Robin Hoffmann

Poll of the Week: Are You From a Musical Family?

Multiple choices possible. Check all that apply.

Pirate Waters - Mockup Walkthrough - Part 1

Due to popular demand, here is the first part of a more detailed walkthrough for the mockup of my piece PIRATE WATERS that I recently posted.

First Orchestra Discovery Session - It's a Wrap

I just got back to the hotel after our first ODS and I have to say it was a big success. We  got some really nice versions of all the pieces recorded, the musicians played very well and I think all of the composers who attended were very happy with the results (and potentially a bit surprised at how different real instruments sound when you have heard the piece 100 times played by samples or Noteperformer)

We ended up recording all tracks without click to get a more musical perform...

Arrived in Prague - 1st Orchestral Discovery Session Tomorrow

I made it to Prague! Tomorrow, we will be recording our first Orchestra Discovery Session with a Woodwind quintet in Smecky Studios.

Three of the composers will join personally so we're having a little Patreon get together as well.

I'm really looking forward to the session and am excited to share what we have been cooking over the last weeks.

Poll of the Week: When Are You Most Creative?

Multiple choices are possible in case you have several creative peaks during the day.

Confusing Musician's Feedback

Back when I studied composition at university but also during my first few recording sessions I was eager to get feedback by musicians who played my music. A lot of what I got back was really helpful and helped me to gain a deeper understanding about how these instruments work and what is possible and what not but there were many times when I went out of such a dialogue being completely puzzled.

Quite often, I was confused that some of the things that I learned in the direct communicati...

Revisiting PIRATE WATERS - New Mockup

As some of you know, I recently did something that I didn't think I would ever do - I bought a library by VSL and I actually liked it. With their release of Synchron Brass, I found that this was a library that was filling a gaping hole in my template: A detailed brass library with different single instruments, a consistent set of articulations and a wide dynamic range in the upper dynamics, recorded in a room with some volume. 

This was something that I was missing a lot from my cu...

August 2021 - Wrap Up

With summer coming to an end (at least here in Germany), things are becoming busy again. In fact, behind the scenes, this Patreon has been very busy in the last weeks.

In just a few days we will have our very first ORCHESTRA DISCOVERY SESSION in Prague! We will be recording pieces for Woodwind Quintet by five of our patrons with some excellent musicians at Smecky Studios, Prague. The five composers and I have...

Poll of the Week: How Did Covid19 Impact Your Music Business?

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 7

In this part, I'm pushing further in laying out the piece, working on the middle part. There is a lot of going back and forth and scrapping ideas which I left in the video. I left this process all in the video to show how trial and error is part of the creative process.

*I still haven't figured out Youtube's encoding algorithm. Sometimes, videos process to a 4K version within a few hours, sometimes, they take longer than a day (as this one) since upload. So if you don't get the 4K versi...

Poll of the Week: How Does Your Work Computer Setup Look Like?

Let us know! Multiple answers possible.

Stylistic Waves in Media Music

On a few occasions, I have been mentioning how essential it is for a media composer to not only study and practice the theoretical possibilities but also develop a strong sense for style and taste of media music.

To put it short: just because a certain musical device is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it would be appropriate to use it at the current time in a media music context.

Media music has become a subject to temporary styles way more than it used to be. Things that...

Film Orchestration - Part 1: Introduction

When I was about 16 years old, I bought an expensive >1000 page encyclopedia about Instrumentation and Orchestration from several months worth of my pocket money. I read that whole thing in just a few weeks as I wanted to figure out how to get this film music sound that I was so obsessed about.

I was relatively sure that I just needed to read this thing as a sort of "film music manual" and I would be able to write like John Williams, because what could be so difficult about it? Decid...

Poll of the Week: What is Your Average Daily Output Rate?

* Fully written Score Sheets or Finished Audio Production

Nocturnal Adventures - Commercial Campaign Score plus Score Sheet

A few weeks ago, I was working on a commercial campaign by Brother/Disney. It was a three minute commercial that telling an imaginary battle between two siblings based on Disney characters.

The score was supposed to be in a very Disneyish family adventure style which of course was a very welcome job.

I recorded my entire work on that cue and composition screencasts of it will soon be following dissecting the work of scoring to picture. The music was written very close to the pictu...

