Film Music Notes
Understanding the art of film music
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New in 2024
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Understanding the art of film music
Learn to write themes in long forms using both time-honored traditional structures and looser, more ad hoc approaches. Discover what makes an effective short theme or motif in terms of its emotional expression. And learn how film themes are adapted into works for the concert stage by carefully considering their order, key structure, and transitions from one to the next.
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 2024.
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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