Composing Epic Trailer Music

1. Introduction: Are you looking to make a trailer for your movie, TV show or video game? Hi, I'm Jordan. I'm a composer and music producer. And today we are going to be making music for a trailer. I've had a few people asked me, what do I do when it comes to the situation of making a Bois for movie trailer. So today we're going to do that. We're going to take a really wonderful movie trailer that already exists for a really cool Indie film called punch. And we're going to rescore that trailer together. This trailer has a lot of inspiring music that builds and gets more inspirational as the trailer goes on. But we're going to do something to change that. We're going to keep it inspiring for the first half, but then we're going to take a big shop left turn and get very action movie focused and very heavy. Lots of blogs and building momentum until it tense finished. It's not that the trailer really needs that. It's just that it's fun to practice and it's fun to change the tone of films and trailers, justify the music that you make. Joining us today, if you would like some extra tips on your process and making music for trailers. If you're someone that's a beginner at making music, this is still perfect for you. Or if you're someone that you just looking for a few extra ways of doing things. We'll go through the process step-by-step. We'll make a chord progression and then we'll build in some harmonics. Then we'll build up the tension and the emotion from there and create a very well laid Bois sound. If that sounds interesting for you, please join in. It's going to be a blast. 2. Chords and More: Let's begin by watching the trailer. The trailer is a movie from New Zealand called punch and is a Indie movie that is coming out soon, very soon. And it's about, It seems to be about gay guy trying to live his life and be a boxer, but he's gay, so he's having a lot of trouble doing that. Looks like a great, exciting fun in the movie that should definitely be supported by everyone. But anyway, we're going to try to change the tone of the trailer. So we want to stop with a similar time in the beginning, the first professional fire break, very inspiring boxes story getting teased by the bullies. Things are going badly. Very inspiring kind of sound. I do. Learn to be yourself, learn to not care what other people think of the whole. Life's good when you're super hot. Enough in a unit. You can't just push it using a life normally. Alright, that's a turning point. And from here it stays really inspiring. But now it's before it was kind of like, uh, oh, inspiring struggles. Oh, this poor guy, what's it gonna do now? Now it's like training, inspiring, like let's become better. Let's turn this into self-improvement. Sorry, It's more of an uplifting towards a goal inspiring. Yeah, I would say before it's like a inspiring. These are the troubles of a young gay lad and now it's this young gay lag can defeat the bad guys, inspiring you to scan. Not that low violin right at the end there started violin or a chiller, or a viola. Probably viola sounded nice though, actually, probably a teller. Not that it matters. Alright, That was great. So we've got, I want to keep the first part inspiring and light, setting up the story. Everything's good. And then I want to, when the twist happens, which is the kiss. Right here. Let's go. Really serious action movie. That'll be the change that we bring. So I'm going to mute it now. Now it's our turn. Now it's our turn to take over. Let's put some chords down. Given the tone of the film. Let's put it into a minor K. C minor. You know, what's interesting is I find that minor keys do a much better job at being inspiring, at being uplifting. Then made a case. And I may just kinda like, that's the happy one. But that's what I've found in terms of minor keys. Um, they kind of inspired me more. So what do we want now? To 34? Maybe up to the fourth. From there. Up to the fifth, G. Okay. Oh, I didn't assign an instrument. Let's put on strings or piano. I will start with piano and we can change our minds if we want to. Okay, skirt and then down. So some people have said before in my classes, I didn't explain the codes enough, which is very valid. We start with the first chord of the key, so we decided in C minor. So I guess all I can say is I was counting my way out. So what is the root chord? What is the first-quarter of the key? And then just counting my way out, what is the fifth chord or what is the fourth-quarter of the key? The fifth quarter the key, and then down to the third quarter of the key. And so that just makes us chord progression. First, fourth, fifth said, Is there a reason for that particular order? Not really. I just thought 1453, my sadness. And you can just experiment