The Cutting Edge: 10 Film Scores That Push the Boundaries of Composition
Today we take a look at 10 essential scores that changed the game for what roles and responsibilities composers take to bring a film to life.
Today we take a look at 10 essential scores that changed the game for what roles and responsibilities composers take to bring a film to life.
Almost 20 years later, Thomas Newman’s score to “American Beauty” still enchants us with its refreshing approach and seductive sonics. Here’s why.
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Spoiler alert! This article contains spoilers for the movie Black Panther. If you haven’t seen the movie, you may want to stop and bookmark this page to read the…
Who’s the first composer you think of when you think of film scoring? They probably started in pop music, and that says something!
Underscore and sound design can serve a variety of different purposes in film and TV, here are a plethora of scene music function examples.
These days, scoring for film and TV is as much about the sound palette a composer uses as it is about the music itself. Here are 10 examples.
We break down a handful of composer Jonny Greenwood’s go-to techniques in examples from his scores to Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood.
The sounds of the everyday punctuate awkward conversation, saying, perhaps, what the characters don’t. These sounds alone could be characters in the film.
An analysis of how Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for Joker helps anchor the narrative and characters in both their story and their timeline.
Who will win Best Original Score at the Oscars this year? With a powerhouse list of nominees, the choice isn’t going to be easy…
In this exclusive video lesson, we attempt the impossible: to (briefishly) sum up the entire history of musical scoring in the film industry.
A new documentary follows the production of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ 16th studio album, Skeleton Tree, and the fallout from Cave’s personal tragedy.
A little complaining could go a long way to help us get our summer blockbuster mega-hits back. That’s why we called cultural whiner Jon Chattman in.
Horns are a prominent piece in the puzzle of modern music. When it comes to pushing the language of American music forward, predominantly via jazz in the 20th century, their role has been invaluable. But what about their prominence in film? Whether it’s the saxophone, trumpet, or trombone, or, yes, even a bunch of tubas,…
There would be only a handful of musical pieces that could rival Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for its iconic status in screen music. It was present in the starting days of silent cinema when chosen by D.W. Griffith to partially score his controversial, artistic watershed, Birth of a Nation (1915), and it was lovingly parodied by…
The composer behind the award-winning music from the short film, The Nobody Prayer, lays out his 7 simple keys to success.
What if part of your practice as a musician, composer, or producer, was to score an imaginary film scene? How would you tackle that challenge?
Soundfly’s wide-reaching new course, Intro to Scoring for Film & TV is out NOW. Get started learning to write, orchestrate and produce cues.
Nervous about getting started on a film or media sync project in your DAW? Here’s everything you need to know to professionalize your session
And the winner is…. Chords! This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Score put a ton of stock into creating lush chord textures over other attributes.
What if part of your practice as a musician, composer, or producer, was to score an imaginary film scene? How would you tackle that challenge?
From sound design to music theory to auditory phenomena, here are the reasons why horror film score music can actually spook us to death!
Everyone has a favorite classic Nintendo Entertainment System soundtrack. Who could forget the much-celebrated “Tetris” theme, the driving Dr. Wily song from “Mega Man 2,” or the epic Moon-level music from “Ducktales?” Heck, someone even wrote a whole book analyzing Koji Kondo’s legendary original “Super Mario Bros.” soundtrack! But for a system that boasts more…
Brian Eno is a producer, writer, and multi-instrumental musician, legendary both in his own right as a pioneer of ambient music, and in the work he’s done across his vast career with others, like Bryan Ferry’s band Roxy Music. He is perhaps best known in mainstream circles for his incomparable synthesizer and soundscapes work on…