Notes

Sibelius Film Scoring

Katie Wardrobe
Midnight Music

2013

Getting Started With Film Scoring

Project #1: Box Clever

Aim

Skills

Steps

Empty bars and Panorama View

Add Video

The Transport Panel (Playback)

Playback

Add Hit Points

Rename Hit Points

Add Hit Point Staff

Create percussion parts

Add some extras

Project #2 Haunted House

Aim

Skills

Steps

Empty Bars and Panorama View

Add Video

Hit Points

All About Suspense Music

Creating Suspenseful Music With Students: Some Ideas

Project #3 Big Buck Bunny

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Open Source Short Film

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Cue sheets

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Steps

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Matching music tempo with hit points

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Contact me

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Getting Started With Film Scoring

Project #1: Box Clever
Aim
Start simply: use untuned percussion to add musical sound effects to the short movie Box Clever (one of
the videos provided with Sibelius).

Skills
Students will learn how to:

Synch visuals to sound

Set up a new score with specific instruments

Add video to the score

Use the video window

Play, rewind, fast forward, stop and scrub through their score

Add hit points

Create a hit point staff

Input notes

Copy and paste

Add dynamics

Steps
Start new blank score with the following instruments from the Orchestral unpitched percussion family:

Snare drum

Triangle

Bass drum

Cymbals

Large Gong

And from the Other unpitched percussion family:

Finger cymbals

Tambourine

Wind chimes

Other score attributes:

Time signature of 4/4

Metronome mark of crotchet = 160

C major

Add a title and your name as the composer

Click Finish

Empty bars and Panorama View

Change to Panorama view by pressing Shift+P. Then create some empty bars 24 in total by using Ctrl
+B or !B to add bars at the end of your score.

Add Video
Add the Box Clever video by going to Play > Video > Video > Add Video (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and
Time > Add video). Locate the video: it should be in your Example scores folder. If you cant see the
Example scores folder, you may not have it installed. Youll need to find your installer disc and copy the
Example Scores folder on to your hard drive.
Click Open and the video will appear in its own window in your score:

There is a series of buttons across the bottom of the video window:

The Add hit point button

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4 buttons to control the video screen size (half size, full size, double size and full screen)

Volume slider (controls the volume of the video only not the score)

The Transport Panel (Playback)

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Sibelius 6: go to Window > Playback

Sibelius 7: go to View > Panels > Transport

You can use the buttons on the transport panel (the playback window) to start, stop, rewind and fast
forward your score, however, its really useful to learn some of the playback shortcuts:

Playback
Its really useful to learn some of the playback shortcuts when doing film scoring:
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Add Hit Points

Hit points (also known as time markers) are used to mark specific places in your score where action and
events occur in the video. Hit points are locked to the video not to the score so if your score tempo
changes, the hit point position will change too.
Were going to add untuned percussion sounds into our score to create sound effects to match the
action. First of all well start by marking each action point with a hit point. In the Box Clever video, action
points include the bouncing of the red box, the big hammer splat and the tipping over of the red box
after its been hit.
Its useful to scrub through the video frame by frame so you can pinpoint the exact moment an event
occurs. Use Shift+[ to do this and when you reach an action point, click on the Add Hit Point button on
the video window.

A hit point will appear in your score and looks like the one to the right. It shows you the
timecode at that position in the score, the position in bars, beats and hundredths and the
name of the hit point. By default, Sibelius gives each hit point a generic name (ie. Hit Point
01). Next, well learn how to change the name for easy identification in the score.

Rename Hit Points

Open the hit points window by going to Play > Video, click on the lower half of the Hit Point button
and then choose Edit Hit Points (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and Time > Hit Points). You can rename each
hit point by clicking on the name and typing a new title.

You can also delete hit points in this window, or create new ones.

Add Hit Point Staff

Next, we want to add some percussive sounds at each hit point to audibly illustrate whats happening in
the video. In order to do that we need to work out the exact rhythmic position of each hit point so we
can replicate it in a percussion part. Although this sounds difficult, Sibelius makes it easy with one of its
plug-ins.
Go to Note Input > Plug-ins > Add Hit Point Staff (Sibelius 6: Plug-ins > Composing Tools > Add Hit
Point Staff). This plug-in adds a staff at the top of the score which shows the rhythmic position of each
hit point. The staff is silent - it wont make a sound during playback.

Create percussion parts

Now all thats left to do is to create percussive sounds that match the rhythmic position of each hit point.
First youll need to decide which percussion instrument will represent each hit point. As an example, I
used a tambourine sound for the red box bounces at the beginning of the video, but you may like to try
something completely different.
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Then you can simply copy the hit point staff notes into any (all!) of the other staves in your score.
It can be a good idea to change the noteheads on the hit point staff to normal noteheads before doing
anything else: select the entire staff (double-click on it) and then use the shortcut Alt+Shift+0 (Opt+Shift
+0).
Next, you can copy the notes on the hit point staff on to any of the other staves in your score. Select the
bar/s on the hit point staff and then Alt-click on to one of the other staves to copy the notes across.
Playback your score frequently to hear the result.

