Robin Hoffmann

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 9

In this part, I start from the beginning of the piece to refine and work on the details.

By The Christmas Tree - New Orchestra Recording

In fall of 2019, I was switching to Dorico and in order to get to know the software, I spent some time writing three little Christmas tunes just for fun. I have made the mockup as well as the Doric...

Write Music According to the State of Your Career (?)

I consciously and willingly decided to slow down or even sabotage my own career. At least according to a few composers and mentors that I was talking to during my early years of pursuing this caree...

Poll of the Week: What Role Does Music Play in Your Spare Time?

I would be interested in what role music plays in your life outside of musical work. Check all that apply.

Reharmonisation Part 11: Bass Notes II

With all the previous parts of this series it has become relatively obvious that successful (re)harmonisation strategies don't need to be complicated. In fact, strikingly simple strategies can have...

Lucy Kay - Enjoy the Silence - Score Sheet

Due to popular demand, here is the score sheet for my arrangement of ENJOY THE SILENCE that I wrote for Lucy Kay. Here it is important to say that this score is ONLY for study purposes.

A few...

Poll of the Week: How Do You Deal With "Office Work"?

Being a self employed composer for media often means to spend a considerable amount of time in answering emails, phone calls or messages as well as book keeping and many other non-musical things. H...

Listening Fatigue

When working on music for several hours without break it is a relatively common problem for many composers to start to suffer from ear fatigue. You start to hear things that are not there or start ...

Pirate Waters - Mockup Walkthrough - Part 2

Here is the second part of the walktrough of the mockup of my piece PIRATE WATERS that I recently poste...

Poll of the Week: How Many Instruments Do You Play?

(at a level where you at least can play some easy etudes on it)

Film Orchestration - Part 3: Concert Halls, Studios & Seating 2

In the last part, we were having a look at the acoustic properties of concert halls and traditional seating charts of symphony orchestras. The reason why I focus that much on this topic is that fil...

The Overworking Attitude in the Industry

A few days ago, in a relatively large Facebook group about composing for media, a fellow composer posted the following provoking text:

2021-11-05 08:02:10 +0000 UTC View Post

Template Evolution - 2019 vs. 2021

One of my patrons was recently posting on social media that he was following some of the things that I have been talking about on here regarding mix/template etc. transfering that into his template...

Poll of the Week: How Does Your Musical Imagination Work?

This is something that I have been wondering about for a while. Tried to cover as many options as I think might exist but I'm pretty sure there are specifics for everybody so don't hesitate to use ...

Witches' Spell (for Woodwind Quintet)

Here's my second piece from our first ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION, which we recorded in early September in Prague. This one is a more "dissonant" piece with some frantic and virtuosic passages thro...

October 2021 - Wrap Up

Even though it has only been a few weeks since I came back from vacation, it seems like ages ago. The downside of being self employed is that whenever you go on vacation, on your return all the thi...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 8

It has been a while since we were looking at this piece but here finally is the eighth part of the series where I finish sketching the piece and move back to the beginning to start the detail work....

Poll of the Week: What is Your Primary DAW for Composing/Producing?

Deceiving Dissonances

Pianos are dissonance amplifiers. Period. This is something that took me years to actually fully realize as I thought that simply a dissonance is a dissonance is a dissonance. But they are not as e...

Device Lexicon: Part 2 - Low Trumpet Fanfares (feat. The Patriot)

Everybody has been saying that James Horner reused his "Danger Motif" over and over again in many scores (which b...

Poll of the Week: How often do you listen to your own music after you finished working on it?

Brother Commercial - Composition Screencast - Part 1

I'm back from a wonderful vacation and well rested as well as still under the impression of having seen John Williams conduct the Berlin Philharmonic a few days ago so there definitely is enough en...

Enjoy the Silence - Release

I am still on vacation but wanted to interrupt my silence to let you know about this release.

When Lucy Kay asked me to arrange and produce her new album and told me she wanted it to be call...

September 2021 - Wrap Up

I know I'm a bit early for a wrap-up this month but there's a reason for this and it's something that hasn't happened since I started this Patreon: I'm going on vacation. So for the next 2 weeks, t...

A Simple Act of Kindness (for Woodwind Quintet) - Recording & Score

Here's the first recording from our Orchestra Discovery Session from a few weeks ago. I wrote two pieces for this session. For this one, I wanted to write a quite emotional piece that captures the ...

Film Orchestration - Part 2: Concert Halls, Studios & Seating 1

When we talk about film orchestration, we also need to take things into consideration that are different compared to traditional orchestration.

Probably the biggest difference lies in the fac...

Poll of the Week: Did/Do You Have a Plan B For Your Career?

Recording Imperfections

One thing that you do a lot when you record real ensembles is to dig in Protools sessions through individual mic signals. Even if you outsource the editing/mixing to someone else, you will most lik...

A Few More Impressions from the First Orchestra Discovery Session

It has been a week since we returned from Prague from our first Orchestra Discovery Session. By now, most composers have edited and mixed their tracks already and we have been discussing and critiq...

Device Lexicon: Part 1 - Sustaining Violin Chords (feat. Jurassic Park)

This is the start of a new series where I want to dive into musical devices that we keep seeing (and hearing) in film scores and that define a certain sound or a certain genre. This can be little o...