What if John August's Scriptnotes theme were composed by world music extraordinare Thomas Newman..?

Scriptnotes Thomas Newman

Imagine if John August's Scriptnotes theme were composed by James Newton Howard.  Scary, huh?

Scriptnotes James Newton Howard

An outro using John August's five-note Scriptnotes theme in the style of Sting's song, Russians, from, 1985.

I tried to change the lyrics to be more screenwriting related - changing the Cold War conflict in the original song to the conflict between "writing guru's" on Twitter and sensible screenwriting advice.

Scriptnotes Outro - Sting's "Russians"

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Written in the style of lush, romantic tracks from 1950s Hollywood, this piece was a chance to take my virtual instruments for a spin on a classic, romantic, golden age film theme.

Elizabeth

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I wrote this action-based track a while ago for a video game project. I ended up using a long list of percussion libraries to get the large, punchy sound I was after. After all this time, I'm still happy with how this turned out.

Rise and Fall

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Since it's now "Spooky Season," I wrote this creepy little outro for the podcast, Scriptnotes. For Octobers past, I've tended to write something a little more bombastic and loud, but I enjoyed writing something a little quieter this time. After all, quiet can be scary too...

Scriptnotes Spooky Season

matthewchilelli.com
A while ago I wrote this track to be used in promotional material for an indie tabletop gaming company. It was dark, grim, and gothic. Coming back to it nearly a year later it still makes me smile in a chilly, October kind of way...

Helforged Theme

Elmo kidnaps Jim Henson to get revenge for being used as a muppet, but Kermit swoops in to save the day! But is he on the up-and-up?

American Muppet Soundtrack

John August's Scriptnotes theme gets a superhero treatment...

Scriptnotes Superhero Spectacular

Ever wonder what that classic Star Fox theme would sound like played by an orchestra? Well, wonder no more! I've done it for you.

Libraries used:
Cinestrings
Cinebrass
Cinewinds
Cineperc
Hollywood Winds

Star Fox End Credits (Orchestrated)

The famous scriptnotes theme done in the style of Vince Guaraldi's theme for Peanuts.

Matthew Chilelli Scriptnotes Peanuts

A Big Band take on John August's scriptnotes theme.

Libraries used:
Broadway Lites
Cinesamples session drummer
Cineperc Pro

Scriptnotes Big Band

Don't know where you are; don't know where you're going. A little jazz sextet piece featuring tenor sax, trombone, and trumpet.

Libraries used:
Fablesounds - broadway lites
Cinesamples session drummer
piano in blue

Unknown Zipcode

What if Scriptnotes actually were a cult? Would this be what they'd sing at "Scriptnotes Live" events?

Libraries used:
Cinewinds pro
Cinestrings
Cinebrass Pro
Cineperc Epic
Voxos 2.0

Scriptnotes Satanic Mass

A steel string guitar take on John August's five-note Scriptnotes theme.

Libraries used:
Orange Tree Samples Evolution Acoustic Guitar

Scriptnotes Guitar

An adventurous track I wrote for Mr. Chris DeLoose as thanks for backing our kickstarter movie. I was given the prompt that it be a cross between John Williams, James Horner, and Holst's "The Planets." It made me think of space exploration.

Libraries Used:
Cinestrings Core/Runs
Cinewinds Core
Cinebrass Core/Pro
Cineperc Core/Epic
Hollywood Winds

Chris Crossing The Stars

An arrangement of the Japanese lullaby: "Takeda no Komoriuta." It starts off with the lullaby orchestrated, then takes off into a frenzied dream before finally "waking up" again.

Libraries used:
Cinestrings
Tina Guo Cello
cinewinds
cinebrass
cineperc

Takeda No Komoriuta (Arrangement)

A quick scriptnotes outro in the style of the composer Masaru Sato (Yojimbo, and a few Godzilla films).



Scriptnotes Masaru Sato Style

The classic Scriptnotes theme arranged for Japanese Koto and Shamisen.

Libraries used:
Impact Soundworks's Koto Nation

Scriptnotes Koto Shamisen

A short lullaby written for shamisen, koto, and bass koto.

Traditional Japanese instruments such as the shamisen and the koto are not learned by young students as often as they once were. I thought it would be interesting and challenging to try writing in this style, for these instruments. Here's a little lullaby I came up with.

