How To Compose Character Themes
This week's tutorial is all about composing themes.
Here are the 6 prompts you can follow. When you've finished your prompt Workshop Patrons and above can send them to me for feedback. But ALL TIERS can send me their finished tracks to be promoted on my SoundCloud, website and social media!
Compose a theme for a film set in a celtic fantasy world. It should be changeable to fit a variety of emotions and actions. You’ll have fight scenes, moments of magical discovery, love and loss, celebrations, etc.
Compose a theme for a sci-fi adventure. This theme needs to be able to fit multiple lengths of time. It should be able to be chopped up into small segments and the harmonic structure should be written in a way where it can play on its own and still be recognizable as a part of the theme.
Compose a theme for a character who lives in a modern city. This character will face many zany obstacles in a quirky coming of age story. The theme should be able to fit comedic moments, emotional realizations, and the final climactic moment of growth for the character as they come into their own sense of self.
Compose a theme for a dark back alley bar in an action adventure TV show. This theme will only appear a couple times in the series and needs to be able to convey a sense of suspense in some scenes and support a fight scene.
Create 2 character themes for a love story, one for each of the characters that will be falling in love. These themes need to be able to play together to create a theme for the film as a whole. The combined theme will start the movie and should be simple and sweet but grow and expand to get the audience excited. The individual themes will appear as each character is introduced in separate scenes. The theme will appear again at the big happy emotional climax of the film with grandeur. Each of the three themes should also be able to convey sadness or support bittersweet moments.
Compose a theme for a villain in a horror movie. This needs to be able to be chopped up in small pieces consisting of 1-2 measures to act as warnings, show up when the character is being talked about, and when the villain is on screen. The theme will play in full during intense scenes with the villain and the harmonic structure of the theme will play during the villain’s monologue. There will also be an origin story where the theme should develop as the villain’s story unfolds.