15 Recording Sessions

The reason composers choose FSAE

This is the reason hundreds of composers have chosen FSAE over any other film scoring school in the world.

At FSAE, recording sessions are not a bonus, an occasional opportunity, or a single end-of-year project. They are the foundation of the programme. From the beginning of the year, you are writing for real musicians, preparing professional scores and parts, recording in world-class studio environments, receiving feedback from faculty and industry professionals, and building the kind of portfolio most young composers spend years trying to create after graduation.

There is no other film scoring education in the world built around this level of practical recording experience. Across the year, you compose, orchestrate, record, produce, and mix a major body of work with the European Recording Orchestra, moving from intimate solo and chamber sessions to large-scale orchestral, folk, choir, hybrid, and game scoring projects.

By the time you graduate, you will not simply have studied film scoring. You will have done it, again and again, under real professional conditions.

Build a portfolio that proves what you can do

The industry does not hire composers because they say they can write. The industry hires composers when the work proves it.

At FSAE, every recording session is designed to build a different part of your professional portfolio. You begin with the most essential challenge in film music: emotional clarity. Can you communicate one specific human emotion with solo piano? From there, the assignments expand in scale and complexity, moving through chamber music, strings, orchestra, low brass, folk instruments, woodwinds, adaptive game music, love themes, choir, and full symphony orchestra.

This is how FSAE students consistently stand out at major film music festivals, conferences, and international scoring competitions. Year after year, our students are among the strongest participants at events such as the Film Music Prague Festival, and FSAE composers have won awards at major international platforms including the Ghent Film Festival, Krakow Film Festival, Berlin Film Scoring Competition, and Oticons Faculty Film Scoring Competition.

That success comes from a comprehensive education built around one central truth: composers become professional by doing professional work.

What you will record

Across the year, you will build a serious, diverse, professionally recorded portfolio with the European Recording Orchestra. Your work will show range, not repetition. It will prove that you can handle intimacy, drama, action, fantasy, tension, romance, atmosphere, cultural color, hybrid production, interactive systems, and large-scale symphonic writing.

Throughout the programme, you will record music for:

• Solo piano, focused on emotional clarity and direct musical communication
• Piano trio, translating descriptive scenes into intimate dramatic music
• 22-piece chamber strings, your first major live-to-picture dramatic scoring session
• 38-piece symphony orchestra, for a main title or emotional climax
• Epic low brass and low strings, recorded in separate orchestral layers
• Bulgarian folk soloists, creating a distinctive and culturally rich portfolio piece
• Eight upright basses, an extremely rare recording experience built around depth, pressure, weight, and physical power
• Orchestral woodwinds, focused on color, restraint, and narrative sensitivity
• Adaptive game music, recorded in layers and implemented as a dynamic system in Wwise
• Large string ensemble with piano, harp, celesta, and vocal overdub, focused on writing a memorable love theme
• 84-piece symphony orchestra, the largest ensemble of the programme and a major showpiece portfolio opportunity
• 20-piece choir and 52-piece symphony orchestra, supporting your final Major Project

From intimate emotion to massive orchestral scale

The year begins with simplicity, because simplicity is where musical truth is tested. Your first session asks you to write a short solo piano piece that communicates one clear emotion. No explanation. No hiding behind production. Just the music, the performer, and the listener.

From there, the programme expands rapidly. You write for piano trio, chamber strings, and then a 38-piece symphony orchestra, learning how to support picture, shape drama, create emotional movement, and write music that comes alive in the hands of real performers.

Then the scale increases. You record epic low brass and low strings in separate ensemble passes, learning how modern orchestral scores are built in layers. You write for eight upright basses, including instruments with low C extensions, creating a sound world of gravity, darkness, pressure, and force that no ordinary sample library can truly replicate.

A portfolio that does not sound like everyone else’s

FSAE’s recording sessions go far beyond standard orchestral writing. You will record Bulgarian folk soloists, giving your portfolio a unique color and identity that immediately stands apart from generic demo reels. You will write for orchestral woodwinds, learning subtlety, transparency, register, restraint, and the expressive use of soloistic color.

You will also enter the world of game scoring, composing and implementing an adaptive music system in Audiokinetic Wwise. Instead of writing a linear cue, you will design music that responds to gameplay through layers, states, loops, stingers, combat material, and transitions. For composers interested in games, this becomes an essential portfolio piece. For composers focused on film and television, it is still invaluable training in structure, pacing, modularity, and modern production thinking.

And then you write a love theme, one of the most important challenges in all of screen music. With strings, piano, harp, celesta, and a professional female vocal overdub, you create a refined, emotionally direct piece built around melody, intimacy, and the expressive power of the human voice.

The biggest sessions of the year

One of the most extraordinary opportunities in the programme is the 84-piece symphony orchestra session. This is the largest ensemble of the year and a major showpiece opportunity for your portfolio. You may write a dramatic film scene, a sweeping main theme, a bold standalone cinematic piece, or a major cue designed to fill an important gap in your reel.

An orchestra of this size gives you access to the full dynamic and coloristic spectrum of symphonic writing: chamber-like delicacy, massive full-ensemble power, intricate internal motion, emotional breadth, and cinematic grandeur. For many composers, recording an 84-piece orchestra is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At FSAE, it is part of the curriculum.

The year culminates in the Major Project, supported by a 20-piece choir recording session and a 52-piece symphony orchestra recording session. This is your final artistic statement: a substantial, independently developed project that reflects your voice, ambition, and professional direction. It brings together everything you have learned: composition, orchestration, recording, production, artistic identity, professional presentation, and portfolio development.

Graduate with proof

By the time you graduate from FSAE, you will have proof.

Proof that you can write for real musicians.
Proof that you can handle a studio environment.
Proof that you can prepare professional scores and parts.
Proof that you can score drama, action, romance, atmosphere, games, and large-scale cinematic moments.
Proof that you can work with orchestra, choir, soloists, chamber ensembles, hybrid production, and interactive systems.

At FSAE, you do not wait for your first real recording opportunity.

You build your career on it.