Film Music Notes
Understanding the art of film music
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Understanding the art of film music
Write melodies that mean what you want them to mean. Melodies in tonal music tend to conform to underlying linear patterns that have different emotional meanings when they are elaborated in different ways. By analyzing many of Hollywood’s best-known themes, you’ll learn these basic shapes and how the elaborating techniques can create expressions that are perfectly suited to a theme’s association.
Learn how to handle not only the voice leading of chromatic chords, but also the expressive and emotional associations they can adopt. This course will show how well-known film themes create expression through chromatic chords like augmented 6ths, common-tone chords, dominant substitutes, as well as techniques like chromatic planing and mode mixture. We then explore how key relationships in film can be associated with certain expressions like intensified action, hopefulness, and the awe-inspiring.
I worked as a Professor of Music Theory for several years in universities, specializing in film music, Beethoven, and rock music in my teaching and research. For more than two decades, I have taught music theory and analysis to all ages and at all levels from the community music school to the large university. I have published articles on film music and have a new chapter on John Williams’ Star Wars themes forthcoming in 2022.
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By subscribing, you agree with our Privacy Policy.
To avoid copyright infringement, this course contains no score excerpts or audio from film scores. Students are directed to find and listen to soundtrack excerpts while the course content consists of:
1. Music theory connecting the techniques to be discussed
2. Analysis describing the techniques behind the assigned excerpt, and
3. Composition tutorials applying the techniques to original compositions
To avoid copyright infringement, this course contains no score excerpts or audio from film scores. Students are directed to find and listen to soundtrack excerpts while the course content consists of:
1. Music theory connecting the techniques to be discussed
2. Analysis describing the techniques behind the assigned excerpt, and
3. Composition tutorials applying the techniques to original compositions