Film music arranging/ Orchestration

While I do compose a little, my goal is to arrange/orchetrate music for film, theatre, tv. I'd like to get my hands on film scores to either study or practice orchestrating film compostions. I emailed the post production/Music divisions of all the major studios like Universal, Fox, Disney, Paramont, warner Brothers to see if there was anyway to get copies of scores to study but never heard back. Anyone have any ideas???

yes.

go to school and learn counterpoint, harmony, orchestration, and structural analysis.

then get a degree from a reputable school with a curriculum in film music.

that way you get to apprentice with teachers who actually work in the medium. there are a number of these schools in Los Angeles.

in my opinion, studying film score excerpts is only going to teach you what some other film composers have done. you have more chances of getting into the business by demonstrating a unique voice of your own, and by building connections in hollywood. most film composers start out as orchestrators.

The good film composers (at least the ones that are the most well-known and successful) neither went to school for film scoring nor started out as orchestrators. They studied music and met people. Most of them hammer it home to others that it doesn't matter where you learn music, just learn how to compose. Learn how to compose in as many styles as you can so you can meet the need of the producer or director.

John Williams started out as a jazz musician in a local pub, where he met a young Stephen Spielberg and the two started working as a pair, and still do today. Jerry Goldsmith was a clerk in CBS's music department and started writing scores for radio and T.V. It wasn't until he met Alfred Newman that he had the shot at being hired by 20th Century-Fox.

Go and read the bios of these composers on Wikipedia or, even better, directly on their fan sites. See the roads they've traveled and how they've gotten to where they are. I don't know of any successful film composer that began as an orchestrator.

The good film composers (at least the ones that are the most well-known and successful) neither went to school for film scoring nor started out as orchestrators. They studied music and met people. Most of them hammer it home to others that it doesn't matter where you learn music, just learn how to compose. Learn how to compose in as many styles as you can so you can meet the need of the producer or director.

John Williams started out as a jazz musician in a local pub, where he met a young Stephen Spielberg and the two started working as a pair, and still do today. Jerry Goldsmith was a clerk in CBS's music department and started writing scores for radio and T.V. It wasn't until he met Alfred Newman that he had the shot at being hired by 20th Century-Fox.

Go and read the bios of these composers on Wikipedia or, even better, directly on their fan sites. See the roads they've traveled and how they've gotten to where they are. I don't know of any successful film composer that began as an orchestrator.

Williams studied composition formally, at Juilliard. He DID work as an orchestrator at the start of his career, for composers such as Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman and Franz Waxman. He met Stephen Spielberg because he had already been composing for television and film for years. Meeting Spielberg was not the beginning of his career. Spielberg did not "launch" his career". Spielberg did not "discover" Williams playing jazz in a bar. Look carefully at the number of film and television scores Williams had already composed before he wrote Jaws, his first score for Spielberg.

Goldsmith DID study specifically film composition in university, under Miklos Rosza. Did you read Goldsmith's bio carefully? He was already writing for television, and had already received his first Oscar nomination when he met Newman. We're talking 12 years later!

You have read the wrong bios if you don't know of any successful composers who started as orchestrators.

On top of the two above mentionned composers, Chris Young, Alan Silvestri, James Horner, Alexander Courage, Alex North ALL worked as orchestrators at the beginning of their careers.

Now, if you want to make it into filmscore, there is no way that you will "meet Stephen Spielberg at a jazz club" and get a job as a film scorer.

And by the way, the world of film scoring has changed dramatically since the 1950's. It IS a good idea to go to a composition school specifically geard towards film scoring. There you start making the right contacts. There you learn the new technologies and techniques. There you have a chance at meeting people who will mentor you and guide you into the world of film scoring.

The time of composers miraculously turning to film scoring "out of nowhere" has passed. Those days are now long gone. You want in, now, you have to go up the ladder like everyone else.

