# My instructions for writing modal film music



## Studio E (May 23, 2018)

How to use modes when writing film music:

1) Pick a Key
2) Pick the mode
3) Burn the mode scale into memory
4) Discover all the chord tones from this mode/scale
5) Experiment for hours to find chord/melody combinations
6) Notice the ones you like
7) 30 minutes later throw away all ideas that earlier seemed promising
8) Worry
9) Feel desperation 
10) Gradually spin desperation into imposter syndrome
11) Sleep
12) Wake up fresh
13) Accidentally stumble upon something awesome and record it
14) Finish film project
15) Forget everything you just learned
16) Months later, try to remember anything you learned the last time about writing in modes.
17) Go back to step "1".


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## Mackieguy (May 23, 2018)

Studio E said:


> How to use modes when writing film music:
> 
> 1) Pick a Key
> 2) Pick the mode
> ...


Perfect


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## mikeh-375 (May 24, 2018)

Eric..what about the copious amounts of alcohol between points 9+10?


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## ghandizilla (May 24, 2018)

I am in a very similar piano workflow:

1) Pick a Key
2) Pick the mode
3) Burn the mode scale into memory
4) Discover the tonic, subdominant and dominant chords from this mode/scale
5) After 2mn of experimentation, it's all forgotten: relearn the scale
6) After 2 other mn of experimentation, re-re-learn the scale
7) Decide to go with two different scales to accomodate all the accidentals you put into the sh*t
8) After 3mn of experimentation, relearn both scales
9) Smoke some weed
10) Slight improvement, back to one scale
11) Stupendous discovery: you're stuck in the wrong scale (but at least, you're in one scale)
12) Go with it
13) Orchestrate the stuff
14) Send to the client
15) The Client : "I wanted the romantic idyll theme, why is the music so violent?"
16) Back to step 1

(It may be the reason why I'm like almost never paid :-D )


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (May 24, 2018)

Let's not forget the sadly famous :

1) Pick a Key
2) Visit VI-Control

There is no 3).


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## benmrx (May 24, 2018)

There is no 3..., there is only Zuul.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (May 24, 2018)




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## reddognoyz (May 24, 2018)

two day intensive orchestration for film class.

End of day two:

.."questions before we rap up? anyone?"

"yes, do you have any thoughts on the actual composition of the music? how do i make it sound cinematic"

"oh that... move your chords by thirds"

true dat


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## gyprock (May 24, 2018)

1) pick a key
2) pick a scale
3) only use the root note
4) use the octave for variety


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## ghandizilla (May 25, 2018)

5) make a broken chords pattern with the pedal tone
6) varies it, one time up, one time down, one time in the middle, one time thick, one time light
7) use porn for inspiration until you've finished your 30-cues score
8) get your Oscar


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## Rctec (May 25, 2018)




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## DMDComposer (May 25, 2018)

Rctec said:


>


I can only imagine whoever drew this was procrastinating from other work lmao.


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## Rodney Money (May 25, 2018)

Rctec said:


>


Isle of good intentions: "See, I'm still a good person!"


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## ghandizilla (May 25, 2018)

Social Media and VI-C forests reign supreme at my day work.

River of Excuses is the goddess in the studio.

Sudden Urge to watch some useless masterclasses may be the main city of the Isle of Good Intentions.


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## jononotbono (May 25, 2018)

"A Map of Procrastination"! Haha! That's amazing!


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## dgburns (May 25, 2018)

so funny @Studio E 

To be serious for a sec, I admit a certain fondness for the ‘modes of limited transposition’. Especially the wholetone scale. So many times that scale has given me a way out of a big hole I dug for myself, especially throwing together a wide chord centered on that scale in place of some kind of aleatoric cluster swell before shoving off to somewhere else. It allows you to ‘go’ to just about any key from where you were putzing around in for the last little section. (there are only two modes to the wholetone so you can access alot of root shifts)

And, it makes you sound french, which seems to be in fashion as of late (lol)

smoking my BBC pipe with my white lab coat on...


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## Rctec (May 25, 2018)




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## dgburns (May 25, 2018)

Studio E said:


> How to use modes when writing film music:
> 
> 1) Pick a Key
> 2) Pick the mode
> ...



I’d find all this admirable, but it’s just too much ‘work’ and not enough ‘play’.

I feel like writing a book, please forgive me-

-pick a key, but don’t hold yourself to it if for some reason, it makes sense to move the composition to another root. Something as simple as that might open up a few ideas when you hear your writing in that new key. I do this all the time.

-pick a mode, wrong. Don’t do that. Piss around with one if you like. But why confine yourself to that ONE just because. I’d recommend, in all humility, and in all seriousness, to try an idea that you wrote in one mode, and shove it off into another mode, just to see what happens. Especially if you’re putzing around with modes that are similar, like the ones that are derived from the major or minor keys. Jazz guys use modes, but they move between modes as the keys change, it’s more interesting then just staying in one mode, it’s obvious to hear once you get behind the theory.

