Hey all,
Here’s my entry to this awesome competition.
Multiple genres in this because it’s cinematic, but I’ll give you the rundown. Starts with underscore and opening of the magical winter theme, moves into underscore, John Powell type theme enters with the excitement of the change, then some more underscore which incorporates the first theme and hints at the last theme (the summer theme). We then move onto the “super dog theme”, which is a fanfare type cue which I felt depicted the excitement of the dog who was simply chasing a bone. More underscore that hints to Bb and finally lands in Bb major. Finally the texture switches from being heavily polyphonic to somewhat homophonic, and then moves into polyphony again at the end.
Harmonically we move through 3 keys in this track, D major, D minor and BBCSO major (I joke, it’s Bb). There’s also elements of Gb and Ab which were taken from both the Lydian and frigian modes.
Tempo varies throughout and occasionally I change to 3/4 for a bar so that sync points line up.
In terms of sync points, I chose the ones I felt were most important and for the music around them, so’s not to Mickey Mouse too much (which is where your hit every sync point).
Thematic development - as there’s only 3 minutes of music on here I tried to use the connecting music to solidify all themes. Even the last theme is hinted towards just before the fanfare chase scene. The first theme is based on the Phrygian scale which includes a b6 (Bb). The second theme uses borrowed chords and includes the modes I included earlier and the last theme is Bb Major, plain and simple, but because the harmony is so complex and interesting beforehand it’s a nice change for a straight Major theme to come into ear.
Finally, I just want to say how much Fun it was to write this. I don’t get a chance too often to work on a project like this so I very much enjoyed writing for it! Would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you so much for watching/listening… and thank you for reading my inner ramblings.
