This would have been so cool! I wrote in an earlier blog a few months ago how I have recent aspirations to be a film composer, and this would have been a great place to start. I feel like film music has been the best music written in the last few decades, and will continue to be so for many years to come. I don't know what it is about film music that speaks to me, but it really does. A good soundtrack will have me stop what I'm doing and sit there and absorb it...and then go back and listen to it again and again. Right now, I'm stuck on the Inside Out soundtrack, by the way (you should really go see it on Disney+ if you haven't already...perfect movie).
But anyways, this new itch I have to write film music has me thinking a lot about it, and just wanting to write orchestral music that tells a story about something. I haven't really been thinking about composition at all for the last year, not since High Flight. But this weekend I started to again. And I want to make it happen.
Actually, the International Horn Society's Composition Contest is up and taking entries until December, and they're two categories involve a horn ensemble piece and a chamber piece with a horn and other instruments. So jotted down a few ideas yesterday for a horn octet, and will soon look for ideas in my mind for a brass quintet. I feel like I really need to get on composition and get the creative output out there.
But yeah, how cool would it be to be a film composer, huh? A lot of composers aspire to do that, so it, like horn auditions, is a competitive market. But the right person has to hear your music in the right kind of way. With movie making, no matter where it's based, musicians are all freelance, meaning they don't have to necessarily apply and audition for their jobs. My wife gave me the idea of trying to make friends with movie makers...not a bad idea!
One thing I keep remembering is that movie soundtracks are probably the amongst the most-often-heard music in the world, and definitely the most-often-heard Classical genre music ever heard. A friend I have would tell me back in high school that she would always expect to see my name at the film composer on movie credits.
It's funny, because at that time, I didn't have aspirations to be a film composer. I wanted so badly to play in the soundtrack orchestras, but not be a composer. It's strange, I wonder why I didn't have that desire then, but I do now. I've always loved soundtracks. I don't know, maybe I didn't feel confident that I could do it. But regardless, now that I look back at it, I wish I had, and as a result enrolled in a film scoring college program.
So I'm going to start writing original stuff, and searching for competitions. Winning these things is extremely hard, so I don't expect to win any of them. But I do expect some good music to come out of me for them, and that will make me happy.
Take care and value music.