Film and Game Music Theory: Conveying Emotion

Learn an intuitive approach to music composition for film, TV and game music.  This workshop will not require reading or writing music notation (although examples will be available).  This workshop-style course will introduce you to the elements of music that are necessary for creating emotional moods in your compositions.  You will compose 3 different musical cues (short, 30-second compositions) representing 3 specific moods (urgent, calm and creepy). This course will introduce you to valuable music theory concepts and walk you through the process of composing these 3 cues.  You will learn when and how to use musical elements such as rhythm, harmony, melody and scales to convey emotion effectively and quickly.

This course presents examples using MIDI, audio clips and Ableton Live.  Ableton projects are available for download (so that students can follow along).  However, students can also download the audio and MIDI clips and load them into any DAW.  This course also assumes that students are familiar with basic music theory concepts - such as triads and major and minor scales.

• Introduction
• 3 Live Examples and Explanations
• Process Overview
• Introduction to Themes and Variations
• Using Rhythm Effectively
• Using Harmony Effectively
• Using Cadences Effectively
• Writing Effective Melodies
• Color and Timbre in Your Theme
• Step-By-Step: Creating Your Theme
• Step-By-Step: Creating a Variation
• Demo: Conveying a "Urgent" Mood
• Demo: Conveying a "Calm/Melancholy" Mood
• Demo: Conveying a "Spooky/Creepy" Mood
• Final Thoughts