Nine recording sessions with the ERO

Capture the essence of your compositions through nine exclusive live recording sessions with the European Recording Orchestra (ERO), a professional orchestra from Sofia, Bulgaria, that specialises in studio recordings for film, TV, and more. By partnering with them, we provide you with an invaluable opportunity to enrich your portfolio and showcase your musical prowess.

Once your music is ready to go, you'll be fully immersed in the recording process from the comfort of your own home. While the European Recording Orchestra and our production crew operate live from the studio in Sofia, Bulgaria, you will connect virtually through Zoom and Audiomovers ListenTo. This enables real-time communication with the booth personnel and provides you with a high-fidelity audio livestream, hearing everything the crew hears in stunning detail.

Throughout your time slot in the recording session you’ll be in constant communication with our Production Manager, who will be relaying any feedback you have whilst updating you on changes and tweaks our Creative Team are making in the studio. This way your feedback is incorporated in each successive take of your music, and you’re aware of the changes being made by our trusted Score Supervisors.

1. Scoring an Emotion • Solo Piano (MIDI)

Learn that capturing and conveying emotions via your music is the first step to successfully scoring visual content. Composers will write a piece of music that successfully elicits a chosen emotion, so much that an audience of listeners would be able to successfully guess the emotion the composer has scored. Composers will also learn that writing for live studio musicians under strict time constraints is a skill in and of itself, and the first session, performed by a professional pianist into a fully-weighted 88-key MIDI keyboard, will help bridge them into this world.

2. Modern Minimalism • Solo Piano (Studio)

After an absence in the 1970s and 80s, the use of piano as a featured instrument in film scoring came strongly back in the 1990s, although the piano as employed by composers like Thomas Newman was a very different instrument from the one made iconic by the likes of Michel Legrand and Francis Lai. In the early 00s, the new piano sound continued to evolve in the hands of Mychael Nyman, Craig Armstrong and Carter Burwell, and later, Olafur Arnalds, Max Richter and Jóhann Jóhannsson. Most recently, it drove the haunting score of THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT by Carlos Rafael Rivera. Composers will compose a cue for solo piano and virtual instrument pads and atmospheres in the “neo-Romantic” minimalist style that is current today.

3. Depicting Character • 3-pc Strings

Some of the most indelible portraits of character and character psychology in film music have been painted with strings. From Bernard Herrmann’s PSYCHO to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s THE REVENANT and Mica Levi’s UNDER THE SKIN, the string section in all sizes and configurations is the most adept at following the curves and contours of character and emotional states like grief, longing, agitation, revery, and nostalgia. In this assignment, the solo violin and cello will become “characters” in the drama of the composer’s cue, with the piano as accompaniment and rhythmic motor.

4. Depicting Setting • 6-pc Winds

When a composer wishes to create a sense of place, as Delius did in In A Summer Garden or as in the orchestrations of Debussy’s Nocturnes, or as Elmer Bernstein did in To Kill A Mockingbird, they often cues the woodwinds, for no other instruments can speak quite as lightly, whether whispering in our ears like the sound of a rural stream or imitating birdsong or the voices of children at play. Woodwinds can place us in Medieval Britain, 19th century America, or contemporary North Africa. With the addition of two horns, with their power to elevate and inspire, we can make any setting feel immediate. In this assignment composers will put the wind ensemble front and centre in an arrangement that can also feature virtual strings, as well as pads and effects.

5. Scoring Under Dialogue • 17-pc Strings

In both the final lesson in Module I (1.10) and the fourth lesson in Module 2 (2.4), the unique challenge of weaving music through, under and around dialogue was discussed. It’s very rare these days to hear the sort of elaborately worked out underscoring of dialogue that was common in the era of the 1940s through the 1970s, complete with pauses, stings, tempo changes, and even modulations, but it’s just as rare to see an intense dialogue scene with no music. Mostly, composers try to lay low and maintain the mood. If it’s done well, however, as in a series like PENNY DREADFUL or any of the films of the HARRY POTTER series, underscore can lend meaning and great emotional impact to dialogue. Composers will learn to subtly interpolate fragments of a theme or leitmotif under the dialogue of a scene.

6. Creating Suspense • 8-pc Low Brass

The brass section can, of course, take on many roles. It can be heroic, elegiac, deeply nostalgic or relentlessly aggressive. But in cinema, the brass is probably associated most strongly with the genres of film noir and thriller, and with the creation of nail-biting suspense and tension. Composers will employ horns and trombones as Jerry Goldsmith (e.g., L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) or Ennio Morricone (e.g., THE UNTOUCHABLES) did. The ability of the brass instruments to sound great in tightly packed clusters, extended harmonies, and in soft dynamics with or without mutes, is one of their greatest attributes. Because they are driven by breath, they can swell like no other section. Think of the wonderful fp < f brass effects in Don Davis’s score for THE MATRIX. You can’t do that with strings or woodwinds. Put us on the edge of our seats in this one.

