The Soundtrack Composer’s Ultimate Guide to FL Studio: Learn to score films and games, compose orchestral music, and launch your music career
- Length: 266 pages
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- Publisher: Packt Publishing
- Publication Date: 2022-04-11
- ISBN-10: 180323329X
- ISBN-13: 9781803233291
- Sales Rank: #11976261 (See Top 100 Books)
Create and compose production-quality music with the power of FL Studio 20 along with MuseScore and Wwise
Key Features
- Develop widely applicable music composition techniques and create full orchestral scores
- Leverage the power of FL Studio to create your own production-level soundtracks
- Use cutting-edge tools to fuel your creative ideas and launch your composer career
Book Description
FL Studio is a cutting-edge software music production environment and a powerful and easy-to-use tool for composing music. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll discover how to use FL Studio’s tools and techniques to design exciting soundtracks for your films, TV shows, video games, and much more.
You’ll start by understanding the business of composing, learning how to communicate, score, market your services, land gigs, and deliver music projects for clients like a professional. Next, you’ll set up your studio environment, navigate key tools, such as the channel rack, piano roll, playlist, mixer, and browser, and export songs. The book then advances to show you how to compose orchestral music using MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) programming, with a dedicated section to string instruments. You’ll create sheet music using MuseScore for live musicians to play your compositions. Later, you’ll learn about the art of Foley for recording realistic sound effects, create adaptive music that changes throughout video games, and design music to trigger specific emotions, for example, scary music to terrify your listener. Finally, you’ll work on a sample project that will help you prepare for your composing career.
By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create professional soundtrack scores for your films and video games.
What you will learn
- Compose production-ready music for films and video games
- Plan and deliver a soundtrack music score for clients like a professional
- Apply practical music theory using themes, leitmotifs, scales, and modes
- Compose orchestral music with MIDI programming
- Design music for specific emotions
- Create sheet music with MuseScore, score music for films with Fruity Video Player, and make diegetic music
- Design interactive music by leveraging horizontal resequencing and vertical remixing
Who this book is for
This book is for musicians and programmers who want to take their music composing skills to a professional level. Film directors and game designers who want to get involved in scoring music for their own productions will also find this book useful. All you need is a computer and FL Studio to get started.
The Soundtrack Composer's Ultimate Guide to FL Studio
Contributors
About the author
About the reviewer
Preface
Who this book is for
Challenges associated with composing soundtracks professionally
Thinking like a composer
What this book covers
How to get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
Part 1:The Business of Composing for Clients
Chapter 1: The Business of Composing for Clients
Landing your first composing gig
How to establish yourself as a professional
How to network
What if I don't already have a portfolio of music?
Preparing for meeting clients
Planning a music score
Composing for films
Composing for video games
Gathering soundtrack requirements for the design document
Watching the film with the client
Creating a Soundtrack Planner
Researching music ideas for the project
Collaborating with others
Problems with collaborating
Version control with Splice
Advice for avoiding rookie mistakes
Get the project in writing
Ask for feedback
The day-to-day tasks of composing
How to collect music royalties
Summary
Part 2:Composing Tools and Techniques
Chapter 2: Navigating Through the Key Features of FL Studio
What is FL Studio?
Get FL Studio
FL Studio core tools
The Channel rack
Using the Piano roll
The Playlist
The Mixer
The Browser
Recording audio
Exporting music
Summary
Chapter 3: Designing Music with Themes, Leitmotifs, and Scales
Toolkit of the composer
Themes, motifs, and leitmotifs
Motif
Theme
Leitmotif
How to use motifs, themes, and leitmotifs
Understanding scales
What is 12-tone equal temperament frequency (Hz)?
Why does Western music use 12 notes?
What are scales?
Why are scales important for composing and how do you use scales to compose?
Understanding modes
How to use modes
Understanding sharps and flats
Using the Circle of Fifths chord wheel
Summary
Chapter 4: Orchestral MIDI Composing
Why learn orchestral composing?
Recommended orchestral tool plugins
Recommended paid instrument plugins
What makes instrument plugins sound real?
Using velocity
Using articulations
Using expression
Orchestral MIDI programming
Composing for string instruments
Tips for composing orchestral chord progressions
Tips for making sampled instruments sound realistic
Considerations for mixing orchestral compositions
Summary
Part 3:Designing Music for Films and Video Games
Chapter 5: Creating Sheet Music with MuseScore, Scoring with Fruity Video Player, and Diegetic Music
Creating sheet music in MuseScore from an FL Studio project
Syncing music to visuals using Fruity Video Player
Setting markers
Setting time signatures
Diegetic music (The Art of Foley) and sound effects
Sound effect examples
Recommended sound effect plugins
Sound effect libraries
Summary
Chapter 6: Influencing Mood with Music and Designing Emotional Music
Composing spooky music
What is fear?
Designing a jump scare
Designing creepy music
Creepy and scary music note combinations
Composing music for specific moods
Composing happy music
Composing sad music
Composing romantic music
Creating tension/composing epic music for trailers
Summary
Chapter 7: Creating Interactive Music for Video Games with Wwise
What is interactive music?
Getting started with Wwise
Understanding horizontal re-sequencing
Implementing horizontal re-sequencing in Wwise
Understanding vertical remixing
Implementing vertical remixing in Wwise
Creating music for vertical remixing in FL Studio
Summary
Chapter 8: Soundtrack Composing Templates
Overcoming writer's block
Soundtrack composing templates
Soundtrack requirements checklist
Composing music checklist
Mixing music checklist
Summary
Share your music
Next steps
More from the author
Video courses
Social accounts
A few final thoughts
Conclusion
Further reading
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