Starting now, I am offering one-on-one film composition lessons over Skype!

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This is something directors and all creative types really need to see.

When composing it is normal to have doubts about the quality of your ideas, but in the business of music on demand and tight schedules, you need an approach to deal with that and make the best decisions.

This is how I deal with it

1. I brainstorm.

I have a variety of ways of doing this: at the keys, the guitar, often just walking around the house or my studio or, if ideas are slow in coming, I do laundry or a few chin-ups, anything to clear my mind and get into “play mode”. When brainstorming I find it important to just have fun.

Figuring out under what circumstances I get my best ideas is something I spent quite a lot of time figuring out, and it was not time ill spent. I never get the blank page syndrome anymore.

2. Pick your favourite.

I do this right away and I don’t wait for the next day. I make a few choices and if I have doubts about the best one to choose as I play through them, I will do a rough sequence and then sit back and listen.

If I still have doubts I will stop for a bit, do something completely unrelated to clear my head and get some distance from it, then I come back in 10 minutes or so and sit back and listen.

Even with tight deadlines, taking a short break is important, it makes everything else go much, much faster and smoother.

And let’s face it, if you have doubts about the quality of your idea, it will nag at you as you work.

Furthermore, I am sure this has happened to you; you think your idea is great, you write the whole thing in a heat of passion only to find that it is quite lame when you listen again the next day. Time completely wasted.

Having experienced that a few times, even when I think I am sure I have doubts!

So even when you think you are sure, taking a few minutes or a day to get distance and the come back to your idea with a fresh ear is an important part of the process.

Today I am writing a little 45 second ditty for my next project (more on that soon) and I had to take a break, get some distance from two ideas that I have to choose from – so I wrote this post!

Later,

Alain

What is fluency?

You have to be in touch with your muse, of course, know how to call her at will, and have the musical knowledge, skill and experience to do something with it.

Like Brahms said:

“Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind”

But an important and seldom discussed aspect of fluency is the ability to self-edit on the spot.

Here is a great read on this very subject.

I enjoy reading about copy writing because there are many parallels between copy writing and composing for film.

I have gained many insights reading about copy writing that I have applied to composition, and also to my writing of words, which I also enjoy doing.

And of course, fluency requires that you put your nose to the grindstone, as the saying goes, which is where I should be right this minute instead of writing this post!

So off I go.

Well, this is taking a while, isn’t it? I never imagined for a second that the last song would be hard to write at all.

But it is.

The first thing was finding a style of music that both me and the director were happy with, something that has a big finale feel to it. A nice big happy party.

I remember this video on Jerry Goldsmith where he talks about spending a week just listening to Native Indian music as he got ready to score a film. Just immersing himself in the sounds and colours before he started writing.

So that is what I am doing now. Not Indian music of course, but rock, rockabilly and funk.

There are a lot of ideas written down right now and piling up fast, but for this song I have to go with the great idea. The great, simple idea.

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederic Chopin

I am looking for that idea that makes me go “aha”,the idea that fits the many criteria required, and I didn’t get that yet, not quite. I feel myself getting closer, though.

And the funny thing is, that once the song is done, it will feel so easy and natural.

I also need to get started on the underscore soon!

Pre-production music was still the goal this week. Having completed the first song with great success things were off to a great start.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was having trouble with the second song, a big production number for the ending. But I finally completed it and sent it over.

The director (David) didn’t like it as much however. I mean, he liked the song, especially the ending of it, though, but wasn’t sure about the start of it. He was hoping for something a little bit more jazz as well.

There was a little bit of miscommunication with that one, and that is fine, because that will happen, it’s part of the process. It’s how you deal with it that makes a difference and our discussion went very smoothly. David is a great guy.

But then David called me up a few days later saying that the producer and others in his team liked the song a lot and thought it captured the feel of a big ending perfectly. So David was changing his mind about it, although he still felt the beginning to be a little weak, which I agreed that it was.

I’ll get back to that one after a little break from it. I am jotting down ideas in my note book as they come in the meantime as my subconscious keeps working on it.

On Wednesday I recorded a short rock-hero guitar number for a scene in the film at Josh’s place. (Josh Rosario will be mixing the music for the film.)

We recorded the guitar parts and I got to do some fancy shredding on his nice Gibson SG with custom EMG humbuckers. I got a really nice, meaty hard rock sound out of that. Man, I need a new guitar…

I sent it to David and he listened to it while I was on the phone with him. He laughed out loud and that was that, approved on the spot. Easy! So now Josh needs to fix up that mix a little and we move on.

Then I tackled the third and last song for pre-production. I can’t reveal a lot here, but after reading the script and seeing the character designs, I came up with a piece that combines war chants, Chinese war drums and other big drums, surf rock music, hard rock and Chinese traditional. (Does that pique your interest?)

And it rocks! I sketched it out real quick, a fast MIDI sequence in Cubase with rough guitar tracks, and that was enough to get me laughing out loud and dancing like a fool around my studio!

You know you did something right when your own music gives you that kind of reaction.

So I made a better sequence out of it, mixed it and sent it to David who loved it right away! He emailed me saying that is was sooooo cool and that it was the best present he received on his birthday!

Wow, what an overwhelming compliment…

This is why I love writing film music. How often do you get to combine all of these musical elements, have so much fun writing, get paid for it and then be told your music is a gift?

