I sketch my scores by hand on Judy Green score pads with a custom layout (36-stave).  If I'm REALLY in the crunch and it has to be a mock-up, then I may go directly into Performer, using the pad just for basic orchestration "blocks."

I've owned Finale since 1.0; rarely use it.  My orchestrators - who really act more like proofreaders - bring stuff into their program of choice for that stuff.

Speed-wise, I knew very young that was going to be important.  It's a skill like any other.  Between projects, I constantly do speed exercises, where I have a given number of hours to produce a given number of minutes of music, and I treat it like it's a real job.  I must finish, and it must be as good as possible.  25 years of doing this all the time has helped me learn to get to "it," quickly, but I still have to practice constantly, to avoid falling back on the same harmonic habits piece after piece.  Also, when I do my sketches, I do them in pen, so I'm not allowed to correct or erase - this forces my internal musical ear to be sure about its choices, because I only get one chance. I always make mistakes - there are mistakes in the Star Trek piece, for sure - but my feeling is that if I can get it 90% right the first time, quickly, then on a real schedule, I will have ample time to review and get things the way I really want.  It usually works out that way.  In fact, if I take too much time writing, I begin to hate my own work and it kills the momentum.  As it is, I have learned to let go of a finished piece very quickly, because within an hour, I despise almost everything I write, and will change or destroy it otherwise.  

Also for speed, one other thing I learned to do was go for 3 or more days without sleep and little food.  I began training for that in 1990, and for the last 15 years, I regularly only sleep 4-5 nights a week, tops.  This has saved my ass on more than a few occasions, where I was asked to do something that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, and a great many jobs where I'm called in at the 11th hour to rescue a project, and without being able to go constantly for days, it would be logistically impossible to finish.  It also allows me - when things are working - to just stay with it as long as possible, but I also steal the trick of stopping while I still have an idea, so I can begin with that fresh the next cycle.  I think of the score to Gone With the Wind - which was 3 hours of orchestral music written in 4 weeks. Amazing... unfair and ridiculous, but this business often is. I got a couple of early breaks just becuase I could finish when other guys couldn't.  It cost me a marriage and gave me kidney stones until I figured out how to adjust my diet, but my work is more important to me than those things.  On non-project cycles, I use the extra hours to train, both musically and physically.  I have to be at the gym every day and stay in shape or my body can't handle the stress.  As it is, when I sleep, I sleep like a baby :)  

I have a ton of other things which I do regularly as part of the discipline, but they're not directly related to speed. If you don't have to cultivate this skill, why do so?  Enjoy the time writing, and let it flow how it flows!  If you want to learn to get faster, just start setting time limits for yourself - say, 2 minutes a week, and force yourself to hit it.  One thing I did, in the beginning, was make myself perform my speed pieces for others, so that I could feel the humiliation of an incomplete work.  You'd be surprised how effective negative reinforcement can be! :)  Anyway, those are a couple ideas for you.

Best,

_Mike

I knew I wanted to write for films at age 5 and began studying at a conservatory.  I began serious compositional exercises (which is what I was referring to) at 10, yes, and started working professionally at 15.

As for the sleep - you'll notice I'm not a small child :)

_Mike

Great writing discipline, Mike. Inspiring.

I'm not "strictly" a film and television composer, it's just what I love best, and what I do most. Like most concert composers, I do private commissions, etc., but I've yet to pen a symphony.  Just haven't had time  If I'm not working on a project, then I'm writing as part of my training regimen, so one way or another, pencil goes to paper every day.

_Mike

Mike:

Loved your mock-up and intend to use it a reference. 

@mverta said:

I have a ton of other things which I do regularly as part of the discipline, but they're not directly related to speed.

I would love to know what other things you do as part of your discipline. I am a composer/arranger/orchestrator and work almost exclusively with live situations. Also, no film/TV experience/knowledge at all. Mostly Musical Theatre, Stage Shows and "Art" music. Am always looking for more ways to study, practice, train, etc.

Thanks in advance for any info you chooose to share.

Be Well,

Poppa

I have many "routines."  Here's one: If I'm not on a project, one thing I will do is wake up, select a minute or two of random music (today's was Janacek's Sinfonietta: II) on my ipod, and listen to it over and over for an hour during cardio at the gym. Then after I get back, I'll attempt to notate it from memory.  I don't have absolute/perfect pitch, so I allow myself a starting note, but I try not to use the piano for guidance as much as is possible.  I'll usually spend an hour-and-a-half to two hours on this, and then check it against the actual score.  Because of anomalies in recordings, I don't think it's possible to ever truly get 100%, but the closer the better.  This has many advantages: ear training, orchestration, familiarity with the lexicon, penmanship, speed, and discovery of my own ear's biases (the way I "mishear" things in my own mind).  I do this in pencil, and watch myself make the corrections on my score to match the original.  Then I usually do an hour or two of speed sightreading exercises to keep sharp - all clefs, transpositions, so I can think in real-time no matter what instrument I'm dealing with.  Then usually I pick a movie to watch, and turn off the sound, but turn on the subtitles. I make a cue sheet for it, guessing what the entrances/exits will be, and notations for my first instincts as to the drama. Then I watch it down again with sound to compare.  No matter which director's work you're talking about, Western films have alarmingly predictable edit structure, and this helps me hone my sense for overall flow and presence of music, by-and-large.  After that, it's usually a few hours of just free-form writing, but one thing I always do is finish whatever I start.  Sometimes it's just a simple quartet piece, or a reworking of a familiar song (on the 4th of July, I did a thing around our national anthem, for example).  Between that stuff, shower and meals, etc., it's usually an 17-20 hour day, and then I do a different set of things the next day.