safe. You can mix them into sounds nicer. That third, that might actually be nice, but it's like a little bit depressing. Like like things are actually bad. Which given that trailer, it looked like things actually were pretty bad. That didn't sound right. Sorry, it's a lot of messing around. E a They had much, much better. Say a sudden f psi F a, C, C, D, E F. Okay? I've just repeated the fourth. That's actually fine. I've repeated the fourth, but what I'll do is I'll repeat the chord progression, then change the last 1645 up to here. Now here, this one. So B, D, F, but I'll invert it because I don't want to have it so high right on the end. Inverting just means I'll keep the bay the same. But I'll take this middle one, the third of the chord, the middle one. And it's a D. I'll just drag it down to the day that's underneath. And then I'll take this F and I'll take it down to the F that's underneath. So it's the same chord. It's just turned upside down. Yeah, Coca, Coca Cola, it's same chord progression. Now. It's, yeah, it's mostly the same, but the last chord of h at the end is different, and then it's just a little bit better. Okay, so now what I wanna do is maybe have some like codes that lead into the next chord. And not just have, not just have it go from one to the next. D. And then another one here. But in a different spots. These chords are so close together that it's got a weird to have it child down. I'm okay. I'm okay with that. Just reshape that a little bit. Alright, cool. That kinda works. Ah, sedan, we can improve it a bit with adding a, another root note underneath and octave down. So we've got this c. So just like another seed and maybe make it longer. Got an F. Just like checking it still sounds GI. And then F Again. No, not really. See as the rate. It's just that the rates on the top. And then, oh, no way this one is not inverted. The next one is invented. F will merely copy that over. And then just lift that up. Man, that's kinda weird. I could do the C that's down here. On a baby, baby, baby, sally. Yummy. Cool. So now the chords a little bit more complicated there, sevenths. Now, let's add a running repeating note that is the same as the root node. It's just going to add a bit more drama. Maybe up here, C5. Not sure how far to space them said that it sounds interesting. That's probably good. This one sounds a bit rough. Idea. Put it inside. Now when we repaid at, we don't have to vary up the chords so much as we can just vary up these repeating nights. Kind of go like a third higher. And then just try to create something interesting. Just thinking about what I watched him the trailer and just trying to create that kinda the spirit of what I watched. Maybe you take that out of the key. Go now. Leave it at that works. That did it. Okay, cool. Let's check the child. God, I heard that that lines up. Alright, that trailer has a second and it's chopping off. Alright? It's kinda tense like it has like a tense feeling to it like you're waiting for something which rarely suits what's coming later. Which is one by going to like, kinda break down like a kinky sudden, suddenly actually Like a week, reduce that. Second, a new thing needs to come in here, maybe like a string, just to vary it up. And I've Valhalla, maybe it could be a bit stronger. So I'm adding Valhalla for the reverbs as I love today. Oh wait, I've put Valhalla on the wrong thing. I put it on the trailer. What the heck? I was wondering. I was like, I didn't hear anything. That's probably a bit too dramatic style to traumatic. I'll go back to what I originally went with. The brass blasts, which I really like. I love that for the kind of repeating notes. More than I love it for the chords. I don't know how good it is for the courts. So I'll create I'll copy the codes into new. I'll separate the courts and put them on their own underneath. Alright, so let's move forward and create some variety for when the chord progression repeats. 3. Crafting an Inspiring Sound: Okay, I separated the repeating notes from the chords. So now I need to put Valhalla on the chords and I can give them their own reverb that's separate and suits them better. Yeah, I like that a lot as much better. Now, for the second half, the issue that I had was it needed a rise in drama. So what I'll do is know I won't make you ones. I'll just copy these ones down. And I'm gonna put a string on there. I'll just use Epic strings. So what I've been using so far, by the way, has been Spitfire originals. They are inexpensive plug-ins that are $15 pace and half that if you are a student. So epic strings put that over here. So they've got these or most of the originals that I have. I think I don't have all of them, I don't think. But they just they just say reasonably priced. I really like