My take on the composer's union negotiations

I sympathize completely with the composers who support a composer's union or guild. I would like to be optimistic about it's success but I'm ambivalent at best. I don't have a dog in the hunt at this time, I'm mostly oriented toward composing for production music libraries, which some may feel is part of the problem. Libraries provide "stock" music to productions and a great majority of reality shows and much cable is scored using this music by music editors and supervisors.

There's been lots of confusion in the library composer world about this whole thing. I'm not 100% up to speed on the whole thing, but I'll add my 2c to the discussion, FWIW.

So here's my take on the composer's union:

It's really oriented to the composers who score films and tv shows. The producers are doing more package deals where all the production costs come out of the composer's fee, which is the entire music budget. Yet the producers want fully realized demos (because they have no imaginations for music), which take a team of assistants working around the clock to do due to the extremely strenuous deadlines. And they want some live players, which also comes out of the composer's package payment. So there are plenty of stories of composers going in the hole to complete a score. Imagine working your ass off for 6 or 8 weeks, 18 to 20 hours a day and then have to take a loan out to pay your employees at the end of it. Bummer.

And if there is a music budget separate from the composer's fee, it's much smaller than it used to be, but the amount of music per show is going up. And the composer's fees are going down too. Part of this is due to the ability of excellent composers to turn out awesome sounding music from their garage or spare bedroom, and the producers realize this and feel that they can pay less because the composer's overhead is less. Which is partly true, except for the fact that the composer still needs a team of hired guns to help get the music delivered to the mixing stage on time, which might mean, with more music, the composer's overhead is actually the same or more. Not to mention keeping current with technology. A busy composer doesn't have time to learn every new software instrument, yet the business demands new and fresh sounds all the time. Guess what? Hire a hotshot programmer to learn the software instruments and help realize the score using the new sounds. It goes on and on.

So it's understandable why these folks want to unionize. But the problem is, there's so few of them compared to the total population of composers, that there's no way they can speak for the majority on this. There's about 25 or 30 composers in Hollywood who do most of the big films and then a few hundred picking up the crumbs, and many thousands playing gigs, waiting tables, etc., trying to break in to the business. That last tier of folks probably can't afford the union dues anyway, and they'd take any gig that came along just for the resume building and credits, thus undermining the whole purpose of the union.

But library composers are feeding a different market. There's some overlap, but library music is used either as an adjunct to, in addition to, or for the entire score, mostly for lower budget TV like reality shows (Some daytime TV is handled this way as well. I write for the Harpo Sounds library which the producers and editors of O***h have complete access to). Of course, there's a huge market for library music outside film and TV as well. It wouldn't make sense for a library composer to join this union unless they were also pursuing composing for hollywood films and network tv shows

So that's probably only a small part of the reason these guys are trying to get this union going. The ground is shifting underneath their feet and it's making them nauseous.

Blog Player

Reflections on Road Rally 2009

As I sit in my studio the day after coming home from the 2009 Taxi Road Rally, I'm reflecting on the weekend and feel compelled to share.

First of all, I'm pretty blown away by the Community Leader award that was given to me Saturday morning. I love to share what I've spent my life studying, partly because I love to share and partly because I learn so much by doing it. To be recognized for sharing my life's work is quite humbling and gratifying. Thanks to everyone and particularly TAXI for allowing me the forum to share.

Now to some things that have been rolling around in my head:

If you've been to the Rally even once, you've probably sat in a panel and heard "get to the song", "keep the intro short", "get to the hook". Yet every year, folks put their artist CD into the bin as is, with their artistic long intros. The A/R folks, and most of the audience who want to hear a lot more material, need to sit through the often wonderful, but way too long, intros. I strongly advocate that you do a "radio edit" of your song, put it on a CD on it's own with your contact info everywhere and put that in the bin. If they like the song (at least they'll appreciate the short intro) and want to hear more, well, guess what, you can try to get to them after the panel, or if they took your CD, it has all of your contact info on it. If you can't do the editing yourself, then get a friend who is familiar with it to do it for you. It's not that difficult to get a nice, short, musical intro just by editing the stereo master. Your full version is still safely immortalized on your artist CD, but this "radio edit" version just might get you the listen you've been waiting for.

