Robin Hoffmann

The Ugly Truth of How Movie Scores Are Made

We've been talking about this topic on this Patreon a lot as well, but here's another quite insightful article about this whole issue.

Brother Commercial - Composition Screencast - Part 3 (Audio Commentary)

Here's the next part of this screencast for my score for the Brother commercial I did a while back. In this part I finish the sketching to the end of the cue and give a detailed breakdown of the decisions. As with the recent parts, I recorded a voice over to comment a bit on the things that I'm doing in the video.

Poll of the Week: How Happy Are You With The Current State Of Your Music Career?

This is a difficult topic to talk about and I'd like to write a post about it in the future so for research I figured that an anonymous poll might be a better way to tackle this. Would have loved to add more gradients to it but that would have created too many options so let's stick to four per parameter. I'm really curious a...

Musical Perspectives

One of the most essential, yet most underestimated decisions when scoring any scene is to question whose perspective the music is taking. In most cases it is possible to take several perspectives but very often some of these perspectives don't make a lot of sense for the music to take so a conscious decision about this is ess...

Device Lexicon: Part 5 - Woodwind Amalgamations (feat. Duel of the Fates)

One of the foundation rules of orchestration is that mixing two or more instrumental colours is always less brilliant than the brightest colour in the mix on its own. This means that combining for instance Trumpets and Oboes makes the result less brilliant than the Trumpets alone. You get a thicker and in some cases more subs...

Across the Great Plains - Studio One Project File/MIDI/Audio Stems

Today, we have a new blockbuster feature on this Patreon. It has been requested many times to make some of my Studio One Project files available so here's the file for ACROSS THE GREAT PLAINS, which I posted recently.

If you ...

How Did I Learn Composition/Orchestration?

A few days ago, on our Discord channel the question came up of how I actually learned to compose and orchestrate and what I see as best strategies to expand one's skills. I found this question to be worth answering in a dedicated post so here we go.

I have a university degree in composition, arrangement and piano as som...

January 2022 - Wrap Up

We are 2 years old! In January 2020 I launched this Patreon without much of an expectation but more as an experiment. I wouldn't have believed how big this would become and how many people are actually willing to pay hard earned money to read my posts. However, it is also more work than I was anticipating to keep a regular po...

Poll of the Week: What Outlets Do You Use For Music Education?

This is more of a market research poll for me but I would still be interested to read where you are active. Check all that apply.

Film Orchestration - Part 5: String Section 1 - Line-Up and Seating

Historically speaking, the strings have always been the fundament of the orchestra. They formed the basis of the ensemble. At first occasional brass/woodwinds/timpani were added and there was a quite extensive period of time where the instruments that were added to the orchestra besides the strings were quite flexible before ...

1st Orchestra Discovery Session - Composition Diary - Lukas Lindner

When I launched this idea of the Orchestra Discovery Session, one of the things that I wanted to make sure is that not only the participants gain some learning experiences from this but also the Patreon community. So one of the premises was for all the participants to document their process of composition and explain their th...

The Danger of Depending on Just a Few Clients

In my early years of pursuing a career as a media composer I had to learn one lesson the hard way which was to never make yourself depending on just a few clients.

While I was still in Uni studying I was lucky enough to being hired for scoring a relatively big feature film which allowed me to also have my first recordin...

Across the Great Plains - Western Adventure Cue - Audio and Score

Here's another pet project cue that I wrote just for fun over the last couple of weeks and to try out a few new things.

I was optimizing my template again a bit while working on this, going back to Berlin Brass as the first choice for the brass instruments after they came out with the Sine version of it that includes a...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 10

Here's the next part. In this part I keep working on the detail orchestration (spending way too much time on a woodwind texture) and work on a section that ultimately becomes the ending of the piece.

First Orchestra Discovery Session - Recordings and Score Sheets

A few months ago, we had our Patreon exclusive First Orchestra Discovery Session where I use some of the money this Patreon generates to book a recording session and invite some of my patrons to record their music in that session.

In September, we had a trip to beautiful Prague to record with a woodwind quintet. Finally...

