Film Composer Research - Task 1

Film music wasn't always what we have now a days. It changed through time.
Before 1930's, before movies started having sound, they were completely mute. Music was already common in theatres.
Actors, in order to perform well and have the public's attention, would have to express themselves by face expressions and
The most common reasons for movies to be silent, was because cameras with sound were to expensive and/or didn't already exist, also, actor had not only to be good with face expressions and in order to have the public's attention, they would have also to sound good.
By 1930, with all the new talking pictures (movies with sound), music established itself as a vital element in the film industry.
In 1940, composers refined their expertise even more. One of the most important and influential composers was Bernard Herrmann, who broke many barriers and traditions to create music that greatly enhanced the films for which he wrote. With the development of Jazz, in the 1950s, Jazz made its way to be a great influence in the film industry. Even tho it was manly used for musicals and animated films, it made a because fewer musicians were needed, therefore less money would be spend.
However, during the 1970s, there was barely any change in the film music history, most people spent the decade perfecting things they had learnt from the last decade.
From 1980 until the 1990s, the first used of synthesised sounds in films happen in the 1980s, this lead to a major revolution. For the first time, it became theoretically possible to score an entire film with only one performer - using the synthesiser to produce the sounds of many instrumentalists.
Now a days, with the daily development of new technology and the general knowledge gained from the past, film composers have the ability to create perfect score, accenting the movies's plot and characters in such a way that it enhances the film and turns it into an experience.

Video Classical Arrangement

Classical Performance Arragement

Classical Performance Arrangement First Week

My class was given the task to choose a piece of classical music and to arrange it in order to make it modern. It's our choice if we want to do it in groups or individually. I choose to work with a friend of mine (Miray).
For this first week, all we did was going through what we need to do with our teacher, discussing what piece we should do and how we would do it and also getting some background information in the piece and in the pianist.
We decided that we would work on a very famous piece of music called "Fur Elise".
Fur Elise by Beethoven was first composed in 1810 and published in 1867. It's now a commonly learnt piano piece that have been many variations made to it over the 146 years since it was published.
The full version of the piece is mostly in semiquarters, there are a lot of dramatic changes through the piece. The piece is supposed to be in 3/8 however this is one of the major things that me and my friend are gonna change.
More background information about the composer is in my previous post (
We made the choice to work on the short version of this piece and in the piano part because we both have knowledge in piano. We believe that by us doing the short version, instead of the long version, it will be easier to make it more modern and more catchy.
We also decided that we will play the piece in 3/4 instead of 3/8 because we want to keep it nice and simple. We also decided that most probably Miray will play the chords and I will play the melody, we will record it then to my computer by using Garage Band and we will try to make a remix with it, in order to make it modern.