them. So what I'm gonna do is just take the chords and just kind of just kind of play around. I'm gonna put a pretty big reverb on here. And then just mess up the order a bit. Whoops. Some like that. Might be good, might not be good. Let's put a big reverb on that. Maybe it's still just in the large category. Maybe that one. Let's see. Startups like way too loud. It should be just in the background. I loved that it matured into a full chord, which was an accident. I didn't like how it changed so fast. I liked that. I think that should be the next octave up. This should still be a full chord, but maybe up into this territory. Maybe not the four chord. If you're wondering if there's a method to the madness, not really. It's like, what do I think will sound good? Change it if it doesn't. I thought these two together sounded bad. I thought that this could have been a lot higher. The reverb is probably too subtle. As big as it is. It gets, it could be a beggar. Let's try a massive one. We are stardust is the most massive and it's amazing, is probably too big for our core, like what we want there. Alright, maybe it isn't too big. It's quite lovely. But we will want that reverb tail to not last too long. We want it to stay. It's Welcome. We don't want it to outstanding. Welcome. Just wanted to I want to make sure I really know whether kisses, because that's what we're building up to without big drop. That's our big drop moment. That's gonna be the moment where things go down. Let's take it out so far. We could just go ahead and just cut off that chord. And that's just the repeating notes. Nice. 4. BWAAAAHHH: So we've we've got everything ready, all our preamble ready, and now we have our breakdown moment, which is the kiss. Obviously the kiss is a really good thing and an important turning point in the film. But if this were like an action ie, suspense type of film, disappear, Great, Dying moment. That's what I want to do with it. I'm going to use, I'm going to put on something here. Can I create a new midi? I'm going to use the BBC Symphony Orchestra plugin from acidified. This is not a cheap one. They do have an essentials version which is free. So you can always use that one, of course. And it's a great one. And alternative is the Sam, Sam's free orchestra, which I love and I actually don't have downloaded right now, so I think I'm going to grab it because it's so good. Tell me that isn't great. So that's a j. I grabbed the next tier up as well. Maybe the next G. Now that sounds Alright, I'll put the next one up in a. By itself. Say, gee, layering is your friend. Layering. The more the better. There's notes are. Probably way too long. I sound nice there. Yeah, that's probably a good length. Cool. Then how soon to repeat that? Maybe here. All right, cool. Yeah, sorry, more of that. Just why am I making new ones? Just layers. Get some more on there. Maybe some horns. Yeah, cool. Maybe one more. Oh my God, So cool. There are two high back to bras. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Cool. More layers, the better. How does this look at the video? God, it's going to make that momentum like to Shocking. Why does it skip that off? Because I broke up the movie. I hate that. Why did I break it up? Golly, gee, I'm going to have to drag the movie back in. That comes back to you quickly. I think we need like a violin. And this horse. That's the technical name for it. So let's, let's just grab one about codes. Scrolling forever. Let's just grab one of our codes. This one. Delete that extra and puts them, make it into strings. Could we layer it up further so that it's really dramatic? So I've got a G here, a b as well. God, Turn that off the day. And then an F. It's actually a lovely color. We may not even need it to be that long. I didn't play. Oh, I know why. So annoying. It's a little bit of intrusive. Maybe Valhalla would help. Valhalla, my favorite helps everything. No parts to layer. It needs to be higher. C. Alright, cool. So we're gonna do like a dramatic dip. So for Des, I'm going to need the neighbors are working. So annoying. Sound shift up, I'm going to need sound shift down. So I'm drag that on. Okay? So I'm going to need to automate this. So I'm going to turn on the automation. So I'm going to press this across button. Can figure what am I going to configure this ratio or get out of it? Get out of it. Then I'm going to turn a for automation. The button on my keyboard. Click it, drag it down. Whoops, I did it twice. Like that. I've put it to LA. That's where it should be. Maybe this should actually be lower. And it should go into a gas. It should go into what's happening. Like that, like that, like that, like that. But that clip needs to be together because apart like that, it's making me crazy. So I'm going to drag that clip back-end so that it doesn't cut like that. Then I'm gonna yell at the neighbors. 