Michael Barry

When I was studying at USC my venerable professor the wonderful composer/orchestrator Jack Smalley told us “if you’re scoring something uncomfortable make the orchestra uncomfortable.” He was speaking specifically about composing jumping large intervals while a series of jumps occurred in the film. Sort of like this example below (which I think is similar to the one he showed at the time.)

The inherent concept being that the natural stress of the orchestra (via the playing of jumps) would come through and make the cue more stressful sounding.

It’s also a sort of musical onomatopoeia which you can hear in frequent use in film scoring (bees sounding “swarmy” in the score, falling cartoons with falling chordal wind motifs and the like.) Even in classical music the onomatopoeia exists with the Vaughn Williams “The Wasps” perhaps being the most famous example.

I’ve discovered a useful tangent to the use of literal, finite musical notation Smalley taught us – the negation of it – vagueness.

At first glance you would think these two note values are identical, but if you put this in front of a jazz ensemble they would be played distinctly different.

The first would have a “release sample” placed directly on the beat and the second wouldn’t.

The tied eighth makes all the difference. In Los Angeles studios – the tied eighth note gives you a hard off value just like in a jazz ensemble.

I’ve found whole values like these (above) also have a sort of universal agreement – less concrete than the tied 8th but mostly uniform.

But if you are looking for a more tapered release you can use vagueness to your advantage.

Due to the purposeful vagueness in the notation not everyone is going to release at the same moment – and thus the note ends with a delightful blur. This is especially useful when you want to subtract players from the ensemble without the listener noticing them.

In this solo clarinet example I’m purposefully unclear what dynamic the start of the hairpin crescendo should be – this asks the performer to use their audio context clues or instincts.

In this example I’ve given a written instruction to gradually slow down trem. – instead of of trying to do any sort of fancy notation with feathered beams. Its clearly notated but I don’t think any two players would do it exactly the same.

While good teachers will teach important concepts to you, great teachers will teach you how to teach important concepts to yourself. A great teacher will prepare you for continued success outside of their tutorage.  There should never be a point where you become too satisfied with your own craft; you should always be looking to improve and learn new tricks.

I am also a firm believer in the ten thousand hour rule.   No amount of short term study or tutorial watching can make you great at anything.  To succeed in such a difficult field, you need to really get in the trenches and become saturated.  You need to consistently study just to keep up with what you are forgetting, and you need to be purely obsessed to make any sort of progress.

I first started composing in college and was a fully self taught composition student.  Going to a liberal arts school, we didn’t have a dedicated composition teacher, so the maestro of the university symphony orchestra invited me to sit at every orchestra rehearsal with a score in hand.  It was here I first learned how the architecture of the orchestra works.  When I found something amazing or something I couldn’t quite figure out, I went to the library with my score and did a piano reduction of the passage.  It is in the spirit of the “teach your own-self how to learn” that I’ve been writing a series of educational tutorials aimed at composers looking to further their abilities through classical music study.

What I’ve been sharing is basically my own experience in my own studies.  It is full of tips and tricks and concepts that I hope are useful to the inquisitive mind.