The training isn't really in the method - it's in the approach.  I look for weaknesses and work them.  I have many weaknesses :)

_Mike

Breakfast after; fasted cardio is the only way to go :P

_Mike

@mverta said:

I have many "routines."  Here's one: If I'm not on a project, one thing I will do is wake up, select a minute or two of random music (today's was Janacek's Sinfonietta: II) on my ipod, and listen to it over and over for an hour during cardio at the gym. Then after I get back, I'll attempt to notate it from memory.  I don't have absolute/perfect pitch, so I allow myself a starting note, but I try not to use the piano for guidance as much as is possible.  I'll usually spend an hour-and-a-half to two hours on this, and then check it against the actual score.  Because of anomalies in recordings, I don't think it's possible to ever truly get 100%, but the closer the better.  This has many advantages: ear training, orchestration, familiarity with the lexicon, penmanship, speed, and discovery of my own ear's biases (the way I "mishear" things in my own mind).  I do this in pencil, and watch myself make the corrections on my score to match the original.  Then I usually do an hour or two of speed sightreading exercises to keep sharp - all clefs, transpositions, so I can think in real-time no matter what instrument I'm dealing with.  Then usually I pick a movie to watch, and turn off the sound, but turn on the subtitles. I make a cue sheet for it, guessing what the entrances/exits will be, and notations for my first instincts as to the drama. Then I watch it down again with sound to compare.  No matter which director's work you're talking about, Western films have alarmingly predictable edit structure, and this helps me hone my sense for overall flow and presence of music, by-and-large.  After that, it's usually a few hours of just free-form writing, but one thing I always do is finish whatever I start.  Sometimes it's just a simple quartet piece, or a reworking of a familiar song (on the 4th of July, I did a thing around our national anthem, for example).  Between that stuff, shower and meals, etc., it's usually an 17-20 hour day, and then I do a different set of things the next day.

The training isn't really in the method - it's in the approach.  I look for weaknesses and work them.  I have many weaknesses 😊

_Mike

... but on weekends you are golfing, don't you?

.

I'm unfamiliar with this concept of "weekend.":)

_Mike

@Mike Verta said:

one thing I will do is wake up, select a minute or two of random music (today's was Janacek's Sinfonietta: II) on my ipod, and listen to it over and over for an hour during cardio at the gym. Then after I get back, I'll attempt to notate it from memory.  I don't have absolute/perfect pitch, so I allow myself a starting note, but I try not to use the piano for guidance as much as is possible.

Mike:

I love this idea! I go the gym every day and virtually always do an hour of cardio as part of my workout routine. I usually don't listen to anything so I could definitely add this exercise. I also don't have absolute pitch but am very good at dictation and inner ear hearing. I usually do all my scores at my desk without a piano and until 2+ years ago, did everythng by hand. Now, I use Sibelius and use the QWERTY keyboard, which is slower than a piano keyboard but still feels like writing by hand. I can see that it would take a while to get to the point where I would be reliable at your type of memorized dictation but, since I'm there at the gym every day anyway, why not? I can start with simpler pieces and build up. Cool idea and definitely will be added to my routine.

Questions: What are you using as a source for your speed sight reading exercices? Do you mean that you read and play a keyboard doing the transpositions? I do something like this with Practica Musica but it's a bit limited. Agreed, it is very useful to be able to think in terms of the transposed instruments and multiple clefs in real time when you work with live musicians a lot.

Thanks.

Be well,

Poppa

Oh, for speed sight stuff I just grab anything...  And yes, I mean I read and play keyboard doing the transpositions...

_Mike

.

Hi Mike, your mock-up is terrific and I think you have huge talent - not just for music, but I'm willing to bet if you focus exclusively on that you will become a leading film composer over the next ten years. Would you consider posting the score to your amazing Star Trek re-working online as an educational resource?

@mverta said:

I use legato violins (3 layers with MW control, AA) and sometimes layered with Legato AA R

P.S. Hermann is great, but I must say I preferred his early work with The Hermits.

Yes, they're SI Giga patches. 

As for posting the score - I'm not territorial or secretive about my work (I think that's obvious by this point),and I've gotten a lot of requests for this.  My speedscore™ [:)] sketches have a lot of shorthand in them, and I don't have a scanner big enough to fit the pages on, so I'd have to clean-up and re-enter stuff in Finale; a lot of work, which I'd have to do between projects.  Might take a while....

_Mike

Thanks Mike, I'm sure it will be of great interest to a lot of the folks here if you find time to do it. In the meantime, best of luck with your current projects!

Thanks... and thanks also for the extremely kind words!

_Mike

...hey Mike,

Wow, just fantastic work!  I don't know about anyone else, but would you be willing to scan a couple of sections of your handwritten speed score.  For me, that would be the most interesting of all, just to see how you work, what you put in a sketch, which parts, melodies, harmonies you notate to start with, how detailed you get, etc., etc., etc.

Thanks again for a really great experience (and your website is terrific too :)