Here is a new mix of Toys in the Attic just in time for Halloween! I also created a video from footage taken at the remote recording session with Budapest Scoring. This was written as a score for the following scenario: “Teen ghost hunters searching the attic of an abandoned mansion, looking for signs of a young changeling poltergeist that’s been encountered by several late-night visitors. All of a sudden, every toy in the attic springs to life, and the kids run for their lives!” I ended the piece with music that is supposed to signify that the kids have been turned into toys by the changeling poltergeist.
Tag Archives: composition
New Arrangement of “Hero and Lyrical Themes”
This month I updated “Hero and Lyrical Themes” which was another Berklee assignment that I originally did in Sibelius, but I wanted to put it into Logic to see how much better I could make it sound. For the original assignment I wanted to write a piece in sonata form, using a heroic A theme and a lyrical B theme like many film score do (Star Wars, Superman, etc.). To keep it short and sweet, I didn’t use any transitions between the themes, and I had a very short development. For this new version I wanted to expand upon the development since it feels a little rushed in the original. While I was at it, I also cleaned the partwriting in the harmonizations of the themes throughout the piece. I did all of my composition in Sibelius, then transferred all the parts over to Logic.
In the Exposition there is a “heroic” A Theme for the brass (the melody is in the horns and trombones over a C pedal) in C Major, and a contrasting “lyrical” B Theme for the woodwinds and strings in F minor. The new Development more than doubles the length of the entire piece (the original version is about 2:00, the new one is 4:30), because I wanted to think of it as music I would write for the middle of a film where I would write a lot of music that references the themes, but doesn’t give them a full statement until the end. It starts in the same key as the B Theme (F minor), with a rhythmic pedal in the timpani and low strings. The rhythm is meant to be a complement to the A Theme, and then the low woodwinds (opposite of high brass) play a chromatic reference to the A Theme. The next section modulates to Bb minor with a new rhythmic pedal that is a complement to the B Theme, and then the low brass (opposite of high winds) play a chromatic reference to the B Theme. There is another modulation to Ab minor where the ideas based on the A and B Themes are used together, both to create chaos, as well as to foreshadow the end of the piece. The Development ends with a big move from an Ab minor chord to a G Major chord to start to pull the piece back to C Major. The Retransition is made up of chromatically-rising fragments of the A and B themes over a G pedal, leaving the brass out to complement the next section. The Recapitulation starts with the expected return to the A Theme in the brass in the key of C Major, however this time the melody is in the trumpets (first time we hear the trumpets) and horns, and it is harmonized in the low brass (as opposed to just a C pedal). The B Theme is also in C Major, as expected, which gives it a refreshing brightness as opposed to the darker F minor version at the beginning. The piece ends with both themes played simultaneously, showing that they were tied together from the very beginning.
New Year’s Resolutions
For this post, instead of writing about the latest additions to my method books, or the most recent piece of music I finished composing, I’d like to write about something different. Now that it’s Pumpkin Spice Season and almost Spooky Season, I’ve been thinking about how at the end of every year the topic of “New Year’s Resolutions” comes up, and usually they are associated with initial optimism, followed by disappointment by around January 3rd. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it the appeal of a “new year, new me” or is it out of guilt because of all the things we haven’t accomplished so far? I’ve found that the best way to look at New Year’s Resolutions is to not expect to be successful within the first few days of January, but instead to implement them throughout the entire new year. I wanted to share what I’ve done in the past, and what I’m planning to do this year, in order to have success with my New Year’s Resolutions.
STEP 1: MAKE YOUR RESOLUTIONS (PREPARE AHEAD OF TIME)
I am posting this in September because too often it sneaks up on us and we feel the need to throw something together at the last minute. Brainstorm a list of all of the things you would like to change, remove, or add in your life (at this point be optimistic). Add a priority scale to each of your items, but then arrange them by difficulty, with the easiest to accomplish first (at this point be realistic). Start with some easy things (even if they aren’t that important) in order to build confidence, but also include some long-term goals (some of which you might not even start for a few months). It can be difficult to start new things in the middle of winter when it is dark and cold and we just want to stay inside and keep warm, so start with things you can do at home. Plan to save some of your resolutions until spring when it is starting to get warmer and the sun is rising earlier (like leaving the house at 6am to go to the gym for example). Not everything has to start on January 1 and continue uninterrupted. Spring is still part of the “new year”.
When I make my list, I think about any previous projects that I should finish first, and which new projects I want to start. I think about any routines I want to start or improve on, like practicing more ukulele, guitar, and bass guitar. Also what I want to do for my mental and physical health, like less time on social media, more time reading books, more time with hobbies that don’t have anything to do with music (building LEGO sets, building puzzles, playing board games, playing video games, and watching movies), more time going outside and taking walks, or at least riding my exercise bike. In addition to how I want to spend my time on my own, I also want to try to spend more time with family and friends: spending quality time with my wife, hanging out with local friends, calling friends and family in Rhode Island, and also flying out to visit them.
