The Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences just recently completed the documentary Homeschool Dropouts: Why the second generation is headed for a spiritual wasteland, for which I was privileged to write the music. You can view the trailer above.

Here are some screenshots I took of Cubase 4 in mid-project. The screenshots couldn’t show everything in my project windows, but it will give you an idea of what the software looks like. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

You can also hear a short medley of some assorted musical cues that found their way into the film.

One thing I have noticed is that film and documentary music (though subject to the same fundamental principles of design), can be very different in the ways that they’re applied to their respective categories of visual media.

Homeschool Dropouts is a documentary, so most of the music I wrote for it plays under constant dialogue and keeps a very subdued and submissive role– almost exaggeratedly so, as most of the music is little more than ambient or atmospheric. Though I developed a couple different melodic motifs and musical textures that I could weave throughout the film, there was never really a place for a big, developed symphonic approach to melody or movement–most of the music would be pretty uninteresting or boring if you heard it on its own.

In the style and texture department, we were looking for a sound that could effectively represent the “serious” and almost “crisis” flavor of the film. The documentary was shot in dry, barren locations in Texas and New Mexico, so the music had to match that empty, wasteland feel. In addition to this, I was also looking to find a musical sound that would be quick to write, as I only had about 5 days to write most of the 30 minutes of music that appeared in the final version of the film.

Prominent Musical Elements in Homeschool Dropouts:

Low Drones and ambient rumbles
Ethnic flute phrases
Subdued electric guitar
Thunderclaps/Explosions*
Percussive Piano
Muted string sustains

*My secret weapon on this score was the site www.freesound.org, a user-based audio community which offers a very wide of sound effects for free. The sounds on the site are uploaded by its users, so the quality of the files is kinda hit-and-miss, but it is a great resource nonetheless. I wanted a very distinct audio signature that I could use at points of emphasis throughout the film, so I used www.freesound.org to download an assortment of explosions, thunderclaps, metallic clangs, engine noise (even rattling chains), and other sounds that I thought would add that extra punch and grittiness the music was missing.

Script is King, but music is Queen.

The duty of a queen is to actively help and support the King. Though she is in submission, both king and queen are united by a common vision and goal – to uphold the law and protect the people.

The role of music in film—to aid, match, empower, uplift and strengthen the film by representing all the story elements, vision, ideas and emotions of the film—is very much the same. Like a good queen, the right score can prove to be an incredible blessing to the King (film) and his kingdom, but inversely, a bad one can destroy it. This is because music is not neutral. If it was, we wouldn’t have to worry about conflicting interests and storylines because all meaning would be purely subjective and relative. The Film Music industry functions upon the presupposition that music possesses the inherent ability to communicate a story. (if it didn’t, then there’d be no point in writing film scores at all!) When the director presents a melancholy scene to the composer and asks for “sad music”, that’s not meant to be interpreted as a relative term, but an objective one. Steven Spielberg declared that, “If I weren`t a director, I would want to be a film composer.” because he, along with all competent directors and composers, understands that every piece of music tells a story.

In fact, music tells stories so well that when score and script present conflicting emotions, the audience will always follow the music, rendering the original intent of the script moot at best, though downright confusing is more likely.

So what does it look like when you have a good, bad or indifferent queen?

Consider this Illustration:
You have a basic, three act film with a pretty standard story curve. (For more information on the three-act structure and basic story arc, read my brother Isaac’s article on his site.)

It’s a standard drama with standard emotional fluctuation that culminates on a high note with a happy ending that prepares the audience to leave the theater with a feeling of triumph and fulfillment. For ease of illustration, let’s propose that this film could take one of three different approaches with the structure of its score:

#1: The Queen is Indifferent

What the viewer feels upon leaving the theater: Indifference and Boredom—because nothing really happened. The film seemed like a whole lot of nothing because there was no emotional growth or fluctuation. Of the three examples, this is the most common, because so many filmmakers and composers don’t stop to think about the message the music is conveying.

#2: The Queen is Independent

What the viewer feels upon leaving the theater: Irrational Depression and Conflict—because although he was sure it was supposed to be feel-good film, it felt more like a funeral procession.

#3: The King and Queen are united towards a common goal

What the viewer feels upon leaving the theater: What a powerful and coherent film! There is no emotional confusion because the storyline of the music matched that of the script.

Notice that even though you have the exact same script, directing, acting, lighting, editing and effects in all three scenarios, in each one the audience walks away from a completely different movie experience, because music colors the way the viewer interprets the film and all of its elements. The fact that music alone can completely change a film has led some filmmakers to call the score the “second script,” because it can hold just as much sway in determining whether the film is a success or a complete disaster.

When used properly and wisely in the context of your script, the musical score can actually strengthen the story, improve the acting, beautify the cinematography and enhance the direction, but it can also destroy them all if it’s left to do whatever it wants. As I explained in Part 1 of this series, the right score won’t write itself; it needs to be constructed by someone who has done the hard work and the study necessary to understand the basics of how music works and how its emotional effect can be maximized to aid film. The obvious next question is, “What sorts of materials do you study to learn how to do this?”

Find out in Part 3.

I wish this resource filled with over 28,000 public domain scores had existed back in my piano playing days, but I still find it helpful for a number of reasons.

If you are a student of composition, I recommend you go to the IMSLP and download some of the full orchestral scores hosted on the site, and study them while listening to an mp3 of the actual piece. This has been helpful to me in the past because the sheet music shows you exactly which orchestral actions create which results. “Ah… so that’s how Tchaikovsky got the woodwinds to sound that way….”

Northernsounds.com is currently hosting Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s classic work Principles of Orchestration in digital format as a free online course in orchestration.

Though Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov is best known today for his piece The Flight of the Bumblebee and his brilliant symphonic suite Scheherazade, his knowledge of orchestration also heavily influenced and saturated the music of his students, among whom were Respighi, Glazunov, Prokofiev and Stravinsky (whose biggest strength was orchestration, in my opinion).

Principles of Orchestration is replete with selections of sheet music by Rimsky-Korsakov and others (most notably Tchaikovsky) illustrating the principles being described, whether it be woodwind doubling, stacking strings and brass, carrying a melody with the cello section or knowing when to use percussive accents.

The course also includes a number of very helpful charts and graphs that show instrument ranges, orchestra seating and other helpful data that can be nice to have on hand as reference when composing.

In the past, an orchestration manual on its own has been of limited use because you can’t hear what’s being described, but NorthernSounds.com solves this problem by creating Garritan Personal Orchestra renditions of every piece of sheet music found in the book, which can be played live as they are viewed on the web page.

When I went through the book/course a couple years ago I was not expecting it to teach me much about composition, but it did — I was surprised by just how applicable all this instruction is to the composition and orchestration of music for today! Sure, the book is over 130 years old and had to be translated from the original Russian, but the foundational structures and patterns that make “music” what it is (the “laws” or “constants” of music, so to speak) are the same, so many of the principles that Rimsky-Korsakov touches upon (such as mixing differing tone colors, understanding the relationship between melody and harmony, isolating and accentuating the primary musical elements, etc.) are for the most part just as relevant to orchestration today as they were in the 1870s.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars, and I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone interested in the fields of composition and orchestration follow the link and check out the material.

Kudos to Gary Garritan and the team at northernsounds.com for making this book available as an easily accessible resource!