[wvjohnson]

@PAMMusic, Those guidelines may have come from me, or at least they sound like something we at ScoreKeepers send out to composers from time to time. Your last comment sounds right on as far as approach goes. Of course there are always exceptions to every “rule”, but even a drone would be best served by sounding interesting and having some sort of development.

To answer your question, unless it’s a cue that needs to be based on a beat or groove, I usually compose it from start to finish on a piano track (even if piano will not be an instrument that is in the final piece). If compositional development is the goal, at that initial stage I try not to think in terms of orchestration, or instrumentation. I’m creating a piece of music that demonstrates compositional interest with just a piano sound. That becomes the foundation. Then when I go back and put all of the orchestration pieces of the puzzle together (often removing the piano or changing its role), there is less risk of falling into the copy, paste, loop, layer syndrome. Of course starting on piano is not the right approach for every cue, but it is one that helps me avoid the problem we have been discussing here.

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