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Bringing Stories to Life Through Music — Composer, Educator, & Author Specializing in Emotional Storytelling
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My Step-by-Step Process for Scoring a Scene
How to use storytelling, structure, and musical psychology to craft powerful film cues. If you're trying to score a scene but keep...
Stephen Berkemeier
Jun 54 min read
27 views
1 comment


How to Use Silence in Film Scoring: Letting Emotion Breathe
Fun Fact: Despite the popularity of its famous soundtrack, only about a third of Interstellar actually contains music Silence can be...
Stephen Berkemeier
Jun 54 min read
8 views
0 comments


How to Write a Theme That Actually Works (From Sketch to Soundtrack)
Turn your melody into a story the audience can feel. Why Most Themes Fall Flat (and How to Fix It) Catchy melodies are everywhere, but...
Stephen Berkemeier
Jun 35 min read
22 views
0 comments


How to Score Emotions: STOP Writing for the Character!
One of the most common mistakes I see newer film composers make is this: They write music that perfectly matches how the character ...
Stephen Berkemeier
Jun 24 min read
11 views
0 comments


How to Score an Emotional Arc (Not Just a Scene)
In film scoring, your job isn't just to support what's happening now . It's to guide the audience through how a character changes and...
Stephen Berkemeier
May 314 min read
12 views
0 comments


How Harmony Shapes Emotional Storytelling
It's not just about major and minor TL;DR Harmony is your strongest tool for shaping valence — the brightness or darkness of an emotion....
Stephen Berkemeier
May 294 min read
23 views
0 comments


The #1 Mistake Composers Make With Emotion
Why writing music for your character isn't always the right move. TL;DR Most composers write music to match what the character is...
Stephen Berkemeier
May 284 min read
8 views
0 comments


The Secret to Writing Sad Music That Hits Hard
Why Valence, Energy, & Storytelling Matter More than Just "Minor Chords" TL;DR Writing powerful, sad music isn't just about using...
Stephen Berkemeier
May 213 min read
23 views
0 comments


Why Your Chord Progressions Feel Bland
And how to turn them into emotional storytelling tools TL; DR Music theory can help you build technically correct chord progressions —...
Stephen Berkemeier
May 203 min read
39 views
0 comments


How Do You Portray Emotions with Music?
By far, the single most important role of a film or videogame composer is to enhance the emotional experience of their audience. Whether...
Stephen Berkemeier
May 18, 20238 min read
1,742 views
0 comments


How Chords Portray Emotion (with chord and emotions chart)
Chord Relationships, or “CRs” for short, are a somewhat obscure but supremely helpful concept to learn (in my own opinion). They are...
Stephen Berkemeier
Sep 28, 20213 min read
27,105 views
2 comments
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