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 ...
2021-01-20 09:10:06 +0000 UTC View Post
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 Walkth...
2021-01-18 09:19:49 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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 pla...
2021-01-15 09:37:53 +0000 UTC View PostA 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...
2021-01-13 09:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostA 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, t...
2021-01-12 17:27:42 +0000 UTC View Post
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 alre...
2021-01-11 08:52:34 +0000 UTC View PostWhen 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. T...
2021-01-08 09:22:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe 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 whic...
2021-01-07 11:50:39 +0000 UTC View PostWith 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. 2021-01-06 09:09:15 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2021-01-04 09:14:10 +0000 UTC View PostLet 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 hone...
2021-01-01 10:26:52 +0000 UTC View PostIn 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 ...
2020-12-29 10:52:53 +0000 UTC View PostI 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 w...
2020-12-28 09:27:34 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2020-12-21 09:29:44 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2020-12-18 15:22:22 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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. 2020-12-18 09:33:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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,...
2020-12-16 20:30:05 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2020-12-16 09:13:03 +0000 UTC View PostI 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 ac...
2020-12-14 09:22:14 +0000 UTC View PostModern 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...
2020-12-11 09:32:36 +0000 UTC View PostOne 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...
2020-12-09 09:20:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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 si...
2020-12-07 09:07:02 +0000 UTC View PostScoring 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 ...
2020-12-04 09:08:38 +0000 UTC View Post
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 p...
2020-12-02 09:06:44 +0000 UTC View PostIt 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 hav...
2020-11-30 11:05:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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. 2020-11-30 09:38:59 +0000 UTC View Post
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 clo...
2020-11-27 16:27:58 +0000 UTC View PostBeing 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 se...
2020-11-27 08:54:25 +0000 UTC View PostIn 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 ...
2020-11-25 09:01:44 +0000 UTC View Post
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 WW...
2020-11-23 09:36:23 +0000 UTC View Post