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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It’s almost Christmas and the last week before the winter holiday has begun. The Netherlands are in a lockdown again but since music studies are mostly practical, ArtEZ is still able to offer physical education.
The first semester is almost over, and I am personally really ready for a few weeks break! Even the last days I’m stuffing with work, so I actually have the time with my family during Christmas. The past couple of weeks I had the feeling our music theory teacher thinks we have music theory as our main subject so I’m still working on three big theory assignments and also our real main subject is not allowing us to be lazy in the moment.
After our block about the radio play ‘Peter Pan’ we started a new block that deals with style copies. That means that we have to pick a new style (popular music) each week and do a lot of research on it. After that we have to write a song in that specific style.
The first lesson was a group lesson but after that we had a lot of single lessons to improve our individual projects. We are also encouraged to record real instruments and are finally allowed (and able) to record in the studio at ArtEZ ourselves.
The whole reason behind this block is to connect with people and build your own musical infrastructure so you know who you can record with if you have a real project. It also is supposed to train us self-organization again, because you have to learn to work quickly and efficient.
To be honest, these times are not the greatest to do these projects, but you also have to learn to work through times like this. It might mean that you maybe not have the possibility to record something live but that you have to improve your midi programming for instance.
This block is a big challenge for some students, especially those who have more of an orchestral background. It can be quite hard to write lyrics if you never have done it and also it can be a big problem if you are not feeling comfortable singing and recording yourself.
On the one hand I get that it is important for composers to be able to work with styles they didn’t know before, but I also heard that you can build a sustainable career on specializing. Anyways you have to work through it and you still have the choice to choose an ‘easier’ style, maybe one that doesn’t involve singing, lyrics etc.
For me it is a nice project because I like songwriting a lot and I also have the possibility to record myself. Even though it is quite a lot in a short time I get to do a lot of styles which I didn’t know I could do.
Another big topic in this lesson are plugins. The life of a film music composer is expensive and especially as a student it can be quite frustrating to know a plugin that could help you but it’s just so expensive. Still, it is an investment for life.
It’s definitely an interesting block and tomorrow we’re gonna listen to all the songs everyone made. Looking forward to that!!!
All the best,
Sarah