STEP 2: CREATE SPACE FOR YOUR RESOLUTIONS (FILL YOUR TIME WITH HOBBIES AND ACTIVITIES)
I think that this is the most important part of being successful with New Year’s Resolutions. Come January, you won’t be able to cram a bunch of new things into an already packed schedule, you need to make room in your schedule in order to be able to do all of those new things. The best way to do that is to add a bunch of things to your schedule leading up to the end of the year (especially in December) that you can stop doing on January 1st. What fall/winter holidays do you celebrate? What can you do to enjoy them more? What are some things you could do at home (put up decorations, holiday arts and crafts, watch holiday themed TV shows/movies, read books/stories, listen to holiday music, etc.)? Where are some places you could go (apple picking, haunted hay rides, etc.)?
Here’s what I add to my schedule in order to enjoy the end-of-the-year holidays more. In October I watch Bob’s Burgers and The Simpsons Halloween episodes, and maybe a few horror movies. In November I watch Bob’s Burgers Thanksgiving episodes, but I mostly use this month to catch up on any projects that might have fallen behind and to hopefully get ahead on a few things before December. In December I watch the Christmas episodes of many TV shows including Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, The Office, Schitt’s Creek, and Hawkeye. I also watch many Christmas movies, some of which have been a tradition since I was a child (Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, Batman Returns, etc.). I also have a number of Christmas-themed LEGO sets that I build throughout the month. Last year I compiled a Christmas Songbook for ukulele and guitar that I use with my students, but I also play at home for fun and with any friends and family who want to do a singalong.
STEP 3: PREPARE TO START YOUR RESOLUTIONS (THE LAST WEEK OF DECEMBER)
If you celebrate Christmas, the week after can be about getting the last little bit of Christmas enjoyment, relaxing/recovering, or getting some last minute things done before the end of the year. Take stock of all of the seasonal/holiday things you have been doing throughout the end of the year that are about to fall away, and how much extra time you will have as a result. Remind yourself of all of the easy, indoor resolutions you are about to start, and reassure yourself that you are saving some for the spring, so you don’t have to worry about those.
I like to try to do a mix of finishing any projects that are almost done so that I can get them out of the way, but also taking the time to relax and enjoy my only real time off, before I hit the ground running for another year.
STEP 4: DO YOUR RESOLUTIONS YEAR-ROUND (FOLLOW YOUR PLAN, BUT BE KIND TO YOURSELF)
Once the new year hits, replace all of the time you spent on holiday activities with your New Year’s Resolutions. Start with the easy ones to get the ball rolling and gradually move to the more difficult ones. Remember that not every resolution has to be completed in the first day/week/month. Also, don’t require yourself to start on January 1st. Be kind to yourself and if you slip up a little bit, don’t get discouraged. The “New Year” in “New Year’s Resolution” should refer to the entire year, not just New Year’s Day or the month of January.
For 2024 my big New Year’s Resolution was to “finish things”. I wanted to finish my score for the Noghtwing series, finish polishing and posting the rest of my Berklee assignments, and finish some of my method books. I did finish the Nightwing music, and I am almost done with my Berklee music (I have a few more to post before the end of the year). Where I needed to be kind to myself was with my method books. Because of the needs of some of my students, I ended up having to start a bunch of new method books (note-reading for ukulele, guitar, bass guitar, mallet instruments, etc.). While I didn’t reach my exact goal, it wasn’t because I was being lazy, because I still did a ton of work on all the new method books instead. Pivoting my expectations helped me to not feel like a failure. In 2025 I’m planning to actually finish some of the method books that I didn’t get to finish this year, and also start the process of publishing them. Whereas 2024 was about finishing old things, I am mostly looking at 2025 as a year to start some new things. New practice routines, new projects, new revenue streams, new hobbies, and also just looking at how I am moving through life in a new and different way.
I hope all of this has helped in some way, and please feel free to let me know if it has. Good luck with your New Year’s Resolutions!
“Town Music” (New Arrangement of “Pastoral Theme”)
This month I worked on updating “Pastoral Theme” because it was originally written in Sibelius, and I always wanted to see what it would sound like if I gave it the DAW treatment. It reminded me of the style of music you might hear when playing a video game and visiting a town, so I changed the name to “Town Music”. Before taking it out of Sibelius I rewrote the end of each phrase and changed the bass rhythms, because when I originally did it as an assignment, it was good enough and I was trying to learn how to write things quickly and move on from them. I think the rewrite is a little more interesting and flows a little better, so I’m glad I made the changes.
