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 | 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 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...
by Tristan | Feb 9, 2015 | Compositions, Exercises, Love
In the past few weeks I’ve started a composition course through the excellent Berklee School of Music online. The course I’ve been doing is Composition for Film and Television. It goes through the approaches to writing for different themes and moods...
by Tristan | Oct 17, 2014 | Compositions, Counterpoint, Exercises, Renaissance
Counterpoint noun Technique of setting, writing, or playing a melody or melodies in conjunction with another, according to fixed rules. Recently I’ve been going back to compositional basics. I started out where so many other composers have, with the famous old...