Musical Humor

There is a very thin line between funny scoring and silly scoring. Inexperienced composers tend to overwrite funny scenes by composing silly music. Not every character who has a clumsy side needs to have a score that points its finger at that. Usually, the humor is more effective when the scoring remains quite subtle in such situations.

This doesn’t only refer to mickey-mousing, where you musically highlight every “slapstick” moment, but also how you use obvious scoring clichees (trombone glissandos, vibraslap, lots of pizzicato etc.). This gets especially annoying if something isn’t that funny and you’re trying to make it funny with music.