Composing film music

[MetalMike06]

I have really wanted to get into this for a while. A couple years back when I was taking MIDI classes I had a blast with composing, since I had regular access to Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Mach Five...etc. I've loved film scores for quite a while, and have recently entertained the thought of diving a bit further in. Of course I probably ought to study more theory to even start to get a good grasp. Does anybody have any thoughts on this or any suggestions of where to start? I'm looking for advice on both technological aspects (i.e. What DAWs accommodate movie scoring? What are some decent, not-too-expensive sound libraries? Where can I get musicless movie clips to practice with, etc), and also knowledge aspects (i.e. What are some good theory and/or composition books to study on my own? What concepts should I tackle first? etc).

Btw, I have had some music theory and piano classes/lessons in the past, so I'm not exactly starting from scratch on learning this stuff...It's just been a while since I've had them. I'm just looking to refresh my memory and then expand.

[Sigz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States

All of those films are public domain, and should be pretty easy to download (legally) somewhere as such.

teoria.com and musictheory.net are both pretty good websites for music theory stuff, bu they're somewhat basic, so they might only help with refreshing your memory.

[Gwii]

Any DAW will work for film scoring.  Get Pro Tools if you can; Cubase is also very good.  Reason is a great sound library, and not too expensive.  Check out www.academicsuperstore.com for the academic version.  If you have a valid student ID, it's much cheaper, and it's still the full version of the program.

For theory-related aspects, I would study some orchestral music to learn how the different melodies and parts are put together.  If you do get Reason, there are some demo songs of orchestral pieces that are great for seeing how digital synths can replicate a real orchestra.  Just make sure you use single instrument patches.  ie, don't use the preset that just says "strings"

[ZBomber]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States

lolwat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Jew

[Sigz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_domain_in_the_United_States

lolwat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Jew

 

[unklejman]

Sonar is known for it's MIDI capabilies. I've used it to compose a few years back.

[Manolito Mystiq]

East West¹ has some great sound libraries, and though they are a lot pricier, quite affordable.
As a nice start, you might check Garritan Personal Orchestra². East West sound 10 times better, but GPO is a whole lot cheaper.

A good book to get for orchestration is The Study of Orchestration 3rd Edition³ by Samuel Adler. It'll take a while to finish the book, though.
A great theory book is Harmony & Voice Leading 3rd Edition⁴ by Schachter and Aldwell.

Good luck in becoming/being a Film Composer!!!

---
1. https://www.eastwestsamples.net/static_pages/EastWest-Quantum-Leap-Symphonic-Orchestra-Complete-pr-EW-177.html
2. https://www.garritan.com/demos.html
3. https://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261260111&sr=1-1
4. https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Voice-Leading-Edward-Aldwell/dp/0155062425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261260196&sr=1-1

[MetalMike06]

East West¹ has some great sound libraries, and though they are a lot pricier, quite affordable.
As a nice start, you might check Garritan Personal Orchestra². East West sound 10 times better, but GPO is a whole lot cheaper.

A good book to get for orchestration is The Study of Orchestration 3rd Edition³ by Samuel Adler. It'll take a while to finish the book, though.
A great theory book is Harmony & Voice Leading 3rd Edition⁴ by Schachter and Aldwell.

Good luck in becoming/being a Film Composer!!!

---
1. https://www.eastwestsamples.net/static_pages/EastWest-Quantum-Leap-Symphonic-Orchestra-Complete-pr-EW-177.html
2. https://www.garritan.com/demos.html
3. https://www.amazon.com/Study-Orchestration-Third-Samuel-Adler/dp/039397572X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261260111&sr=1-1
4. https://www.amazon.com/Harmony-Voice-Leading-Edward-Aldwell/dp/0155062425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261260196&sr=1-1

Thanks, this is all very helpful.

A question about the books though - they both appear to be textbooks. Would it still be relatively easy to learn from them alone? I will not be studying this in school; I am just wanting to go about this on my own. Also, would you recommend I get through the theory book a bit before moving on to orchestration, or can they be done simultaneously?

And I am very impressed with the East West libraries. Sure they appear to cost a bit more, but sound extremely good for the price.

[Manolito Mystiq]

Hey there again,

There's a huge discount now with East West: More than 60% off the Composer Collection Bundle1. That's still a price, though: $995,- something.
I will definitely go for Quantum Leap Goliath², amazing.

That's a good question concerning the study books. I studied the theory book for two years at the Conservatoire, so with guidance. I did quite a lot of assignments of the book on my own, but then again, I'm around a Conservatoire environment. You don't have a book with answers (only for certified teachers), so that's also thing to think about.

Isn't there a library in your neighborhood? They might definitely have the orcehstration book. The Study of Orchestration is really just a very good informative book of 'most' of the instruments of an orchestra.

These free lessons are very helpful, though.:
https://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=77
https://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=107

Good luck!!!

