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The Composer's Thread


Justin

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  • 1 month later...

Hello again. Here's the end credits from the music I just finished for a short film (40 minutes duration).

and here's the trailer of the film itself with an edit of the director of 2-3 cues of the music:

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello again. Here's the end credits from the music I just finished for a short film (40 minutes duration).

and here's the trailer of the film itself with an edit of the director of 2-3 cues of the music:

Very Schindler's List-y. I like it. :thumbup:

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

So here is a more developed version of this piece with a quasi tetrachord intro and more of a lead up. I still need to expand upon this but it goes slowly.

http://www.box.net/shared/mdc0b5dkys

I wrote a little fanfare in studio logo style, that Marian wants to play before screenings in his home theater :ola:

Fanfare for Miniplex Stolberggasse

Both are great!!! Well done! :P

here's my latest contribution. The music I made for a short animation film:

REMEMBER (02:25'') - Short animation film

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Here's my arrangement of the the march from The Great Escape. I still want to edit some parts, like the alto saxes, but overall this present a pretty much final version of it.

It was recorded by the high school that I work for in one take. I wasn't there to conduct it myself (I had to substitute that day) so there are some performance issues that I would have wanted to go over, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mzzynjk1qj1/The%20Great%20Escape%20-%20Allentown.mp3

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Still very cool, and it must have been great to introduce such a wonderful score to players who have never heard it before.

Your re-recording, and having watched the film a week ago, made me pop in the 2CD Varese Club release. Started CD 2 today.

Some of my pieces from the passed couple months that I especially enjoyed making:

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A few months ago I had scored this über low-budget little film for a young director from California, I posted the link here back then and now, the soundtrack is available for streaming right here if you guys wanted to listen to it ;)

Cheers!

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Not exactly in the vein of everyone else's compositions, but here's a song I wrote and performed with my band for a project in our course a few weeks ago. It's nothing special, and my improv is particularly sloppy, but I'm pretty happy with it as a whole. I'm on piano/synth. The singer had the flu when we recorded so the poor dear had some tiny pitch issues, but I still love her voice.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/kfghui

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The second short film I'm working on is called "Shifting Lives" and I just uploaded two short clips of the upcoming soundtrack that I'm currently composing!

You can listen to it here!

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  • 3 months later...

Since the other one got massive (and I cannot find it to post this) I thought I would start another one for those of us on this forum that write music ourselves. This theme was inspired by the book "Let Me In" which has been originally adapted by a Swedish filmmaker and more recently remade domestically. I wanted to paint a portrait of these two kids who are alienated for their own reasons but find friendship in one another. Seeing that this is a vampire tale, I wanted to use eerie compositional devices like sul ponticello strings (although I also use celli with no vibrato giving them a "dead" sound) along with Bartok snap pizz, quarter tone violins (very subtle in background mix) and some cymbal scrapes. The melody I gave to the bassoon since I like its sound- it's a tad mournful. Anyhow, enjoy (mind you it's not a "happy" or upbeat piece...)

http://www.box.net/shared/r5f97lkb1f

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Last year, my own movie got released in selected theatres in The Netherlands. I was deeply involved with the writing, directing, editing, production design and also the score.

Here is a selection of several themes used in the finished film.

Since the other one got massive (and I cannot find it to post this) I thought I would start another one for those of us on this forum that write music ourselves. This theme was inspired by the book "Let Me In" which has been originally adapted by a Swedish filmmaker and more recently remade domestically. I wanted to paint a portrait of these two kids who are alienated for their own reasons but find friendship in one another. Seeing that this is a vampire tale, I wanted to use eerie compositional devices like sul ponticello strings (although I also use celli with no vibrato giving them a "dead" sound) along with Bartok snap pizz, quarter tone violins (very subtle in background mix) and some cymbal scrapes. The melody I gave to the bassoon since I like its sound- it's a tad mournful. Anyhow, enjoy (mind you it's not a "happy" or upbeat piece...)

http://www.box.net/shared/r5f97lkb1f

It's a great arrangement! I think it would actually work very within a (more traditional) vampire movie. Good work! ;)

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  • 1 month later...

The BIg Race

I hope you enjoy it. You will probably notice a Williams-esque feel to it with a touch of Horner. I did not do it completely intentionally, although I had listened to Far and Away fairly recently so that might have been it.

All comments/constructive criticism/suggestions are welcome.

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Thanks for posting! I have to give the disclaimer that I am NOT an amazing composer, but seeing as how you asked for constructive criticism...here we go. ;)

First of all, I do like the approach you've got going - horns, trumpets, violins, and chimes work well together in this sort of setting. However, I think the piece as a whole is too...static. Most musical devices are more effective if only used for relatively short periods of time. The brain likes contrast. You've got the violins playing the exact same figure for more than a minute, with fairly similar melodies going on in the brass the whole time. Consider breaking things up a bit. I find that it helps me to imagine some sort of narrative in my head. What's happening next? How does the mood change from moment to moment? It all needs to be cohesive, of course, but there's still a lot of room for changing things up. Remember that you've got the whole orchestra to work with: all the woodwinds, all the brass, all the strings, all the percussion, piano, harp, etc., etc. There are a lot of possibilities, and taking advantage of those can be a very good thing as long as the piece still feels like a cohesive whole.

