My first film score

Hey !

Bravo ! This is more a post to let you know I listened to all three of the pieces and that I will post more within the next 24 hours.
I just don't have the time right now to write what I want, as I gotta get a jump on the day but I will.

Overall I like them, and would certainly encourage you to keep on posting here, and write, write write.

One disclaimer: Anything I comment on is "shooting blind" as I have no idea of the visual images you were trying to augment.
I am hearing it as a stand alone piece, so it by default makes me listen with a certain type of critical listening that may not be useful when
measuring how the music marries the image. So take any comments with a "grain of salt". Basically take anything useful, leave everything else behind.

To quickly answer your three questions

Yes, sure. The instrumentation pretty much ensures this.

Impossible to say. Sometimes the best comedy scores ignore or go against the image. For example I posted a clip from a film called "Airplane" about 2-3 weeks ago. In that masterpiece of a film Elmer Bernstein basically treats the whole thing as serious. That's what makes it funny. If listening to the soundtrack alone it sound like a Rambo-lite score. Fargo's score has nothing to do with what is going on with the screen.

Yes, plenty..... but I have write em later, First.... let me emphasize I really like your work and please do not let anything I say be a downer at all.

I do have some suggestions and criticism. The biggest criticism is twice ... (City and Hoax), thought my computer had finished the composition and began to loop the song. For stand alone pieces I would revise that. However @Francesco Bortolussi is a big fan of composers simply repeating sections verbatim. So you never know you might have a big fan.

I would also say you 2nd piece was most successful as it was not so beat 1 heavy. I'll explain more later.

The other, and final, thought going on in my mind is wondering about the heavy double reeds and dulcimer (is that what it was ?) feature.
On a first listen, a little too much for me. I like em...... but I feel they get used too much. The dulcimer (pluck string thing) can't crescendo so it's a weaker choice for a melody instrument, and the Oboe/Bassoon (or eng. horn) gets a little too "Peter and the Wolf-ish" at times.


Gotta run. I'll explain more later, and I do hope after the next post you feel my comments are constructive and positive for your work. (or ...I am an asshole)

Wishing you the very best !

Doug

 

I will, and soon !

 

@Matthias Calis wow, great work. Now I want to see the film. I particularly enjoyed "Clumsy Siege" as it had so much character. Love the oboe.

 

Really ? Just turn the fucking thing upside down. That's it. Music is amazing.

I thought I posted this before. Ok..... so take this simple Mozart theme you have heard many times.

If we look at the melody.... C --- E---G. Pick an "axis" which to keep simple I'll use C.

Now figure out the intervals ( I personally use numbers now. So 0 for tonic/root and then 1,2,3,4, for each semitone after. This way I am not locked into a key.
But of course it can be tonal)

So C to E is maj.3 (4) up. Using C as the axis, write a man. 3 below. So now the melody goes C - Ab.
For the next step, it does not matter if you measure from C or E. Let's just take C to G. Perfect 5th up.
Now write a perfect 5th down.

So we get C --Ab ---F. (F minor). In triad land Major becomes minor, and Minor to major. You can hear what happens to the Mozart below.
It's great that its really hard to tell the source. It's sound "classical" for sure, but hard to pick the tune.

This is the technique below. Explore.... it will really be a great addition to your compositional toolbox.

 

You know, now that a few days have passed .... I am thinking it might simply be wise for me to tell you that you are going down the right path, feel good about what you have accomplished, and keep on going. In a certain way anyones first film is kind of like a high school photo. You'll grow and your music will go through phases too.

Now, with Peter and the Wolf..... or any piece you like, of course it is really really helpful to have "models". I wrote my own "Prokofiev Style Study" last year, as I was digging his music. I'll share it below. Heavily "borrowing" from him.

I have struggled with long periods of writers block. I had heard Ravel would have Mozarts scores on his piano when e would compose. This would now be about 13-14 years ago, to get over this block I took a Shostachovich string quartet #7, and basically took only the rhythms and began hanging my own notes on them. This was my undergrad at conservatory. The thing was.....after about oh... 4-5 pages of this..... it actually gets boring. I mean the process, not the music.
So I started to change, and went in a direction that Dimitri did not. I still feel this piece was short of the "launching" of me standing on my own two feet as a composer. You'll hear clearly the "quotation" in the opening. But .. they do go in different places. I learned a lot from his quartet, and also that your "voice" is where you depart. Don't "try", rather it was avoiding boredom that steered me in that direction.

Keep up the great work, and thank you for sharing your music. It was a pleasure to listen to.

The original (superior piece)

 

Hey Matthias,


1. Do the pieces feel as though they're from the same musical universe/the same film?
Yeah, I do. All the instrumentation is similar/the same.

2. Do you think this fits a "comedy fantasy" film?
It seems more fantasy than comedy, especially in the second piece. A lot of that is contingent on the video content though.

3. Any remarks about orchestration, mixing, the composition itself, etc are ofc welcome! (I have my own list of things I'd like to improve, but I can't listen to this music objectively anymore)

This kept popping into my mind. It sounds too clean. Everything is quantized perfectly, automated velocities perfectly. The sample quality and sounds are good, but the mix and "performance" sound very in the box and square to me. A couple mild tricks I find myself doing to kinda humanize things a bit that I feel could help, if this is a concern of yours: Spreading violins/high strings hard L/R, then offsetting them by ~10-20ms, adding a very small bit of bit crushing to high trombones, low trumpets, things in that range, definitely not having everything quantized perfectly, let it feel human, get some tape saturation on your master. Maybe the cellists took their damn time to get to that note on the third pass of that phrase, ya know?

 

Hi Matthias,
Thanks for sharing your cues, I took pleasure listening to them, and so did my girlfriend.

I confirm we can hear it's quantized, but it's doesn't matter that much, doesn't it?

I really like those tracks. I mean, the melodies are cool, and the proeminence of the oboe gives it a kind of medieval and joyful vibe. I think it would really fit in a fantasy RPG. The orchestrations are balanced, and the colors shift keep the listener interested. But there are contrasts I really don't get. For instance, on two tracks you come up very suddenly with brass choral figures which to me don't connect at all with the rest. Maybe it would make sense in the context but naked it just puzzles me.