A Composer's Thought Process

Hello everyone!

Today I’m having a chat about some of the things I think about when I’m composing to picture.  I created a little series called “Movies in a Minute” to give people bite-sized examples of the types of styles that help bring a visual to life.  I’ve also done some “Insight” videos explaining some of the thought processes (again, just short ones so that they are easily digestible).  I’ve created these videos, and this blog to help new composers have some idea about what to think about when scoring to picture.  Today I’m discussing “The Grandeur of Space” music and insights.

Mood, instrumentation and style

The first thing I think about when scoring to picture is; not only what mood is it that I am having to take into consideration, but what instrumentation am I going to use as well as the style?  If I’m composing to a 1920s period piece, I’m not going to be breaking out the synthesisers.  If it’s a landscape, a humongous tree in a forest or a giant wave, a solo instrument perhaps isn’t the most fitting.  Am I going to use many instruments, or just a few?  How big a sound do I want and do I want it to be acoustic or electronic?  What mood do I need to set here?

 When I was thinking about the music for ‘The Grandeur of Space’, these are the questions that I asked myself whilst I was putting the visuals together.  Space is vast, so I wanted a big sound.  I love writing orchestral music because there is so much going on and you don’t get a much bigger group of musos than in an orchestra!  They are dotted about a large stereo field, so you get a sense of space and depth with the many instruments panned left and right to varying degrees.  You also have the frequency and decibel ranges to play with, so an orchestra is incredibly versatile.

 For this little short, I wanted to go the big Hollywood-esque type of score; orchestral, busy, full of drama, climactic etc.  Soaring strings to play with emotions, percussion and percussive ostinatos to create some pace, blaring brass to cut through all the other layers, all building towards a climax.  I achieved this by double-octaves, loudness and the music rising in pitch.

 How to go about composing

As I’m classically trained, I can write music onto manuscript.  However, this is incredibly tedious and in this day and age with the technology we’ve got, when I compose I write using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and Logic Pro is my DAW of choice.  I’ll play in notes via a MIDI keyboard and then I can move them around if I’m not quite satisfied with the initial melodies and harmonies.  I tend to compose for the various instruments as I go, rather than writing out a whole line for one instrument before moving onto another.  I find hearing all the instruments working together gives me inspiration.  Composing in a DAW will also let you loop bars and phrases, which is useful for ostinatos.  It’s been quite a while since I have written music out on a manuscript and as I said, very tedious and time-consuming (can you imagine how much MORE music the likes of Mozart and Beethoven might have written if they had today’s technology?!)  My preference is to go straight to digital and most DAWs will let you print out a score anyway.

The inevitable anxiety…

One last thing I wanted to mention before I finish as I’m sure many, if not all of you, feel the same; I wanted to share just how anxious I get before I compose anything.  I can feel sick, stressed and unfocussed, not to mention completely uninspired before I have written a single note.  This happens every time and I feel sure that I’ve already written my best music and I can’t top it.  Rationally I know that’s not true but irrationally, that’s how I feel.  So I write something anyway and try not to attach too much to it.  Even the compositions I’m most proud of began with doubt, misgivings and anxiety, but I created them all the same.  That’s not to say that everything I compose will hit the mark because it won’t, that’s pretty normal.  But the more you push through the discomfort and create something, the more gems will eventually shine through.

Anyway, thanks for reading and if you have a moment, check out my ‘Insights’ video, linked below.  If you'd like to learn more about scoring to picture, get in touch at [email protected] and watch out for an upcoming opportunity to learn more.
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