7. Depicting Period • 10-pc Winds

Describing a particular historical period, like depicting a setting, calls for instrumental colour, and the woodwinds are perhaps the most colourful section. They are also, at least in ethnomusicological terms, the oldest. Flutes and double reeds of one sort or another have been around since the Stone Age. So when a composer wishes to put us in Renaissance France or Merry Old England or Jazz Age NYC, the woodwinds may well be their go-to section.

8. Heroism & High Drama • 13-pc Full Brass

There are plenty of examples from John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and others of brass used to evoke heroism and high drama, including a classic of the genre, Patrick Doyle’s music for the St. Crispian’s Day speech in HENRY V. We’ve discussed that such music often makes use of forms like the march, the anthem, and the hymn, and frequently conveys feelings that are quasi-patriotic or quasi-religious in tone. It makes our chest swell. For this session, composers will create a theme with a strong horizontal line. Four bars is sufficient (think of John Williams’ SUPERMAN theme).

9. 52-piece Symphony Orchestra

The very first thing that usually happens after a composer is engaged to score a picture is a private session with the filmmaker devoted to a careful viewing of the project and a discussion about what music can add to it, and how. This is typically the first time the composer receives the director’s perspective on the film they have made, and on how they hope the audience will respond to it. If the composer is smart and perceptive, they will at some point ask to stop the video and say something like, “Okay, help me understand how to read this scene. It is sending out a lot of messages. Tell me which message you want me to help you send.” This question—the question of how to read the dramatic intent of a scene accurately—can apply to any genre of film: romantic comedy (is she into that guy or not?), a mystery thriller (does he know that she’s the killer?), science-fiction/fantasy (are we on earth or another planet?), or even comedy (does he know that everyone is laughing at him?). Composers will combine the skills they’ve learned from the entire course into their final session with the European Recording Orchestra, where they will score a short scene from start to finish.

How does the online programme work?

This is both an asynchronous and synchronous program. Composers do not need to sign on at a certain time each day for classes. Composers watch our training series, which we have filmed and edited at the Academy, at times convenient to them. The 9 recording sessions are scheduled and distributed throughout the 8 month course.

Module content, lectures and exercises are delivered via our exclusive online platform, which we have coded and created specifically for this program. Students login with their unique login details for access to the program content.

Each student will have weekly 30-minute one-on-one sessions with our Online Programme Leader on course content, as well as a 30-minute one-on-one session with Dr. Norman Ludwin, our orchestration lecturer and one of Michael Giacchino's orchestrators, on their orchestrations prior to each recording session. Each student will also participate in group sessions hosted throughout the programme where their music is reviewed by FSAE faculty.

All recording sessions will be held in Doli Media Studio and Sofia Session Studio, conducted and produced by the faculty at the Film Scoring Academy of Europe, and recorded by the European Recording Orchestra (ERO). Students do not need to attend the recording sessions in person. Instead, students will be able to login to the HD video and audio streams to produce their recording sessions alongside our team of orchestrators and score supervisors.

The online Graduate Diploma in Film and Game Scoring includes lectures from our core faculty, but not our celebrity guest artists, who are reserved for our full-time MFA programme.

What is the schedule of the upcoming class?

Click here to view the schedule of the upcoming class.

Tuition and Fees

Total Graduate Diploma Tuition: €9,000

We accept payment plans: spread your tuition over the 8-month duration of the course and pay monthly.

Included in Tuition:

135+ hours of comprehensive training in Scoring the Screen, MIDI Mockups, Sound Design, Orchestration, Mixing & Production, and more -- an essential training for film and game composers
A substantial professional portfolio: 9 recording sessions of your music with the European Recording Orchestra (ERO)
Multi-cam HD video footage of the European Recording Orchestra (ERO) playing your music in the recording studio
1-on-1 tutorials with our Online Programme Leader on all course content (every week)
1-on-1 tutorials on your orchestrations with Norman Ludwin, orchestrator for Michael Giacchino (prior to every recording session)
Music review sessions with our faculty on developing your creative voice as a film composer
A Graduate Diploma in Film and Game Scoring upon successful completion of the program. A Graduate Diploma is a Graduate-level degree worth 30 credits (60 ECTS Credits in Europe)

Technology Requirements

Technology Requirements:

DAW (Logic Pro X, Cubase, Digital Performer, etc.)
Notation Software (Dorico, Sibelius, Finale, etc.)
High Quality Reference Headphones
MIDI Keyboard

Technology Recommendations:

4, 6 or 8+ core processor, 32+ GB ram, internal SSD
NotePerformer Playback Engine
Avid Pro Tools 12
Serum by Xfer Records
Cinematic Studio Series Libraries
Spectrasonics Omnisphere
Soundtoys, Slate Digital, or Waves Mixing Suite
External SSD for Sound Libraries

Application Requirements

Submitting your free application is simple. You'll need to submit two examples of your music in audio or video format, and two examples of scores you have created to demonstrate your proficiency in notation software. Head over to the Apply page for the Online Graduate Diploma in Film and Game Scoring to submit your application.

Nine recording sessions with the ERO

How do the recording sessions work?

Why put such a focus on recording sessions?

How much music can you record on a given session?

What will you receive for your portfolio?

What will you be recording in each session?