Welcome to the Daily Film Scoring Bits section of my website!
On this page I publish on a more-or-less daily basis small hints, tricks and advices concerning the creation of music especially for film. These hints cover the fields of composition, orchestration and film scoring but also things concerning the workflow in this field, like the working relationship between composer and director etc.
If you want to read even more tips, tricks and hints, head over to the DAILY FILM SCORING BITS ARCHIVE 2010 and the DAILY FILM SCORING BITS ARCHIVE 2011!Follow me on Twitter or Facebook to receive the most recent tips
02/06/12: One point that is often forgotten when negotiating contracts for a project is to put in a clause that allows you to use excerpts of the score and/or movie/project for dempoing purposes after the project is finished. When working on independent projects, it is usually tolerated without extra clause but as soon as a big studio or publisher is involved it might get quite troublesome when they discover parts of their movie on your page/social profiles. So it is better to put in a clause, which should also be quite specific regarding how much of the project to use for demos. Obviously, you can’t put up the whole movie on your website, so there should be a clear negotiations about that. The same goes for your music only. In order to avoid any hassle, there also should be a negotiation and clause to use them for demo purposes.
#general
02/03/12: When you orchestrate music, it is most effective to work your way from the loudest element to the softest element. Of course, that also means that you have a basic concept in your head already for what the orchestration is supposed to be (e.g. things like: Tutti, melody on the trumpets, horns doing a side line, strings doing active accompanying figures together with the woodwinds). Orchestrate what is supposed to stand in the foreground first, for example the brass, or a big string melody and work your way to the least loud instruments that you’re planning to use. With this procedure, you don’t have the problem of “running out of instruments for important things”. If you for example need a woodwind line to stand out as the melody, when you orchestrate it first you will probably end up doubling it a lot in the woodwinds (as you know that you need to put a lot of forces into the woodwinds in order to compete with the rest of the orchestra) and fill up the rest of the colours after that. The other way around you might have written parts that you already like into the woodwinds and suddenly notice that you need more woodwinds to double the melody. In this case you might have written a few parts that you need to throw out again which of course is a waste of work time.
#orchestration
02/02/12: When a series of hit points in your music don’t match the way you want them to match with the visuals but are slightly off, apart from changing the tempo of the passage in order to make them fit, you should also always consider whether there might be a possibility to slightly offset the starting point of the cue. By this, you can possibly save a lot of hassle that would be needed when you actually start changing the tempo of a passage etc.
#technical
02/01/12: Especially when writing film music, don’t try to re-invent the wheel every time you write new music. Certain scoring clichees have established very strongly because they work with the audience. It is great to be ambitious and try to bring an own unique look and approach to your music but don’t be over-innovative. At a certain point of writing “strange” music, you will lose the audience. In general, for example, a tonality based film music is usually expected. There are only a few exceptions of scores that are completely atonal and in general atona passages are usually only working in connection with horror, shock and suspense in the movie. On the other hand, for example certain chord progessions have become so widly used in filmmusic that they are basically “standard” by now and you kind of expect them in certain situations.
#composition
01/31/12: Main title sequences have become quite rare these days but when you have the chance to score one, use it effectively. On a main title, you can set the overall mood of the score and the movie, you can introduce your thematic material and therefore prepare the audience for what is going to happen. Don’t just write “anything” over the main titles but make them also your musical overture. It will be much easier in the score later to work with themes and motifs once they have already been established. One very good example from recent years of brillant main title scoring ist the opening of SIGNS with the score from James Newton Howard. Not only does he establish his main motif, but he also sets a tone for the movie and creates with the music a certain feeling that pushes you to the edge of your seat. Also, note how the music syncs up with the credits and therefore also has a visual impact on that opening titles.
#film scoring
01/30/12: When writing film music, you should always be aware that you are writing music for a general audience and not for musicians. It should always be first priority to make music work and have the effect you want with a general audience. There is no benefit in writing an extensively complex, musically highly sophisticated score that would make every university composition professor proud but practically nobody in the audience gets that. Effective film music needs to be accessible by all kinds of people. If you manage to bring this heroic moment across to everybody with your music – great, if you manage to bring in musical sophistication on top of that – even better! But don set priorities the other way around. A great example for that – again – is John Williams. His music is highly accessable with a lot of really simple ideas (e.g. Indiana Jones Main Theme) that everybody can grasp, understand and remember, and still, in every cue, there are elements that leave a musician excited as well.