Another observation from one who doesn't write that many songs: I honestly don't care that much about the verse the first time I hear the song, unless it's really quirky or catchy. If the chorus pays off BIG TIME, then I'm much more inclined to pay more attention to the verse the next time it comes up. That being said, I think two long verses before the chorus is one too many. This is pop music, not literature, I want a big hook I can sing right away and then I'll go back and listen to your story next time. Set me up with a great, easily understandable vocal and a hook that "hooks" me and I'm there. There are tons of formulas for writing pop songs and they are used because they work every time. Trying to break new artistic ground before one has mastered these formulas usually doesn't work because the results sound like someone who is trying too hard to be "original". This is pop music, not literature. Make it pop and you'll have a much better chance of getting heard.

Creativity is inevitable, infinite and always available. Artistry is what we do naturally as writers and composers. After we do our artistic work, we need to learn to step back from it and the wonderful energy we channeled to create it, and see it as a product. In the marketplace of music, the folks looking for music to place and pitch see it as a product. They aren't personally attached to the music, it's simply either what they're looking for or it's not. If you're looking for a pair of sneakers, Nike isn't going to be bummed if you buy a pair of New Balance this time, it just means they'll have to work harder to get you as a customer next time. It's the same with our music. To some this may seem harsh and cold, but it's the reality of the business. It's always been this way, but we tend to romanticize it and forget that the industry buys what it thinks it can sell, which is probably on different terms that we would choose as artists. So, we need to get over ourselves and at least try to learn to get some emotional distance from our music so we can more effectively sell it.

Directly related to the above paragraph is the issue of defining the genre of our music. Every artist has more or less trouble with this but it is a huge factor in determining one's success. This year at least one country song was pulled from the "pop" bin at the listening panel I attended. Now the style was pop country rather than straight country, but the steel guitars and vocal style were still dead center country, most definitely not pop. And if you put it in the "wrong" bin on purpose hoping it will get you heard, then you actually did yourself a disservice. The panelists were not happy with being told they were going to hear one style and then another came on. It was pretty blatant and won you no friends. As a writer sitting by yourself in your home studio, it's easy to get micro focused on your music and to lose perspective on where it fits. And that's OK because you have to do that kind of focus to get it done. But if you aren't writing to a specific style target or listing, then you need to find out what the industry is going to want to call it so they can more effectively sell it. Musicians hate this stuff but it's the common language of the industry, so bite the bullet and categorize yourself. Post the music on the TAXI forum and get some feedback, take it to songwriter groups, get a custom critique via TAXI or some other service. Do whatever you can to learn where you fit and then be open to that knowledge. If your ultimate goal is to sell your music, then this is non-negotiable.

This is a long term business. Those of you in the 5 year plan class saw some royalty statements from Matt and I which hopefully illustrated not only some growth potential, but also how long it takes to get some traction in the business. You probably also heard Matt talk about how many hours a day he works (at least 10 hours a day, 6 days a week), and how the stuff he's working on today may not pay royalties for 1 to 3 years. If you love writing music so much that you'll do it no matter what, then you know that you'll do whatever it takes to write, produce and sell it. You will also learn patience or you'll take your ball and go home, the choice is yours. I suggest that by continually learning and improving and writing every day, you won't have time to think about giving up or where your first placement will be. When that day comes, the victory will be much sweeter. So get to work!!! :)

Social networking is the business model of the now and future, for all musicians. Yes, it's still shaking out how anyone will actually make money from all of this, but it's starting to happen and the time is now to get involved. I had some a ha moments in Ariel Hyatt's class this year. I was a partial skeptic going into it, but now I'm convinced that generating buzz and creating value online will motivate people to want to buy what I have to offer eventually. It's marketing 101 but with a different delivery medium. It's still a bit Wild West out there but the beauty of it is that navigating through it and figuring out a personal slant on it can be as creative as writing a great song. For some, like me, it was a stretch to think outside the box of the old business models, but I saw through the keyhole and now I "get it". In a few years, this will be a bigger panel than the A/R panel, I predict.

For all the buzz about social networking online, there's absolutely no replacement for face to face time, and there never will be. Yes, we can communicate with more people at one time than ever before, but we don't usually twitter or post to facebook as a group! We're usually in our studios, or at work or at the coffee shop by ourselves when we do it. So gatherings such as the Road Rally will always be relevant because of the human contact factor. It's such a relief to get to the Rally every year and hug and shake hands and eat and party with composers and writers that are all on the same path as I am. I don't know about you but I don't get that opportunity every day, and as much as I love seeing everyone on the TAXI form and Facebook, etc., those are poor substitutes for the real thing.

