You learned how to code. Now what? — Say that you jumped on the “Everyone needs to learn how to code” train. And you like writing code so much that you now envision it as a career. What do you need to know in order to get your first job in the field? Is it even possible to…

How to build a melody from a chord progression — In a previous article, I wrote about how to quickly build a chord progression. In this one, we are going to look at how to build an effective melody. This is beginner friendly but if you want to dig deeper into cinematic composing, check out Arn Andersson’s course at Evenant…

You don’t need to know about music theory or play keys to use this technique. — Sometimes, all you need to kickstart your creativity is a good chord progression that you can then tweak and expand to your liking. But how do you come up with a good chord progression in the first place? Here’s one of my tricks to overcome a creative block… Let’s look at the Circle of Fifths No! Don’t…

A few tips to easily make an interesting pattern from scratch — So, you have this chord progression that you are quite happy with. What’s next? In this article, I’ll show you one of my processes to transpose 4 piano chords to a string ensemble. The Chords This is what we are going to start with: Am / F / C / G. Nothing…

When the orchestra is not enough and you need to deal with some ear-splitting whoosh hits. — When you build an orchestral template, managing the different sections of the orchestra is quite straightforward. You have your strings, brass, woodwinds, and so on. But how to manage all your sound design samples? Where do you go to find this awesome sub boom that you know you have but…

And CS Solo Strings, and CS Brass, and CS2 — As I was writing about keyswitching and Expression Maps for my upcoming course Building & Balancing a Modern Orchestral Template, I remembered that working with the Cinematic Studio Series packages is not always straightforward. So, I’m going to show you how you can create Cubase Expression Maps that work with…

How you can apply it to absolutely anything — Writers, sculptors, coders, and musicians This morning, as I was having my coffee, I’ve read a Medium article about the process of writing that one of my colleagues at the EPFL Extension School linked to. Here’s the full article by Anupam Krishnamurthy: Separate your writing from your editing. Cool stuff. …

How to learn how to code online and get certified for that — Hey everyone! I have been neglecting my social media presence for a while now. Let me tell you why, what I’ve been up to, and how this can benefit you. The very short version is: “I have been writing course content for the EPFL Extension School.” A career change When it comes to…

Here are some of my findings when trying to switch from Xcode to AppCode for writing Swift code. — The Xcode situation In my recent “6 things I learned by publishing an app on the App Store” article, I briefly talked about some gripes I have with Xcode. Xcode is a great tool and it shines when it comes to features like Instruments that make profiling your app a breeze. Unfortunately, for…