Mano

---
1. https://www.soundsonline.com/Complete-Composers-Collection-PLAY-Edition-pr-EW-189.html
2. https://www.soundsonline-europe.com/Quantum-Leap-Goliath-pr-EW-176.html

[BlobVanDam]

I was here wondering what Goliath was, since I have Colossus, and I find out that it is basically Colossus plus 8Gb more DAMMIT

I love Colossus, but I found it very limiting without getting Kontakt separately so I could modify the instruments a bit more, but I don't think it would be as much of a limiting factor for more regular instruments like the orchestral stuff. My biggest problem was that the standard instruments wouldn't let you play the instruments outside of their sampled range, but if you're trying to learn real orchestral arrangements, that might actually be a pro rather than a con.

[Manolito Mystiq]

Yes, Goliath is more of an updated Colossus, or so it seems.

But Blob, what specs does your PC have, and what software do you use?

Software:
I use Sibelius 5.

PC:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual
Core Processor 3800+
Clockspeed: 2.01 GHz, 3,00 GB

Well, Sibelius 5 is so much slower and seems to use so much more RAM than its predecessors, sound is clipping already if I use more than two instruments of Garritan. The soundcard is onboard, so a specific soundcard might help, but I think our PC might just be too old, no?

I was quite knowledgable when it comes to PCs, but now I think I might take some advice from people like you.

Mano

[BlobVanDam]

Your computer specs look good enough to me. It's the soundcard that makes a huge difference. Obviously RAM and CPU are important, but it looks like the soundcard is your biggest bottleneck.

What do you have the latency set to? When I was using on onboard, I think I had to set it to 250ms or so just to run a few instruments without the sound buffer not keeping up. I currently have an old Audigy 2 I got off eBay a few years ago, and it's not even considered a good pro audio card, and I've never had the sound cut out, and I can keep the latency at about 5-10ms. The most important factor is getting a sound card that supports ASIO (which is basically any separate sound card nowadays).

My current setup is a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, 4gb RAM (32bit OS, so I only get 3.5Gb). I use a little program called Zynewave Podium as a VST host for my sounds. A recent program that's not as full featured as other programs, but it's cheap and I like it.

[Manolito Mystiq]

I just tried on old Sound Blaster Live! Digital card (not even the Audigy 1), and it's a lot better.

I remember back when we first had this SB Live! card, that gaming was a lot better soundwise, because of no clipping and noise and everything.

I have a better card, an Audigy 2, but one steering wheel uses the gameport, which the superior card doesn't have. Need to find a convertor for that gaming device, I guess.

[RobD]

Another thing to look into is soundscaping. A lot of tense moments in most films and pretty much the entire score for horror films use soundscaping and noises instead of traditional scoring. Go and rent a few modern horror films and analyse the sounds they use in them, and think of ways to create those sort of sounds. In work, we use Omnisphere for a lot of that stuff, along with my old school natural sound design skills to, which is an interesting thing to look at.
https://www.spectrasonics.net/instruments/omnisphere.html

For natural sound design/sound manipulation the best bet is to start with foley and making sound effects with a specific goal in mind. Learning to make lasers are a great one for this sort of thing, and it's also a good way to get to know how your effects plugins work. A couple of months ago I needed a laser noise that didn't sound like it was stolen from Ben Burtt's library, so I spent a week wondering how the hell was I going to do that. In the end it was a plastic recorder (wind instrument type not recording device that is) being used as a slide on the strings of a bass above the nut, with a little bit of sub frequencies added in. The point is to understand soundscapes, some experimentation with objectives (i.e trying to get specific sounds) is the best way to go.

As for orchestral sounds, after using Vienna for many years we're now using ProjectSAM libraries. The orchestral effects on it are incredible and I would strongly recommend it.
https://www.projectsam.com/Products/Symphobia/

As has been said before, get some movie clips and use them as practice. You don't even need public domain ones as long as you're using them to learn on. An assignment I had in college for Sound For The Moving Image classes was to get a 3 minute action sequence and completely redo every single sound and the score for it. They didn't tell us this, and only told us to bring in the clip. We had less than a week to do it on old iMacs in Logic Express and I had chosen the Battle of Hoth.

[MetalMike06]

Unfortunately I won't be able to get any of this stuff until I get a decently fast computer. But I will bear all this in mind. For now I'll just have to stick with staff paper and a keyboard when available. 

[RobD]

Haha! You're lucky to have to have the ability to do that, as I sure as hell don't. But then I'd like to see you try and write down a soundscape on a piece of paper.

Just watched Se7en the other day, that's a good example of what I was on about if you're interested in that and looking to get some ideas before you get to play about with anything.

[BlobVanDam]

https://www.soundsonline.com/free-orchestra

For anyone interested, here is apparently a free 2gb version of East West Symphonic Orchestra, no limitations etc. I haven't downloaded it myself to check out yet, but it seems like a great starter for anyone who wants to get into orchestral stuff.

[Manolito Mystiq]

Yeah, I saw it too.

The samples are great. It's free!!!

I try to get it to work with Sibelius, but as of now, it doesn't work.

I think I'm definitely going to buy Silver, it's with discount and shipping around €120,-.

I might take some more money and go for Gold, though.

Mano

[RobD]

Ooh, thanks. I don't have anything liscened on my laptop so that's going to be handy.

[Manolito Mystiq]

Well, the code you get when you download the free edition is also a discount. And it seems to work with Silver as well, bringing the price down to €50,- With taxes and shipping. I think it's a mistake, but you can check out with it.