Tagged Under:

Alan Silvestri

A master of film soundtracks explains how to score a blockbuster.

Alan Silvestri is the composer of some of the most memorable film soundtracks of the last three decades, from Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future to his recent work on the 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame — the highest-grossing movie of all time.

In these two videos, filmed at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, Silvestri describes his scoring workflow in detail, starting with loading the film into Steinberg Cubase and composing the music to play in time with the picture. From there, he adds different instrument parts to create a basic arrangement, and then exports the timeline to Steinberg Dorico to complete the final scoring. “It’s always about getting the technology out of the process,” he explains. “I’ve just found a kind of resonance with Cubase and Dorico — they just feel so comfortable and forward-thinking, and made for what I’m trying to do.”