A Composer's Guide to Crafting the Perfect Orchestral Theme

Showing you my composition process behind composing a melody for an epic orchestral adventure music. Creating a music theme that is simple yet memorable with the right balance between rhythm, notes and chords. Watch as I expand this into two captivating sections of music with the use of sequences and various composition tactics like the use of the Circle of Fifths to do a meaningful modulation!
Will surely develop this theme (now only for a group of brasses) into a full orchestral cue in a later video!
For the videos from my video series on melody writing :
- Advanced Secrets of Melody Writing - Episode 1 : Music Theory
• Advanced Secrets of Me...
- Advanced Secrets of Melody Writing - Episode 2 : Counterpoint • Advanced Secrets of Me...
- Advanced Secrets of Melody Writing - Episode 3 : Orchestration • Advanced Secrets of Me...
- Advanced Secrets of Melody Writing - Episode 4 : Phrasing • Advanced Secrets of Me...
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0:00 Introduction
0:58 Finding the Theme
3:30 Developing the Theme
4:00 Expanding the Harmony
5:30 Cycle of Fifths
7:40 Modulation toward the second phrase
8:45 Second phrase with new harmony
10:30 Full Melody
11:40 Tips
#composition #orchestral #melody

[@jenssieckmann]

First things first: man, this theme is perfect for the next adventure blockbuster! I would love to hear it fully orchestrated.
Great video becaus of many things you mentioned: to not understimate the imporance of the rhythm of a melody. It has such a huge impact. You demonstrate very well where a composition may fork to a different harmony while keeping the main melody. You nicely showed how to vary motifs and phrases. I hope you will pick up this topic in one of your next videos. I'm curious to watch it.

[@adavidcompo]

@jenssieckmann thank you so much!! My plan is indeed to orchestrate this more fully in one of my next videos. It’s hard to put all these different steps, from composing to orchestrating, in one single video without making it an hour long video! Thanks for tuning in and hope to hear more of your feedback in the future!

[@svendkorsgaard9599]

It was interesting to see the way you used modulation. I never thought of modulation this way. Could you make a video of how to use modulation more freely and creatively in compositions?
Usually i only see people talking about it like "here is a theme in major, now to make it sad, we modulate to minor"

[@adavidcompo]

Thanks for your comment! Yeah definitely it’s on my video to-do-list. But yeah I would say, like I’m doing, using an harmonic match through the circle of fifths can get you pretty much anywhere without too much surprise. The key is to make a smooth transition, and knowing what tonalities are close and which one are distant. I might be doing this video in the upcoming weeks, stay tuned !

[@ajames283]

Kind of reminds me of Lully

[@adavidcompo]

It was a very common chord progression (the first part) in baroque music! I think Lully did the version the major chord at the the dominant though