Next week: arranging song #1, completing song #3, thinking about song #2 and hopefully be ready to start the underscore. I got about 100 minutes of music to write, so I need to get going!

Monday I started work on the pre-production music for the animated feature I am scoring. I wrote the first song on Monday, the ballad, which I thought I would have a hard time with. So I approached it with intense effort, brainstormed, and after a day of hard toil I had the whole song written.

And then, an hour before the family was set to return, something hit me and I re-wrote the song completely in about 20 minutes, and I knew that was the one!

I recorded it and sent it off on Tuesday and it got approved. The director, the producer, his team, everyone loved the music, my wife cried while listening to it, what a great start! (This being the first piece of music for the film, it was important to make a good first impression!)

Then it was time for the second song which I thought would be a breeze. I had the idea for the chorus already, you see. It had come to me on Monday during lunch and thankfully I had some manuscript paper (never leave the studio without it!) so I wrote it down right away.

On Tuesday I still remembered the tune perfectly, which indicated to me that it was memorable. So when I sat down to work on it on Wednesday, I thought, I already have the chorus and it’s a killer! I’ll just start with a verse, do the chorus, modulate twice, it’ll be a breeze.

I even woke up and was playing through it in my head while taking a shower and it sounded great! But I sat down at the piano and it started all sounding too… country.

That wasn’t going to fit. How depressing.

But as soon as I detached myself from the idea (and that took a while) I realized what parts worked and what parts needed fixing up, and within a few minutes I had a version that rocked.

Now, the problem I am having is the form. I have goals for the form and it has to work dramatically within the context of this ending.

Sure, this second song is giving me problems, but that’s fine, I embrace them! Bring ‘em on.

Because, after all, you can’t have solutions without problems.

When I gave my little talk on composition, a question was asked about what is the meaning of structure in music? As often happens when teaching, the answer I gave became a moment when many things came together to form one clear, perfect concept.

You see, I always look to extract core concepts out of whatever music I study, and not just the surface elements. This way I can assimilate the essence without resorting to plagiarism or locking myself in to a single approach.

Melody writing is important to me and has been on my mind for years, and even more so recently.

I have analyzed large amounts of melodies, dug deeply to understand how the composer thought while writing them and why the melodies work.

I have devoured music psychology books to try to understand how the listener perceives music. How I perceive music!

All these ideas floating in my head came together in that classroom to form a very simple concept of melody writing.

Simple, yes. Truths are usually simple and appear self-evident.

And here it is, the condensed version. I’ll let you figure out the details. (I feel like I should charge for this.)

First, let’s talk Gestalt Theory for a second. The human mind is wired to perceive patterns. Patterns are perceived as beautiful.

*            *

*            *

What shape do you see above? See, your brain makes it a square and it is almost impossible for you to only see four little dots.

Now imagine that each of these dots is a motive and that the shape is the phrase. You can organize these dots/motives to form any kind of shape you wish, (as long as it has order and is perceivable as a shape.)

Think of The Barber of Seville, Beethoven’s Fifth or Indiana Jones and you will see what I mean.

Now pay up!

I have recently struck a deal with another manufacturer of musical software. I won’t say who it is yet… all I’ll say is that I have now an orchestral template that is beyond my wildest dreams!

Between this new software and Synful, I have sounds that firmly plant my little studio on the cutting edge of the 21st century.

It feels good writing that!

Especially since I never was interested in samplers and other music technology in the past because of the lack of musicality involved, but this new software brings playability and expression as close to real as you could hope for!

Anyway, I’m excited, but since I can’t write about it I’ll just leave it at that… for now!

And next Wednesday I am going to give my first talk on composition. Oh, I have taught composition before, but this is the first time I will address a class of University students. It should be a lot of fun!

Last item for today, come check out my new website: www.gettingthescore.com

It’s a website about film scoring aimed at directors!

It is so easy to start judging what you write as you write it, and you really shouldn’t.

Of course you should consider technical aspects during composition, things like form and counterpoint and motivic development, that sort of thing. What you shouldn’t do is ask yourself “is this good”? It’s too early for that.

Judging slows down writing to a snail’s pace. Judging hinders creativity. Judging should come after, not during composition.

I know this, but still, this is what has been happening to me lately, and I know it is partly because of fear.

Fear of my music being bad.

I want my music to be worthy of living in the same universe as Bach, Stravinsky and Ravel, a worth-while goal for sure (I mean, what else should I aim form?) but this can sometimes result in a bit of pressure…

So to break the habit I started doing what I think of as “writing rehab” in order to remove that tendency to judge too early and thus, hopefully, open the floodgates to all those ideas waiting to come out.

The rehab plan is this: write a given amount of music in given amount of time. As I relax I will increase the quantity of music to write and the length of the writing session.

Today, I had set for myself a goal of 2 pages of music in one hour. I ended up with a page and a half so, close enough.

I decided to write whatever came out and not stress out about trying to be new or different or anything like that – this is rehab after all! Must relax and focus on the process.

So I wrote this nice little tonal andante for strings, lying down on the nice futon in my studio, pretty relaxed and singing very, very badly…

Here is a roughly sequenced rendition.

If anyone is interested in my sketches, I could scan those once in a while…