“Film Sound” Chords: Chromatic Mediants

A widely used technique in film music is the use of chord progressions involving “chromatic mediants”. These are chords that differ by moving up from the root chord to the mediant chord or down from the root to the submediant chord. The mediant or submediant chords so used can be chromatic, where for example a C to E minor change might instead be a C to Eb minor, or C to E sharp major, and so on. Here is a simple video of a chord progression I created in MuseScore to demonstrate how chromatic median chords can sound. This is not a real composition, just a simple series of chords using simple synthesized sounds in MuseScore (when composing music for production I use high quality sampled instrument libraries):

Powerful Composing Workstation Build

Just completed building a much more powerful desktop composing workstation. CPU processor upgraded from Ryzen 7 to a Ryzen 9 3900x central processing unit that has 12 cores and 24 threads. RAM memory upgraded from 32 GB to a massive 128 GB to handle all the virtual instruments needed for full and complex orchestral compositions. The cpu cooling fan will be upgraded in a few weeks (item on backorder) to the extremely quiet black Noctua NH-D15 chromax.

AMD Ryzen 9 CPU  CPU Cooler

Acquired New Instrument Libraries

Acquired several new instrument libraries during the xmas sale period of 2019– Hans Zimmer Percussion, Orchestral Swarm, Percussion Swarm, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Solo Strings, Eric Whitacre Choir. Also acquired some sound sweetening plugins from Izotope including Neutron Elements, Ozone Elements, and RX 7 audio editor.