That's it for now. Love and blessings to all of you that I saw and met at the Rally and my prayer is that anyone who didn't make it this year can make it next year. You owe it to yourself and your music and your career to figure out a way to make it to the Rally. As corny as this may sound, it will probably change your life in some way. You'll go back home a little or a lot different than when you arrived, in a good way.

Thoughts on creativity and composing

I posted this on the TAXI forum on a thread titled "How do you compose?".

Embrace the idea that you are always creating, no matter what you are doing.

The actual bringing the final product to life in the physical world is probably the smallest part of the process (although it might not feel like it sometimes!). I believe we bring the sum total of who we are to bear in every moment, to a greater or lesser degree, and that applies to writing as well. The best writers are able to tap in to that and have practiced and honed their writing chops so they have some modicum of that life experience available to them at all times.

We never stop creating, and just accepting that for yourself will help you be able to be creative at the drop of a hat. Jazz musicians know this process intimately because improvisation is the whole purpose of jazz. The river of music is always flowing and learning to swim in it is a lifetime process, but it's there and available, even when you're sleeping.

Beethoven used to take walks. He would walk and hum and had a pencil and paper with him at all times. When I get "stuck", I'll go out and walk up a hill (not hard to find in my neighborhood in SF!! :) ) and invariably the solution to my musical problem will reveal itself (not comparing myself to Beethoven, just borrowing his walking technique). For me, the process of doing something different allows my mind to open up and find the solution. I"m composing even if it doesn't look like I am!

Orchestra piece progress 007: Wrap Up and MIDI moments

Fig 1.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

I've decided to put some screenshots of my Digital Performer session from the piece "Odyssey Begins", just to show a bit of the actual nuts and bolts sequencing process. Also I'll put in a wrap up of the entire process.

Fig. 1 is a shot of a portion of the track layout. As you can see, there's a lot of tracks. Look at the woodwinds in particular. As you can see, there's a separate track for each articulation I used, sustained, stacatto, runs and trills. I did that because the library I used doesn't use keyswitches (Westgate Studios). I know there's a way in Kontakt that one can switch programs inside of a bank, but I've never explored that, although I may soon.

Fig 2. is a Cello track playing the spicatto articulation. Notice the controller lane below the track and how it has peaks and valleys. That is CC11 and it is used to give an undulating feeling to the track. I also try to sequence parts like this so they don't do too many repeating notes at one time. This way, the "machine gun" effect is less noticeable. Even with round robin programming, the effect can get machine like, so adding the controller data for volume variation and also repeating only two or 3 notes at a time, can help give a more realistic sound.

Last but not least, is a shot (Fig. 3) of a portion of the flute part. From top to bottom, the tracks are: Flute Legato, Flute Stacatto, Flute Octave Runs, and Flute Trills. In this example, you see the track alternating between short and long notes and then an octave run blending in to the first note of the next phrase. The octave run (chromatic scale up) is a sampled run so it looks like a single held note, but that note triggers a scale run. It also looks like it bleeds into the first note of the next phrase, but it actually ends just before it. When placing runs like this, some experimentation with the exact placement is necessary to get the run to end at the proper time. The start is sometimes less critical and can even be faded in with controller 7.

To summarize, here's what I feel can help when undertaking a large piece like this:

1. Determine the form ahead of time. In this case I laid out the rhythmic structure and length in minutes and seconds before I started.

2. Determine a harmonic structure ahead of time. In Odyssey Begins, I used a common device of film composers which is moving chord changes in minor thirds. This creates an unresolved feeling and also adds drama. Mixed in with this were other harmonic moves, but overall modally this piece stays in the minor mode realm. I did venture in to Lydian, which can be thought of as being derived from a major scale, but in this case, I kept the minor modality in the upper voices and moved the bass note to create the Lydian feeling (E minor triad/F bass).

3. Create a thematic structure. The melody in this piece is very simple. It is then varied slightly and transposed as the piece progresses. Having a melody is not necessarily a requirement, particularly if the piece is meant to be a "bed track", but for a more cinematic approach, a melody that can be varied can help the audience follow the story.

