this week we're taking a look into my
process for writing music
for films and looking at how it affects
the emotion of a scene
i think there's a real temptation with
music to rush into making loads of
tracks drums and all these other
instruments but i'm yet to find a piece
of music that can't be fully
encapsulated on an emotional level when
it's played on a single instrument like
a piano so let me show you what i mean
now that's a very simple piece of music
from jurassic park and it's used when
they're arriving on a helicopter at this
brand new island and this island happens
to be jurassic park with all these
dinosaurs so it's really trying to be
impressive and grandiose i think that's
what this piece of music achieves
and that's just on a piano so it's even
more intense when it's got the big
orchestra in the big arrangement now
same composer and this has a very
different kind of sound
it's quite scary
quite worrying like there's something
that's about to happen
especially when that happens now this is
a very simple piece of music especially
that part and yet it's very emotional
and it really does sound like
quite scary
so if we were to use a different two
notes for example something equally
simple
suddenly we haven't got such a scary
shock
so we know we can get a bunch of
different moods out of one piece of
music from that to
but what if we want to make our own
music now i personally like to start
with chords and i play by ear so we can
do something like this
there's another one
and
okay so if those were our chords
how do we make it into a piece of music
well let's try and start with something
that's very jolly so we could start with
this
it sounds a bit silly a bit joy but what
if we wanted to change it into something
that had a completely different mood we
can change just one note of that and
same chords just with a couple little
changes we start with this
and let's change that from a major to a
minor
or in the scheme of things
but we now need to change the rhythm i
think because it doesn't seem to fit so
well with those notes so let's change it
just to straight rhythm
you get the idea
so now let's just slow it down a bit i
think this will end up sounding quite
sad compared to the original one which
was very jolly
see what i mean
sounds very different
from the very small that we started with
which was this
so there we go we can change things a
lot by just using rhythm slightly
different chords and the tempo which
we're playing so what i'm really trying
to show you here is that if you want to
make a piece of music sad you can't just
play it on a violin if it doesn't sound
sad on a piano it won't sound sad in the
end and that goes for all kind of
emotions whether it's you want to add
energy or fear or happiness sadness
whatever it is so let's say that we're
really happy with the emotion of this
for our scene so now is the time when we
can bring that into the computer and
start adding tracks and start adding
other instruments so i usually start
with the main chords or the melody
played on a piano or an electric piano
for starters after that it's worth
adding percussion i found it easier to
find interesting rhythms when i can work
around the drums then with a few extra
details we've got a decent loop that we
can repeat throughout now when i'm doing
these episodes it's all about speed so i
aim to have just two different sections
that i can switch between so for the
second one i'll do a similar process
starting with piano and building things
up and once i'm happy with it we can
bring in the visuals there are a few
kind of tools i like to use when
structuring music for these episodes
firstly cutting out everything except
the drums can be a nice change up i also
look out for times to switch to the next
section that has the different chords i
like making a kind of staircase
gradually introducing each instrument if
i want to build up the intensity over
time
we can also shorten or lengthen some
parts so that the end of a section of
music lines up perfectly with something
in the visuals for example cutting out
the music completely which often adds a
real weight to what the person's saying
if there's dialogue but the key thing is
to always go back to what is the emotion
of this scene when it comes to timing
rhythm and matching up sinks with
different kind of parts of the film
so that's it for this week and i'll see
you next time
you