#general
01/27/12: An orchestra is not only an ensemble of different instruments but also a group of human beings. Psychological factors can influence the performance quite heavily, not only whether it is a rainy day or things like that but also by the way you write your music. It is particularly frustrating for musicians to have badly notated music in front of them, maybe missing accidentals, phrasing, including wrong notes, unnceccessarily tricky passages, constant playing in a weak or possibly bad sounding register etc. All these things might be manageable from a technical standpoint, you could fix wrong accidentals on the stage, the player might have the ability to pull off even the unneccessarily tricky passages but the effect that this has on the mood is tremendous. First of all, after a few of such “problems” they start losing the respect for you as a composer, also by the fact that they are doing their best and it still sounds bad because technically it is not possible to make it sound better is even more frustrating. It is highly important to show professionalism as composer in order to get the best out of your players. Professionalism includes a good knowledge of the instrument and a feeling for what is difficult and what is easy to play and decently notated score sheets. I cannot stress the latter one enough. Bad notation including errors will not only slow you down in the recording due to the need of fixing things but it will push the mood quite a bit and you might not even be able to get a real enthusiastic performance by your musicians once all problems are fixed. Keep that in mind and better do a proof reading of your music once more.
#orchestration
01/26/12: Most composer work prints of movies come with a special soundtrack. Usually you have the sound effects and dialogue on the left (or both) and the music temp track on the right audio track (or the other way around). This avoids the need to transfer two prints of the movie including the temp track on one and only soundfx and dialogue on the other. By simply putting the sound track of your work print to mono and chosing the appropriate channel as audio source, you can have a work print that only includes sfx and dialogue to work with and put into your DAW and on the other hand, you have a reference temp music track to check back.
#technical
01/25/12: When writing a melody, you might get lost in the actual composition progress so that you lose the overview of the general gesture of your melody. A good way to check a melodic development is to reduce the melody to its key notes, the notes that outline the melodic gesture (leaving out all passing tones etc.). Checking the conture of that “outline” can help you a lot to find weaknesses. For example check this outline for a shape. Good melodies have a plausible shape like an arc or a rising gesture. If your melody seems to jump around all over the place or has several major “dents” you might want to recheck that. Also, how does it develop? Most plausible and “catching” are developments over seconds. For example if you have a “key note” which is a c and the next high “outline note” is a d, this is a quite plausible concept for the human ear. If it moves in thirds or larger intervals, the gesture gets melodically weaker and therefore the melody isn’t perceived as being as strong.
#composition
01/24/12: In recent times, scores that are purely orchestral are often seen as a little old fashioned and very much genre-dependant. Currently, animation movies are more or less the last ressort which is almost untouched by the trend of incorporating electronic elements. Develop a stylistic sense for what is modern sounding and what isn’t. Even the way you use “modern” elements follows stylistic tendencies. You would for example rather put orchestral instruments on melody lines and electronic elements into the accompaniement and not the other way around. Especially rhythmic percussion beds enriched with synth and/or processed elements are very sought after currently and are being used all over the place. Whenever you think about a concept of a score, take these recent tendencies into account. Movies that are maybe less than 10 years old wouldn’t be scored the way today anymore as they were back then.
#film scoring
01/23/12: Never find excuses for your music. Arguments like “I know this track could have been much better if I had spent more time on it/if I had better samples/if my dog hadn’t eaten the manuscript” are unprofessional and don’t make you being perceived as a serious composer. You have to stand behind what you present to anybody. Don’t make yourself the target of questions like: “If it were better if you had spent more time on it, why haven’t you?” It is important to know and be aware of one’s weaknesses, but this is not something you admit to a (potential) customer. What counts is what you present.
#general
01/20/12: Whenever you write for real orchestra and have a limited session time at hand you need to make sure that you use the limited forces a human player has most effectively. Booking one session and expecting to record 20 minutes of brass heavy fortissimo music in that time is probably not going to work out. So when you’re actually pushed in such a situation, make sure to give player breaks when possible. When y0ur horns are playing chords together with the trombones and just double the harmony, you might rather go for giving the horns a break on that so they might be able to pull of that big horn theme later. This sensible use of force is especially important on brass, so whenever you can avoid doubling, avoid it. In general you might lose some fatness but this is more desirable than having bad interpretations of important parts and you always have the option to later double the recording with some samples in order to make it fat again, however, saving a badly played horn theme with samples is much trickier.
