Scoring the Screen

The Secret Language of Music for Film and Visual Media

By: Andy Hill

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eText | 30 April 2026 | Edition Number 2

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This widely acclaimed book enables readers to understand and practice the language of music composed for film, video games, and other visual media.

Film and television music veteran Andy Hill offers an insider's view of what goes into the creation of the musical score for major motion pictures and other works of screen entertainment, including video games. This unique text provides deeply informed, measure-by-measure analysis of highly detailed reductions of music cues from more than two dozen films composed by the top composers, among them Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone, and Bernard Herrmann, as well as trailblazers of today.

New chapters in the second edition tackle:
- Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- The Music of the Disney Renaissance, featuring analyses of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King
- Women in film music, featuring interviews with Rachel Portman, Pinar Toprak, Natalie Holt, and Stephanie Economou
- Adaptive music for games, featuring analyses of game scores by Austin Wintory (Journey and Abzu), Garry Schyman (Bioshock), and Mikolai Stroinski (The Witcher)

Hill's powerful insights informed by music theory and the scenes of composition, as well as first-hand input from many of the artists themselves, enables readers to witness the composition of the score from the first motive to the last bar. This indispensable resource provides a close-up look at the musical conventions and tricks-of-the-trade that composers use to express the full range of human (and sometimes non-human) experience, allowing music students, practicing composers, and aficionados of the craft to better understand and hone its power.