Creating a Soundtrack
Lesson 2: Use Images as Inspiration for Composition
In this lesson, students identify and analyze sounds used by film composers. Students then use imagery as a stimulus to compose and record short musical ideas using the included Use Images as inspiration for Composition - Live Set.
Learning intentions
Critical listening – identify and describe musical conventions
Technology literacy – effective use of MIDI recording and editing
Creativity – imagine musical responses to imagery
Introduction:
The impact and function of music in film
This lesson aims at getting students to identify the extensive role that music plays in shaping the tone and mood of a film.
The videos below offer a fun way to introduce the impact and function of music within a scene.
How Music Affects Film #3
This video overdubs a variety of different film music scores over the top of a classic
scene from The Shining.
Q. How does the mood of the scene change with each musical change?
How Music Affects Film #8
Another mashup of a variety of classic film soundtracks to the famous standoff scene
in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Q. If you were to pick a different score from the original, which would it be? Why?
Connecting Music and Mood – Soundtrack Examples
In this listening exercise, students listen to the provided soundtracks and use mind maps as a means to examine and build insights and connections between music and mood.
Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s soundtrack to The Social Network
Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s soundtrack to The Social Network has a range of intriguing and evocative sounds.
“Hand Covers Bruise” (the first track) is an example of how slow, subtle movements can evolve and build over time.
Q. How does the sound move over time?
Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for Joker
Award-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score for Joker is dark and brooding. This piece demonstrates the effectiveness of combining just a couple of musical elements.
Q. How many sounds can you hear in this?
Biking to School from Stranger Things Soundtrack
“Biking to School” from Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s Stranger Things soundtrack is a brighter, happier piece of music.
Q. What mood is created by this piece? Which sounds make it bright and happy?
Mind map to draw lines between mood and sound
For the listening task, use a mind map to identify and name each of the sounds and instruments, as well as consider and name the mood or feeling of the music. You can then draw lined connections between each sound and the mood that it evokes.
Practical Task:
Using images as inspiration for composition
Working independently or in pairs, use imagery as a stimulus to compose and record short musical ideas. You can work with the instruments in the Cinematic Instrument Racks Live Set to develop musical ideas that match the mood the imagery evokes.
Recording MIDI and Automation into Live’s Arrangement
In this task, MIDI instruments may be recorded in a single take via a MIDI controller. Additional parts can then be overdubbed to create a layered composition.
This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to record and overdub into Live’s Arrangement View.
Guide: Recording MIDI and Automation into Live’s Arrangement View
Use Images as Inspiration for Composition - Live Set
This downloadable Live Set contains four cinematic-styled instrument racks with performable Macro controls and sounds split across octave ranges, allowing for a vast range of sonic possibilities.
Visual Resources:
Evocative and Inspiring Images
These websites contain collections of evocative and inspiring images that your students can use to inspire their compositions. Select some in advance, or let your students choose for themselves.
These landscape images from National Geographic may evoke an expansive musical response from students.
This collection of surreal photographic images by photographer Erik Johansson may spark an imaginative and whimsical musical response.
Photographer Mikko Lagerstedt’s work captures otherworldly locations in Finland, and could easily be
on a film poster.
This collection of spooky forest images may be suitable for darker, scarier musical responses.