Feb 15, 2019 | Daily Film Scoring Bits, Orchestration
Highest Note in a Chord In well balanced orchestral chords consisting of several instrumental colours (e.g. a chord that is orchestrated in the woodwind section) the instrument on the highest note will dominate its colour impression. This means that even in a chord...
Feb 6, 2019 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Shared Chord Tones A very commonly used concept in film music to write chord progressions is the concept of shared chord tones. Basically you could treat every chord as a new tonic and find the next chord by moving to a chord that shares at least one chord tone with...
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...
Dec 19, 2018 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Tonic Chord overuse Have an eye out for how quickly you return to the tonic chord. Almost in every case, returning back to to the tonic chord feels like “closing off” a phrase. So every time you reach that chord, your listener’s perception will give him/her the...
