Improvised material turns into a trailer
An everyday situation: when you are experimenting on the keyboard, you often come up with little ideas that you can reuse later. Maybe for a new trailer. Once a selection has been made and the ideas have been brought into a common key, they need to be musically worked out step by step and brought together into a meaningful whole. “One” possible way is shown here.
click
to enlarge.
You could maybe do it like this:
The 'idea one' has enough rhythmic and harmonic energy that it should definitely be repeated.
A literal repetition 'may' sound good, but a slight variation of the material could be much more appealing.
You could do this:
The 'idea two' could be adopted exactly as it is. It might be worth refining the articulation a bit. And for the trailer, you could repeat it a second time, with the dynamics a bit louder the second time.
You could
proceed like this:
'Idea three' could be given more space than the previous material by extending the two bars of the original to a classic 8-bar period. The
melody part could be varied slightly so that it doesn't become too monotonous.
The constant change between 4/4 and 3/4 time has a special charm. Then you
could, for example, shift the 8-bar period harmonically: e.g. a whole tone
lower from D minor to C minor. Somehow you have to get to the end: for example,
by thinning out the movement, a ritardando and a discreet return to the
original key. 'Idea two' is very suitable as
a final idea: the first time around, from bar 9, this groove remained within a
single harmony. At the end, the groove of 'idea two' could be made to oscillate
between two harmonies. On the one hand, this looks like a flashback, but it is
not a simple repetition. And the sketch would be finished...
The task is now to turn the piano part into an orchestral part. This can be done puristically, i.e. using instruments only for acoustic reasons. It is not a matter of "keeping all the instruments busy". Let's move on.
click
to enlarge.A standard orchestra is available with the following instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2
bassoons - 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, strings (abbreviated: 2, 2, 2, 2 - 4, 2, 3, 1, timp, perc,
str).
As mentioned at
the beginning, the instruments can be used according to purely acoustic
aspects. Some (classical-romantic) books on orchestration discourage this
technique, claiming that composers of the time would not have worked in this
way. However, this rather effective way of working is often used in film music.
In this scenario, only ‘one’ of many possible solutions is demonstrated, as there are various options for elaboration depending on taste.
However, you will very quickly realise that it is not so easy to find instruments that come close to the character of the piano part at this fast tempo. In addition, the result should be ‘playable live’. In other words, it shouldn't just be playable on the computer, and since no piano is supposed to play in the orchestra, it's not so easy to transfer the percussive character to others. No mallet instruments were chosen for this scenario either, which might have been the best way to achieve this. So all in all: difficult conditions.
The video shows an example of the positions of ideas 1 - 3 in the score. The audio included has not yet been edited.
click
to enlarge.The final musical elaboration follows the principles shown in Scenario 6:
)* depending on the selected sound library
)** depending on taste
)*** depending on taste, e.g. with the plugin Graphical MIDI Tools (GMT)
)**** depending on taste: Setup here: Vienna MIR Pro 3D, Sage Hall One - Mic 1+2 HOA - 3D FLOOR - 5.(1).4
Improvising a bit of music, putting the fragments together in a musically meaningful way, creating a first piano movement, transferring the material to an orchestra, working on dynamics, articulation and phrasing, using MIDI automation for refinement, and finally optimising the spatial sound for the new instrumentation:
It all sounds very simple at first, but in reality it is quite a lot of work. But it's worth it, as the comparison at the end clearly shows.