Composing : HZ Masterclass by Sai Natarajan

I have, Sai!

Good price but I with the limited amount of research I did, it was really difficult to tell what exactly will be in those 30 videos and exactly who the target audience is and the pre-requisites. For example, should the perspective customer come with a previous knowledge of working with a sequencer or do they need formal music training.

I watched the YouTube video. It sounds like there is a lot of motivation and inspiration in the video and that is important. The idea of anyone with an ipad in a garage can do it perhaps is true but I doubt personally in most cases that such an artist would be ever be 'destined' for medium to high budget films.

I like the idea that he suggests telling a story is important and that listening is crucial. For example, he shows how important changing the articulation of two notes can make a significant difference. Or he cites an example of splitting the French horn section in two and placing the sounds higher than the rest of the orchestra. But I wonder what the 'tradeoffs' are in that for example (i.e., the sound difference between placing the French Horns in a conventional orchestral location versus his suggestions). Even in the business of artistic music creation, there is the ongoing tradeoff between the time and money required to do something versus the impact (i.e., 'diminishing returns'). When you have a whole crew/music department to help you, for example, as Hans does, you have the liberty to try and implement things that more junior scorers working on independent films alone don't have the time to do. As a simple example, doing sophisticated tonal movements with a full orchestra may sound wonderful but takes significantly longer than say a simple percussion line with piano and strings only. Does the difference in sound warrant the extra work when we often work under tight deadlines. I hope things like this are addressed in the master class.

Which brings me to my final point, the 'outline'. I have attended and purchased many courses in both my current and previous IT career (when I worked for Exxon). 30 lessons represent a significant amount of learning. A course syllabus and outline would help me decide what I am going to get for my purchase. I could not find any more details than the small amount of information on the web site and the YouTube video. Perhaps I missed it.

On the other hand, for $90 and for Hans's reputation, we can merely purchase it on a 'leap of faith', but I would be concerned that for some fraction of purchasers, this course could not be beneficial OR perhaps more importantly, the it might not yet be the correct time to for some to take it without first covering other material/pre-requisites.

I completely get what you're saying, Joel - more information on the course would be really useful. Actually, I found that a lot of people were saying the same thing about Deadmau5's masterclass - apparently it was a big let-down for the more advanced electronic music producers. Since no outline or syllabus was presented prior to the class's release, a lot of people would've taken that 'leap of faith' like you said, and then found it to be quite disappointing.

It's quite a decision to make, but we'll see what happens. I'm pretty sure the class will still be available after the release, so I'll let you know if it seems to be worth it :)

yes, i have

Now my wife and I went to see "Hidden Figures" tonight. I paid particular attention to the Hans's cues in the film. What I would benefit out of in a "Master Class" would be Hans going through each of the cues in that film explaining why each cue was composed the way it was, what was involved in the choice of the arrangement for each cue, and why certain scenes/places without dialog did not get cues.

For me, general descriptions and terms don't do anything for me as I have scored 14 IMDB films already. For me to take my game to the next level, I want to know more about the specifics of why choices are made. LIstening and make guesses are useful, but picking the composers brain as to why they chose the style, tempo, key signature, the instrumentation mix, etc. is what I personally would find invaluable in a "master class".

Now that you've pointed that out, I'd love to learn more about that aspect as well. You're right, it would be really useful. Though the process for making those choices will differ for each composer, so again it may not help everyone. It would be great to pick up tips though.

Congrats on your IMDB credits by the way, that's quite impressive!

I am working on a film right now (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3953804) where I have had to make choices. In this film, there is a scene where a hitman goes into a warehouse to kill the main character's wife. Then later in the film, the main character goes back in time one day to stop the killing and you again see the hitman going in.

So what type of music do I use? The same for both or something different. If different, how should it differ - considering I am working backwards from the end of the film and the second scene where he goes back in time was scored first.

More about the choices to come. I want to first concentrate on finishing the film - probably one more week of scoring. Then I will post my experiences here.

I am trying real hard not to sign up. The thing is, that everyone will take it, and it s one style and one recipe that is Zimmer's. I m not sure if it would benefit me.

What would make the master class real useful to people I hope is he is able to very specifically define his 'style'. When we hear music in a film, even if we don't know who scored it, there are differences we can discern with our 'inner ear' that allows us to differentiate between say the musical styles of Zimmer, Williams and Silvestri. We can say to ourselves, 'yup its a Williams score'. What is more difficult is to actually describe the specifics of what makes it so. That is what I hope a master class should be able to codify. What has troubled me from the beginning is that without a syllabus, it is hard to tell whether Hans intended to make this a Scoring 101 class to teach the basic concepts of 'success' or whether he plans to spend any time on what defines 'his sound' or anyone else's for that matter.

This simplest analogy in the pop/r&b world to the above is if we were to ask Al Green to teach a master class on R&B, how simple would it be for him to define his own 'sound'. For those familiar with 70's R&B or Al Green specifically, it is quite straightforward - a lot more so than perhaps defining the "Zimmer" sound. That is the magic that Hans could provide/contribute in a master class but we don't know if he will or not.

