Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.13 - M4

Over the last couple of months, I have been asked a lot what the content on my Patreon is like and whether I could provide a "sample" of it.

As this cue is relatively short and can be covered in one post alone, I figured this would be the ideal way to showcase what these "Composition Walkthroughs" are like, so this one is publically accessible.

For the people who don't have access to all the other parts of this series, we're currently digging our way through the score for the short film HERO that I wrote in 2017. You can watch the entire movie at the top of the post. At the bottom of the post, you can download the Score Sheet, Midi File and Orchestral Recording of that cue.

In these walkthroughs, I work with score reductions as they are easier to digest than complete score sheets. I also consciously leave out elements in these reductions that are not completely relevant to understand what's going on (mainly percussion) so it's always worth cross referencing the score sheet.

The playback of the reduction can be listened to here:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m4-piano-reduction/s-w0A5rIzLeFO

And for quick comparison, here's also the Orchestra Recording:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m4/s-WcEIYG48rns

The Cue that we're looking at today is a small transitional cue that however gets a quite prominent moment for the music in the movie. You can find the section at about 6:17 in the movie:

https://youtu.be/-RIIufN6_WA?t=377

I had a few spotting notes for that cue:

• 06:17:00 start cue
• 06:19:00 sweepy lord of the rings cue
• 06:31:09 dies down quite a bit
• 06:39:20 stop for a second
• 06:44:04 quick build
• 06:49:00 music stops

So the idea what the cue needed to do was quite clear. I felt that it was appropriate to give the cue some exoticness as they are "exploring adventurous landscapes" at least in their imagination. So I picked some more uncommon scales to use but more on this later. Also, there was this little joke in the middle that needed to be reacted to by the music. It was clear that it shouldn't drift off into comedy music but I felt that the most appropriate way to react was to do the same with the music as was happening to the older brother in that second: being ripped out of the "movie in his head". So basically the music ends abruptly.

The cue needed to start quite softly and crescendo to a considerable size quite quickly, so I use the vehicle of V-I cadence to set up the crescendo. Harmonically, in the first two bars we're sustaining on an A7sus4 chord. I set up a small ostinato in the high strings and high woodwinds outlining that chord to gain enough rhythmical momentum for the big downbeat in bar 3. As I mentioned earlier, I tried to give the cue a slightly exotic hue by chosing scales that are a bit uncommon. I specifically wanted to focus on scales that have a flattened 2nd degree which create this exoticness of the musical material pretty quickly and universally (very often pushing the music into the Middle East or Spain, but generally creating a rather exotic association)

The first of these "exotic" hues can be found in the scale runs at the end of bar 2. This is basically the scale material of G harmonic minor over that A chord, so it is the second mode of that scale. Harmonic minor contains the interval of an augmented second which always feels a bit special to our ear. This second mode used here is not what would be the most logical choice even if you wanted to employ that harmonic minor sound. Normally, you would use the scale material of D harmonic minor in such a context which looked at it from the perspective of A would be what is commonly known as HM5 (5th mode of Harmonic Minor).

However, I wanted to telegraph already what was coming which was this D tonality with its flat 2nd but also major third that dominates that cue, so I felt it to be appropriate to give that scale run already this hue. The Eb from this scale clashes slightly with the E that is included in the Asus4 that is the harmonic fundament here but I felt it to be a nice little rub.

Other than this busy triplet ostinato, we mainly rely on sustained chords in the rest of the orchestra which crescendo into bar 3.

Bars 3-6 harmonically remain in chords that are derived from that G harmonic minor scale (or D HM5), mainly focussing on that (from the perspective of D) flat 2nd degree of Eb. There is one harmonical deceit which happens in bar 3 on count 3 which is this E natural in the melody which briefly implies a clear major quality . The melodic alternative to stay true to the HM5 scale with an Eb instead of an E in the melody felt considerably too dark to me so I went for the E natural which also made this bar 3 considerably brighter. The other chords are basically variants of Eb major and D major triads (with varying bass notes). I marked bar 4 as Dsus4b9 of course still means that it is derived from that DHM5, so that chord symbol does not exactly represent the idea behind it.

It also was a conscious choice to drop the rhythmical momentum with the downbeat of bar 3 as I wanted it to only gain momentum towards that downbeat but have the actual theme more in  sustained and "fat" quality, rather than push the rhythmical energy. For me this creates more of that "cinemascope" sound than small detailed figures pushing the rhythmical pulse.

The thematic idea used here is not referenced from any other theme or motif in the movie as it didn't really need that. This brief sequence is a small independent musical entity without any cross reference to other moments in the film so I felt that I didn't need to force a thematic link into it just for the sake of it. The melody is played by high woodwinds and high strings in octaves to give the most sweepy quality with low brass and low woodwinds providing harmonic backdrop.

In bar 4 and 6, I use the rhythmical rest of the main melody to fill with some "epic" side motifs in horns and trumpets. Normally, I would have preferred to have it on 6 Horns alone but knowing that I would only be having 4 horns plus the fact that it was going to be recorded in a relatively small and compact space, I decided to double with the trumpets to give it a bit more brassyness.

Bar 7 and 8 continue in the same manner as the previous bars with the harmony landing on the dominant of A7sus in bar 9/10. These two bars are also used to decrease the musical intensity and dynamic degree.

Bar 9 has an alternation between Gm and A in the Horns and Oboes/Clarinet, so we once again could see it as a bitonal field but could also see it as chord material sourced from that D HM5 scale. However, it should be noted that the underlaying A7sus4 chord indicates that the Gm on top of it could be understood as an A7sus4b9. The sustaining sus chord with a d in the chord structure plus that briefly happening C# in the moving chords create a rub that I felt to be quite attractive here.

Bar 11 brings  back the ostinato from the beginning to give that some sort of musical consequence and at the same time repeats the first 4 notes in the theme from bar 3 and 4 (including the deceptive E natural). I used the device of the texture of oboes in another cue already in a moment where the little brother annoys the older brother, so I brought that back in bar 12 before the music stops on bar 13 to make room for that little joke.

Bar 16 till the end is basically a written out crescendo on the dominant. The scale material here still is that DHM5 scale which when looked at it from the root of A creates this sus4b9b13 chord. Again, this is only partially correct as the Horns and Trombones keep altering back and forth between Gm and A triads with the trumpets and high woodwinds later joining in on these alterations.

Again, I pick up the rhythmical idea of triplets which keep ascending. So in a way, besides being a dynamic crescendo, this is also a written out crescendo.  In bar 17, the woodwinds enter with a run and after that double the trumpet idea. You can see that during the run, I basically keep moving the target chord configuration reached in count 3 of 17 through the entire run using the scale material, which in such a brief moment and quick run works very well without obscuring the harmony. You get a more resonant result in having runs already in a chord configuration while octave unison runs tend to be a more punchy. As I wanted to reach a chord with the woodwinds, having the run only in octaves would have resulted in a few awkward leaps at the end of the run into the chord which I wanted to avoid, hence the chord already during the run.

We agreed that it would be nice to have that cue end realtively out of the blue as this would leave the desire open to learn what happens next. If I had brought this quite epic cue to a proper conclusion it would have felt like a way too definitive ending instead of transporting us right to the next scene. This would have worked against the storytelling.

So, if you're new here, I hope you enjoyed this little insight into what's going on on this Patreon and would be more than happy to welcome you in the future as a patron.