Second, I think you definitely need a strong melody for a piece like this. You've got some melodic ideas that do repeat, but I think you need to work on crafting something a little more memorable. Even if you don't want to do that, you could still work on making the notes flow with more...direction. A good melody is like a little self-contained story, and surprisingly difficult to come up with, but if you study amazing melodies that others have written and really will yourself to come up with the melody you want, you may be surprised.

Third, the piece doesn't really have an ending. bowdown You pretty much just kept the same pattern going and then suddenly ended it with the chimes. I would consider working out something there - a fanfare, a quieter passage, something that will make it so the listener isn't too surprised by the ending.

Fourth, and unrelated to the quality of the composition itself, you may want to invest in some better software or use the one you've got differently. I don't have a tremendous amount of cash to blow on software, but I have Finale 2008 for engraving music, and I find that combinations of the SoftSynth and Garritan sounds that come with the program work fairly well. Better than this MIDI sound, at least.

Anyway, just my two cents. Thanks again for posting!

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I've just listened to it, and while I am unable to offer anything like the comments that Datameister has posted, I will say that I enjoyed listening it. Hornerisms were kept to a minimum ;) and the whole thing has a Coplandesque feel to it. It reminded me of a speeded-up version of "Fanfare For The Common Man", which is good, as I like that piece:I even like the E.L.P. version(!).

Datameister is right, though: the piece simply ends. There is no build-up, no climax. Perhaps this is what you intended. Small "dig" aside; if I was Siskel and Ebert, I'd give it two thumbs up.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi all,

Here is my most recent uploaded composition, just under 5 minutes long:

It wasn't written for any particular purpose. The final version was created with the Edirol Orchestral Synth.

Comments, constructive critiques, compliments, etc, are welcome!

Thanks,

-Scott

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Hello guys,(and girls) ..

i didn't came here since one year and a half. not sure if some people remember me, i did some piano / horn collaboration with french horn player and arranger, marc papeghin in the past.

i didn't come here since more than one year, because i lost my hearing and my capacities to make music, listening to music, playing music etc .. almost everything (and not only music) because of a 16 years long hearing trauma.(i'm suffering from permanant headache and oversensitive hearing sine 16 years now). and coming here on a music board and seeing everybody enjoying listening to music, and especially my idol, john williams, was, is and still is a pain in the a**.

anyway i found some force (not the Starwars one !!) to come here and to show two tributes i did and posted on youtube.

one to john barry , with the main title of out of africa, (if you ask yourself why there is the end of the black hole movie in the video and i'm playing the main title of out of africa, i will let everything guess :) .. not sure if someone will understand it ... but anybody can try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2sEhJ9Mi0U

and a tribute to christopher and dana reeve on the theme of somewhere in time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_m-EMFuwU

these tribute are not done by reading the piano usual sheet music available in the songbooks.

i improvise/play on the melody and the chords i write from the songbooks or a full score (if it's available), like a jazz pianist would do it (i studied jazz piano in the past).

so it's my own version of these tunes that i play, and not what has been written by a "guy" who did the piano transcription for the songbooks that i always hate, anyway ...

all comments are welcome. these tribute has been made with the heart and with a lot of pain, in regards of christopher for some special reason regarding myself , and for barry, because ... well , john barry is something special to me ... he's the first one who got me into soundtrack music when i saw the black hole movie in theater when i was 5. i still remember all the red end of the movie on the screen at this moment.

i recorded the barry tribute after spending one of the biggest sad day of my life, crying when i learned his death from my mother and spent a very depressive afternoon. i recorded this tribute the same day of his death, 4 hours after i learned his death.

so everything i was feeling at that moment, i put it in this video, in the music i played, and in the pictures. i don't know if it made anything good or not, i didn't had the chance myself to listen to what i recorded more that two times. as i lost my hearing capacities again exactly one day later after doing this video.

thanks for your comments... i will release some songs soon around some soundtrack composer, and a jazz album, but it's not the place i think to put any link for this in this post ...

so, all my love to christopher and john, and thanks to everybody who will check my videos.

any comments are welcome.

thanks,

Didier.

PS : there is a folder called john williams on my youtube channel, with some nice stuff. i have a lot of other stuff to upload , but i don't have time to do this actually.

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  • 1 month later...

A little while back I uploaded a couple of pieces that were played on a Student Composers' Concert at UofL. The first is a wind quintet that was inspired by pieces like Scheherazade, although with more of a contemporary element. The latter is a piece for solo trombone and six percussionists.

