MFA Media Composition & Orchestration

Full Time - 24 Months (30 hours/week)
Part Time - 36 Months (15 hours/week)
Part Time - 48 Months (8 hours/week)

Media Composition & Orchestration is for composers looking for a comprehensive preparation for a career scoring film, TV and games. You will learn to work in almost every sector of the media using a range of compositional techniques from live orchestral scoring to sound design and hybrid compositional techniques. Your course includes a live orchestral session with a professional film orchestra.

During this comprehensive Master of Fine Arts degree course, you will cover the skills taught in both our Orchestration for Films, Games & Television and Professional Media Composition degree courses.

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Course Details

Gaining an understanding of orchestration and live instruments is crucial in composing realistic sounding sampled mock ups. This course combines both skills, as well as delivering the market-focused material you need to start, or further, your career in composing for media.

On this course, you will learn:

To write in a wide variety of styles, using different compositional techniques.
How to produce professional quality sampled mock-ups and high-quality demos.
To explore many different areas of the media, each of which has specific requirements and expectations.
About each section of the orchestra, led by some of the world’s top film session players.
What the market expects, what producers and directors are buying right now, and how to deliver market-focused music.
The business skills needed to help you produce a winning portfolio that will help you into a new career.

I chose ThinkSpace because of the people; I did my research on the lecturers and they are all amazing.

If you're thinking about taking a course with ThinkSpace I would highly recommend it - it has changed my life.

Jenny Bishop

Composer, Performer and 'MFA Media Composition & Orchestration' Student

Student rating: (4.8)

Teaching Staff

Our tutors are all current working professionals, many involved at the highest level in the business.

The tutors who will be giving you individual feedback, either in writing or at the student workshops, have composing and orchestration credits including:

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Iron Man Armoured Adventures
Die Hard 4
Angry Birds
Pokémon Movies
Robot Chicken
Batman: Arkham Origins and hundreds more.

They’ve worked for every major film and game studio and networks and production companies including Disney, Dreamworks, Marvel, Universal, Warner Bros, Sky, BBC, ITV, NBC, ABC and many others.

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Guy Michelmore

Composition / Orchestration

Stephanie Taylor

Composition

George Oldziey

Composition / Orchestration

Bill Boston

Orchestration

Erik Desiderio

Composition / Games

Allison Piccioni

Composition

Douglas Black Heaton

Composition

Fletcher Beasley

Composition / Games

David Denyer

Composition / Orchestration

Student Stories

Our students are working in every corner of the industry from features films and television, to video games and trailers. Setting out on their careers as composers, orchestrators and sound designers, they continue to receive active support finding and pitching for work in the months and years after graduation.

Our recent students have gone on to work at Mojang, Creative Assembly, Frontier, Dam Busters and many more. Our graduates have worked on the score for Spiderman PS4 and scored the latest Battlefield 1 Apocalypse trailer.

See our student 'Hall Of Fame'

Course Structure

Your course falls into twelve modules plus a final major project which lasts three months. Each module focuses on a different area of media composition and orchestration, while at the same time developing specific compositional, technical and business skills.

Arguably the biggest and most important part of writing music to picture is the ability to understand the needs of what you're working with and be able to follow the narrative with your score. You'll be introduced to the practical skill of writing music in sync with the picture and come to understand the powerful and complex relationship between music and the moving image. You'll also look at several different areas of the industry, including documentaries, animation, commercials and natural history, each of which presents its own set of specific requirements and challenges.

Both professional and academic research gathers relevant information from a wide range of sources before analysing, evaluating, synthesizing and drawing reasonable conclusions on the basis of that information. Your research will be evaluated on the basis of its originality, depth of insight, and the quality of the supporting argument.

Research can constitute examining the practical work of industry professionals, as well as studying theoretical and historical academic research of the topic.

As part of your degree, you will be given two opportunities to further your studies with a selection of elective modules. With a range of choices and more being added as time goes on, you can choose what is best for you to progress your career.

The elective modules are:

Music Editing
Advanced Sibelius
Cinematic Sound Design
Pro Tools
Sampling Technology
Work and Money
Composing: Telling Stories

This module explores what, for most composers, is the most challenging and rewarding environment offered in media composition: scoring drama. You are introduced to the art of spotting the film, choosing when and where to place music, and discussing in depth the role the music plays. The emphasis now is on interpretation, the nuances of style complementing the vision of the director, storytelling and characterisation. You are encouraged to develop a distinctive musical and interpretative style of your own. We have moved on from the technical aspects of writing to picture covered in the last module to embrace the more subtle, artistic, and interpretative value brought to the film by an effective and well thought out score. At this stage you will also be expected to accept and implement notes on your work quickly and effectively. A key personal and professional skill.

The journey from finished orchestration to final recording is a complicated one involving a combination of musical and technological skills. This module takes you through the complex process of taking a finished arrangement and preparing for the live recording session. This includes producing musician’s parts, conductor’s scores, preparing pre-records, click tracks and Pro Tools sessions. You will also learn about session planning and budgeting for live recordings.

The string section is the largest and most important section of the orchestra. String instruments are also amongst the most flexible, with a vast range, both in terms of pitch and articulations. The woodwind section is perhaps the most dexterous of all the orchestral ensembles. Instruments have the ability to play incredibly fast runs and make huge leaps in pitch.

There are many technical challenges to consider when writing for a string or woodwind instrument or ensemble, making them a very technical area of orchestration. In this module you will explore how best to write for these instruments, and their function within a larger ensemble.

This module explores brass, harp and percussion writing and how classical orchestration techniques are adapted to fit the needs of cinematic orchestration. All three present significant technical challenges to the orchestrator, challenges which those in the forefront of the professional have met with skill and ingenuity.