5. Pulling it All Together: Two things that I've done. One is I, I took that violin that was just one chord and I've lengthened adapt to the full progression because I thought on its own, that single chord. It just comes out of nowhere and then just pitch shifts down like that. It sounds very strange. I've lengthened it out. It's the full progression now. And I've also dragged in this EDM kick drum sound that is going to hit when the horns do. I think that'll sound nice. I'm gonna put a reverb on it, see how that goes just to lengthen it out and kinda give it some feeling. So the violence now a longer. That's so interesting. The kick drum got length and die and sounded kinda like thunder. They didn't hit it older, so I've put them all here. That's interesting. That's interesting. Maybe I can shorten the rave up on that one. That's so weird. Changes that wow, I like it there. I liked the other and a lot better. That's really weird, but I like it. So it can be repeating with the horns. The horns also could have like a cool extra sound to them. So we're gonna use serum for that. So I'm going to drag in serum my favorite synth, just a single, maybe a couple extra voices and a filter. This should, if I drag this on, this should change the filter according to the modulation. But I think I will have missed a step that may not do anything. Okay. What's wrong? Maybe not. Pulled him Sweet. Yeah, I have done something wrong with that. Say Don't do that, Don't do that. Let's reapply serum. Have to filter them. A man that's sarco that the one thing it needs there as I think they all need. Ah, maybe not all of them. That one can be a bit smaller. So really cool, just so dramatic and so insane. Who would ever need this? I like it. Let's see how it looks at the video. Let's just say crazy. Yeah, Cool. Great. Let's have those. Paid a bunch more. And then we just had to have to add, whoops. And then we just have to add more musical elements on top that just develops it. But in terms of, in terms of Bois, That's some pretty satisfying BWA. That's probably enough. Bois say, yeah, those are our Bois. And then we just need some musical elements on top that can just develop them. Maybe I'll bring up codes back then than on there. What I want to do with dice having returned. Okay, What about if there's happen and then these happen at a higher octave band. Now is that it? Is that the trailer? Oh, maybe the whole thing happens at a higher octave. I think. The only thing I want to change is I want to vary up the bourgeoisie so that they pitch shift up slightly. Like can you imagine if, if the, if the pitch gets a bit more varied? So I'll drive waves in just like we did earlier and see if we can add some variety with the pitch shifting. Waves. Drag it in. Same as before. Okay, so ever so slightly more slides. Oh my goodness. Slight dip. Last time should be just normal. All right, cool. Let's slight pitch bend like that can just add a bit, a bit of variety, make it a bit more interesting and weird and strange. I like. 7. Until We Meet Again: Well, there you go. That is the end. I hope that you got something out of that. I hope that there's something that we did today that you can take away and apply to your own future projects. Have a go at the project for this class. Try and make your own trailer using the tips and the progressions that we've learned. Try making your own trailer by starting with a chord progression and adding those harmonics, building up the tension and the mood. And then adding in some of those cinematic twists such as the boil, something else like that. If there is something that you end up using in your future projects that you got from this class, please let me know. I've got lots of other classes here on Skillshare that you can check out. If there was anything that seemed a little confusing, such as me talking about starting on the root of the chord and then jumping up to the fourth and the fifth. This type of music theory, lingo, if that's all a bit strange, I do have a basics of music theory class here on Skillshare that you can check out. A bunch of other things too, such as scoring films and video games and other things. So do check out the other things that I've got here on Skillshare. But most of all, thank you so much for taking the class here today. I really appreciate it. I really hope that there's at least something that you can take away and apply to your music using your own creativity by borrowing the techniques that of course, we were passing it off for it. I got it from someone and passing it on to you. So I heard that something was useful. Thank you once again for joining me and have a really pleasant rest of your day.