Good book, concise and clear with lots of score examples.

I don't want to downvote the book just because of the format, but unless I am doing something really wrong the Kindle version is atrocious - I'm trying to read it on a laptop and it is completely blurry - the scores are unreadable. i just don't understand how someone would look at this and approve it as appropriate for paying customers.

Great book. Very educational.

Most books about composition are the same tired instructions repeated almost verbatim - "basic" tonal harmony followed by instructions for creating a short theme and variation. Lalo Schifrin has gone beyond this, giving students ideas about the aesthetics behind film scoring. He discusses some of the decisions he's made, giving you an idea of what is really expected from a film composer.

If I were to say anything negative about this book, it's that Lalo only writes about Lalo's musical style. While that's invaluable, it's incomplete and hardly represents much modern scoring. For better or for worse, film composing is a different beast now, and it may be difficult for students to work Mr. Schifrin's style into your own. On the other hand, if you do, you may just get a leg up on the (considerable) competition.

While there is no DVD included with the book, I'm currently on Chapter 3 and have found the audio or video clip of every score example in the book on YouTube. The book assumes one already has studied composition to some degree. So where many film scoring books walk through its process, this one summarizes that information in one chapter, then takes off on providing composition techniques for scoring film, and does it in a concise and very easy-to-understand manner. This is a major step up in resources made available to those interested in film scoring...written by one of the masters.