If you were tasked with developing one 8 bar melody into a three minute piece of standalone cinematic music, would you find the challenge daunting?

​Analysing the structure of some of your favourite standalone cinematic pieces can be a great way to dissect and discover the composing techniques that have been used, breaking down how an idea has been developed into a full piece.
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So today, I thought I would walk you through the step by step method I use when analysing a piece. I've used the track 'Evergreen' by Thomas Bergersen, which you can find a link to below:

Here's my step by step process for analysing the structure of a track:

1. Import the Audio Track into your DAW (in my case Cubase). I will often buy High Resolution music (.flacs or .wavs), which I can easily import onto an audio track.
2. Trim the waveform so that the beginning of the music lines up with measure 1 (or work out if there is a pickup measure first).
3. If you have a tap tempo function in your DAW, (like beat calculator in Cubase), tap along in time with the track to work out the BPM. Then change to the new BPM in your DAW. This will ensure that the track aligns to your DAW's grid, which will help you to analyse section lengths etc.
4. Create a marker track, where you can then use markers to identify each musical section.
5. Start listening to the track, identifying sections by naming and adding markers. Typically there would be an Intro, followed by an 'A Section' or two. There will also probably be some kind of contrasting material, which could well be a 'B Section'. You'll also find that section lengths could fall into 8 or 16 measures.
6. Colour code the markers, so its easier to see the various sections. I colour Intros Blue, A Sections Green and B Sections Red.
7. Add 2 new midi tracks (One for Melody info and the other for Accompaniment info) and create blank midi regions on each. You should then be able to rename the regions in your DAW with descriptions of which instruments are playing what). You could alternatively use markers for this if you DAW supports multiple marker tracks.
8. Go through and try to work out the chords. In Cubase there is the chord track - Cubase 12 can even work out the chords automatically from audio!)
9. BONUS STEP - I will often transcribe the melody, drawing notes into the midi editor/piano roll. If the track lines up with your DAW's musical grid, this should be fairly straight forward to draw notes in! A good track should feature repetition of the main idea, so you'll probably find you can copy/paste somewhere as well! 

If you would like to download a PDF with my detailed analysis, click the image below:

🎓What I learned from analysing 'Evergreen'

Thomas Bergersen has managed to construct a nearly 3 minute piece of music from one 8 bar melody.

The A Section (8 Bars) is played a total of 6 times, growing in intensity as the piece progresses, mostly by adding to the overall orchestration.

To break up the A Sections, there are two contrasting B Sections. The material for these B Sections is based off of the initial accompanying piano pattern heard in the main A Sections.

As well as using Orchestration to develop the initial 8 bars, he also makes use of Modulation (changing keys) to help the initial idea develop further:

• The music starts in the key of D minor for the 1st minute of the piece.
• It then modulates to F minor from the beginning of the 3rd A Section (around 1:16)
• During the 2nd B Section (around 1:55), the music modulates again, this time to Ab major (the relative major key of F minor)
• To further aid the climax during the last minute, Bergersen modulates yet again, up to Eb.