4. Choose the orchestral palette. For this piece I consciously decided to add woodwinds, which I don't use that often in big, bombastic electro/orchestral pieces, but this one was intended to be more organic sounding, with the power coming from the low percussion. The low percussion was chosen from Stormdrum 2 and Heavyocity Evolve with a Taiko loop from Nine Volt Audio Beat Bandit Takio Edition for Stylus RMX.

Orchestration can be done while composing, but try not to let the orchestration dictate the composition. Applying the orchestration to an already well written piece will make for a better overall presentation, IMO.

5. Once you get everything loaded up in the computer, save it as a template. It will save time the next time you get a call for a Big Dramatic Orchestra picece!

With this material gathered ahead of time, when the computer is fired up, there's less time spent fishing around for ideas. Of course, you'll find that things will change as you start entering the parts. Pay close attention to the ranges you are having instruments play in. Instruments have a different sound depending on the range they are playing in and trying to give a big melody to flutes playing on the treble clef staff won't be very effective in "real life" if the rest of the orchestra is playing fortissimo!!

Have fun, happy composing!!

Mazz

Orchestra piece progress 006

The "final" mix is up on the player (in the number one spot!).

You'll hear percussion: A couple of big drums from Stormdrum, an EW snare, EW cymbals and gongs.

Also added in the beginning and ending: Celesta, Harp, Chimes

I need to go sleep now, but I'll do a debriefing on the process in the next day or so.

Thanks for reading!!

Orchestra piece progress 005

Odyssey Begins RF4 at the bottom of the player.

All the parts are tracked to audio now, with the exception of the percussion which still needs to be added (whew!!).

The choir has been added to this rough mix. With the exception of the strings, everything is pretty much mono right now. I thought that this might be a good contrast as the piece progresses to hear how much difference panning can make on an orchestral piece. The EW libraries and to some extent the KH library comes "pre-panned", but for this piece I'm using primarily SAM orchestral brass, SampleModeling Trumpet and Westgate Studios Woodwinds, which aren't pre-panned.

One thing I like to do is to bus all the individual sections to their own bus, which allows me to add a global amount of reverb via a send to each section individually. I can do detailed balances within each section with automation and then when I'm doing the very final mix, I have just a few faders to deal with. I can always go back in and tweak an individual instrument if necessary. I will do the panning on the individual tracks, but they all end up on the same bus which means if I need more trombones, I just pull up one fader. If I want to move the bones back in the room a bit, I just add a bit more verb send and drop the level down a shade if necessary.

More to come!!

orchestra piece progress 004

Odyssey Begins RF3 at the bottom of the player list.

The intro is on. I used material from the ending in the low brass and horns. That and percussion will be the extent of the intro, I think. It will be a nice contrast for when the strings and woodwinds come in.

The woodwinds are complete. The EW strings have been brought down a bit so the other parts are more clear.

Still to come is the rest of the choir parts and, of course, the percussion. The choir isn't on these mixes cause it's on a separate computer and doesn't get bounced with the internal VI's.

After that, I will track all the parts to audio tracks and mix.

Next blog I'll attach screen shots of some of the parts to show the keyswitches and the separate tracks for different articulations, particularly in the woodwinds.

orchestra piece progress 003

The next iteration is up on the player: Odyssey Begins RF2 (at the bottom of the song list)

It's starting to morph a bit away from the sketch but not much really. The sketch is pretty "sketchy" which leaves room for interpretation and doesn't lock things tightly. I have chosen to be pretty true to the harmonic progression and the rhythmic structure, which will save time and hopefully make the piece feel cohesive.

The strings started out as only Kirk Hunter Diamond and have now been doubled with EW Platinum. The KH strings have more "bite" to them, to my ears and the EW have the hall sampled in on the releases which makes the sound "swim" a bit and smooths out some of the mechanical-ness. I'll do some more "humanizing" on the EW parts to make them even less mechanical.

Of course, on this mix, it's "ALL STRINGS ALL THE TIME" LOL

You'll notice that the piece goes all the way to the end now, still minus the intro. I've added a string melody, which I didn't think I was going to do but it just called for it after the string flourish at bar 54. The melody was actually derived from the brass melody that comes in at bar 70, the brass melody there came first and then the string melody was put in at bar 58.

The woodwinds are conspicuously absent from about bar 42 on but they will be coming back, particularly at bar 70 to reinforce the brass melody an octave higher.

The voices will be more prominent in the final mix as well. They will be coming back in off and on.

