@Vitaly: http://synful.com/RPM.htm

This technology makes something similar, but with single instrument recordings. It would be possible to make a database with musical passages (rythms, hooks, arpegios, melodies and tuttis), categorized by mood, original tempo, type of texture... and blend them on the fly.

@zareone
I agree with all that you say from your response to "jack of all trades, master of none". I mentioned it mainly cause it pertained to my personal situtation and is very broadly speaking, true. As much as I value the importance of sound design and music, and I like to think I have a really good taste in music, I have no formal education on music and would require a sick amount of effort to learn even basics of composing etc, so I'd rather focus on improving what I'm best at-visual arts. For unimportant stuff I'd do the sound stuff myself but for any important stuff, I'd seek collaboration. But I really admire people who attempt and can combine 2 disciplines that are so diffirent, cause they're completely different skillsets. Like, I maybe have a wide skillset being half-decent in stuff like photography-editing-color correction-directing etc, but they're still in kind of the same visual group, if you throw in sound arts in there for me, there would be no space:)
I think it comes down to standards of excellence and aspirations. I think when one starts to go beyond "good" and wants to reach for excellence (and I'm talking Ingmar Bergmann, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa etc kind of excellence:) ), then it becomes almost mutually exclusive to do both at such high level of excellence.
BTW, I digged the music you did for that film :) very good.

and speaking of 1 of my top five directors of all time, the genius that was Andrei Tarkovsky, I think "Stalker" is extraordinarily interesting when it comes to sound design and film score, really really worth studying. Eduard Artemyev did a spectacular job. read the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_%28film%29 and ofcourse see the film!

I leave you with some of Andrei's own words:

"I would like most of the noise and sound to be composed by a composer. In the film, for example, the three people undertake a long journey in a railway car. I'd like that the noise of the wheels on the rails not be the natural sound but elaborated upon by the composer with electronic music. At the same time, one mustn't be aware of music, nor natural sounds."
Andrei Tarkovsky in an interview with Tonino Guerra in 1979

Anyone thats into guitar at all really should know about www.warmoth.com

they are licensed by Fender to make "replacement" parts, but the stuff I've seen from them is top-notch, and you can certainly source a whole guitar from them, you just have to put it together. And they offer options and combos you will NEVER see from fender, like raw wood necks and strange pickups.

@Stefanos "I mentioned it mainly cause it pertained to my personal situtation and is very broadly speaking, true"

Hhehe, I feel totally the same. I work full time as a web developer. Audiovisual world has interested me since long time, but is now that I'm trying to make things. I started with music: electronic first, and then "orchestral". I put orchestral between quotes because I'm just using orchestral libraries / synths, but I have not formal music training (harmony, counterpoint, orchestration...). Serious orchestral music is something someone could dedicate his/her whole life and not get to master. Then, my interest shifted towards 3D and graphic design, photography... I wanted to do so many things, I liked so many things, that I did none of them.

Then, the video capable DSLR arrived, and I thought I could pack all my artistic interest into filmmaking. That way, you don't have one hundred projects in your head, but one which consists of several areas, interconnected. My idea is to start with simple projects, trying to do as much as I can myself, just to grasp knowledge of every aspect (writing, directing, filming, sound recording, sound design, VFX, editing, color grading...). But, if I ever want to do a serious project (be it commercial or just for fun), I will be a "Rebel WITH a crew" TM :-). I'll try to find people who shares interest for the same aesthetics, writing, themes... and to focus in the area which I'm better at, or the one I like the most.

If I were writing a script instead of posting in forums, I could have written 5 pages today! :D I can't help myelf...

Greetings!

Here's a great example of what music can do - some YouTube kittens - standard stuff, but with music composed to fit. Wonderful.

My friend recorded this track for on a simple 4 track he even "intentionally" left the tv on to add some ambient sound he liked....I think he did a great job for a 8 hr turn around ...I told him to do something playful and fun... I was just tossing clips together from the camera to show off the the 20mm pancake and it evolved into this....what do you think ?

@Mike_the_Harp @Vitaly: the music of the kitten video is not composed for the video.

While I was listening, I found it too much familiar to me, and it didn't sound anything like samples (don't think anyone is gonna pay a professional orchestra to score an amateur video).

Then, I found the answer in the end credits. It's the score of Aliens, by Jerry Goldsmith and Elliot Glodenthal

http://www.youtuve.com/watch?v=8-1F-CokXNU#t=1m48s

(I've intentionally written youtuVe so it doesn't embed the video in the post) It has a link to the correct time where you can see the credits (1:50 aprox)

Maybe there's some fragments of different parts of the scores (since Goldsmith scored Alien, and Goldenthal Alien 3) seamlessly blended.

So, this is an example of really well edited music!

@zarone "But, on the other side, I think music for picture doesn't always need to be a masterpiece by itself, but suport the image it accompanies. For example, listen to David Julyan soundtracks to Memento, The Prestige... they are not Rachmaninov like pieces, but they fit the overall athmosphere of the film quite well IMHO."

+1

I actually find those older "big orchestra" soundtracks quite annoying and cliche now. I'm a huge fan of melodic and rhythmic ambient scores.

Hans Zimmer has also done allot of great stuff lately with the Dark Knight and Inception. Epic... but not traditional overpowering brass and strings crap.

@lolo Wonderful animation - can't see the Vimeo stuff at the moment as I'm on my iPod (there's just a big blank space). And nice to see such a lively discussion about techniques.

I'm a big fan of putting together real sampled sounds of everyday objects to make interesting musical textures, along with conventional or synth sounds and like @lolo says, there's a point where music composition does become a bit like editing (I would argue it's exactly like editing - you're manipulating events in time, with music and with editing).

Whether it's sound effects, narration, images or music, it's all stuff that you are organizing to tell a story. Also it's nice to be talking about how things relate to each other as sequences of events - it feels liberating, like we're going somewhere with this amazing stuff. I appreciate all the testing that's going on on this forum, of course, but it's refreshing to get away from talking about static test shots and learn about what people are doing with their gear to tell stories.

@Mark_the_Harp (: thank you, and yeap, we have to manipulate events in time, and with the particular characteristics of those events, that are placed in a particular order we have to evocate an emotion!, yeap in general ways music it is exactly the same as editing

btw about the "JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF NONE. " thread, i think that just means lazyness (if you do want to explore multiple paths), or that you want to follow an already known path of creation, a path that others have made already, or that to your own subjective mind is not comfortable with more than one path of creation.
either way is insulting...

btw, i think is absolutely legit if someone doesn´t want to explore a path with multiple visions to make a more complex own path. that just ain´t my path and i will not insult those that do.

hhaha i´m not that insulted, but adghfghasfghjhsjghf! was my reaction to that statement :p
greetings!

@ Mark_the_Harp thank you so much. If anyone is interested, I'm trying to kickstart the project here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1574320286/dont-cry-for-your-hair You can find my second trailer down below. For that I recorded my acoustic Yamaha (bought on a scrape yard for $70) with my shotgun mic and my Tascam 100. It doesn't really sound good (and my performance isn't good either), but I was in a rush. Actually I was trying to imitate the sound of acoustic guitar from my beloved movies — Amores Perros, Babel, 21 grams, Motorcycle Diaries (all Innaritu+ Santaollala). If you add just a little bit of reverberation or delay to a single guitar arpeggio, it may become your self-contained sound track.

+1 for Reason! It's an amazing piece of software!