Aug 21, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Movement of Inner Voices Most of the time, when arranging chords, you should try to move the “inner voices” (=all voices except for bass line and potential top melody line) by the shortest possible distance from chord to chord, using inversions of chords but also...
Jul 31, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Melody Notes as Chord Extensions When harmonizing melodies, it can sound musically more interesting to place key notes of the melody higher up in the chord structure (like 7th, 9th etc.) than playing around root, third or fifth. Eg. you have a melody sequence of...
Apr 19, 2019 | Daily Film Scoring Bits, Orchestration
Excessive String Divisi Many composers coming from the sample world tend to use massively split up string sections. Things like triads in the violas alone, several different violin movements at the same time etc. are very common. While this might work in the sample...
Jan 23, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Composing Melody First vs. Composing Chords First Neither composing chords first and then finding a melody on top of them nor the other way around are optimal composition principles. In both ways you’re lacking ultimate control over what you’re writing. For example...
Jan 9, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
V-I Cadences and Extensions Final V-I cadences in important form sections (e.g. like the end of your main theme) can start to sound quite pedestrian and boring especially when they occur very often in the piece. Of course, the quality of a V-I cadence is one of the...
