Film Scoring/Creating the sound of fear:Notion Protégé

Lesson #01 - Creating moods using individual musical notes

Overview

An interesting (and FREE) alternative
This course is designed for Apple's GarageBand with Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra. However, there is an very interesting alternative which is free. This is the demo version of Notion Protégé which is fully working for 30 days.
Learning musical notation
This course does not teach you to understand musical notaion. There are many tutorials on the Internet for this. Notion Protégé is a very good excuse to learn musical notation. It creates wonderful sounds so you know when you have it right (unlike Finalé Note Pad.)
Creating moods with the sounds of a symphony orchestra
Creating musical sound effects using Notation Protégé is not difficult if you know musical notation. All you do is find different sounds which create moods. This is it! That is the entire lesson. This is why even musicians who are not filmmakers can create effective musical scores with Notion Protégé if they know musical notation.
Wrong page?
If you got to this page by mistake, click on the option at the top of the page (if you have GarageBand with Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra or just GarageBand by itself.) If you have only GarageBand by itself, I strongly suggest you try Notation Protégé or you buy Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra to use with GarageBand.


The Sound of Fear

Creating moods with individual notes

Some musical sounds automatically create the sound of fear. The most common musical instrument sound which creates the sound of fear is the violin trill.

"It's a trill!"

A trill is a special musical sound created with bowed instruments such as a violin. Most filmmakers cannot play a trill on a violin. Not in a million years.

Yet with Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra, all a filmmaker need do is press one key on the keyboard to get a wonderfully realistic trill sound. For filmmakers with no musical talent, this is a miracle. Using the software instruments in the Macintosh computer, a filmmaker can create fantasitc sounds for motion pictures.

Fade in and fade out

Just playing a violin trill is not enough. When you play a violin trill with GarageBand, the trill turns on and then turns off. This is not realistic. To make the trill seem realistic, you must adjust the volume of the sound so it fades in and fades out. That is simple!

That's it!

This entire process is fast. Super fast! Once you have found the correct musical instrument to create the mood you want and after you have adjusted the volume of the note, you are done. How easy can it get!!!

The Next Page

The next page explains the how to get started with GarageBand.

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