Sarah’s Blog
Hi, I’m Sarah. I absolved the preperatory course ‘Filmscoring and Production’ at Musicube Academy and now I am a second year student of Composition for Film and Theatre. In this blog I’m gonna share my personal experience as a student at ArtEZ in Arnhem.
Any questions: sarahs_blog@yahoo.com
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We’re back from our winter break and starting the new year with renewed energy! 2022. If you had asked me five years ago where I saw myself in five years, I would never have imagined that I would end up here.
But I don’t regret anything. I think everything turned out exactly as it was supposed to. Even though things are really starting up again after the vacations and the stress is coming back, I’m finally happy to be productive again.
Yesterday we already had our first class and directly a new subject: Methodology. Methodology deals with the methodology of learning and in a broader sense also with the methodology of teaching. Already in the first year we had a subject about teaching, called Education.
The reality is that most film composers will have to teach at some point in their lives and so we are prepared for that in our studies. I personally have always enjoyed teaching especially working with children. I know I don’t want to spend all my time teaching, but as part of my job I can definitely see myself doing it.
In our first lesson in Methodology, we put together what it takes to teach film composition. In the process, we came up with some exciting topics. One sentence in particular stuck in my mind:
Composing is more than the sum of the ingredients.
By ingredients, I mean music theory and all the skills you can learn with it. This means that when you compose something, the result is not just the combination of music theory tools, but in the process we always add a bit of our own magic.
Another phrase that has stuck in my head is:
Don’t confuse composition with music theory.
Of course you can write a piece based purely on music theory, but it will probably never be as moving as something that was truly composed.
And exactly this one component that makes the composition not the sum of the ingredients is our creativity. And this creativity is what makes our works so unique and incomparably beautiful.
Some might say that you need a certain talent for this, but in my opinion now there is no such thing as talent, there are only physical and mental predispositions. (Maybe it’s just another word for talent 😀 )
I wish you all a good start into the new year, that it will be a great year with many beautiful experiences and that you discover your physical and mental predispositions!! 😉
All the best,
Sarah