...
2020-09-09 08:15:55 +0000 UTC View Post
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.
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 consciou...
2020-09-04 07:53:10 +0000 UTC View PostSince 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 ...
2020-09-02 07:44:41 +0000 UTC View PostI 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...
2020-08-31 08:57:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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 th...
2020-08-31 07:48:44 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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 dedic...
2020-08-28 10:15:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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 quest...
2020-08-28 07:57:45 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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: introd...
2020-08-26 07:53:10 +0000 UTC View Post
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 acousti...
2020-08-25 16:31:59 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2020-08-24 07:37:08 +0000 UTC View PostWhen 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.
Fortunatel...
2020-08-21 07:48:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt 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 vo...
2020-08-19 07:34:47 +0000 UTC View Post
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 entir...
2020-08-17 07:36:19 +0000 UTC View PostBeing 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...
2020-08-14 07:08:11 +0000 UTC View PostNext 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 ...
2020-08-12 07:23:33 +0000 UTC View Post
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 itsel...
2020-08-10 06:10:09 +0000 UTC View PostRecently, John Williams gave an interview for the New Yorker and among many other things he hasn't worded like this before he also said:
"[...]... 2020-08-07 07:56:41 +0000 UTC View Post
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 2020-08-05 07:06:21 +0000 UTC View Post
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 th...
2020-08-03 07:24:03 +0000 UTC View PostWelcome 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 ...
2020-07-31 11:18:19 +0000 UTC View PostRecording 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 differen...
2020-07-31 07:50:39 +0000 UTC View PostIf 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...
2020-07-29 08:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post