Add some extras

Dynamics: select a note, type Ctrl+E or !E (E stands for Expression text) and then type the
dynamic in whilst holding down Ctrl or ! (this makes the dynamic appear in the correct font style)

Trills (rolls), ritardandos or ralls can be found in the Lines menu (press L to access Lines)

Articulation such as staccatos, tenutos and accents can be found on the Keypad

Project #2 Haunted House

Aim
Create a suspense score to accompany to the short movie Haunted House. We will also add some musical
sound effects to highlight the lighting/thunder and synch visuals to sound.

Skills
By the end of this project, students will know how to:

Set up a new score with specific instruments

Add video to the score

Use the video window

Play, rewind, fast forward, stop and scrub

through their score

Add hit points

Create a hit point staff

Input notes

Copy and paste

Add dynamics

Locate suitable musical snippets (loops) in the Ideas Hub (if applicable)

Steps
Create new score with the following:

Instruments: Cymbals, Tuba, Violin I, Violincello, Double Bass, Tenor Drum and Bass Drum
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Time signature of 4/4

Metronome mark of crotchet = 100

C major

A title and your name as the composer

Empty Bars and Panorama View

Change to Panorama view by pressing Shift+P

Create some empty bars 13 in total (Ctrl+B or !B)

Add Video
Add the Box Clever video by going to Play > Video > Video > Add Video (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and
Time > Add video). Locate the video and click Open.

Hit Points
Add hit points when you see the lightning flash. Hint: the first one isnt until around 21 seconds into the
video and there are around 3 in total.
Go to Note Input > Plug-ins > Add Hit Point Staff (Sibelius 6: Plug-ins > Composing Tools > Add Hit
Point Staff). Copy the rhythmic position of the hit points into the cymbal stave (or other instrument of
your choosing).

All About Suspense Music

Discuss with students some of the compositional techniques commonly used to create suspense or
tension:

Rhythms that get faster (the way your heartbeat speeds up when youre scared or under stress)

Repetition (of almost anything)

Non-chord tones

Jagged articulations

Dissonant harmony

Dramatic devices

Ascending lines
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Increased volume

Extreme register of instruments

Emphasis on passing tones (non-chord/scale tones)

Wide intervals (especially ascending)

Alternating directions

Use of space rests/silence to create sense of anticipation

Creating Suspenseful Music With Students: Some Ideas

Depending on the age of your students and their musical experience, you can choose to approach this
task in a number of ways.
1. Students add pre-made music to their score

Using the Sibeliuss Ideas Hub (or even the Worksheet Creator), students can search for musical
snippets that will suit the style of film theyre composing for. They could try a few different Ideas
and discuss why some work and some dont. How do different types of music change the film?

More advanced students within the group may like to alter the pre-made Ideas by changing the
instrumentation, key, extending the Idea or editing the Idea

2. Students compose with provided building blocks

Show students how to compose a suspense soundtrack by first providing them with compositional
building blocks.

Create a drone in the low strings and tuba staves that goes up slowly in pitch. End on a very low
note

Create a heartbeat rhythm in the bass drum

Create a tension-building rhythm in the tenor drum that gets faster

Add a high-pitched, eerie violin part

Add dynamics so that the music starts quietly and gets louder. End on a loud accented low note

3. Students compose their own music from scratch completely, or use a combination of the above
techniques.

Project #3 Big Buck Bunny

Open Source Short Film
As an extension to Project #2, students can compose music to a
short excerpt from the open source video Big Buck Bunny.
Big Buck Bunny is a 10-minute animated movie that was released
in 2008. Created by the Blender Institute (Amsterdam) it stars a
very big bunny named Buck who decides to seek revenge on three
little forest critters who spoil his day. Big Buck Bunny was released
under a Creative Commons license meaning that it is free for
everyone to watch it, download it, reuse it and learn from it,
provided the creators of the movie are attributed.

Cue sheets
Really, the process for this project is the same as for the previous
two projects, but this time you might like to have students map out
their composition first by using a cue sheet.
A cue sheet - used by professional composers - is a list of the musical cues that will take place in a scene.
It can be useful for students to watch their chosen excerpt a few times and write down the hit points in a
list, with the timings. They can also make note of any musical ideas they may have - parts of the scene
that might fit well with happy music or sad music or dramatic music.

Steps

watch the movie (a few times!) and fill out your cue sheet

set up a new score with a combination of percussive and melodic instruments (your choice)

add in the hit points

create the hit point staff

compose original music to enhance the scene - light, happy string parts, low ominous drones,
sudden chords and percussive sound effects

Matching music tempo with hit points

One extra feature thats useful to know about is the Fit Selection To Time plug-in. If you have composed
a passage of music and you want to fit it exactly between a couple of hit points, Sibelius can
automatically stretch (or contract) the music by adjusting the tempo marking to make it fit the video
exactly.
To do this:

Select the bar/s of music between two hit points

Go to Note Input > Plugins > Fit selection to time (Sibelius 6: Plugins > Composing Tools > Fit
selection to time)

Choose to Set the end of the section to the Time of selected hit point at the bottom of the
window. Select your end hit point from the drop-down menu and click OK
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Sibelius will add two tempo markings into your score: one at the beginning of the section (which will
make the section fit exactly to the length of the video) and then another at the end to return the score
back to the original tempo. You can delete the second tempo marking if you want to retain the current
speed.

Contact me
Contact me regarding

Face-to-face training for your school/network/event

Online courses

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