Complete Guide to Film Scoring

Complete Guide to Film Scoring

An essential resource for both students and professionals, offering shrewd insight into the business, process, and art of writing music for film and TV. Interviews with top film scoring professionals add the priceless insight of the wisdom that comes with experience.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Excellent Resource, Absolutely Must Read
I’ve come to recognize that any of the Berklee Press books will be excellent, but this book exceeded my expectation in nearly every way. Even though this is a textbook, it reads easily, and just as important, it is inexpensive. I was expecting a much smaller book for the price, and was surprised by the amount of material covered.

The only negative thing I could say about this book was that I had kind of expected more musical examples and tricks, for example that a whole tone scale is commonly used for dream sequences. There really isn’t that kind of material covered in this book at all.

What is covered is the various legal and practical aspects of making film music as a profession, and it is covered very well.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone considering a career in film music, or even to someone who is interested in film music.

Finally, a bit of trivia from the book: Where much of the classical community derides John Williams’ Star Wars score as being a rip-off of Holst’s Planets, it turns out that Williams actually had to convince Lucas to use original material, in the style of the planets suite, instead of Holst’s Planets itself which was the temp track.

5 Stars Great Book. Highly Recommended
Very informative, and covers everything you need to know about working as a composer in a film industry

5 Stars A Must Have!
I had a hard time getting through this the first time 4 years ago. However, I just read it in its entirety and it is well worth the wait. Now, having committed fully to a career in film and TV composing, it makes complete sense. This is a more comprehensive and academic reference book for scoring but it covers the basics very well. I suggest reading this along with a few more like Bellis’ “Emerging Composer” and others. Be patient with it and it’ll serve its purpose.

5 Stars An excellent primer
I’m just getting seriously interested in composition and music for films and I literally knew nothing about the process. This book was an excellent overall primer, was written very plainly and clearly and I walked away feeling like I understood the entire process of film scoring, all the steps involved, people involved, how royalties worked, how to get started, etc. I also really enjoyed the last section which contained many good interviews with seasoned composers. I would definitely recommend this book, especially if you are just getting started.

5 Stars wonderful book
This is simply a wonderful book, essential for a composer interested in film sountrack world.

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