‘Yakety Sax’ — Making Gruesome Violence and Real Drama Zany Since 1963
After becoming a hit as the “‘Benny Hill’ Theme,” “Yakety Sax” experienced a renaissance turning dramatic web videos into funny ones.
Learn how to write music for strings and help your string arrangements shine with these tips for orchestrators. For more help, check out Soundfly’s course Orchestration for Strings.
After becoming a hit as the “‘Benny Hill’ Theme,” “Yakety Sax” experienced a renaissance turning dramatic web videos into funny ones.
Last fall, we debuted the first-ever session of our course Orchestration for Strings that included personalized support for students from a Mainstage Mentor — a handpicked expert in his or her field who offered feedback on the student’s work. The course itself was a big success, garnering a 100% completion rate and a ton of validating feedback from our students,…
A little over a week ago, the Kennedy Center uploaded a video of a concert in which singer-songwriter and composer Ben Folds creates an orchestral piece of music in under 10 minutes and performs it with the full participation of the National Symphony Orchestra. The video, which has since been shared over 100,000 times, is a…
As a composer, finding that string library that can do everything you want can often feel like a never-ending quest to find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. New libraries pop up every month or so, all professing to be the best and urging you to press the “buy” button as soon as they’re…
In November 2016, Peter Pillitteri, an aspiring composer and one of the students in Ian Davis’ popular Orchestration for Strings course, emailed us out of the blue to tell us this incredible story: “‘Round Midnight is a 1986 film by Bertrand Tavernier about a fictitious jazzman, Dale Turner, who was played by the great jazz saxophonist, Dexter Gordon.…
A canon (or round) is a single melody line that provides a counterpoint to itself. Canons can, at times, feel lighthearted and happy go lucky (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Frere Jacques” for example), but even the simplest sounding pieces require careful attention and are difficult to craft well, especially where more than two voices are…
In most production and ensemble settings these days, auxiliary percussion is used primarily to add extra sparkle and syncopated spice to a track. Yet, adding this flare effectively is more difficult than it sounds. If mismanaged, percussion additions can easily cause problems with the flow of your track. Let’s break down some of the ways you can…
“The song form is a great central theme in a life well lived.” – Van Dyke Parks Van Dyke Parks occupies a very distinct corner of the 20th century. His is a world of imagination, wonder, and the sublime. His stylistic interests pair a considerable appreciation for the music of the past with an almost complete…
The next time you’re writing a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching tune, try using this handful of chords to drive your sadness home.
This is the fourth instalment in our series on How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, this series asks professional and semi-professional musicians performing and recording with all kinds of groups how they practice and what helps them stay organized. We’re getting to the heart of what it takes to grow your musical…