I also thought this would be a good opportunity to compare my different string libraries. The music is meant to repeat (like video game music would), but instead of an exact repeat, I switched to a different string library, using five of them, one right after the other. I fiddled with them as little as possible, to see which ones sounded best right out of the box, so I would know which ones to use if I’m under a tight deadline. I used the same modulation and expression on all of them, mostly just to create the overall subtle dynamic contour. I also didn’t do any panning, because I wanted to just rely on each of their seating positions when they were originally recorded. I had to do some balancing, because the ranges of their default volumes were all over the place, and for the most part I used the same reverbs (as well as a few other effects) on all of them, with a few slight adjustments when necessary. On one of them I also had to do some pretty drastic surgical EQ because a few notes had some crazy overtones piercing through. Which one(s) do you like most/least (A, B, C, D, or E)?
“Ancient Battle Hymn” (New Arrangement of “Mystical Chant”)
In January I participated in the Made with Musio composing contest. The rules were to use only Musio instruments and feature at least one of their choir libraries. Since I had used Cinesamples “Voices of War: Men of the North” for my piece “Mystical Chant”, I decided to treat it to a new arrangement. I started with replicating it using Musio’s equivalent library “Nordic Voices: Men of the North”, then I included its counterpart “Nordic Voices: Women of the North”. As I added more and more layers (especially the percussion), it began to take on a different character, so I named this version “Ancient Battle Hymn”.
I wanted the A section to be more conversational, so the melody goes back and forth between the Men of the North and Women of the North. I also added timpani (with medium mallets), and string instruments (Norwegian Hardanger Fiddle, Icelandic Shetland Gue, Viola Da Gamba, and Icelandic Bass Tagelharpa) to make it sound a little more rustic.
For the B section I wanted to evoke a more “warlike” sound for the battle hymn, so I left out the strings, and added more voices from the Voxos choir (as if it is the entire village singing). I also switched to the hard mallets for the timpani, added more drums (Icelandic Medieval Drum, two Icelandic Inuit Drums, and Djun Djun), and wind instruments (Low Woodwinds Ensemble, Icelandic Lur Horn, 12 Horn Ensemble, Bass Trombone, Tuba, and Cimbasso).
For the last section I returned to the overall texture of the original A section, but with added inner lines in the Nordic Voices choir parts. I also ended it with a Voxos Solo Boy, which I think adds a nice little twist to the story.
New Arrangement of “Hero Theme”
With the new year, I wanted to get back to also focusing on my music, in addition to all of the method books and other lesson materials I had been previously posting. This month, I worked on a new version of my Berklee project “Hero Theme”. It was one of my first assignments that I posted, which was an exercise in using parallel harmony. When I originally did the assignment, we had to hand it in as a PDF of sheet music, since it was just an exercise, and not something where we needed to have a perfectly polished finished product. Even though I already posed it as-is, I always wanted to see how much better it would sound if I did a mockup of it in Logic using better sample libraries. Once I did that though, I started thinking of other little things that I could tweak here and there to make it even better. I ended up writing an intro, and also changed the orchestration a little in order to create more of a build. I hope you enjoy it!
Black Metal and Nightwing Returns Season 2
I haven’t posted any new music in a while because I’ve been working on the scores to my two biggest projects yet.
The first one was the score to Black Metal (“A black/Asian teen is determined to make it as a heavy metal artist in defiance of his father, a failed jazz musician”), written and directed by Michael Johnson.
As soon as I was finished with that project I had to jump right into the score for Nightwing Returns Season 2, directed by Preston Manee. It will be released as a four-part YouTube series which I will post this links for as the episodes are released. In the meantime, you can listen to the “Episode 1 Intro” in the media player.
Movie Mumble Theme: Hybrid
From August of 2017 through all of 2018 I had composed/arranged custom themes for the Movie Mumble podcast (hosted by Nerds That Geek). Since January of 2019 I’ve been using an orchestral version of the theme (Movie Mumble Theme: Orchestra) for almost all of the episodes. Now that it’s been four years, I figured that it was time to write a new version of the theme. I wanted to incorporate my influences and personal style preferences, as well as utilize what I had learned at Berklee in my Film Scoring Masters program.
I used elements rock music, percussion ensemble, orchestral music, world music, and electronic music. For “rock music” I used distorted electric guitar, bass guitar, and drum set. For “orchestral music” I used low woodwinds, horns, low brass, timpani, tam-tam, choir, and strings. For “world music” I used wind instruments (zurna, xiao, ney, duduk, and didgeridoo), tanpura, and various percussion instruments (from India, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia). For “electronic music” I used a bass synth with an arpeggiator and wavetable synthesis.
