Music for Stage and Screen


  • Music can express emotions.

  • Music can evoke a time or place.

  • Music can create a mood or atmosphere.

  • Music can convey character or ideas.

Why do you think music can do this?

How do you think you can control music to do this too?

Introduction to Screen! How many do you know?

Introduction to Stage: Live Singing - Live Orchestra!

Hollywood! Composing for Cinema

Activity: Film Scoring

Use Sound Trap (in Music First) and the BBC Sound Resource Library to score a Silent Film from the Archives.

  1. Choose a Silent Film from https://archive.org/details/silent_films

  2. Download it and open using Quicktime or any other movie player.

  3. Watch your silent film and think about what it would be like with music and sound effects (use your imagination).

  4. Search the BBS Sound Resource Library for sounds that match your imagination. Maybe you will find something event better than you first imagined - this is ok! Download the sound files you think will work.

  5. Open Sound Trap and start composing music that could go with your film. Match up the 'Time Code' cues with sound effects that you want, changes in melody, harmony, or other musical ideas.

  6. When your audio file is complete, add it to the video file using movie maker, or VLC, or Premier Pro (see the teacher for access).

As we go through the unit, your teacher will show you some examples from Stage and Screen to help give you ideas about what you can use in your composition.

Reference Text book: Exploring Film Music Dorricott and Allen (2010); Film and TV Music Jackson-Kew & Vujic (2016)

Assignments as advised by teacher.

What is Sampling?

Do you think you could be a film composer one day?

Check this out!

Bill Wrobel is a musicologist who has been given access to the archives of many of the film studios in order to study the original scores from many famous films. WOW!