Daily Film scoring bits
Welcome to the Daily Film Scoring Bits. On this page I post little tips, tricks and advices about film scoring in general but also more specific topics like orchestration, composition, working relationships, business advices etc.
Use the search bar on the right to find specific topics or click on the tags to filter posts by specific topics.
Please don’t hesitate to comment on the bits, a lively discussion with different points of view is desired 🙂
You can follow these social profiles to be notified every time a new Daily Film Scoring Bit is posted. Make sure to adjust your notification settings on these platforms accordingly.
If you want to get more in-depth articles, exclusive content like composition walkthroughs and extensive articles, please consider joining me on Patreon.
Pedal Points
Pedal points are very common in film music, meaning usually that you change chords over a sustaining bass note. Even very dissonant chords in relation to the bass note work under such circumstances. Pedal points are great for buildups…
Musical Silence
Musical silence can be one of the most powerful “scoring” devices you can use. It works especially well in scenes where you want the viewer to be pulled into the reality of that scene, especially if it is a very intense scene. Leaving out music in moments…
The “Pitch Culture”
Some customers might want you to take part in a so called pitch. This means that you write music for the project or present ideas while one or more other composer(s) do the same and eventually the composer gets picked who fulfills the client’s…
Harmonizing Melodic Key Motifs
If you have a melody for example in the trumpets (it works in any melodic writing but it is most prominent on brass themes), it creates a very nice colour to harmonize the melody on key motifs or phrases. Coming from all trumpets playing the theme…
Visible Time Codes
Always ask for working copies of the movie that you score that contain a visible time code in the video. So many things can go wrong regarding the sync of music and movie (e.g. wrong framerates, weird video codec glitches etc.) that you should…
Stacking Two Triads
A really effective way to create interesting harmonic structures is to stack two triads on top of each other. This procedure is called polychords, bitonal chords or under certain conditions upper structure triads. Depending on what chords…
Audience’s Attention in the Movies
Be aware that at least 75% of the audience’s attention during a movie lies on the images. As a consequence, writing too subtle (e.g. bringing a hint of the main theme in an accompanying figure etc) when it needs to have a dramatic…
Being Prepared for Outsourcing Work
At certain points, for example when a project becomes just too big to be pulled off only by yourself in the time given, you will not get around outsourcing certain parts of the work to someone else. Usually things like score/part preparation…
The Orchestral Percussion Section
The use of the orchestral percussion section has become twofold in the last couple of years. In trailer music and modern Hans Zimmer inspired scoring, very often its function has become to mimick a drum set, basically providing…
Score Bindings in Recording Sessions
When you’re preparing score sheet material for a recording session by yourself, avoid ring binding. Especially plastic ring bindings create a lot of noise which multiplies especially on string sections when 7 or 8 desks turn pages at the…
Melodic Build-Ups
Building towards a climax requires also your melody to increase tension which is not only possible by “going higher and higher”. When analyzing melodic structures that build towards a climax, usually several characteristics of the melody…
Creative Work vs. “Office Duties”
You need to plan in quite some time into your work schedule for communication and organization. Don’t believe that you can compose/produce music without interruption during your “scoring weeks”. It might not seem like much…
Make No Excuses
Make no excuses. Acting professional involves sometimes swallowing bad working conditions. Nobody cares whether you just couldn’t get the five mins score done in one day or whether your cat has been sick or if your computer crashed…
Melodic Ideas in the Same Register
This is one of the first rules one learns when learning to orchestrate and still I very often see it being done wrong: make space for important melodic lines. You don’t want to have several lines and textures in the same range walk…