How Important Is Formal Education To The Film Composer?
How important is a formal, relevant education to the film composer? And specifically media-related music degrees?
Composing Music Tips: Suspensions
You, the public have voted: 80% of you want more posts about tips on composing music! Vote now in the poll to the right: YOU decide what goes in this blog! ——->
So here’s today’s easy-to-implement tip: suspensions.
Suspensions are an incredibly easy way of adding colour to a series of chords. At their simplest, suspensions ’suspend’ [...]
Composing Film Music Tips: The Pedal Note
Due to popular demand (aka the poll in the right sidebar), my next few posts will be tips on composing music, with an emphasis on writing music for film in particular.
Today’s tip is all about the ‘pedal note’ or ‘drone’. It’s really a very simple concept: a single, sustained note or tone.
Pedal notes [...]
Inspiration
inspiration n
stimulation or arousal of the mind, feelings, etc., to special or unusual activity or creativity
the state or quality of being so stimulated or aroused
someone or something that causes this state
an idea or action resulting from such a state
the act or process of inhaling; breathing in
From English Collins Dictionary – English Definition & Thesaurus
Inspiration is [...]
SCOREcast
Image via Wikipedia
It’s Sunday so I’m gonna keep this short and sweet
SCOREcast is a podcast series that I’ve just recently discovered, started by Deane Ogden, a fabulous film composer from LA that I recently became twitter-friends with. Why not follow him too: @deaneogdenmusic; and Scorecast is also on twitter as @scorecastonline.
It’s been [...]
Is Film Music Art or Just Low-Brow Commercial Fluff?
Is any music that is created for a purpose, other than that of it’s own existence, art? Is film music art, or theatre music, or advert music, or music that appears on a CD-Rom presentation, or accompanying a website promo film, or music on a trailer? Even if the music’s primary purpose is purely commercial – to sell that product or promote another – does that preclude its intrinsic value as art?
10 Top Tips – Writing Film Music
So you’ve got a great commission, composing music for feature film.
Congratulations!
But now what? Here are a few ideas that I’ve learned (often from some pretty tough lessons) make the process go a little more smoothly…
Get involved as early on as possible
Communicate with your director
Communicate with the editor
Be really clear about tone/mood/emotion
Be really clear about [...]
