Category: Composing

A long, 2 part, live composing video stream worth watching. What I find particularly interesting is his use of scale runs in the woodwinds.

Total time of these videos is over 5 hours but even so, he’s fairly efficient and spends almost all that time directly working on his composition

Nite Session(s) – Composing With CINESAMPLES by Dirk Ehlert (1/2)

Nite Session(s) – Composing With CINESAMPLES by Dirk Ehlert (2/2)

I’ve seen the transcribing of other people’s music recommended many times as a way to learn the art of orchestration and composition. The idea is to get a recording of a classical piece of music, attempt to recreate it by listening to it, performing the parts you hear into your DAW and then checking the actual conductor’s score to correct any mistakes. Doing this for a while will help to recognize patterns and be able to re-use those patterns to compose our own music.

There are places that sell conductor’s scores but I’ve found another interesting (free) way. Some live composing videos on YouTube are detailed enough that you can see exactly what is being recorded, by seeing the composer’s hands on a piano as they record a track, or seeing the piano roll in enough detail to figure out exactly what notes were recorded.

I would recommend performing a YouTube search for “live composing”. This will lead you to videos of composers as they work on a new piece of music. You can see step by step exactly how they do it.

Here are some of those videos (if you’re interested in epic/trailer style music):

In the video description of the following video, you will find a link where you can actually download the audio of individual tracks and the MIDI as well. If you become a patreon (paid subscriber) of Alex Moukala, you will be able to download the audio tracks and MIDI of many of his compositions for studying purposes.

Thor: The Dark World’s Theme – by Alex Moukala

In the following video, by carefully watching his hands, you should be able to figure out exactly what is being played so you can create your own version for studying.

CineSymphony LITE Composition Screencast – by Michael Patti

Plus,

How I make EPIC CINEMATIC MUSIC – bY Olexandr Ignatov

And finally:

Making Beats: Epic Cinematic Score – by Landmarq

In a marathon video session, broken into 2 parts lasting over 15.5 hours, (Yes that’s right. Part one is over 11 hours) Mike Verta critiques works of music submitted by various amateur composers (like us) and offers tips on how to improve them. Over the course of the long video, the same problems are found in many of the musical pieces. I recommend watching the video, (yes the entire 15.5+ hours but not all in one sitting) to really drive home the tips he offers. The tips that stand out the most to me, have been summarized below:

• Don’t expect the listener to focus on more than 2 things at a time. If your music is too busy, the listener will be lost.
• Establish a pattern that the listener can lock on to. This requires something to be played at least twice.
• Don’t abandon an idea too soon. Develop an idea. Change the accompaniment, change the harmonization, change the instruments (often referred to as changing the colour).
• At the same time, be wary of too much vertical development or horizontal development. Both are important but in the right proportion. Vertical development refers to changing/adding instruments to the same melody. Horizontal development refers to modifying a melody/rhythm, or changing and developing an idea.
• When moving forward with developing an idea, only change one thing at a time. Change just the rhythm or just the melody or just the accompaniment or just the colour.
• When transitioning from one section to another (from an A section to a B section or verse to chorus) keep a common thread between the two so it’s clear they are related otherwise is will sound like a completely unrelated piece of music.
• If you start your introduction with the focus on what will become the accompaniment, perhaps you start with just chords or an ostinato pattern, when the melody is laid over top of the accompaniment, decrease the volume of the accompaniment. The listener will still hear it because they are familiar with it and they will know that their focus should be shifted to the new music that was just added.
• Don’t use more instruments than you truly need. To paraphrase Mike Verta “no colour is as clear as a solo instrument”.
• Beware of the trap of over orchestration. You will have listened to your music for hours while working on it and what has become a boring 8 bars that needs more instruments to keep it sounding fresh to you, is new and fresh to a first time listener without any extra instruments and will sound muddy and confusing to a new listener if too many instruments are added.
• Keep your melody and accompaniment in different registers (or at least very different tone colours). If your melody is focused around middle C, keep your accompaniment an octave higher or lower, especially if the accompaniment is similar in colour to the melody.
• Never forget that your MIDI mockup is supposed to sound like real people are playing real instruments. Real brass and woodwind players need to breathe. Real string players can’t play really fast ostinato patterns forever.
• Be aware of the relative power of each instrument. A solo flute will not be heard over a loud brass chord. Sure, you can turn up the fader to make the flute louder but it won’t sound realistic.

Well, that’s what I remember at the moment from watching the video below (and other videos from Mike Verta). Take your time, watch the whole video and it could make your music better.

Unleashed EP 4 (by Mike Verta)

This is a 6 part video series by JJay Berthume where he starts from a blank page and composes a heroic style piece of music called “Defending Our Homeland” Much like the Video Composition by Joe Carillo I previously mentioned on my blog, this steps through the process of composing and orchestrating an original piece of music from the beginning.

Let’s Write Music! EP1 (Part 1: Melodic Sketch) by JJay Berthume

Here are links to all 6 parts of the Youtube video series:

Let’s Write Music Part 1
Let’s Write Music Part 2
Let’s Write Music Part 3
Let’s Write Music Part 4
Let’s Write Music Part 5
Let’s Write Music Part 6