Yes, exactly like I said: learn your counterpoint. Learn your harmony. Learn to orchestrate properly - actually, learn to orchestrate like a GOD! Don't expect to start from scratch with no formal training and suddenly BE a film composer. That's a one in a million chance. And don't miss an opportunity to mentor under someone who already has their foot in the door.

Also, though, when you can get your hands on a printed score, study it like mad! It's bound to teach you other things, and if you have the training to back it all up, reading what has worked for other people will help immensely. You can't learn everything you'll need to know just by reading, but you will learn some things that can't be taught. Simple idiosyncrasies that different composers have.

I'm a theatre composer, and I've worked as a copyist for many established theatre composers. It's so helpful to look at their arrangement and look at their scores and see little tricks that they've used. Things that enhance their music, that might be able to enhance mine. Now, I'm not talking chord patterns or things like that. I'm talking the really small details that a composer puts in purely based on his musical aesthetic. It's very important, but won't mean a thing without the proper education behind it.

Go to a college to has film scoring as it part of its curriculum. There you can learn some of the software used in the film scoring world such as Sonar, Pro tools, and ect. You will also learn how to time music to movies the way the director would want it and how to create mock ups that sound just like a real orchestra in the cases that you do not have access to a real orchestra.

I go to Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas were they teach film scoring and we also score full feature length movies on campus each year. Berklee also has an amazing film scoring department as well as UCLA I believe. There are many schools out there they have great film scoring departments... just do some research.

The good film composers (at least the ones that are the most well-known and successful) neither went to school for film scoring nor started out as orchestrators. They studied music and met people. Most of them hammer it home to others that it doesn't matter where you learn music, just learn how to compose. Learn how to compose in as many styles as you can so you can meet the need of the producer or director.

John Williams started out as a jazz musician in a local pub, where he met a young Stephen Spielberg and the two started working as a pair, and still do today. Jerry Goldsmith was a clerk in CBS's music department and started writing scores for radio and T.V. It wasn't until he met Alfred Newman that he had the shot at being hired by 20th Century-Fox.

Go and read the bios of these composers on Wikipedia or, even better, directly on their fan sites. See the roads they've traveled and how they've gotten to where they are. I don't know of any successful film composer that began as an orchestrator.

Antiatonality,

The people who you are referring to that neither studied nor orchestrated rely on an army of very educated people to pull off what you hear. If someone is looking to start a career in the field as an orchestrator, I definately recommend studying the art and craft of composing, orchestrating, etc., and even in film, it all starts with the classics. It seems like whatever it is you are weekest at is what you'll be asked to do. Good orchestrators are very well versed in Stravinsky, Boulez, Ligeti, Pendericki, Quincy Jones, big band, Wagner, etc.., and after they have that solid background, they study film music specifically. For example, sometimes you'll be given a single line melody (probably as midi) and told at 10pm to make it sound like Richard Wagner for the 100 piece orchestra coming in at 9am tomorrow. This is almost an exact quote of what happened so you have to be very well studied and know how to do it fast and well or know how to learn fast in high pressure situations. The guys that you've heard about are pretty much consistently in that situation and say "no problem" and deliver it in high quality. They can do this by knowledge, training, experience. Sure there are some people who make a good living in film music without formal training, but there are some millionaires who've made their fortune through the lottery and it would be ill advised to plan on "making it" with the lottery.

In my opinion, you have two choices - learn as much as you can about music and keep learning throughout your life or hire those who've done that already to make your ideas work. As an orchestrator or arranger, you are pretty much one of the experts others are hiring to fill in the details.

Skiscore, what type of scores are you looking for? Note, practically no film score is in public domain and some are guarded very closely by the studios due to ownership. If you are in the Los Angeles area, James Newton Howard was kind enough to donate all of his original scores to University of Southern California. Some schools have special reserves collections from some of their famous alumni, so you'll have a better chance going through the schools than through the studios. You can purchase many concert arrangements of John Williams scores (a bit pricey) but you are buying the secret recipe to the Hollywood tradition so its worth the price.