This is a guest article written by: Elisabeth (Lisi) Bottoms. 

Why Another Article About Film Music?

When it comes to film music, there are so many different resources out there.  So many interviews,  tips and tricks, analysis and so on. Yet, when I started planning my unit on film music, I felt that it was difficult to find small, practical assignments. As the population of my music classes is quite diverse, I wanted to create a framework, which would allow the students to do well even with little background knowledge. I also wanted to make sure that any kind of musical style would be acceptable. 

Can You “Hear” The Picture?

For some students, creating film music can be quite intimidating. Especially if they are lacking keyboard skills, it can be discouraging and putting students off. I decided to start with the bigger picture – how to translate an image into music and vice versa. I usually have a good mix of musical preferences in my classes, so this question finally caters to the more classically inclined students with  Beethoven’s Pastorale. I chose a variety of examples from the symphony –  from very easy (the birds) to a bit more challenging. 

I made some simple slideshows using Google Slides. I had chosen a blank layout and chose “gradient” for the background. 

For the flowers, I searched for “flower transparent background”. Then checked the copyright situation using the advanced search function. Another way is to go to Pixabay, choose the vector function and then look for flowers:  https://pixabay.com/de/vectors/search/flower/

After the first impression, I tried to get them to think of bigger ideas by listening to the fourth movement. The students shared their thoughts on Dotstorming.com. The fun part was to see how many students had the same idea by the amount of votes received. 

Getting creative with the first mini assignment. 

I am a big fan of “mini assignments”. Composition exercises ranging between 15 and 30 seconds. These are perfect for the short attention span of students and it allows them to explore a big variety of musical styles, tasks and pieces. If they are not content with the outcome, they can always give it another try. In this case, I showed them a picture of the Helenen valley, where Beethoven loved to take his walks. The students had the choice of acoustic instruments, using a DAW or a combination of both. An easy, but lovely combination was to include recorded nature sounds and add them to the composition. 

This is also a great time to introduce the students to the most amazing free Petrucci Music Library. Especially the more experienced high school students are often amazed when they see all the sheet music and recordings – free and easily accessible wherever they are https://imslp.org.

Lesson starter: 

When it comes to film music, students are often not aware of the vast range of music styles used in films. This lesson starter got them thinking: 

So far, every single class was quite surprised by the amount of films using Beethoven’s music. This regularly leads into some fun discussions. 

Playing with Chords

Before we start the big project, I want to teach my students several composition techniques, using the DAW of their choice. By demonstrating the build up of 7th and 9th chords, students quickly understand the power of chords beyond the triad. When I don’t have time to get fancy with imovie or similar, I like using screencasts such as QuickTime Player, Screencast-o-matic, or the Screen Recorder Extension on chrome. Here is a simple example of simply capturing the playing of notes I put in a notation software. 

Another fun aspect is working with clusters. They are easy to create, can be morphed, shaped, transposed and modified. Clusters immediately create an eerie feeling and students do not need a lot of music theory foundation to have fun with it. For additional help to write down the clusters might be the use of the virtual piano with a mark up function. I use Musicca in class quite often.

The next exercise is best done in pairs. Students look for two chords, which can be played one after another repeatedly. A bit like back and forward. One can use a DAW of choice, but if it has to go quickly, students can also use Gootar.com. Especially using the autoharp function with vibes on slow, create a great and easy background for improvisation. 

Gootar autoharp for finding matching chords. 

Antecedent and consequent. 

Often students have a good idea for a motiv but do not know how to continue. A simple way to resolve this is to teach them the idea of antecedent and consequent. For teaching purposes, I am personally a fan of Musescore as it is free, not depending on the internet, relatively easy to use and yet very powerful. Pieces that work well are themes which are short and distinct. 

Here are some ideas of getting started –  created by my amazing colleague Samuel Wright, using ProCreate.

The next step is then to take the first part of a well known motif and ask the students to create different answers on the notation software of their choice. An easy one is e.g. Remy’s theme from Ratatouille –  if you want, you can find the notation on Musicnotes.com. 

Getting ideas with using chordify

This lovely website called Chordify has several songs, films and other short videos, where the use of chords is shown while playing the video. One should always check the chords as the chords are written by anybody who wants to upload them. However, it is a good source for students to understand the idea of harmonic rhythm and how the chords change with the action on screen. 

https://chordify.net/chords/eritrean-animation-movie-ratatouille-2019-part-20-bini-man

Music analysis using film music

Advanced students will love the idea of dissecting their favorite film music pieces. On YouTube, Brad Frey has created reduced scores, with added analysis and the video playing along. It is an incredible source for high quality music analysis. 

More preparation work for the final project: 

In addition to the exercises mentioned above, we also worked on texture, rhythm, timbre and film music specific vocabulary, analysis and listening. As these components were not necessarily connected with music technology, they are not included in this article. 

Moving on to the final project

The final project consists of writing a new soundtrack to an existing copyright free animated short film. Unfortunately, these vary from country to country, so each teacher will have to do their own research on what is acceptable. Some of the webpages I found very useful are to be found on Openculture or at the site of Penn State University Libraries. Again, each teacher needs to decide which film is appropriate for the specific class. I usually pick 5-6 different films to shorten the time of selection. 

Removing the original sound of a video

In order to recreate the soundtrack, the original music needs to be removed first. There are many different options, my students found Cloudconvert.com quite easy to use. 

1. Upload the video

2. Choose mov and select the edit tool:

3. Scroll down to the audio options:

4. Choose audio option “none”:

As with any bigger project, I gave my students regular check in times, in addition to the conversations in class. I also expect them to document their process. This has two main reasons –  it helps the students to think about their work more in depth and it helps me to evaluate their academic honesty, especially if they work on it at home. 

Importing a video into Garageband

Most of my students decided to use Garageband to create their film music. As our school is a 1:1 apple laptop school, this was a good choice. Some very advanced students used Logic pro x and some also used FL studio. I linked this video straight into the task description –  to ensure that I do not have to explain over and over again how to import the video. 

Final Project

The final project was a great success. I had students create music with the most diverse styles. From simple melodies paired with downloaded sound effects to scores, to scores which were fully composed in EDM (Electronic dance music) style. Unfortunately, I cannot share any of the projects here as we used videos for which we had the permission to change the score for teaching purposes but not publish it. My next ones will only use videos from the above mentioned copyright free sources as the compositions were so good that I would have liked to share them on our school’s social media channels. 

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About The Author

Elisabeth (Lisi) Bottoms is currently the Department Leader for Performing Arts at Vienna International School. She loves sharing her passion for teaching music on her website https://www.internationalmusicnavigator.com/

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