-I realize you’re writing this tongue in cheek, but there’s also some seriousness to your intent. So let me put forward that it’s important to know the vocabulary so you’re not thinking so much about all that technical stuff. Piss around with a few chords in a modal way if you like. Jot down or keep the midi parts of a few, and go take a walk and come back to it. Then keep it simple, you can write a compelling score with just a few chords as the tonal backbone. Just maybe think about not explicitly letting the listener hear the chord in it’s full way so as to keep interest, make it known in fragments, and spread across instrument groups. Quincy Jones is a master of this, especially in his orchestration.

-depending on the context of your composition, some modes are going to remind the listener of something that was written in that mode, aka the Simpsons theme song uses THAT mode so strongly that any composition with that raised fourth in an animation/cartoon way will draw comparisons. That mode, Lydian (actually, the Simpsons also has a flattened seventh, so a Lydian/Mixolydian hybrid) is now firmly planted in the American pysche as the comedy routine scale.

-writing music should be about discovery, not a chore. Happy accidents and blatant out and out mistakes lead to lightning bolts of inspiration, so try to have fun and take yourself less seriously. But the hardest thing of all is to NOT throw out that really cool idea that came out wrong, but is somehow leading you to something exciting, when you were busy beating a dead horse of an idea that really should just be let go of and die away, cause it’s really not leading you anywhere, and you know it, but your pride won’t just let it go.

well that’s the advice I try to live by anyway.


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## gyprock (May 25, 2018)

Or you can purchase this course:

https://scoreclub.net/course/modal-mastery/

Alain is a traditional pen and paper composer who really knows his stuff. I've always been familiar with modes coming from a jazz guitar background but this is not the same as understanding how to use them in a non-jazz setting. Alain explains the latter.


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## Emmanuel Rousseau (May 25, 2018)

dgburns said:


> so try to have fun and take yourself less seriously



Lots of good advices in your post, but wasn't "trying to have fun and taking yourself less seriously" the point of this whole thread ?


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## NoamL (May 26, 2018)

Studio E said:


> How to use modes when writing film music:
> 4) Discover all the chord tones from this mode/scale
> 5) Experiment for hours to find chord/melody combinations



Hmm I think that is where you are going astray perhaps?

The most common modes are only different from major or natural minor by a single note.

Lydian = major #4
Phrygian = minor b2
Mixolydian = major b7
Dorian = minor natural 6
(blah blah you already know this)

the point is though, from a filmic perspective, that's really the best way to know the modes. I mean if you have to communicate a modal feeling fast, it's going to be with a quick melody or with 2 or 3 chords... that means you have to hit both sides of the modal feeling, the parent scale and the twist.

When I think Mixolydian I think "Let me establish a major feel and then stretch out to surprise the audience with that b7 somehow." So CM-Gm-CM would be an easy (& fast) way to do this for instance.

Lest I be accused of a lack of imagination, I would point out: there are in fact only two other triads, BbM and Edim, that differ in any way from major. So if I'm going along harmonically and _don't_ hit one of those three triads, the music is actually _indistinguishable from _C major. Any use of the b7 that is more distant than root, 3rd or 5th will just be heard as some kind of tonal implication. For example using the b7 as a seventh (C7) flat nine (Am7b9), etc, we can get more ridiculous), all of these would not be heard as implying Mixo.


So don't overthink it basically....



Of course there are many more adventurous modes than these so you could argue that my view is simplistic. But is it really? For example if you look at the modes of melodic minor, the fourth one is Lydian Dominant, or Lydian b7, or Mixolydian #4. Those are all just ways of saying Major #4 b7. The color of the mode:



is just literally that... there's not much more to it...


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## dgburns (May 27, 2018)

whitewasteland said:


> Lots of good advices in your post, but wasn't "trying to have fun and taking yourself less seriously" the point of this whole thread ?



yep, busted..

-edit-

but to my defence, I’m procrastinating from writing a goth industrial cue, and that’s gotten under my skin...grrrr lol


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## germancomponist (Jun 1, 2018)

Rctec said:


>


So true ...... .


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## robgb (Jun 1, 2018)

My method:
1. Sit down.
2. Load instruments.
3. Start playing.


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## germancomponist (Jun 1, 2018)

I always start composing in my head, sometimes many weeks before I play the first note on my piano ... .


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## Studio E (Jun 2, 2018)

Rctec said:


>



After a short bit of radio silence between my current director and I, I talked to him and explained that I had been writing but that I had to get all of the wrong notes written and out of the way so that our actual score could get started.


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## Bill the Lesser (Jun 2, 2018)

I use modes a lot, when nothin' is working just tossing in a random mode-from-nowhere chord kinda blows out the brain lint and can often be surprising in a good way. Locrian in particular can really shake things up when the creative juices are frozen. Yeah yeah, nothing really special about modes, it's just a kind of a different perspective on the same old stuff, but it's a very helpful perspective. For some reason I gravitate toward chords I don't fully understand, and a modal viewpoint helps find that refreshing point of temporary unfamiliarity. All that makes sense to me, but you needn't feel obligated to agree.

And any map of Procrastination without VI Valley is obviously a fake.


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## SchnookyPants (Jun 20, 2018)

robgb said:


> My method:
> 1. Sit down.
> 2. Load instruments.
> 3. Start playing.



Where's the torture in _that?_


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