by Tristan | Dec 7, 2017 | Compositions, Documentary, Exercises, Film Release
This weekend, one of my tracks will feature in the premiere of The Commodore Story – a two-hour documentary about the history of the legendary home computer and gaming system. Whether or not you actually owned one (I didn’t), the Commodore 64 is a childhood cultural...
by Tristan | Apr 26, 2016 | Action, Compositions, Exercises, Love
One of the fundamental skills of composition is being able to extract a lot of material out of a single idea. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Think of that simple four note phrase, you know, duh-duh-duh-DUNnnn. Ok, those are four...
by Tristan | May 6, 2015 | Compositions, Drama, Suspense
Everyone has heard of suspense. It’s a film genre in its own right and has a very distinctive sound. You can hear it in the cue below called Halls of Regret, a slow meandering cue with a dark foreboding sound. That distinctive sound is created by writing not...
by Tristan | Apr 3, 2015 | Action, Compositions, Exercises, Magical
Three more cues. The first two are possibly the biggest and most complicated things I’ve ever written. The “Battle or Chase Action” piece is crazy. It is 2 minutes long has 10 distinct ‘sections’ in alternating key signatures at around...
by Tristan | Mar 16, 2015 | Compositions, Horror
The last two weeks have been all about music for horror scenes. This has been really fun and has allowed me to rekindle my love of Ligeti, Bartok and Penderecki. An interesting point that came up in class was how this sort of music is really common in film, but so...
by Tristan | Mar 1, 2015 | Compositions, Exercises, Sad
In my last post I talked about how I had started a composition course with the Berklee School of Music. That time I was publishing a trio of love themes. This time I’ve been working on sad themes. It turns out that they are almost identical to love themes, just...