Alright, so the first three videos are out as of now (they're releasing a little bit at a time since it's early access). So far so good, three videos in and he's already drilled in a few key concepts. He explains that a melody should be able to carry multiple different 'personalities' (emotions, etc.), and the simpler melodies tend to be more adaptable (I've scaled my explanation down a fair bit here, Hans did go into more detail). He also briefly mentioned about communicating with the director (the next three videos are all about directors, so I assume that'll go into quite a lot of depth). He places a lot of emphasis on finding the story and crafting the melody around that entire story. He talks a lot about the music in terms of the film/story, which is really good.

The video titles later on include sound palettes and synths, scoring to picture, scoring under dialogue, tempo, character, working with musicians, writing tips and life of a composer.

Love to hear/read if you are allowed to share, one very specific tip/suggestion about actual music writing. Can you provide an exact example in musical terms of two different 'personalities'. What seems to be coming up according to your description is either arrangement implementation (working with the sequencer, sampler, and samples to create a 'sound') or the non-artistic / business aspects. I wonder if he provides any guidance about working with musicians, ensembles and orchestras. There are both artistic aspects (a simple example would be deciding what key(s) to write in) and business aspects.

A funny thing you mention 'scoring under dialog'. I have been dealing with that issue all this week for a few cues of the film I am currently writing. I generally prefer to minimimze if not eliminate music all together under dialog unless there is a real reason to write supporting material (for example, supporting a hit point, a funny comments, or transition into or out of the scene especially when dialog from the next scene is used on top of the current scene as a transition tool). One of the issues I deal with (which you will learn about in working with a director), is my current director wants as much music as possible throughout the film. What I 'know' is that I will spend significant time writing music cues behind dialog that will get mixed in so low you will probably be unable to hear much of the music. From a composition point of view, it does not pay in those situations to write sophisticated multi-instrument cues since the listener will not hear it any better than a single piano, for example. So I am playing the game of trying to leave as many 'gaps' between the cues as I can during the dialog hoping the director won't make me go back to score it. For me it becomes prioritizing and choosing which dialog segments get 'neutral' (typically major key in 4/4 about 80 to 100 tempo and one or two instruments). Sometimes, just percussion can be quick and dirty choice. I also have decided on 'explanations' for each place I have left without music in case he asks. I have finished now all but the two final cues of the film (out of 30 something). The last couple had a bunch of dialog and he'll see and hear a mockup tonight... we'll see.

(p.s. here is something I got him to agree on - any time there is foreign dialog such as a Mexican drug person speaking on the phone, I explained the attention of the audience should be on the titles and hence it normally would not require backing music to distract. Not a 'rule', just my opinion)

He spoke about his preferred keys to write in during the first lesson- very insightful comments that had me wondering about my own choice of keys later in the afternoon!

He's also given examples about how he composed themes for a few different films. Again, very interesting process, and it's fascinating to hear how his mind works.

Sounds promising. I have found two major considerations when choosing a key. First has to do with mainly scoring for live performance. While highly trained and seasoned professionals can play pretty much any of the keys, I generally will remember two things: (1) how the 'concert' key will impact the key of the transposing instruments such as trumpet, sax, french horn, etc. For example, scoring in A or Fminor with 3 accidentals will cause the part for trumpets and clarinets to be B which is 5 accidentals. (2) if there is a singer, singers, or choir, the key chosen needs to take into account the singing range(s) and the 'sweet spots'. The second consideration is both for live and electronic performance. When choosing a key and knowing that the cue will move through certain chord directions, the instrument ranges need to be considered or the note movement may not be 'smooth' or may move in the wrong direction producing an 'unintended sound'.

BTW, I generally try to stay away from Cmaj or Amin for long sequences but that is not for any technical reason. As these two have no accidentals, someone looking at my score may consider it less 'professional' - that is my 'shtick'.

Themes are important to the major features and its important to understand how to create and utilize them. But as you score for lower cost features or shorts, the cues often get less and less 'thematic' and more just pure support. I have found that creating non-thematic cues are more challenging to capture the action in the scene. For example, I am about to score the final cue of the film I have been working on this past month right after this post. It has a 45 second to 1 minute segment of a scientist looking at a vertically standing see through display to decide on how to configure his time machine. I don't judge anything thematic about it. So what do I compose for it? It has to support the action and emotion of the scene, provide some 'anticipation' for what is about to come and generally stay out of the way and be 'non-memorable'. I let you ponder that one.

I'm enjoying it so far

Indeed. The next video's a long time coming though :P

I am! We've had 6 'lessons' so far as part of 'early access' and the rest will come when the course opens, I think. I enjoyed watching the videos, I think Hans is very open about his process. When he talked about how he collaborates with directors on the movie and score.. that really resonated with me. There hasn't been any work or assignments. However, there's a lot of chat and I think there's connections being made between composers of all levels from all over the world. That is really neat.

Absolutely love the master class so far!!