Movie Mumble Theme: Hybrid can be heard for the first time in this month’s episode (January 2023).
A Winter Carol for piano and orchestra
Seasons Greetings!
I composed A Winter Carol a few years ago for a contest, and I recently cleaned up the orchestration and made a new mockup. If you are interested in performing it with your orchestra, let me know and I can send you a score to look over (if you don’t have access to a piano, we can figure out an alternative). If you have a concert band (or some other ensemble), let me know and I’ll do an arrangement to suit your ensemble.
A Winter Carol showcases the two best parts of winter: sitting inside where it’s warm (maybe with your favorite warm drink) while watching the falling snow, and playing outside in the snow.
Happy Holidays!
Berklee Online, Summer Semester, Final Projects
These next two tracks were the final projects from my Berklee Online Summer Semester.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Fight Scene was the final project in Synthesis, Sampling, and Sound Design in Film Scoring to score a three-minute film clip. Previously I’ve only done action scenes with orchestral instruments (and on those I’m probably guilty of Mickey Mousing), so I wanted to score an action scene with intense electronic sounds that is relentless (as opposed to having an orchestra hit on every punch). All of the percussion sounds and most of the synthesized sounds I used in my score are samples from the clip. For the Winter Soldier, the synth rhythm and percussion groove are based on a paradiddle (RLRR LRLL) which is reflected in the sound choices as well as the panning (his robotic left arm is stronger and metallic, so the right-hand part is a sample of him punching Captain America with his human hand, panned to the right and the left-hand part is samples of two different “metallic punch” sounds panned to the left). I also used filter cutoff automation to lighten and darken the sounds as he moves around (also at one point both sounds go to a higher octave). Black Widow’s percussion sounds are made up of the two footsteps she takes as she is running up to him, the sound of her kicking, and the fast repeated notes are the sound of the little disc that she throws on his arm. I used a reversed sample of the sound of the shield being punched to lead up to the actual sound in the clip. Captain America’s rhythm was made from different sounds made by the shield. When their fight starts, I panned of all Winter Soldier’s rhythms to the left, and put Captain America’s on the right so there was a clear separation of those two parts. I added chords on the right with my “distorted guitar sound” that I used in a previous lesson, and I added a bass line on the left. I kept the music mostly going relentlessly except for a few key moments where I stopped, and every time I did, I used automation to bring all of the filter cutoffs down and slowly bring them back in leading into the next downbeat. Since there was some music in the clip that I had to work around (sections with three slow bass drum hits, a whailing sound when Winter Soldier jumps up onto a car, a big BRAAAAAM as Captain America is running up, some soft staccato strings during the fight, and something like a zurna during the fight), I brought down the original volume of the clip, so that all you can hear is my music, except for a few key sound design moments that I was consciously working around as I was scoring (The explosion at the very beginning, Winter Soldier cocking his gun, Black Widow’s decoy phone conversation-the explosion-Black Widow running up to Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier firing his gun as his arm is temporarily deactivated-pulling the disk off-reactivating his arm, Black Widow getting shot, Winter Soldier punching Captain America’s shield, Winter Soldier punching the ground, Winter Soldier’s knife cutting through the side of the van, the shield hitting Winter Soldier’s arm, Winter Soldier hitting the ground after Captain America throws him).
Iranian Scenario was the final project in Stylistic Adaptations in Film Scoring to score a scene that takes place in a country of our choice. Once we chose a country, we had to research the native music of that country in order to incorporate it into our cue. I wanted to use a mix of Persian and Western instruments because it takes place in Iran but the main character is a Western woman who works in the American Embassy.
This movie takes place in Tehran just before the 1979 revolution.
0:00: MX in on a LS of a Western woman walking down a busy city street. She doesn’t look totally out of place, but she doesn’t look like she belongs.
0:21: She goes through the gate of the American Embassy, which is guarded by two Marines in dress uniform.
0:27: She sits at her desk and looks deep in thought. She is obviously either a diplomat or an intelligence operative.
0:36: We hear the sound of a large angry crowd chanting what are apparently anti-American slogans.
0:41: CUT to the crowd.
0:49: The woman rushes out of her office and goes out a side entrance to a back street. She runs down the street avoiding the crowd and…
1:05: enters a local coffee shop (think hookahs) and meets a man wearing traditional Arab robes. He is agitated, but glad to see her, and they have an intense conversation. During the course of this conversation…
1:19: his robe opens slightly to reveal a 9mm Beretta in a holster.
1:26: They leave the coffeeshop and go hurrying down the street away from the mob.
1:33: Dissolve to sunrise over the mountains in Northern Iran, and the woman and the man are looking out over a deserted valley.
1:44: MX OUT.
Tim Girard 