I am an animation college student, doing my homework before the deadline and I wanted to make a theme song for my character who is a shapeshifter thief with a secretive/unknown past. I found your video and this is really interesting!
This is EXACTLY what i was looking for! This process is so fascinating to me. My experience with music is making fun twerk bangers for me and my little group of friends, but I’ve been thinking about theme songs for specific people or stories. Perfect video.
I am so happy about finding your channel. Your videos are concise, informative, and highly inspiring. I appreciate your ability to take an abstract idea and boil it down into a usable process. I look forward to your next video!
Everybody should watch things like this. I suddenly feel like I have a framework to create a theme from. Considering I was punching in the dark before….
This is so useful! I've always tried to make musics pops in my head until it matches the character before, but it never really worked. This totally changes the way I make music now! Your channel is very-too-much underated I find.
This will help me don't worry, this video wasn't made for nothing. Also, it's really well made. The sections make sense on their own and all combined, it flows, and you threw a little humor in there too. Well done. :) I love how much effort was put in for a butterfly. lol
this is the exact technique i was looking for!! it was clear and concise even for me as a new producer😊tysm for the amazing content, super underrated!!
Amazing video! I know very little about music and I'm commissioning an artist for themes and had no clue how to communicate my intentions (or even what I wanted for that matter). This video helped more than I can put into words thank you!
Wow you deserve way more subscribers and views. I’m sure you will have way more sooner or later. Great content and quite funny thank you! You inspired me :)
As someone learning to compose for films, I am constantly confused by character themes. They seem to be something academic more than practical, but maybe thats just my naivety. For instance, recently everyone has been freaking over Nicholas Britell's score for Succession. It wasn't until a friend pointed out to me that every single piece of music is the same in the show. There are no other melodies than the theme song. Literally, the entire series has one song. This is an extreme example, but whenever watching film or television, Im always trying to keep an ear out for character themes and I can hardly ever spot them. Follow up question: how are you supposed to use them practically? Certainly not every time a character comes on screen. What about when its multiple people in a scene? Are there are rules of thumb for how and when to use these? (Again, people like Britell clearly dont follow these rules, but im just wondering what the common wisdom is)
Hello there, Mr. Harkema! I really enjoyed this video! Will be watching more of yours soon. I wanted to ask you a question. Is there any advice you could give to a musician in grad school who wants to be a media composer like yourself?
Do the same process over and over again with each new character/theme until you come up with a variety of colorful characters all with an overarching narrative to it? It's what I'm doing.
i was just confirming if i was right when i listened to the fucking horse theme song of legends of zelda breath of the wild where the theme song sounds like a melodic version of a horse clopping on the ground with the violins playing in the background giving an adventurous feel
I've already failed the association game, because my character has so many associations that couldn't be left behind. And if i include them, my theme would be around 30 minutes.
You could just try including the big ones. Like: what really jumps out to you in your character? Maybe try to write just one paragraph about your character that just has the main details, and then use associations you can see from there
I thought he was gonna say “AS A COMPOSER, RAGE FROM ABCTV HAD THEIR OWN THEME WITHOUT MAKING A VOICEOVER. JUST SOME RAGERAGERAGE marks pizzeria did you know CumCumCumheuehdjehdjdidjsjBOBoNj”
Ok, I’m not expecting to get a response from literally anyone, nor am I expecting it to be all that helpful if I actually do… but I’m a non-composer trying to use this, and I’m stuck on the step where I turn the associations into music. I have the associations and I have their significance ranked, but I don’t know what to do after that. Not only am I struggling to come up with ideas of how to incorporate each association, I have no musical experience, so I’m struggling coming up with a unique melody and scale for the association. Here’s the associations I came up with and how I ranked them, so someone can help me figure out what I could do: -High Significance -Powerful -Strong -Medium Significance -Dark -Energetic -Low Significance -Malevolent -Godly. Now, to clarify, I do plan to compose this character theme myself. I’m just asking for help in figuring out what I can do with the associations I came up with.
It helps alot if you know the basics of music theory, which i recommend you research if you haven't. There's some good videos on youtube about it if you just search it up. I'm not very experienced but here's some connections i could make: Powerful/Strong: Big, powerful chords that make up the song, maybe alot of orchestral instruments Dark: You could use a dark sounding instrument like an organ, or try using some dissonant tones in the main melody Energetic: Maybe some jumpy arpeggios, or a faster rhythm in the main melody. Godly: You could try having some sort of choir in the backround of the song, or some angelic sounding sound effects