The percussion will really help to add the drama and support the build. I intend to add Taiko drums as the piece progresses. I'll start with a fairly sparse part since the strings are doing their part to move things along but by the time bar 70 rolls around, we should have a fairly rockin' Taiko part going. The trick with percussion is to use it for color and drama, a little goes a long way. I always find myself going back and taking out percussion or really trying to find the perfect spot to add it. It's tricky to find the right balance. I think if I'm adding too much percussion, I'm trying to make up for some deficiencies in the rest of the orchestration, at least for a piece like this. I love percussion, don't get me wrong! But for a piece like this, a little goes a long way, and judicious use of the percussion will really heighten the drama and the build.

Enjoy!! More to come.

Orchestra piece progress 002

There's no way I'll make the deadline with a finished piece so I took a chance and bounced down what I have so I could submit. My wife's Prius died and I had to pick her up from the dealer this morning among other things, like a previous commitment to go look at furniture for our living room yesterday afternoon. Life keeps going on, it doesn't stop for little orchestra pieces!!

Here's a link to what I have so far:

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1672238

It's also in the player at the top, it's called "Odyssey Begins RF".

I usually don't post really rough pieces but for the purposes of this blog, it's available in all it's unfinished glory!!

I'll continue working on this today and tomorrow. I need to finish it by tomorrow afternoon due to other commitments.

Orchestra piece progress 001

I'm up to bar 50 but the piece is still kind of like a checkerboard. I'll work ahead with a section and then fill in behind it. I haven't written the intro yet, the music currently starts at bar 18. I'll probably leave at least one blank bar at the beginning for controller setups, initial keyswitches, etc.

Due to the time constraints, I've decided that the piece will ebb and flow by changing the textures of the rhythmic chords. It starts with horns doubled with woodwinds and then moves to brass and then strings and low brass (while the trumpets play the melody) and then down a bit with the strings and then adding the brass and then everyone will be playing big fat chords while the voices take the melody.

Right now the mix is a total mess with everything too loud and after I get the parts in, I'll go back and add the more subtle controller tweaks and begin to refine the mix.

The good thing about having a roadmap laid out ahead of time, is that the foundation is already down and the execution can be done more efficiently. Of course, things will change as the sketch is filled out, but it's way less hit and miss because the path forward is clearer before the computer ever gets booted up and the samples loaded.

Back to it!!

Sketch of orchestral piece

Well, below is a sketch I am going to start to put in to the computer, hopefully to meet a deadline on Friday, which is very ambitious. It's a TAXI listing, not a gig deadline, so if I miss it, it's not the end of the world. But I'd like to challenge myself to come up with a big orchestral piece and have it be big and powerful yet not over complex orchestrationally.

So, briefly, here's what I've done so far:

I set up a form and a harmonic structure and played it in to the sequencer roughly using a piano patch.

Then I printed out some sketch paper with the piano part on the top and 4 staves below.

I already knew that I was going to use strings, brass, percussion, woodwinds and voices.

I'm going to distribute the accompaniment amongst the brass and strings, starting with the strings and then moving to the brass later and then the combined "band" doing punches with the voices doing a simple long melody. I think that will be dramatic and will allow for good opportunities to build, which is one thing the listing mentions. It looks like the strings won't be doing much melody on this one.

As far as woodwinds go, I'll probably use flutes, clarinets and oboes and probably will have them doubling each other playing three note chordal melodies because I'll need the power. I may have them do some trills or flourishes near the end if it doesn't make the texture too complex or make the sequencing take too long!

That's all for now. Time to go boot up the Mac and get rolling!

See the pages of the sketch below (there's two page 7's, oops!) :)

Mazz

Sketch of orchestral piece, pics

The case for bouncing to audio before mixing

If you use a lot of Virtual Instruments (VIs) like I do (or hardware synths for that matter), how do you deal with the situation if you are called to do a re-mix or edit a year or two after you've already finished the piece?

What would happen if you'd upgraded your computer and the VI you used for that piece doesn't work with your new OS and you were called to re-call that piece and submit it for a high end advertising client? Would you be sweating bullets trying to recreate that awesome synth sound that the now obsolete VI could only create?

Why not take an extra few minutes and bounce, or render all your VI and hardware synth tracks to audio before you mix?