#orchestration
01/19/12: When preproducing tracks for music that you want to put on top of a real recording and therefore take with you into the mix, prepare them in a good way so there is no hassle putting them to the music. First of all, rhythm beds incorporating several tracks of drum loops etc. which are supposed to add to the groove should be bounced to only a few tracks, having 10 tracks with basically just percussion loops is not going to help during the mix. However, leave big hits on a separate track, you might want to have control over the volume of these in the mix. Also, of course, all tracks should have the same starting point, best would be the first click. There should be not a single track that you need to “put at bar 38, on 3-and”. Just leave silence before the entrance of these tracks. Also, don’t overproduce these addition elements. You might want to leave some room for additional reverb as you probably want some of the orchestra reverb that gets added in the mix on your preproduced tracks as well in order to put them in the same acoustic space as the rest of the ensemble. Make sure that these elements have enough flexibility in order to tweak them during the mix to make them fit.
#technical
01/18/12: Something that is often forgotten by young composers is the impact of dynamics. There is not just a “forte” and a “piano”, just like there is not always one of both a piece can be in. In music history, the first time that a crescendo in the orchestra was used, it made the people stand up from their seats in the concert and still a well placed crescendo, which is written and orchestrated well and dramatically is at the right spot can have a fantastic impact. Also, note the impact that strong dynamic contrasts have and how they add liveliness to music. A wild outburst of brass in forte after a delicate soft string pizzicato passage will make the music feel very strong, powerful and inpredictable (in a good way). Also, for example a string section which has carefully written in hairpins will sound much more lively than a “flat” dynamic level. This also applies for sample production where added dynamic and expression will make the music just way less artificial. Keep dynamics in mind when composing and your music will highly benefit from that.
#composition
01/17/12: Syncing up hit points while still writing musically pleasing composition sometimes creates a lot of headache to a composer. However, most hit points don’t need to be more precise than a third of a second. Only it points that are cued by a very strong visual action (punch, explosion, gunshot) need to be dead on (+/- 2 frames). There are a few ways to make things a little easier. When a few hit points constantly are slightly off-sync, try offsetting the starting point of the cue. Also, slight tempo alterations that are practically not noticeable might help to get a hit point right. While there is hardly any difference to hear, after a few bars, you might be able to move hit points quite a bit back and forth without obviously getting slower or faster. Good film composers are also very effective in placing hit points on “not obvious” spots. Why not have a hit point at a 3-and instead of a downbeat? When you sell this musically, it will feel very naturally and on top of that create interesting rhythmical structures.
#film scoring
01/16/12: When you negotiate a licensing of your music, be VERY precise about what exactly you license it for and what not. Don’t just give a general license to a production company to use your music or you might end up hearing your music in completely unrelated projects of theirs, possibly on movies, spots etc. you even don’t want to be connected to at all. It is much better to actually limit the license to use with a certain project, e.g. something like “This license gives company X the right to use music Y by composer Z in any context of project V, including promotional material, trailers, [list here, whatever applies]“. Make sure any contract you writes is very specific on that to save you from possible headache.
#general
01/13/12: If time permits, it is nice for musicians to write in “orientation notes” into the score sheet. For example, if you have a line being played together by a horn and a clarinet, it is good for the players to have a note at the beginnig of their line saying “with clarinet” respective “with horn”. In this situation, both players know that they have to listen to each other and will not have troubles actually finding out whom they’re playing with while they’re already playing. This will make them more comofortable and ultimately the performance of the line will improve. Same goes for solos. When you have a solo for an instrument, write in “solo” at the beginnig of that passage so the player will not be in doubt whether he or she may have gotten an entrance wrong as nobody joins them on their line and can play their solo with more confidence as well knowing that he/she can stand out a bit from the rest and perform a bit more freelly. These things are very helpful especially in scoring situations where there are no rehearsals. When there are rehearsals, many players will write such notes in themselves once they figure it out after the first few run-throughs but writing such notes in right from the start might save you time on the scoring session and result quicker in better performances.
