Recently in Life! there was an article about local film composer Ricky Ho, who had won a Golden Horse award for “Best Original Film Score” for the film “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale”. This was indeed a remarkable achievement, and the article basically chronicled his life and described how he got to where he [...]
Archive for the ‘Composition’ Category
Songwriting vs Film Scoring
Tuesday, 20 December, 2011
The Unfinished Song (Psalm 23)
Wednesday, 6 July, 2011
I’ve always had this idea for a song based on the entire Psalm 23. The first melodic seeds were planted way back in 2007 (back in the Songcraft heyday), and in 2008 I made another serious attempt to complete the song, but somehow it never saw the light of day. All these years the melody [...]
A Gift Of Song
Wednesday, 28 July, 2010
Finally managed to get the piece recorded. This is the piece I had been working on the last two weeks for a dear friend who had specially requested that I compose it for. Recorded this in one hour flat at a studio which had a Yamaha C7 grand. Cool place! And not that expensive too. [...]
It Has To Feel Right
Tuesday, 20 July, 2010
Recently I was asked to compose a piece of music for a dear friend. I was thrilled to do so, of course, because this friend was dear to me and I wanted to do a very good job out of it. I decided to write a song (i.e. with lyrics), and I wrote out a [...]
Purely Random Musings
Monday, 29 March, 2010
(This is a post of random musings that is designed to bore you by the time you reach the third paragraph or so.) It can be both rewarding and challenging playing through a Frederick Loewe score. I bumped into a copy of the full vocal score to “My Fair Lady” while I was in London [...]
Harmony Is The Dress Sense
Monday, 21 December, 2009
To quote from the movie “Music and Lyrics”: Sophie Fisher: A melody is like seeing someone for the first time. The physical attraction. Sex. Alex Fletcher: I so get that. Sophie Fisher: But then, as you get to know the person, that’s the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It’s the combination of the [...]
Catching Tunes
Sunday, 13 December, 2009
Some nights you find yourself in the mood for “catching tunes”. That is when you sit by the piano and just try to come up little motifs…anything at all, really. Little wisps of melody, chord changes, whatever you can grasp at. Anything that might give you the inspiration to write a song with. That’s not [...]
Film Scoring Vs. Song Writing
Friday, 11 December, 2009
I was just watching this very interesting clip of Hans Zimmer tonight, and a few thoughts struck me. Y’know, I’ve always told myself that I would love to be either a film score composer or a Broadway musical composer…but on second thoughts I think I would prefer being the Broadway musical composer. You see, the [...]
“Hooked” On Film Scores
Sunday, 16 November, 2008
My current obsession is with film scores. Have been reading up on a number of books on the subject lately, as well as perusing the works of John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt. I think film scoring is such a fascinating genre of music and there is such a wealth of material [...]
“Hear” The Music
Thursday, 16 October, 2008
Photo (“Music Man”) by chelseajg How does an artist paint a picture? Well, first I believe he decides what subject he wants to paint. Then he’ll start to conceive the entire painting in his mind, and think about aspects such as perspective, composition, colour and perhaps brush techniques. In other words, the artist has the [...]
