Berk's Forumvine

The score for How to Train Your Dragon is rich with recurring themes that interlock. What better way to present it than a complete catalog of ALL significant themes, showing when the themes come in and whatnot?

PDF Link

This is a work-in-progress; my goal is to have all occurrences of the themes sorted by theme, and then by track (so you could listen to the entire album knowing what themes come in where). An interesting way to enjoy the score, going one level deeper than simply being in the moment of the music.

It might also be fun for me to write brief comments on what these themes each suggest by talking about the elements in the theme like rhythm, meter, mood, etc.

Update: entrances have been sorted by both theme and track now.

Sample (track "This is Berk"):



I just need to go over and proofread these, since there are some inconsistencies and typos I need to fix. Back to work.

Interesting to see the themes broken down. But the rest is right over the top of my head!

Hopefully this will finally urge me to learn how to read notes. I've also got Cubase a few days ago, now I just need some nice orchestral samples, then I can finally start playing this music by myself.

Zer0x

02 Jun 2014, 16:46

Hopefully this will finally urge me to learn how to read notes. I've also got Cubase a few days ago, now I just need some nice orchestral samples, then I can finally start playing this music by myself.

"nice orchestral samples" could mean anything from $200 to $2000, from my experience. There's Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 which only goes for $149, but it is far from "production"quality, but more designed for personal pre-production sketches, etc.

If your goal is to get production-quality sounds, options include East/West Quantum Loop (at least Gold, to get all instruments and articulations) starting at around $500 (as far as I remember) and Vienna Symphonic Library, which, in entirety, will cost you three kidneys and your firstborn child (yes, it is that expensive).

For someone who has never played an instrument in his entire life (when you exclude Guitar Hero) is a simple libary for $100-$150 probably enough to begin with. I've also got Cubase 5 free from our university and I don't want to spend to much money in it.

Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 doesn't sound so bad for the price. Maybe I can also get some samples from the manager of our audio production (he has his own little libary and some experiences in composing).

Thanks!

Update: THE CATALOG IS NOW COMPLETE.

50+ hours of work. Woo hoo.

I also turned this into a Tumblr post series, with interlocking hyperlinks, making it a bit easier to digest in bites: http://thecube42.tumblr.com/post/88290727834/

Interesting analysis of reoccurring themes, will definitely check it out once I get home, even though I have no knowledge of this whatsoever.

Fantastic analysis! I have to ask, where did you find the catalog scores? I've never come across them before, and they would have been very useful for the arrangements I was working on last year!

They come from a source I don't really know of and probably can't really talk about, though I'm sure I could have reconstructed about 70% of the score by ear (because that's how I roll). Hence, my disclaimers and addition of watermark (following the protocol for perusal scores by Schott music).

It's also funny that there are some discrepancies between the score and the final recording, but I decided not to comment on those since it goes a bit too deep for listeners.