#orchestration
01/12/12: Being present on the music mix is obviously the best situation but sometimes due to budget or location issues, it is not possible to be there. Unless you’re mixing the music yourself, you need to have quite a bit of trust in your mixing engineer. In such cases, you should write very precise notes about how you want the music mix to sound. Best would be to include recordings that for example illustrate the amount of ambience and general estehtics of how you want the music to sound. Additionally, you should provide detailed notes regarding specific mix wishes, ideally with timings and/or bar numbers. Things like “3M4, bar 34 – please make sure this flute solo is present and sounds very airy” are a good indicator for your mixing engineer. Doing this very detailed will prevent you from severl back-and-forth mixing correction emails/telephone calls and ultimately save you a lot of time.
#technical
01/11/12: Maintaining a sense of motion with an orchestra (or rather a non-band-ensemble) once it is established is not always the easiest thing. Due to the lack of a drum kit or something like this, you don’t have a rhythmic pulse naturally (unless, of course, you establish percussion loops/beds etc.). This means that you need to sustain the motion in your ensemble by incorporating it into accompanying figures etc. For example, once you start a section that relies on eighths movement, you need to make sure that this movement doesn’t get interrupted for too long or the energy will deflate. However, on the other hand, you don’t want to have only one instrumental line keep the pulse all the time (e.g. eighth figures in the violas). In such cases, it is nice to distribute the pulse within the ensemble or work with complimentary rhythms (basically have the addition of all rhythms that are going on to be a steady eighth pulse even though for example violins one only play quarters and violins 2 only play quarters starting one eighth note after violins 1). Also, it is very important to maintain the pace when for example your melody comes to a rest, at the end of a phrase for example. While the melody sustains one e.g. a whole note, in order to maintain the activity, it is a good idea to bring in another element which fills up this rhythmical “void” with the pulse. Good examples for study on this are again John Williams scores which practically always bring in new elements whenever the melody sustains on a longer note.
#composition
01/10/12: A good musical concept and good thematic material make about 50% of the score. Considering tight schedules you might easily fall into the trap of rushing this first phase of film scoring, not fully developing a decent concept and going along with thematic ideas that you’re not totally satisfied with. Later on, a weak concept or weak thematic material might cause in major troubles when actually scoring scenes and noticing that your concept doesn’t work there and you need to partially deviate from it and start making the score inhomogenous etc. It is important to take your time in the beginning of writing a score to find the voice for the music that you (and the director) are happy with and that you are convinced of to carry you through the whole score. Even though this might take you a nerve-wrecking long period of time on a very tight schedule, once you have a strong concept and ideas, composing will be very quickly and you will be able to work through big parts of the score without the permanent doubt of “Is this working?”. Of course, there are projects with such a tight deadline that you can’t take the comfort of conceptualizing and have to dive in right away just hoping to get it done at all but hopefully these projects aren’t your everyday business.
#film scoring
01/09/12: Negotiating a composition fee on projects when you’re pretty new in your composing career is always a quite tricky situation. On the one hand you want to sell yourself as a professional composer whose services are worth a decent amount of money, on the other hand, you are happy to have an offer for a project at all and need a decent reference and think about what other projects this project might generate. It is most important to gather as many informations about the project as you can before you make a financial request. Ask about the general budget, who else is involved, the production process, the way the project will be released… practically anything that might give you a clue about how much professional attitude is behind that project. Do a research for yourself, google for traces of the project on the internet etc. When you have a fairly decent picture of the project, you can weigh how much you want that project against how much money you want for that project. When negotiating for money, always start a bit but not far higher than what you want. Don’t start too high to not scare anybody off, but leave some room for negotiations to eventually settle on the fee that you want. The most important thing in this phase of your career is to never be too stubborn to try to push through a certain fee that you set as “your level” or setting a fee without researching what project this is.
