Robin Hoffmann

Part 9 - Woodwind Section - Line-Up & Seating

In modern scoring, the woodwind section of the orchestra has unfortunately become a less integral component of the orchestra. In fact, we might see quite a lot of session orchestras these days not having any woodwinds at all or at best a few flutes that double the violins. Part of why this is happening is because of the association of traditional orchestras and scores with the woodwinds that ma...

A Summer Night to Remember - New Concert Composition - Recording and Score Sheet

I have been a bit silent here for the last couple of days but I had a good reason for that. I spent my last week in Cologne to attend the rehearsals and concert of my piece A SUMMER NIGHT TO REMEMBER. Last year, the WDR Funkhausorchester approached me to commission a piece to fit into their concert programme titled SUMMER LOVE.

The orchestra is well known in Germany mainly for crossing ge...

Orchestrating the Dynamic

One extremely effective way where orchestration can be used to maximize the desired musical effect is to orchestrate the dynamics.

It is a well known fact that certain instruments are louder than others, but also that certain instruments have a limited dynamic range, sometimes depending on the register. A high trumpet can not enter in pianissimo, a bassoon can not fade away into absolute ...

The Relevance of Craft

I was recently orchestrating a project for a composer who approached music in a very different way than I would do. The score was a small ensemble with quite a bit of electronics but also a few acoustic instruments. And they picked each sound and instrument during the production as if one picks a synth patch for its sound alone. While this is a perfectly valuable approach, it posed a quite...

Poll: Are You Interested in Shared Patreon Sessions?

Over the last couple of months, I have been approached by some of my patrons whether there would be a possibility to join forces and book sessions with an orchestra and split costs among several shoulders. So for instance if we get 4 people on this, we could book a full session with each of them getting one hour of recording time at 1/4th of the cost of a full session which would make it financ...

Brother Commercial - Composition Screencast - Part 5 (Audio Commentary)

In this part, I'm working more on the orchestration details of the first third of the piece.

Getting an Agent

There is a wide spread belief among up and coming film and media composers that in order to be perceived as a professional you need to have an agent. Additionally, there is this misconception that when having an agent you get more and higher profile jobs.

Both of these assumptions are as a general statement not true.

It is still true that the film and media industry is incredibly ha...

April 2022 - Wrap Up

I'm a little late this month with a wrap up as I have been busy with work over the last couple of days but here we are.

April has been a quite busy month for me, unfortunately however I can't talk about much of this yet but there will be more to talk about soon.

Over the last couple of weeks and months, I helped one of my patrons with his first orchestra recording from giving feedba...

Film Orchestration - Part 8 - Brass Section 2 - Seating

For no other section in the orchestra the seating of the instruments is more relevant to the overall sound than the brass section. Particularly in scores that make use a lot of it, the seating of the brass should be a very conscious decision.

There are two main reasons why brass seating influences the sound alot. First of all there is the sheer volume of the section, especially when they ...

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Composition Diary - Boris Bruchhaus

Today, we have a look at Boris Bruchhaus' piece Aotearoa that he wrote for our first Orchestra Discovery Session back in September.

We had a lengthy exchange over several versions of this piece of which all are attached at the bottom of the post, including the final score/recording/Dorico file.

Here's Boris' documentation about the piece. Below you will find the exchange that we had...

Themes for Isolated Scenes and Sequences

The principle of using themes in film music has been a prominent scoring technique since the beginning of film and in spite of melodic themes not being that en vougue anymore, the strategy to create narrative connections through identifying elements (themes, harmonies, sounds, rhythms) is still prominently used in film scoring. Most commonly known are character themes that are attached to a cha...

Device Lexicon: Part 7 - Menacing Orchestra Unison (feat. Harry Potter 3)

Accumulating many or even all orchestral forces on one unison line or an unison line in octaves is an extremely simple and in its simplicity radical concept. In fact it is so simple and radical that many composers/orchestrators don't even see it as a possibility to use it. The urge to "fill up" the idea with something else often is overwhelming.

But in the right context, focussing the ent...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 12 (with Audio Commentary)

In this part, we're focussing on the detail work in the middle of the piece and I talk about the struggle of writing octatonic lines with melodic quality. Other topics covered are dynamic envelopes of long sustaining notes and managing dissonant chords.

The Monopolization of the Film Music Industry

I was writing a lot already about how the film music industry has changed over the last two decades and also how film music as a genre has changed. Many of these developments are inter dependent or follow the trend of the media industry in general. And while the topic I want to cover today is no exception from this it nevertheless is a notable development that has a considerable impact on the w...

Film Orchestration - Part 7 - Brass Section 1 - Line-Up

In modern Hollywood scores, the brass section has become increasingly more important to the overall sound and to some degree the esthetics of how brass sounds in scores is sometimes closer to the sound of samples than actual real players.

