Action Piece - Composition Walkthrough Pt.2 - More Concept and Line-Up

After coming up with a harmonic concept, I needed a general idea of how to approach this piece. I wanted  to create an action piece that could be the score for a chase sequence. 

However I didn't want to start out of the blue with the high energy part but create an ominous and threatening atmosphere first that leads into the actual "chase" in order to set the tone for what's about to come.

So generally speaking the piece is two parts with a build up from bars 1-18 and the actual chase from bar 19 onwards (see score sheet attached below).

The biggest challenge generally when writing such action sequences is to avoid expectable musical maneuvers to keep the audience on the edge of their seats while still providing enough structure to hold on to so the listener doesn't get alienated. 

This comes down to the core fundamentals of writing accessible music. A listener will allow me to take him/her on the most advanced musical paths as long as I provide them with a trace of bread crumbs that holds it all together. Such bread crumbs can be manyfold from structural pillars to motivic ideas that keep reappearing to rhythmical structures that hold it together. Generally, the human brain loves to look for patterns and is happy if it recognizes any. So as long as I provide things for the audience that it recognizes from before or that it can structurize and make sense of, I can keep them interested in the piece.

With action writing, this concept usually gets a little stretched as it is desireable to put the listener slightly at unease in such situations.

This uneasy feeling can be achieved through a writing that is more unexpected than what would normally be desired. Great ways to achieve that is to keep shifting metric accents as well as rather quickly moving through different keys or key centers.

Having said that, the threshhold for "Ok, that's it, I'm lost!" differs individually for each person. With this piece, I'm pretty sure I might lose quite a lot of the audience that is not accustomed to such music as they simply will be overwhelmed by the search of structure  (or dissonance) while people who listen to a lot of such music might be not put at the slightest unease by such a piece. So generally, aiming for a middleground is the best way to go if you want to reach as many people as possible emotionally.

Considering what I said above, in this piece, I'm doing quite a bit of these things to keep the listener at unease. As you might have noticed, there's a lot of odd meters in this piece, mainly centering around a 7/8 pulse which however gets interrupted quite frequently by slightly longer or shorter bars and therefore often avoids a predictable downbeat. In such cases, it is essential to provide a structural element to hold on to. I came up with a rhythmic/motivic idea that is pretty prominent throughout the piece:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-7-8-rhythm/s-i5kuI 

This rhythm becomes a rather central structural element in the piece and in spite of the piece constantly switching particularly between 7/8 (subdivided into 2+2+3) and 9/8 (subdivided into 2+2+2+3) this rhythm keeps appearing on downbeats of measures quite regularly, just not very expectable as the time signature keeps shifting. But due to it being so easily perceivable it serves as this track of breadcrumbs that I mentioned earlier that structually holds it together in spite of all the unexepctable elements happening in that piece.

The melodic/harmonic component of the example above keeps reappearing as well, just not as persistent as the rhythmic idea. Towards the end of the piece a developed version appears:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-78-development/s-cwTXi 

Notice the higher degree of dissonance than in the first appearance which helps me to "ramp it up" towards the end. Also this appearance isn't rooted anymore in a minor chord as it was the first time around but completely sources itself from the octatonic scale which I used as harmonic concept mentioned in the last part of this series. Furthermore, this appearance now uses the "central chord structure" that I based that piece on which is a (shortened) Dm/F# and creates that clashy minor/major third feeling.

Regarding the orchestral line-up, I'm a big fan of staying within reasonable size confinements. In spite of this being a sample production, I will always try to orchestrate "realistically". Most likely I will record this piece some time in the future in a session to facilitate any extra session time I might have so this already forces me to write with a line-up that is realistical.

I hardly ever see a need to going to extremes as done so often in recent film scores with brass line-ups of more than 10 Horns or more than 5 Trombones. I'm convinced if you properly orchestrate a regular sized orchestra you can absolutely achieve the same size impression and "epicness" as you would with unproportional section sizes plus you'll have the benefit of being able to get a natural balance.

Having said that, with this piece I felt the need to go slightly bigger than I normally do. As I wanted this to be a quite punchy sound, I increased the brass section to 6 Horns, 4 Trumpets, 4 Trombones and one Tuba which is still a reasonable size and should be manageable by every "normal" symphony orchestra.

Going from there I chose triple woodwinds (meaning three of each family) over double as I normally do to have a bit more force against the increased brass section.

Percussion section would probably need four players plus Timpani to incorporate all the instruments I wrote for.

With the string section for this, in order to be properly balanced, I would not go below 12 first Violins, 10 second Violins, 8 Violas, 6 Celli and 5 Basses, preferably 14/12/10/8/6 I would make this depending on the room I'm recording in depending on space available but also depending on room size. I would probably go for more strings in smaller (lower ceiling) studios as otherwise the brass in such a confined space will overpower everything and go smaller in larger spaces as the brass will not be as overpowering then anymore and a smaller section sounds bigger with natural reverb anyway.