Few things give a filmmaker as much pause as the term 'Mickey Mousing' and for good reason. For the uninitiated, the term Mickey Mousing refers to the music of old Disney, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, etc. cartoons. It was very commonplace for the music to accentuate what was happening on screen often taking the place of sound fx. A classic and personal favorite of mine is the violin-glissando-peeking-around-a-corner sound and if I could find an example I'd link it. In the modern film scoring world Mickey Mousing refers to the music following the action in a very obvious way (nearly to the point of breaking the fourth wall). Often this term is used in a sort of derogatory way, for good reason as it was very abused in the film world.

BUT!

It can be done exceedingly well and effective if done with care.

Lately, it seems to me at least, woodwinds have become a mystery instrument in the sense that -- it seems like lots of composers are scared to write for them. I'm hoping we can demystify what are -- I think -- the most important coloring instrument in the orchestra.

Last time we discussed how melody is affected by the chords accompanying it. You can take a melody and change its perception or mood depending on where your chords are going or how much they're doing. Today -- I'd like to focus on how melody can be affected by its orchestration.

Many composers pour over melody but often times not in the way you're thinking. It's pretty common in pop and rock that the melody "writes itself" meaning the melody naturally settles into the chords. That doesn't mean it's easy ​to write a melody just that it's often the sum of it's parts.

Happy November! In my last post (this will be two posts in one week) I talked about planing chords and there's just too much to talk about there so we're diving right back in.

Hello! I have returned, and I've officially migrated my blog directly to my timcoxcomposer.com site. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Easier functionality for me as my HTML/CSS skills are out of practice. I'll be able to start including images for musical examples and audio snippets to help better get my point across.
2. Less pages to manage. I'm a very streamline kind of person when it comes to workflow. I have three monitors so I don't have to keep clicking menus in Digital Performer just because it bothers me enough! Having everything accessible in one place just makes my life easier.
3. Theoretically, point number 2 will also tie in to keeping me more accountable when it comes to keeping this damn blog updated (more than every two years).

With that said, it's good to get back into the swing of things and today we're talking about planing.

In Part I we talked about the tropes involved in writing for characters. Since character themes are — well — themes it makes sense that you would want the music to be more melodic in nature. Maybe not necessarily “hummable” but definitely differentiated from just basic underscore. A nice melody to associate with the character in question isn’t always necessary though. In The Dark Knight Hans Zimmer uses a long distorted droning note with building ostinato underneath it to signify the Joker. It’s very effective due to it’s stripped down and almost primal sound. What Zimmer does is essentially create a mood that ties to the character — it may not be a traditional theme but when has Hans Zimmer ever done anything traditional? Tonally the Joker’s music is pretty different from the rest of the movie as well so it helps to separate the character even further. Every time I watch The Dark Knight I get the impression that Joker is an inch away from breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly. The music assists this imbalance greatly. So tone, it seems, is just as important as melody. We touched on this a little bit in part I but that was more geared towards using tone to assist the melodic intent. You can just as easily use tonal ideas to establish a character’s motivations. Tone is also used to establish the world but we’ll get into that some other time.

Working with thematic material presents several challenges. Do you make a character theme? What are they thinking? How do you state this theme, if needed, at this moment? Good theme writing starts with an understanding of the common tropes associated with various character types. Even if some are stereotypical and “tired” tropes. You have to try to remind yourself that we’re telling a story through sound. We don’t have the visuals to show the hero or the villain or the written word to describe them. Yes, we accompany the visuals of the film but in order to organically (early 2000’s buzzword) work with the picture our musical language needs to be seamless with the story. Today we’re going to talk about theme building ideas and characterization but let’s get some things out of the way. There are tired old descriptors for various themes that just don’t apply much anymore. Terms like “masculine” and “feminine” are incredibly useful and more often than not accurate to the tone of the melody. They work well and really haven’t been associated with one gender or the other for a very long time. Basically, bold themes are deemed masculine and light themes are classified as feminine. Really though it doesn’t mean the theme is male centric or female centric — it’s describing bold/daring vs. light/emotional themes. The terms are common and originated from descriptors in classical literature analysis.
Should we use them? I think we can use them just fine but I’ll refrain simply to get a fresh take on it.

Ah. Ah…yes. So let me preface this by saying I routinely say I’m going to start blogging more and then I don’t and then I feel bad about it and forget my login info. But — hey I’m a busy guy so there.
IF you are the least bit curious, I’m a film composer. If you want you can follow my ramblings as I try to figure this whole thing out. Let’s get started, the topic for today: instrumentation.
There are plenty of different schools of thought on this and really, they’re all correct. Some composers really enjoy just picking what is going on in their heads at the time and making a soundtrack. Sometimes this is called “eclectic” but to me these often come out feeling very disjointed. It lacks the coherence you get from a score that’s had its instrumentation plotted out. That’s the method I prefer, a cohesive symbiotic score with a singular tone to it. This doesn’t mean I don’t throw in an occasional “guest” into the mix but overall there is an ideology present throughout the film. Here’s some examples: