The Guitar Player's Resource
I am a huge fan of movie soundtracks and I love how different this music sounds from "typical" 'guitar music'.
The soundtracks for movies like Harry Potter or Indiana Jones are not made by stringing together guitar riffs and power chords - they are in fact as un-guitaristic as they come. But we can still learn something from them.
Let's see together one of the 'secrets' of movie composers. It gets a very scary name - "chromatic mediants" - a name that seems designed to repel anyone who is not comfortable with theory. But, in fact it's super-simple to learn, sounds great, and can be applied immediately in your music.
Watch this to learn how to create that "movie" sound.
Pay attention especially to the trick at the end that allows you to create longer chord progression than the cliche' of "two chords back and forth" that you hear so often.
Have fun with it!
Tommaso Zillio is a professional prog rock/metal guitarist and composer based in Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Tommaso is currently working on an instrumental CD, and an instructional series on fretboard visualization and exotic scales. He is your go-to guy for any and all music theory-related questions.