Library used:
Impact Soundworks's "Koto Nation"

Lullaby For Shamisen And Koto

The five-note Scriptnotes theme worked into the (ahem) fair use song Yellow Rose of Texas! Yeehaw!

Libraries used:
Cinewinds
Cineperc
Cinebrass

Scriptnotes Yellow Rose Of Texas

The scriptnotes outro for the 200th episode - in good ol' Danny Elfman style!

Libraries used:
Cinewinds
Hollywood Winds
Cinebrass
Cineperc

Scriptnotes 200 Elfman

Just a quick orchestration of the Kokiri Forest theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I'm really happy with how this one came out!

Libraries used:
Cinesamples strings, percussion, brass, woodwinds
OrangeTreeSamples steel string guitar.

Zelda Kokiri Forest Orchestrated

An orchestral version of the Goron City theme from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Koji Kondo's original version is so much fun, I kept hearing horns and marimbas while listening to it. I hope you enjoy this take on a classic video game score.

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Zelda - Goron City Orchestra

I’ve been listening to Lorne Balfe’s score to Mission Impossible: Fallout a lot lately, and this idea started developing in my head: what if an Ethan Hunt-type character (let’s call him, I dunno, “Jira”) had to save the world from The King of the Monsters by running a lot?

To read more about what the heck I was thinking when writing this piece, visit my site: matthewchilelli.com

Go, Jira!

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As I’ve been watching Craig Mazin’s excellent HBO series, Chernobyl, I’ve been especially taken by the score for the show. Hildur Guðnadóttir wrote music as eerie and chilling as the images we’re presented with. I thought it would be interesting to take her radioactive style (she used only sounds recorded inside a nuclear power plant) and apply it to John and Craig’s Scriptnotes theme.

Matthew Chilelli's Album

Scriptnotes Chernobyl

For a while, a simple piano tune was rattling around in my head - something warm and cool at the same time. It almost felt like walking through New York in the winter, skyscrapers towering overhead while the sun in a clear blue sky chased away the chill of the season.

I wrote the piece, added some light strings and flute, and it was done. And the more I listened to it, the more it felt like I wasn’t alone while walking through the city. It felt like walking along, enjoying good company.

Happy listening,

Good Company

matthewchilelli.com
It’s not often I get the chance to write music for a project that’s in pre-production, so when I was approached to do exactly that for a Crime Thriller set in Nigeria, I said yes.

It starts off with some edgy cello improvisation, transitions into a Nigerian rhythmic line in the percussion, and then concludes with the main theme being hummed lyrically by a solo vocalist.

The Sleep

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What makes good “boss battle” music?

This is a question I asked myself after a prompt from a client to create a track in the style of a Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep boss battle. This lead me to the deeper question of what characteristics do classic boss battle tracks from video games have in common?

I'd say it's speed, chromaticism, and syncopation. Enjoy this boss battle track that has all three.

The solo violin in this track is from Embertone's Joshua Bell Violin library. It's amazing!

Boss Battle

matthewchilelli.com

I absolutely love scary movies. And more than that, I love writing scary music. Detuned pianos, screeching strings, and mysterious percussion that goes bump in the night. That’s my jam.

Every Halloween, I try to write something in a different spooky genre for the Scriptnotes podcast. This year, I went for that in-your-face, super dry sound we’ve been hearing in recent horror films and trailers. I love how much texture and grit we can get out of violins, cellos, and prepared pianos.

For this track, I leaned hard on the libraries from Silence + Other Sounds, featuring extremely extended technique for those instruments. I was pretty happy with (and pretty creeped out by) the results. In past years, I’ve created retro synth horror tracks and pieces that sounded more like The Sixth Sense or The Ring, but I feel these eerie sounds took Halloween to a new level for me.

Scriptnotes If 2020 Had A Soundtrack

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A recent conversation about Batman on Scriptnotes lead me to write this outro in the style of the Dark Knight score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

Scriptnotes The Dark Rewrite

Composer for film, tv, and games; living in Los Angeles.

Composing is the best job I've ever had. I started writing music twenty years ago when I picked up my first instrument (saxophone), and I've been doing it ever since.

Matthew Chilelli

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