I'm always posting about the "yes's" that make it through a pitch. Well, here's a "no". It needed to be less somber and more “inspirational” for the client. You live/write and you learn to respect the feedback, knowing the track could find a home somewhere else. And every time a track is written, new insights about the skills required to get to the final product are gained. 

Here's the second of three tracks that has been signed with a music library for use in TV and film. I had an assignment to write “Magical Orchestral”. After perusing a huge list of titles given for the task, this one peaked my interest, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil”.

I used no visual aides to get this one started like I had for the previous track posted.

I couldn't help but think of Adam and Eve and that infamous tree of forbidden fruit.  But the genre is in a magical, possibly “Harry Potter-ish” kind of setting so I did't want the mood to get too dark. I thought it should have a little mysterious “good” mixed with “playful” evil (if that's even possible!) Hence the beginning comes in, ends at 0:40 with an “edit point” and that brings you into, oh I don't know, the wizardly evil section?

And once again, many thanks to a couple of new friends and veteran composers with the music library who helped me dial in the mix to get things where it needed to be.

Here's 1 of 3 tracks that has been signed with a music library for use in TV and film. I had an assignment to write “Magical Orchestral” and one of the titles I had to choose from was “Joy of Paradise”.

Hmmm, how to get started?

I “googled” “Joy of Paradise” and click on images. Here's what I chose:

Ah, here we go! Heavenly paradise. It turned out to be a painting of the Resurrection, but all I needed was a quick-start to get the piece rolling. A melody started forming from the visual in front of me, and then I was off on another writing adventure.

I learned that this painting, “The Resurrection” by American artist, Robert Clark, can be seen at Forest Lawn in Glendale, CA. I'm going to be making the trip myself.

Many thanks to a couple of new friends and veteran composers with the music library who helped me dial in the mix to get things where it needed to be.

After a short study of the chord structure and melody from John William's Theme for Jurassic Park, I wrote a piece for a music pitch and orchestrated it mainly using Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra Core library samples with a little help from EastWest Hollywood Orchestra.

While it was sent on to a music library for further consideration, I went ahead and found some public domain footage for my experiment.

By the way, I came up with the title after needing an ear break while I was working on this. I step outside, gazing upon our garden at home and it popped into my head and sort of...."grew" on me. 

Here's the track by itself:

I've always wondered what it would be like to "score to picture". You know, like John Williams, Randy Newman. Then this opportunity came along...

The Westworld Scoring Competition

Oh, sure there was stuff to win for the lucky participants out of thousands chosen by the creative minds behind HBO's "Westworld". Who does't want to win?! I'm a beginner, so I wanted to have some fun, at least. 

I gave myself the whole month to finish it, interspersed amongst my more serious musical efforts writing tracks to specific industry pitches. I figured I could do 1 minute of music per week or so. Live performances for Hotel California were/are shelved for the time being, so off I went in the land of film/TV composer!

I must say, it was a creative rush! I sensed/chose a tempo by the pace of the action, trying to weave in and out of dialogue and gunfire. I aimed (ha ha) to use the gunfire actually as a percussion instrument all it's own! 

Well, here it is... [I noticed too late after I bounced the finished video that one of my "Buh's" in my big drum "buh-BUH's" did not play for some reason. ]