Sometimes the flow of a film requires a very short musical cue. These are surprisingly tricky to write. An entire scene may be emotionally defined by one musical phrase, which creates pressure to come up the exact right one from countless possibilities.

Usually when writing micro-cues I reprise a fragment of existing musical material. However, for the moody driving scene from the film Craving Greatness I came up with a standalone theme just for that moment. In retrospect, I wish I could have made it longer!

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This weeks’s selection is a two-part cue that opens Stephanie Keefer’s film about the joys and struggles of the creative process. (I featured the closing cue in a prior week’s post.)

This cue introduces the film’s main theme, meant to evoke the quiet satisfaction that creativity can bring. Following that is a jaunty section for the film’s depiction of some of the amusing realities of a writer’s life: disorganization, scatter-brainedness, and the occasional fit of expletives. To match the film’s intimate perspective, I stick to piano throughout the score.

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When my friend and collaborator Stephanie Keefer approached me about her quasi-autobiographical film about inspiration and the creative process, I immediately became excited. A mere two or so years later (we were both busy) I delivered this accompaniment for the film’s conclusion.

As Craving Greatness is a personal statement, I decided to approach the score with just piano. The instrumentation matched the intimate perspective, and on an emotional level just seemed to click.

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Happy New Year! We’re back after a holiday break spent… well, mostly in the studio. (Occupational hazard.)

This week’s selection comes from an interactive title that was halfway between a game and linear story, The Penguin Who Wouldn’t Swim. The cue itself is what game composers call “sad ending music”.

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Some film music cues are melodic and hummable, others more atmospheric. When writing an ambient cue, such as this disquieting accompaniment from the film Healers, I like to add and remove quiet instrumental layers so as to create a sense of ongoing motion. This piece features thrumming muted strings, twin bassoons, and the low register of the harp, which I’ve always regarded as an under-utilized timbre.

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