Music Composition for Film and Television – Learn Film Scoring Techniques | Berklee Guide for Composers and Filmmakers | Insights from Award-Winning Composer Lalo Schifrin

Good book, concise and clear with lots of score examples.

This is a very informative book about music composition for film and TV.

If you're new to this sort of thing, you'll want to start with Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, or Don Sebesky's orchestration books first. Any one of those will give you a good survey of the various instruments, their ranges, along with examples of how they're arranged in groups. This particular book is most similar to Mancini's other book on the Thorn Birds score. You get a lot of content about how to write to convey certain moods, lots of anecdotes that relate what it's like to work on a picture, with a deadline, producers, directors, etc. To me, this is mildly interesting, but I mainly bought this book to see how he voiced his horns and strings. This book is unique in relation to others mentioned because Lalo spent more time in the funk/soul idiom, so you get to see how those type of parts are arranged. You do get a complete (or nearly) transcription of a piece from "Mission Impossible" and two pieces from "Bullit" (along with other snippets that span his long career). After you study these, you should have a pretty solid idea about how Lalo approached things and what voicings he favors for different situations. Ultimately, I got what I came for, and I'm very appreciative that he wrote this book. As others have said, the final ~100 pages of the book are his 'fantasie for film' score. It is unaccompanied by any analysis, so feels like an attempt to pad out the length of the book. Might be an interesting study, but hard to be curious about something none of us have ever listened to before.

Most books about composition are the same tired instructions repeated almost verbatim - "basic" tonal harmony followed by instructions for creating a short theme and variation. Lalo Schifrin has gone beyond this, giving students ideas about the aesthetics behind film scoring. He discusses some of the decisions he's made, giving you an idea of what is really expected from a film composer. If I were to say anything negative about this book, it's that Lalo only writes about Lalo's musical style. While that's invaluable, it's incomplete and hardly represents much modern scoring. For better or for worse, film composing is a different beast now, and it may be difficult for students to work Mr. Schifrin's style into your own. On the other hand, if you do, you may just get a leg up on the (considerable) competition.

If you're in the mood for a little film scorin', then this might just be the book you're lookin' for.

Excellent service! The book is simply amazing with lots of good information. I recommend amazon! Very reliable. Highly recommend! I love it!

Many Good & Practical examples

Great book. Very educational.

Parfait pour apprendre des trucs sur la composition musicale de film!

I purchased the Kindle Edition of this book and am very pleased to say that it takes pride of place on my digital bookshelf. Therefore I wholeheartedly recommend it to musicians with a passion for notating and composing atmospheric themes. Lalo Schifrin is a pioneering music maestro and very well known amongst film and jazz music circles. He has a highly impressive repertoire to his credit. I have grown up listening to and feeling inspired by his music. In fact, anyone who has enjoyed listening to and truly appreciates orchestral and digital hybrid movie scores will get value from this remarkable book which is amply illustrated with music score extracts and witty anecdotes from recording sessions. A thorough understanding of music theory whilst not essential is highly desirable and will help the reader to get the most out of this volume. I particularly liked Maestro Schifrin's engaging writing style as it was also conducive to analysing, developing and formalising my own composing technique. I also liked the tips and the way his hard-earned experience was shared at regular intervals in the text. As one reviewer expressed it is akin to a Masterclass - the scores presented a polished and illustrate valuable strategies in notation and give fascinating insights into the collaborative director-composer relationship in the film-making process. One suggestion for improvement: The electronic version of the book would have been greatly enhanced by inclusion of links to an accompanying website with excerpts and examples of the music for readers that eg. may not be 100% comfortable with reading notation; but I appreciate that legal ramifications and Copyright Law may have prevented this at the time of publication. So bravo sir! Thank you for publishing and sharing your knowledge. Overall an excellent and insightful read and well-deserved five stars!

Los ejemplos no hay forma de encontrarlos en audio y algunos no tienen nada que ver con lo que se está explicando. Explicaciones con poca profundidad y bastante pobres... en resumen, un libro decepcionante que no vale lo que cuesta.

Super livre et reception très rapide, merci.

A mio parere c'è di meglio, e comunque mancano gli audio degli esempi. I frammenti di partitura da solu non bastano.