Poll of the Week: How Was 2021 For You?

With the many challenges we had over the last two years, regarding your career in music or personal growth in the field, how would you rate the past year?

Mix Automations in Orchestral Music

Recording orchestral concert music vs. recording an orchestra for games or movies has grown apart quite considerably over the last few decades. Even though the technical approach is relatively similar, for instance considering the basic microphone strategy, there has been quite a development regarding the use of overdubbing, ...

Device Lexicon: Part 4 - Woodwind Dyads (feat. Finding Nemo)

Having a woodwind instrument play a solo melody is a very common device (if you even want to call it like that) in orchestration. Similarly, woodwind chords are very common. However, having two woodwinds play dyads (= two different notes at the same time) is not that common but can create a very specific sound.

Even mor...

December 2021 - Wrap Up

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope that 2022 will become an exciting and successful year for all of you!

The last year has been quite a challenge for many of us so lets hope that 2022 brings some improvement, especially concerning cultural life.

This Patreon will have its 2nd birthday in a few days. I wouldn't have...

Christmas Village - Composition Walkthrough - Part 2

This is part 2 of this composition walkthrough. Part 1 can be found here.

Bar 19-26

2021-12-23 10:07:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Christmas Village - Composition Walkthrough - Part 1

By popular demand, we're going to dissect my piece CHRISTMAS VILLAGE today. I had the pleasure of recording it with the Tokyo Studio Symphony Orchestra. Score sheet, Midi, MusicXML and Dorico File is attached at the bottom of the post so you can follow along in whatever form you like.

So let's dive straight into it. As ...

Extreme Dynamics

Musical notation is depending a lot on common practice. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who believe just because they know musical symbols and can input them into a software qualifies them to competently orchestrate music.

Just the other day I was looking at a score sheet by someone who seriously decided tha...

Poll of the Week: How Do You Back Up Data?

Being able to restore corrupted or lost data is crucial in our field of work. How do you keep your data safe? Check all that apply.

Christmas Village - Recording/Dorico/MIDI/MusicXML

I already posted a recording of the Tokyo Studio Symphony of one of my Christmas tracks a few weeks ago. Here's the second one and this one additionally comes with Dorico File, MusicXML and MIDI, all attached below. I already posted the Dorico file of this track a year ago but this one has a slight update: the Tuba solo from ...

Brother Commercial - Composition Screencast - Part 2

Here's Part Two of the composition screencast for the commercial campaign by Brother that I have been working on. Again, with a bit of voice over to explain the things that I'm doing. In this part, I keep on sketching and structuring the timing of the video.

Poll of the Week: How Much of Your Income is Through Royalties?

Whether to join a Performance Rights Organisation (PRO) or not is a big decision, especially in the Game Music field. I'd be interested what percentage of your income is usually generated through royalties that are being paid out by PROs.

Don't Wait Until You're "Ready"

One of the very common excuses I keep hearing from beginning composers is "I'll wait until I'm ready and then start trying to aquire jobs and start networking. I feel like my chops are not up to a professional level yet."

There are several problems with that attitude:

The first one is that you will never really kn...

Device Lexicon: Part 3 - Sweeping String Octaves (feat. E.T.)

One thing that I found quite surprising when I studied my first few film scores was the approach to orchestration when it comes to sweeping string themes. From what I had learned this far, it was supposed to be best to have all large sections of the orchestra (Woodwinds, Brass, Strings) being musically plausible on their own,...

November 2021 - Wrap Up

I can't believe that it's December already. Seems like this year has gone by in the blink of an eye. Thankfully, in spite of current waves of the pandemic it seems like the media business has started to normalize again so let's hope it stays that way.

As per usual it starts to slow down a bit towards the end of the year...

Poll of the Week: What Are The Genres That You Work In The Most?

This is a pretty broad question as sometimes the use defines the genre (e.g. commercial music) and sometimes it doesn't (e.g. "Horror" could be a movie or a game etc.) but let us know what are your main genres when writing music. Check all that apply.