When I first studied harmony, I was surprised that there weren’t standard courses or books that covered music that was between tonal and atonal. And even today, in academic studies of traditional harmony, you essentially have the diatonic/chromatic system and atonal set theory. But the gap between the two is where plenty of great film music draws from. Think of the opening chord to E.T., or the roof fight cue from the 1989 Batman film, or the strange music in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wanted to bring you a solid understanding of cool harmonic effects like these. So I created the Extended Tonal and Atonal Harmony course to focus on three main areas of harmony: non-diatonic scales, common extended tonal and atonal chords, and advanced atonal techniques.

I felt that some of film music’s most common non-diatonic scales – pentatonic, whole tone, and phrygian dominant – require a good amount of detail on how to get film-like harmonies from them, and what associations they usually have (because they are strongly associative!).

Take the whole tone scale, for example, which usually depicts a threatening feeling of mystery in film music.

This scale can quickly become predictable sounding because every interval and chord can be built on every note of the scale. If the scale continues for some time, film composers tend to use several different harmonic materials in the same passage, like:

a solid triad

a solid tetrad

a broken tetrad

and the odd flourish.

This helps to keep things sounding fresh without having to change the scale. Here’s a passage I wrote that demonstrates the idea:

Another important idea is a collection of common film-music chords that are either extended tonal or atonal. One of the extended-tonal chords is what I call the dissonant-bass chord. All that means is a major or minor triad with a non-chord note against it in the bass.

It’s not a resolving kind of dissonance, but one that is there to create a certain sound. The more dissonance between the bass and triad above it, the higher the tension in the scene tends to be. So imagine a scene where something heroic occurs in the midst of an ongoing battle – so a high-tension situation. Here’s an excerpt I wrote with dissonant-bass chords to convey the idea:

We do, of course, get to set theory as well, and we talk about the most common atonal chords in film, what they tend to mean, and even how you can work them into a twelve-tone row to create longer stretches of atonal music. But we also talk about those more “avant-garde” techniques like writing with clusters, slow glissandos, quarter-tone wavering, and the like that can create some truly chilling sounds. Here’s a passage of mine that demonstrates these concepts:

So in covering concepts like non-diatonic scales, common extended-tonal or atonal chords, and avant-garde techniques, I feel that this new course bridges that gap I always felt between tonal and atonal harmony studies, and gives those interested in music for media a solid grounding for knowing not just how and when to best apply these harmonies but, most importantly, what it is they usually mean.

Extended Tonal and Atonal Harmony in Film is at 20% off until the next course release, and all general harmony courses are in a bundle for 20% off (with Fundamentals for free). See here for details.

Since I started creating courses on Film Music Notes back in 2021, many people have asked me when I’m going to do a course on the orchestration of action music like in classic blockbuster films. Well, I’m happy to say I’ve finally released the first of these courses, Orchestrating Action 1: Core Textures and Components. I feel this is a special course in my repertory, because it had to be created over a long time entirely from original ideas. Not wanting to disappoint my fans, I was determined to make just such a course. So here’s the story of how it came into being.

While I’ve had academic training in the gamut of subjects in music theory, how to use the orchestra to create certain moods or meanings just wasn’t part of the curriculum. Of course, we were taught the instruments in the orchestra, their characteristics, and how to write for each of them and what tends to sound good together, but when it came to putting them all together into a whole that had a certain meaning, there was a distinct lack of literature on the subject.

I knew that I needed to take the time to come up with a set of ideas from scratch. So I took my own research sabbatical to study many of the most beloved action cues from classic blockbuster films – over 50 in total, a process that took 2 and a half months. That was just for the research. Actually making these ideas into a course took another 3 and half months, so it took quite a while at 6 months overall, but it was a journey that I really couldn’t be happier with, and I hope that you’ll find the same.

What really cracked it open for me was coming up with just 5 action-texture components, especially the continuous rhythmic element called the motor rhythm, or simply the motor. I started to notice that cues with similarly-scored motors had similar uses in the narrative. Like notice how in this track from Star Wars, the timpani has a motor of one note per beat and the trumpets have a mid-to-high melody overtop:

And compare that to this track from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the timpani and snare drum have again a one-note-per-beat motor, and the brass have a mid-to-high melody overtop:

And the thing is, in both of these scenes, the heroes are being pursued by a large army. This kind of texture became one of the main texture families in the course – the Large or Powerful Enemy family.

And so it went until I had developed a full-blown course of over 7 hours with nearly two dozen textures divided into four texture families. That’s a lot of textures! Now I had to make sure the ideas actually worked. So I wrote my own action cue using the concepts in the course and was quite pleased with the results. Here’s a short sample of what I came up with:

So if you’re one of the many fans who are interested in classic action orchestration, I very much hope that in taking this course, you get a lot out of it, and are able to build up and understand classic action textures in a way that is both new and especially meaningful.

I’m excited to announce my second talk with the Academy of Scoring Arts this Saturday, October 5th, 10am-12pm PST (they are based in Los Angeles). This time, we’ll be discussing the opening cue of John Williams’ score for Raiders of the Lost Ark, “In the Jungle”, where Indiana Jones and a small group walk through a South American jungle in search of archeological treasure. The talk will focus on the wonderfully strange harmony in this cue as we analyze all kinds of typical chords and harmonic techniques found in his music, especially those from octatonic scales.

To attend the talk, you must be a member, but you can sign up for free on the Academy’s website. Here’s the link for the talk on the ASA’s site (to sign up with ASA, just click “Join” on the menu in the link):

https://scoringarts.com/event/john-williams-raiders-of-the-lost-ark-score-study-part-i/

Hope to see you there!

I’m excited to announce that I will be giving a virtual guest talk on harmony in John Williams’ action music. The talk is with the Academy of Scoring Arts this Sunday, Sep. 10th, from 10am-12pm Pacific Time (they’re based in L.A.). I’ll be breaking down two cues from the original Star Wars trilogy: “Attacking a Star Destroyer” from The Empire Strikes Back, and “Den of the Rancor” from Return of the Jedi. The idea is to give a sense not only of the kinds of chords Williams often uses, but also how he tends to use them in an action scene.

You must be a member to attend, but you can sign up entirely for free on the Academy’s website. Here’s the link for the talk on the ASA’s site (includes a link to sign up with ASA):

Hope to see you there!