Robin Hoffmann posts
Posts: 410
Files: 466
Why Jurassic Park's Music is So Powerful
Here's a nice viewing recommendation that puts specific focus on the economy of using themes in a long narrative story. Besides some in my opionion "overinterpretation" defintiely worth 15 minutes of your time.
The "Lucky Punch" Project
When I got into music university at the age of 20, I was already working on smaller scoring projects for a few years. Student films, amateur films, you name it. I didn't earn any money with those but I felt that "I was climbing up the ladder". I felt that I was "ready for the big game" and looking a...
My New DAW
After working on my old DAW since mid 2013, I finally decided it was the time to get a new system. I have been planning for about two years now to get a new system but held off for a few reasons until now.So let's maybe talk about what machine I had so far and what I was missing from it.Back in 2013 I got a system ...
Poll of the Week: How Many Hours of Concentrated CREATIVE Work a Day Can You Do?
I have a quite specific personal theory for this one and I'm curious if there is some truth to it, so let us know how much time per day you can work creatively* before you run out of juice.*actually making creative decisions, not just "legwork", and actual creative decisions that you would consider reasonab...
Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast Part 4
Here's the next part of the Screencast for this piece. In this part, I'm fighting with the flutes at the beginning and push on with setting up the textures.
Orchestra Player Hierarchy
A very common misconception among learning composers is the ignorance of player hierarchy in an orchestra. Especially with fixed ensembles and classical orchestras, this hierarachy is relatively strict while it is less strict with session orchestras.There are several implications by that hierarchy on several levels and...
Help me settle a debate...
Sorry, I've got one more poll for you, this time it is not part of the Poll of the Week series but outside of it and I will most likely not leave it up for long. I was having a debate with someone yesterday about the common understanding of licensing among composers if there is no written agreement so please let me...
June 2021 - Wrap Up
We finally have a date to record the first Orchestra Discovery Session! On September 9th we will be recording a woodwind quintet in Smecky Studios Prague, consisting of the top players (and section leaders of the large orchestras) in Prague. I'm really happy that we finally can get started on this and hope that the...
Reharmonisation Part 9: Modal Interchanges
Today, we're gonna talk about a harmonic approach that is probably the most "film music" sounding harmonic strategy and after we touched on it briefly in the last part of this series, let's have a closer look at this principle in more detail today.I'm talking about modal interchanges. I'm pretty...
Love Story and Lord of the Rings Arrangements
One of the things that I also sometimes do is arrange film scores into concert arrangements that then make it on the stages around the globe. In 2013 and 2014 I wrote two arrangements that were played several times over the last years and made it into this concert yesterday. LOVE STORY (Francis Lai) at 11:45 and RETURN...
Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.21 - M6 (Part 6)
In this last part, we will have a look at the final theme statement in the End Credits as well as discussing what I would do differently now 4 years after I originally wrote that score.As usual, recording, score sheet and Midi File attached at the bottom of the post.https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m6-bar-74-...
Giving Up Control Over Your Music
As discussed on this Patreon many times before the current generation of media composers differs quite a bit from the generations of composers from just a few decades ago.Quite a few of them are most comfortable in a DAW and don't just write the music but also produce it. This constellation leads to a degree of con...
Orchestrating With a Vertical Focus
One of the things that can often be seen in music by learning composers/orchestrators is the limited scope of the execution of ideas throughout the orchestral colours. This might sound really cryptic but let me explain what I mean by that:Very often, the execution of a musical idea remains in a relatively confined spac...
Poll of the Week: Where do you create your music?
Let us know!
John Williams to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in October
Just as a little service post for everybody who's interested :)
Opening the Portal - Stems/MIDI/Score
As promised, here are the audio stems for my latest piece OPENING THE PORTAL, separated by sections, as well as a MIDI file and the score sheet.These should make dissecting the different textures and approaches of the piece more easy as well as giving a clearer insight into the role of the individual groups and section...
How the Sampling Industry Forgets the Pros
We live in a golden age of sampling. Practically every day, a developer releases a new package of samples that is targeted at media composers. There is hardly any instrument left on this planet that hasn't been sampled and there is hardly any playing technique left that hasn't been covered in any of the librari...
The Overuse of Downbeats
One of the most common issues that can be observed with inexperienced composers/arrangers is the lack of variation in rhythmical ideas. Certain rhythmical gestures or accompanying patterns very often get repeated over and over again. This results also in a concentration of rhythmical events on the downbeats of each bar...
Composition Screencast - Returning Home - Part 10
In this final part of the composition walkthrough, we go step by step through the effect chains that I used on this piece.
Poll of the Week: Is Music Your Main Job?
As announced yesterday, I'd like to get to know you a bit better which is why I will start a new Poll of the Week, sometimes with more serious questions, sometimes with more fun questions. Let's start off with the basics this week :)
May 2021 - Wrap Up
Several big changes are coming!Over the last couple of weeks and months, a few of you approached me, telling me that they are "drowning in the content" that I put up here. Obviously the rate at that I post here is overwhelming a few of you who struggle with keeping up and dedicating the time to properly read/wa...
The Recording Room as an Instrument
One of my personal pet peeves are "Orchestra open airs". As much as the atmosphere of enjoying an orchestra outdoors on a warm summer night is desirable (even more so after the last year), the acoustics of such an event are usually horrible. This is usually not the fault of the sound crew but the lack of the ro...
Reharmonisation Part 8: Avoiding Standard Cadences 2
In the last part we were discussing how to avoid standard cadences by not using the structural pillars of tonic and dominant at expectable moments.In this part, I want to extend this approach even further by almost completely avoiding any cadential harmony or even a clear tonal center.One essential premise is that we u...
Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast Part 3
This is the first part where I really start to work at the piece and don't talk all the time. I edited it in a way where all the things that I do are documented including the moments where I go back (which happened quite a bit on this piece) but edited out all the passages where I just search for the right chord or...
"Modern" Orchestra Line-Ups
If you compare orchestral scores from today with the ones from a few decades ago, you will very quickly notice that at least in the big budget productions we see an excessive growth of orchestra sizes, particularly obvious in the brass sections.It is not uncommon to see line-ups that extend even beyond Mahlerian orches...
Opening the Portal - Score Sheet
Finally, here's the score sheet for my piece OPENING THE PORTAL, which I have been working on over the last couple of weeks and have been documenting the entire process in an ongoing series of composition screencasts.I will also be posting the Stems soon so you can dive deeper into the score sheet if you like.