Both brass and percussion writing in film, games and television are very different from its classical counterpart and therefore, a detailed knowledge of how film composers and orchestrators have developed these sections is important.  You will delve deeply into contemporary professional practice to develop a critical awareness of these issues and the innovative technical and creative solutions proposed by those at the forefront of the profession.

This module looks at the treatment of the whole orchestra by cinematic orchestrators and composers and the differences in approach between large and small ensembles. You will examine the different approaches to orchestration possible through specialized recording techniques such as split sessions and combining live and sampled instruments. We also deal with approaches to creating convincing mock-ups of large and small ensembles.

This module is an opportunity for students to gain more experience of scoring for a variety of ensembles and creating live and sampled scores in different styles, receiving feedback from their tutor and cementing the skills learnt in earlier modules. Students should aim to hone any skills with which they are not fully comfortable, with a view to perfecting these skills before embarking upon their final major project.

The final major project is a major piece of work that will take 12 weeks to complete. Either picking from the provided projects or delivering their own functional project, that has been approved by the course manager. This is a substantially longer piece of work than any other so far. It requires both solid technical skills and a much broader and deeper creative insight into the source material.

Students will be expected to research their chosen genre, developing a critical awareness of creative and technical problems faced by composers at the forefront of professional practice. Students will be supported by formative assessment from their tutor at points throughout the dissertation. If students decide to deliver their own project, they are responsible for its functionality and the delivery of the project.

If instead of the Final Major Project you would prefer to produce a piece of written work that reflects your accumulated knowledge, then you can choose to submit a dissertation. The dissertation will represent your research into an area of music intended for media consumption. It is an extended piece of scholarly written work and you will still have the same 12 weeks to complete it as you would if you were completing the practical Final Major Project. It is intended to represent the culmination of your academic, analytical and research skills, as well as taking advantage of your practical experience. This module will cultivate your intellectual and scholarly independence as a specialist in this area.

Schedules

We offer 3 different schedules, and students are able to pick which suits them best.

Full Time - 24 Months (30 hours/week)

Part Time - 36 Months (15 hours/week)

Part Time - 48 Months (8 hours/week)

These are estimates of the time a student will spend on each schedule. It will vary from student to student, depending on your rate of work. This includes live workshops, one-to-one tutorials, reading and watching the course materials, and time spent on assignment projects.

Learn More About Your Time Commitment

Finance

Total course price:

£14250

UK and International students pay the same. Exact price is subject to exchange rate fluctuation for those paying in other currencies.

We offer interest-free payment plans from £218.06 per month, where you can spread the cost of your course across the duration of your studies. The payment plan you are on depends on the schedule you are on.

Students will be required to pay a deposit on enrolling. For more information on this, visit the Student Finance page.

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Applications

Before applying for one of our courses, we highly recommend getting in contact first. It is useful for us to hear your current musical abilities, and this also allows you to ask any questions you may have about studying with us. Please get in contact at

postgraduate@thinkspaceeducation.com

To find out more about the application process, visit the Applications page.

Learn More About The Application Process

Interested?

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*To submit an application, there will be an application fee

Frequently Asked Questions

For more FAQs, and more information please visit the Applications & FAQs, Student Finance and Study With ThinkSpace pages.

Ideally, applicants will have an undergraduate degree in music. However, there is an option for those who do not have a degree, taking into account real-world work experience of making music, and non-degree professional development courses. This Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), as it’s known, is always assessed on a case-by-case basis. It also depends on how many other students are using this route during this stage of applications, as there is a maximum percentage of students we can take through this process.

We expect you to have a competent knowledge of one digital audio workstation. You need to write music fluently and productively. You should be able to produce roughly two minutes of music in a day. Your demos should be of good quality and we are happy to listen to your music and give you an opinion on this before you apply. A high level of music theory is a big advantage but we appreciate there are many different ways to create a great score and you will be judged principally on the potential shown in your portfolio.

The latest Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) capable of importing video files. We are able to provide extensive support for:

Cubase 8 (or newer)
Logic Pro X
Pro Tools 11

Sample libraries are a must-have for the course. There are literally thousands of libraries, many of them capable of creating outstanding quality demos and we could have chosen any number. Most of the libraries listed below are available at a significant educational discount.

Here are some sample library suppliers that we recommend:

East West
Vienna
Spitfire Audio
8Dio
Heavyocity
Native Instruments

For our base orchestral libraries, we suggest:

East West Quantum Leap – Symphonic Orchestra Gold
VSL Special Edition – Woodwinds
8Dio – Adagietto
Heavyocity – Damage
Soundiron – Emotional Piano

You must also have a reasonable to top performance computer (Mac or PC) as well as at least a basic orchestral virtual instrument library (we can advise you if you’re not sure about your setup).

PC:
Minimum Spec:
Intel/AMD Quad Core Processor 2.6GHz
8/16GB RAM

However we would recommend:
Intel i7 Quad Core 3.2GHz (equivalent or higher)
32GB RAM

Mac:
Minimum Spec:
Intel Processor Quad Core 2.6GHz
8/16GB RAM

However we would recommend:
Intel i7 Quad Core 3.2GHz (equivalent or higher)
32GB RAM

You will also need:
Monitoring headphones and/or speakers

We also recommend:
External audio interface
MIDI Keyboard

Have a question?

Let’s chat…

That’s how most of our future students start: an informal conversation about where you are and where you want to be. No pressure, just getting to know you and how we might be able to help.

Get in touch with Tim Johnson the course manager (and film composer).

postgraduate@thinkspaceeducation.com