Here's the link: Soundclick

I've had trouble getting the program notes to get posted on there, so here they are in chronological order:

Tales From Arabia is a semi-programmatic work, conceived for five moments. For this concert, the first three movements will be played. For each movement, a different instrument of the ensemble is the main carrier of the central motif for the movement; in the first, the flute takes the melismatic main theme, following the titular traveler on a journey through the desert. The second movement has the oboe delivering the central, shifting thematic material as a shopper experiences the sights and sounds of a bustling marketplace, getting more heated in a haggling session with a street vendor. The bassoon introduces the main theme for the princess in the third movement. The kingdom is in turmoil, and the innocent princess is slowly growing into an age where she will have to leave behind the naiveté of childhood and face the situation. These troubles confront her in a nightmare, but when she awakens, her father is there to comfort her.
In the Spring semester of 2010, I had written three pieces in school, all having fairly upbeat sections, if not total focuses, and all seeking to have some kind of bridge between more old-fashioned, tonal approaches and more contemporary, atonal ones. Seeking different things to explore, I chose to pursue something with less tonal basis, and something that was more aggressive.

The piece pits the trombone against the percussion ensemble. From the beginning, the ensemble establishes itself with all of its primary motivic material. The trombone tries to join in, but is shunned by the ensemble. The trombone makes several more attempts to be a part of what is happening, to fit in—the ensemble pushes back forcibly every time. Finally, the trombone part gets more tenacious, and after a struggle with the ensemble, gains the upper hand and lashes out in belligerent triumph with a solo. The ensemble renews its strength with changed instrumentation, but once again, the trombone comes out on top. Drained, the trombone delivers one more solo, and the ensemble wearily paces in a section referred to in the score as “Grim; like a processional.” The trombone and ensemble seethe at each other, the anger of the feud once again burning, and the music builds in intensity. Syncopated bursts of percussion sound as the ensemble gets riled again, and the trombone and ensemble meet each other in one final (fatal?) clash.

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Hello guys,(and girls) ..

i didn't came here since one year and a half. not sure if some people remember me, i did some piano / horn collaboration with french horn player and arranger, marc papeghin in the past.

one to john barry , with the main title of out of africa, (if you ask yourself why there is the end of the black hole movie in the video and i'm playing the main title of out of africa, i will let everything guess :) .. not sure if someone will understand it ... but anybody can try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2sEhJ9Mi0U

and a tribute to christopher and dana reeve on the theme of somewhere in time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt_m-EMFuwU

Oh crap, I wept when I heard your take on Out Of Africa, do you have an MP3 of this? And more importantly, can you send it to me?

That is a brilliant version.

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  • 3 weeks later...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1QW-RHMBUE

Here's a suite of material that I've written over the past few months. Most of you may have heard the first one when I posted it a while back.

Selections include:

The Big Race

Stars

Going Into Battle

Spying

Tension

Piano Ideas

Please comment, I would be interested to know what you think overall.

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I have a small question could I request somebody to compose something for me here or should I ask it somewhere/somehow else?

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I have a small question could I request somebody to compose something for me here or should I ask it somewhere/somehow else?

Depends. Do you want music for free or are you willing to shell out some $$$. Most self respecting composers don't give away their music for nothing.

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I do not really want to have to spend money, I would be willing to trade with them (edits, sheet music etc.) I hope this does not make me sound like a cheapskate

oh and here is a Piano Mock-up of a Suite of the Young Indy Theme (from TLC) that a friend of mine* is composing for me: http://www.divshare.com/download/14364501-dc7

*his name is Isaac Vail BTW

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The thing is, most people who compose as more than just a hobby can't do things like that for free. It's their livelyhood, composers exist on commissions. It would be like asking an auto mechanic to change and rotate your tires...for free. Doesn't really work that way. :P

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  • 4 weeks later...

I recently finished scoring a short film for a director in South Carolina. It's called "Paradox In Noir." I posted the soundtrack on my blog, so you can head over there and give it a listen!

Paradox In Noir Soundtrack

Let me know what you think :)

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Here is my latest work. I created the preview video slideshow, including an original soundtrack, for next year's National Park Travelers Club convention.

Thanks for listening!

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Here is my latest work. I created the preview video slideshow, including an original soundtrack, for next year's National Park Travelers Club convention.

Thanks for listening!

Great work, I like it a lot! Great adventurous feel allround, some nice Williams-esque orchestration in places, and a bit of Americana vibe. If I had any criticisms, I'd say it felt a little bit aimless in places, and the ending felt a bit sudden. But overall very good, and it enhanced the visuals well.

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tannhauser,

I enjoyed it; it was colorful, not restrictive -- something I can't escape in my music due to lack of knowledg,e and a poor program.

This was something I could easily hear in some TV movie. You shown skills few people who make music and post it on the score boards, have.

scottsinct,

I felt the music was plaster, boring, and the kind of stuff I don't care for that I hear in cheap midi pieces of video game demos. But I will say that you got a way of making it that some composers wish they could pull off; there's a certain flow to it, a certain build

Adventure #3

Compliments! What software do you use?

FL Studio 8, augmented with several SF2 files from various other sources, since many instruments were poor, or just completely missing. FL Studio is okay for people practicing and getting into it, but professional music, I just can't see this working, plus it has many draw backs for someone wanting to use it to score projects.

Snare drums, cymbol, piano, piccolo, french horn, trumpet, violins, timpani, cello, celesta (I think it was), xylaphone (wooden); that's about everything in the piece.

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