Blog: Composer resources: Top 5 online
Here are a few great resources for music composers working in the film and media industries.
1: International Music Score Library Project
Offering a wealth of learning material to music composers; this is a great site.
“IMSLP is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores based on the wiki principle; it is also more than that. Users can exchange musical ideas through the site, submit their own compositions, or listen to other people’s composition; this makes IMSLP an ever-growing musical community of music lovers for music lovers.”
The huge quantity and variety of scores available make this the place to go for studying compositional techniques or just for a spot of inspiration.
Tip: Try browsing by ‘Work Genre’ to track down scores relevant to a style of music composition you are researching.
2: Garritan Principals of Orchestration Online
As technology has developed the ability to create more and more realistic orchestral mock ups, using software has given composers the opportuniy to compose in the digial relm. Here at Ithaca Audio we use some of the best software available to create some really exciting orchestral scores (you can hear some examples on the showreel)
The Garritan Principals of Orchestration is based on Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous text ‘The Principals of Orchestration” but delves into the world of composition using digital means and gives excellent examples along the way.
“One of the the most effective ways to learn orchestration is by listening, and simultaneously seeing it on the score. Live playback of the score examples imparts an added dimension, converying concepts far more clearly and immediately than simply viewing what’s on a printed page. Rimsky-Korsakov himself recommended: “The best plan is to study full-scores, and listen to an orchestra, score in hand.”
3: Wikipedia
Have you been asked to write some Kizomba inspired Dubstep? Wikipedia is a great starting point when tackling new musical styles. Often with accompanying audio excerpts, it can really help speed along research and provide great inspiration for new ideas as a composer.
A few great corners of Wikipedia for composers:
Tip: Use the ‘See also’ section of the article to find useful articles you might not have though of searching for
4: Vimeo
If you are a film composer or a TV composer Vimeo is a great place to find up and coming animators, directors and visual effects artist to work with. Much more than YouTube, Vimeo’s content is focused on high quality creative video.
A good place to start is looking through the various groups. There are some excellent videos produced using digital SLR camera’s video functionality. Try the Canon 5DMKII category for some interesting new videos.
You can also find Ithaca Audio on Vimeo here
5: SoundCloud
When choosing where to promote your work there are a huge number of options. SoundCloud offers some good features that allow you to get the most out of your music. Here is one of the Ithaca Audio posts on SoundCloud, an introduction to a podcast:
Journalism.co.uk Podcast Theme by Ithaca Audio
Listeners can link comments to specific sections of your track, a very useful feature. There are also a number of advanced embedding features including the options of customising the colour scheme to fit with the site that you are embedding the player into and also adding artwork to the player.
If you have any other resources for composers please add them in the comments.
Title image by jrossol