A few months ago I celebrated my birthday. Nothing new. Happens every year. But as you get older, you begin to consciously realize that time is running out and if you’re going to write the musical equivalent of the Great American Novel, now would be an awfully good time to start.
I’m finding myself growing more [...]

Writing pitches isn’t the same as writing words. The approach is drastically different, especially when writing historical fiction. You’ll read pages upon pages of facts. You’ll log them down for future use. Then you start to write. You look at the facts. You consider the scene or situation  you’re writing about, and you back in [...]

It was with great pleasure and relief that I posted, today, the final lessons in my Marketing Your Music and You class. What started out to be a “simple” four-lecture class turned into a major extravaganza going for nine lessons and lots of unplanned hours of preparation and teaching.
What prompted me to expand so much?
The [...]

The other day I did my first review of LASS (L.A. Scoring Strings) at Sonic Control.TV. I said it was the new workhorse string library and I meant it.
When I first listened to it I was really taken aback as I was, frankly, expecting a much more warmer sound after hearing all one of the [...]

Mark Northam has added the Professional Orchestration blog to the home page of Film Music Magazine. Caroline and I took a break last night and went to the movies to see Julie and Julia. The movie spoke to me on many levels, particularly Julia Child learning French to read French cookbooks and to learn French [...]

I decided to ask Caroline for a graphic favor that I was sure would only take an hour.
And it did. Plus three additional hours for a total of four. If tonight I were a dog, I would not be comfortably sleeping by the fireplace. Instead I’d be outside flicking mosquitoes with my tail.
To explain. [...]

It’s July 4th and I got up late today. We fixed an easy meal on the grill and settled in to watch the concerts. Which of course reminded me I hadn’t spent any time with the Spectratone chart in the past few days.
I decided to start out with Professional Orchestration 2A - Orchestrating the Melody [...]

This is my first time in a week where I felt I could breathe a little. Since I’m finishing up Professional Orchestration 2B, I decided to compare what I’ve learned so far from Lange to Rimsky’s range chart where Rimsky breaks the registers into low, medium, high and very high, and then gives some adjectives [...]

It’s 6AM. I’m finally getting up with the sun instead of going to bed with it. I’ve made the coffee and I’m at the kitchen table with the Spectratone chart unfolded and next to it is one of those Professional Orchestration Sketchbooks we sell. And pencils with erasers that actually erase, too.
My objective is to [...]

Composers are always looking for ways to more effective communicate with producers in a language we both can understand. Playing with the Spectratone chart really gives the impression that if you take the time to work out the ranges and see what sounds where, you can play some chords and stuff and say, “Well, if [...]