Nov 13, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Minor Ninths The minor ninth is considered the “last dissonant interval”, even more than a minor second. Therefore it should be handled with care in any chord voicing (including minor ninths + octave(s)). The inherent dissonance in this interval will often...
Oct 23, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Dominant7 and Tritone Substitution The reason why dominant7 chords create the feeling of wanting to resolve results from the inherent structure of the chord, specifically the tritone that exists between the third and the seventh of the chord. As an example, let’s look...
Sep 4, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Voice Leading is King Good voice leading beats any other rule. This was already valid in Bach’s times where there were fifth parallels and doubled thirds in the chord because the voice leading of the individual voices was so strong that it could easily justify for...
Jun 5, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Alternative Bass Notes of a Chord Altering the bass note of a chord to a note different than the root note can create quite new harmonic impressions than the original chord. If you change the bass note to a different chord tone like the third or fifth of the chord,...
May 22, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Major 7th Chords in Film Scoring Major7 chords (e.g. Cmaj7) are a bit tricky to handle and should be written with care. They are usually used as tonic chords, however function very nicely on the subdominant position as well. The actually very dissonant major7 in this...
