New Royalty Free music including first few pieces from my scoring of Nosferatu. Three orchestral pieces and a solo piano piece.
- A Mission (orchestral – soundtrack)
- Professor and the Plant (orchestral – soundtrack)
- Village Night (orchestral – soundtrack)
- Friday Morning (new age piano)
The Soundtrack Challenge
Several of today’s uploads were born from the sountrack challenge. I was heading to Wis-Kino (a local film-making association) and wondered if I could score a feature film in a week. I picked a horrendously challenging film Nosferatu (1922). Challenging how? Well – it is a silent film, so that means 96 minutes of music. Quite more than your average soundtrack.
I completed 88 minutes, so I fell short of the challenge. Much of the music I wrote for this film will stand alone, so I’ve been pulling them out of the score to offer online here.
A Mission This piece occurs when Jonathon Harker wakes up after being harassed by Orlok the night before, and he moves with purpose to find the slumbering Count. The action is: running through the castle, going down some exterior stairs, and opening a door. This piece needed to be high-energy, so I used half an orchestra’s worth of strings performing stacatto short bows.
Clarinet on the top carries the theme, and is countered by the trombone and other brass.
There isn’t much more this piece needs to convey (unlink many other pieces that I’ll write about later). Just a sense of purpose and urgency. Harker didn’t get lost – there’s no confusion… he knew what he was doing, and he did it.
Professor and the Plant Remember that scene where we watch a Venus Flytrap eat a fly? Yeah… it isn’t a really useful scene. I have a feeling Murnau just wanted to show a carniverous plant onscreen because the audience wouldn’t have likely ever seen one. But it still needs music. A professor is explaining the Vampire of the Vegetable Kingdom to some interested people. Joy.
The professor isn’t really a useful character. He doesn’t do much. This is an academic scene in a supernatural love story… so this piece, while similar in orchestral composition, shares no motives with the real story. What do you get? A bassoon/concert harp duet.
The only interesting feature is the instrumentation change to the glock when the scene cuts to plant. It is your cue to pay attention because it is interesting…. well… more interesting than the dialog boards you’ve been reading.
Village Night After Harker stops at the little local inn, he mentions the castle – and the mood changes from mirth to muck in an instant. This piece happens after that change when he goes to bed, and reads up on vampires a bit.
This is a careful piece that uses the same theme that was being played on a folk accordion in the previous happy scene. We’ll hear the “rural” theme again in the next scene. I wrote the accordion version first… on my accordion.
This piece is slightly calming and slightly eeire. The theme at the end isn’t repeated an expected number of times, and that also lends an uncertainty to the feel. You’re really not sure when it will end. But it is subtle. Very very subtle.
Friday Morning This is your run-of-the-mill new age piano impromptu. I guess I haven’t put any online for a few months, and I recently got requests for more to use as background music. One take; Save; Upload.