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.
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On Screen Credit
In the excitement of getting to start working on a project, it is not uncommon to forget to negotiate about smaller things that in the end might become reason for frustration. One of these things is your credit. Not negotiating the…
Unprepared high entrances for Brass
High entrances out of the blue are a nightmare for every brass player and particularly tricky for horns (due to the way they produce their tones). The chances are quite high they the tone will be missed or there will be a split in the unison sound or the attack of the…
Recording take protocol
When recording music with live players, make a protocol of takes in some sort of form. I prefer marking the score sheets with differently colored markers where I circle or highlight things that were particularly problematic or good in individual…
Music theory knowledge
There very often seems to be a battle of arguments between different groups of composers whether one should be well versed in music theory or not and both sides use self justifying arguments to prove their point. The important thing that is to…
Physiological effect of bass frequencies
You should be aware, that music (or rather sound) will have a physiological effect on the body if it exceeds a certain volume. The for a film composer great thing about that is, that your audience can not gain concious control over that. Especially loud bass…
Projects with unpredictable work load
On some projects the expected workload is extremely hard to predict beforehand which makes it even trickier when you need to schedule it in or to give a quote on your costs. If you can not come up with a flat fee, it might be better to do an…
Dynamic shaping of long notes
Hardly any musician in an orchestra will play a long note with a static dynamic as samples do. Even if you don’t write in any dynamics or hairpins, the musicians will shape sustaining notes dynamically on their own. It’s usually very obvious…
Recording musicians separately
Whenever you record an instrument or a section separate from the rest of the orchestra/line-up, never just record them to click and nothing else. Musicians hate playing something without hearing or knowing the context that they’re in which makes it…
Composing backwards
One strategy of finding a plausible way to a specific chord or to a key change is to work backwards from the target chord. This works particularly well if the music that you’re writing is mainly cadential harmony as you can simply look at your target…
Misleading Briefs by Clients
One of the most annoying things are misleading briefs by clients. It’s not too uncommon to get a temp track or a comment by a client that completely sets you on the wrong track of what they actually want. One classic is the temp track which…
Black sheep in the business
Never trust any spectacular business promises by someone in the business who you don’t know. Unfortunately there are a lot of black sheep in the media world trying to especially talk inexperienced people into working on something under circumstances…
Organ effect problems
One of the most common problems of inexperienced orchestrators is the “organ-effect”, which happens when you double too many instruments in a middle register with relatively long notes. At a certain point, the transparency gets…
ff Brass layer
One of the reasons for “fake” sounding orchestral mockups is the overuse of the ff-layer on brass samples. Very often you get to hear for example horn lines that last for a minute and are all played at ff without any rest or natural…
Altered perception of your own music
Working on a composition for hours alters the way you perceive your own piece and is something to be very conscious about. Many composers tend to overwrite because having listened so many times to the same passage or piece…