With brass sections, there are two fundamentally different approaches in film scoring:

1. Record the Brass with the Orchestra tutti with natural b...

Poll of the Week: Did You Ever Ghost Write*?

After the Vanity Fair article and all that discussion surrounding it as well as Hans Zimmer winning the Oscar and people still talking about it, it would be interesting to do a little field study about it on here with a few detailed options. Let us know your stand on this.

*getting no credit for your work

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Composition Diary - Adrian Gucze

Today, we have a look at Adrian Gucze's piece VENTUS that he wrote for our first Orchestra Discovery Session back in September. Attached to this post at the bottom you can download the different versions of this piece and which stages it went through.

Here's Adrian's documentation:

Hi everyone and thanks for taking the time to read this.

This piece started off with the concept...

March 2022 - Wrap Up

So Hans Zimmer won the Oscar. While it was kind of expected, it was still surprising that after all these years where he obviously shaped the entire genre of film music and the academy ignoring it, this year they decided to hand him the award. Personally, I really liked the score for DUNE in the way how it worked in the movie. It's not that I would want to listen to any of this on its own but t...

Splitting Long Cues

Sometimes, you have to deal with excessively long music cues in scoring projects. There might be animated short films that have music wall to wall or climax scenes in feature films where there is non stop music for sometimes 10 minutes or more. Such music cues can be massively overwhelming and it is easy to get completely lost in such cues, especially when there are a lot of hit points and diff...

Device Lexicon: Part 6 - Artificial Harmonics Legato (feat. Hook)

In spite of the fact that it seems like every articulation of orchestral instruments has been sampled already, some even multiple times (like the infamous flautando overkill with Spitfire) there are still some articulations (particularly the non standard ones) that are not covered that well yet.

One of these are artificial harmonic legatos/glissandi on strings which to my knowledge only o...

Brother Commercial - Composition Screencast - Part 4 (Audio Commentary)

In this part, I start over at the beginning of the piece with the detail work on the orchestration. As in the previous parts, I recorded an audio commentary to explain what I'm doing.

Emotional Quality of Melodic Intervals

Just a few weeks ago, I was reading an online review about John Williams' music and the reviewer spent half the article "analyzing" his themes coming to the conclusion that he obviously has favorite intervals like the perfect fifth and major third and went on with sentences that go like "The fifth symbolizes stability and openness" etc.

With this analysis he was reproducing a century old ...

Film Orchestration - Part 4: Orchestra Recording

After we talked about Orchestra seating and differences between studios and concert halls in the past parts, it is essential to talk about how orchestras are recorded and what sort of microphone signals are used to assemble a soundtrack mix.

It should be noted that the general approach to record a concert performance and a soundtrack recording doesn't differ that much. However with soundt...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 11 (with Audio Commentary)

With entering the 11th part of this Screencast for this piece and going more into the details, I thought it might be more beneficial if I added an audio commentary to the video so you can understand a bit better what I'm doing.

Where to Find Motivation for Gigs That You Don't Like

Making money with being a media composer comes with one problem: you need to make money with being a media composer. As trivial as this might seem, it has massive influences on how you need to work.

I know quite a few composers who made the switch from hobby to professional composer quite late in their life and who suddenly found themselves in a different reality. And this reality include...

Music Theory and Intuition

There is one idea that is still wide spread in the composer community: the direct connection between music theory knowledge and quality of composition. I have discussed this topic already in another post about a year ago but want to expand on this a little further in this one and take it from another angle.

I r...

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Composition Diary - Sebastian Katzer

In this part we take a look at Sebastian Katzer's piece CAELI which we recorded with woodwind quintet in our first Orchestra Discovery Session in September 2021. I attached the different stages of the piece at the bottom of the post as well as the recording from Prague.

Here's what he wrote about the piece:

In the beginning, I decided to make the piece a bi...

2022-03-01 09:06:22 +0000 UTC View Post

February 2022 - Wrap Up

The world has taken a turn again, as if we didn't have enough of unexpected things already happening to us in the past years and while I generally want to keep this Patreon politics free as much as possible, there are times when it is necessary to take a clear position. 

My opinions and words are of course insignificant in the grand scheme of things (especially here in this very conf...

About the Vanity Fair Article

A few days ago there was an article released by Vanity Fair that I also linked on this Patreon. I didn't comment much on it yet and meanwhile it has created quite a vivid discussion among composers. This was also fueled by the more recent 2022-02-25 08:46:25 +0000 UTC View Post

Film Orchestration - Part 6: String Section 2 - Divisi

(this is an updated and extended post that I published in 2020 on this Patreon)

After talking about general string line-up questions in the last part, we will have a closer look at specific properties of the string section. They are the only instruments in the orchestra where by default several players share the same part. For people who come from a DAW background and who are transitionin...