#general
01/06/12: Don’t change your orchestral colours too quickly unless you want a really “restless” effect. The human brain takes about 10 seconds to “settle in” on a sound structure and anything quicker than that will kind of “overwhelm” the hearing perception. Especially when writing score sheets, you might be quickly mislead and feel the need to fill up blank spaces or change the structure all together. At a quick tempo, bars fly by quite quickly and several pages of score sheet might only be a few seconds so always keep the relation of tempo vs. time in mind. Inexperienced orchestrators tend to overwrite such passages and just throw in too many elements. In general, always trust your ear and if something sounds fine but looks quite empty in the Sequencer or on the score sheet regarding things that are going on, you should rather follow your instincts and leave it as it is. Of course, when you want to write a really hasty, busy cue, you can and should play with exactly this as exactly this “overwriting” carries a lot of the pace of busy action sequences.
#orchestration
01/05/12: Don’t mix music on headphones only. While (good) headphones help to hear and fix many small details that you don’t hear on speakers they create a different impression about the music compared to how it will sound in cinema or on a stereo later. You will especially hear a stronger transparency on headphones than on speakers and might be surprised how muddy your music sounds when you hear it on speakers eventually. Some people swear on methods like “When I finished mixing it I always take it to my car stereo and listen how it sounds there, and when I like what I hear on this stereo, it’s a good mix.” While this of course is a highly subjective matter, you should definitely hear mixes on several systems before you finally send them off and do the main mixing work on decent speakers.
#technical
01/04/12: Repetition is an essential factor to create structure in music. The human brain values things that get repeated higher than things that don’t so by noticeably repeating a central motif, theme etc. it automatically gets a higher priority in the brain. However, repetition quickly can be boring as well, of course. A general rule of thumb when writing music is that one identical repetition is fine but the next repetition should have “new information” already, for example when repeating a motif, it could land on a different target note on the second repetition, could be presented by a different instrument etc. Again, this only is a rule of thumb and for example musical minimalism defies this rule, however, even in this style, repetition works very closely linked to establishing new information as the repetitions keep slightly changing throughout many minimalist compositions.
#composition
01/03/12: High sustained string notes are one of the “favourite” devices of film scoring. They can be useful in practically every situation: leading into a cue, creating a slight suspense etc. They create a certain “middleground” of not yet being a “real” music cue that gets perceived as one but being able to start off into musical motion at any point. They are also great for music to “sneak in” rather than starting with an accent (and sneak out as well). However be aware that the overuse of this can get very annoying and feel clicheed so keep a good ratio with cues that don’t use this device.
#film scoring
01/02/12: An university or college degree in composition will neither make you a professional composer nor guarantee for being able to make a living out of media composing. It takes years or at least months of networking, doing unpaid jobs, assisting others etc. until the first gigs start coming in that are actually paid properly. The first and most important rule is that it is never too early to start networking. If you’re a young composer who’s just studying music on college, go ahead and find film students, score their movies and hope that eventually after they finish their college as well, one of them might be succsessful and pull you into better gigs. Don’t do the mistake of thinking: “Well, let me just get proficient enough in this craft and try finding jobs when I feel up to it.” Scoring movies is a lot learning by doing and there are so many young film makers out there (many of them organized in filmmaking forums, just do a google search) who might need a composer that there is no excuse for an aspiring composer to hold back doing scoring gigs. This of course also applies if you’re not studying music but still want to pursue a career in composition.
#general
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About Me
Composer/Orchestrator/Arranger Robin Hoffmann
*1984 in Dresden/Germany
He worked on several feature film scores, including SAVE ANGEL HOPE, TELL, MORGEN IHR LUSCHEN and LIEBLING, LASS UNS SCHEIDEN. He co-composed the award winning musical DÄLLEBACH KARI and orchestrated highly successful game music scores such as ANNO 1404, BLACK PROPHECY and HALO LEGENDS.
Besides his work for media he also writes music for several international artists such as SARAH CHANG, THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, THE LOVEBUGS and others.
He studied composition/arrangement and piano at the music university in Dresden, Germany.
RT @RobinHoffmann: Tip of the day: Clarinets are capable of creating incredible low dynamics. This is highly effective on… http://bit. …
Hi, thanks for all the great tips! However, i want to learn a whole lot about music theory, harmony, counterpoint etcetera. Writing music for orchestra and film. Do you know what books are best for that? I was thinking about tonal harmony, but are there any alternatives? I’m looking for “the best” books for music theory, composition and another one for filmscoring. I hope you can help! Thanks! Roy