Musician's Muscle Memory

When playing any instrument, the muscle memory has an important role in mastering this instrument. Basically, the muscle memory kicks in when you practice a passage long enough that you can reproduce it without thinking about it. It just flows out of your fingers because it has been engrained so deeply into your memory that you can recall it at once.

The more you practice an instrument, the more musical phrases and passages will be stored like that and you can recall them at once. For p...

Poll of the Week: How Do Tight Deadlines Influence Your Work Output?

This is another one of these controversial standpoints that keep coming up every now and then so let us know your stand on this.

How to Record Your Music With an Orchestra

Very often these days, a media composer career starts at the computer and not in a music university. The main reason of course is that computers and music software are way easier accessible than a music degree or the necessary theoretical/musical knowledge to pass the entrance tests for such a degree.

Personally, I'm absolutely convinced that with enough curiosity and passion, there is no need to study music in this particular line of work these days. The internet is full of knowledge a...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast - Part 6

Poll of the Week: How "Remote" is Your Work?

A few decades ago, the golden rule was to be where the work is. With internet, things have shifted away from this premise and many people work on projects without ever meeting the client in person. How does your work model vs. location look like?

The Musically Educated Client from Hell

As composers who offer creative work as a service, we have to get along with many types of clients. Most commonly, we work for people who have an intuitive understanding of music but have no professional background on this which usually sets the relationship into a comfortable situation where the client can communicate what they want but leave the execution to us.

However, every now and then there is this client with some musical background who fits perfectly into the 2021-08-03 07:52:36 +0000 UTC View Post

July 2021 - Wrap Up

Last month's polls of the week brought up some highly interesting results. Especially the poll about how much everybody earns per minute of music brought up a massive spread of results between a majority who don't get any upfront money to someone earning more than USD 2.500 per minute. Another significant peak was at USD 500-750.

Another interesting poll result was my question about how many hours of creative work you guys usually do per day which clearly showed that between 3-5 hours p...

What to Charge

In yesterday's poll of the week I was asking what you guys earn on average per minute of music and got extremely diverse results spanning from zero upfront to more than 2500 USD.

I know from my own history as well as from the ever recurring questions in forums that it remains a mystery for many people of how much to charge for what kind of job.

The poll from yesterday shows once more how...

Poll of the Week: What Do You Earn on Average Per Minute of Music?*

* upfront payment for final production, excluding any licensing/royalities that are paid out later

Let's use these anonymous polls to tackle the interesting questions.

Scoring A WAR WITHIN - Part 2: Concept & Theme

It has been a while since I wrote the first part of walkthrough about the feature film I did in 2018. Nevertheless it is time to catch up on this and talk about the concept and the thematic material of the score.

As I've written quite a few times before, I'm a big fan of strong musical concepts for scores. If you have a concept and the thematic material in place, this is in my opinion already half of the work...

John Williams - Violin Concerto No. 2 Premiere

For everybody who lives in Germany and possibly surrounding countries, there will be a free live stream tonight for Williams' 2nd Violin Concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter. For everybody else, there is this possibility:

https://www.dg-premium.com/dg_stage_video/world-premiere-of-john-williams-violin-concerto-no-2-at-tanglewood-2021/

The Pitch Culture

Over the last couple of decades, it has become quite common practice in the entire "commercial creative" industry to get hired for a job after pitching for it.

For a client, this practice reduces the risk. Basically, they let several creatives provide their ideas for the project and pick the one that is most in line with what they envisioned and hire that person to do the entire project.

However, this practice has lead to a partially massively exploitive industry. It is not uncomm...

Poll of the Week: Where/How Do You Document Your Ideas at First?

Let us know!

Reharmonisation Part 10: Pandiatonicism

We had a look at the fundamental (re)harmonisation techniques in the past nine parts of this ongoing series and were looking mainly at concepts that are simple to apply and understand and yet can be extremely effective. From this part on, we will however look at more complex strategies that are also not as obvious. 

The more we dive into this, the more we will move away from easily digestable harmonic sound worlds and also away from harmonic situations that would commonly be consid...

Opening the Portal - Composition Screencast Part 5

In this part, I'm working on the build-up to the first climax with a lot of back and forth :)