>> The best way to develop
your compositional toolbox is to study music, study other composers,
successful experiences of other creators in
how music can be effective especially within visual media.
[MUSIC] I compose music for life,
I wrote a Viola Concerto,
so I wasn't thinking so much about visual media during that process.
But I think it is critical to study other composers.
Yet it's also critical not to be locked in by what other composers do,
is to be open to what you might call epiphany in terms of how can I
synthesize all of this music that I've taken
in over my life experience and come out with some new thing.
One thing that is critical these days is that you
have to be thoroughly comfortable and competent with the technology.
I started out in the paper and pencil era.
I started a piano when I first started writing music for
television and had a television set on the top of my piano,
and VHS player, and would play against picture and write notes on paper,
and that went to the copyist and we went to the scoring stage.
But that process has likely changed,
and really so much of the music that we're
hearing nowadays is almost completely synthesized and sampled.
That does not mean that there's not opportunities to write the orchestra.
There are, and orchestras still an extraordinary tool,
perhaps my favorite part of the process is when I get the opportunity to
write for and get my music reported by an orchestra,
and I am very fortunate to have that occur frequently.
That said, my score still have a lot of content that is
not performed by the orchestra that is in fact
created within the box, within the computer.
It is very important for composers,
especially someone starting now,
to be competent and to understand these technologies and to use
them to their best possible.
Some film and video game scores that I think you should listen to, obviously,
there's some fantastic film scores out there,
and there are literally hundreds of great film scores.
Now, the one that comes right to the top of mine
is Tom Newman score for Shawshank Redemption.
I think is absolutely a brilliantly.
It's a great movie, a fantastic,
and a brilliantly scored film.
I think John Williams films,
almost every film that John Williams has scored,
I think it could be a masterclass in learning how to score picture.
The thing that John Williams brings to the table from
a composers perspective is not only does he score each scene perfectly,
but he also manages to write brilliant music at the same time.
That's a trick that many composers do not accomplish.
They may actually score picture,
they may have some really cool ambient sound
that works and creates the right mood or whatever.
But John Williams manages to write great music at the same time.
But he never subordinates picture to his music.
At least from my perspective,
the music always beautifully and perfectly fits picture.
Then he manages to write brilliant stuff underneath it.
Jerry Goldsmith, I'm going with some of the great classics.
I'm a huge fan of Jerry Goldsmith's music.
Jerry was brilliant also,
had plan picture and also writing gorgeous,
beautiful, affective music for our Herman.
I think James Newton Howard as it is and Tom Newman are both masters of scoring,
so there's just literally thousands of scores to listen to.
There are a lot of great game scores.
I think most elementary is written like
his score for journey is absolutely lovely, gorgeous.
I think you might enjoy some of my scores like source for BioShock 1, 2, and 3.
Those I think are pretty interesting scores and worth at least considering listened to.
There's just thousands and thousands of great scores.
In terms of games,
the scores sometimes are better than the game and vice versa,
and I think that's true for music.
So in a way,
you have to balance that finding really great music versus necessarily the best games.
[MUSIC]