I know, I know, it takes extra time, but it really shouldn't be that big of a deal because you have a template set up already, right? :)

If you have all your outputs from your VIs already routed to audio tracks in your DAW (for instance assigning the outputs from the Multi page in Omnisphere or the Outputs tab in Kontakt), the it shouldn't be much more than playing the piece back once or twice, depending on the strength of your system, and recording the outputs as audio tracks.

Another benefit of this approach is to free up resources from your computer that it would normally have to use to process the VIs and direct those resources to all the cool plug-ins that you have but can't use because your CPU is maxed out from running all those VIs!!

If you find that you would like to tweak a VI part in MID again, just re-load the VI, edit the part and then re-bounce. Since what we do with audio on computers is a constant balance between computer power and our creative ability to stress our computers anyway, this work flow is a good compromise, IMO.

Any thoughts and comments welcome.

DAW templates for computer-based composer

As a busy composer with a day gig too, I'm constantly pressed for time when I'm in my studio. With one of my gigs I have deadlines to meet, sometimes with a 2 day or shorter turnaround to submit demos. Also, for some reason there seems to be more opportunities to submit music then there is time to fill all of the requests (admittedly a nice problem to have!). All of this activity demands an efficient approach to generating ideas and getting a piece up and running quickly.

So what's a composer to do to? Well, my answer is: Create templates in your DAW for the different types and styles of music you write.

For instance, I write orchestral and hybrid electro/orchestral pieces fairly often. I have a very large template set up that addresses 3 computers and has a wide selection of articulations available on many, many MIDI tracks. While it may seem like overkill, when I need that marcato trumpet articulation, it's already loaded. Admittedly this approach takes a lot of computer horsepower, but if you have the power, it's worth the time it takes to set up a large orchestral template. I do find myself adding tracks and articulations from time to time and at that point I'll overwrite the template so it's updated or I'll save it as a new one.

So how should creating templates be approached?

Some people have expressed concern that a template may lock them in to using the same set of sounds. In order to avoid this, just take one step back and load up the VIs but don't load any sounds in to them. This way you can have, for instance, Stylus, Omnisphere, EZ Drummer and Kontakt loaded up but they would come up "empty" instead of with some default sound you chose before.

If you play to a click, just use the standard click in your DAW, or if you like to play to a loop, don't have the template open up on a generic beat, choose the loop as a part of your creative process. The same goes with tempo. My DAW comes up at 120BPM as the default. I consciously try to tune in right away to the right tempo for the vibe I'm trying to create, partly to avoid having 85% of the pieces I write end up at 120BPM!!!! LOL

Create templates from a "high level", rather than too far down in to the process. The style of the music will suggest how far down to create the template. For instance, a template for electronic music might just have a bunch of "blank slate" synths loaded up whereas a "hard rock" template might need to have the basic drums, bass and guitars already loaded up.

Don't forget to include things like countoff duration, controller setups, extra audio tracks, display parameters (bars/beats/frames, etc.), any default settings that your DAW offers that you find yourself setting up each time. If your DAW offers that function as a selectable default, use it.

A template is a good place to organize the tracks in to folders if your DAW supports it, color schemes if you're visually oriented (my DAW offers the feature of track colors, for instance), and track layout (I lay my orchestral templates out in classical score order).

Here's some other ideas that you might consider:

1. Have a basic solo piano template for improvisation and creating solo pieces.
2. Augment the solo piano template with a basic rhythm section and maybe an organ or pad sound.
3. Leave your mic always connected to the same input and always include an open track for it in your templates.

Feel free to leave some ideas and comments on your approach to templates.

Preparing a quote for a film scoring gig

I was recently helping a friend who is in the process of negotiating a possible film scoring gig. Since I scored my first feature-length film last year, the process is still fresh in my mind so I was able to share a few things from my experience. Some of the things I mentioned I also learned at various seminars I've taken over the years and was able to put in to practice on my scoring gig.

Here's what I sent to my friend, somewhat edited and amplified in places:

I would try to find out how much music they envision having in the film. There's a big difference between writing 30 minutes of music and 60 minutes of music!! 60 minutes of music is a lot of music, even if it's simple!! You will be collaborating with a director and possibly producers. There's more time involved in a film score than writing and recording the music so budget time for meetings, rewrites, phone calls, hand holding, etc. All of this should be taken in to consideration when answering that inevitable question: "how long will it take you to write the score?".

You could charge a flat fee per minute of finished music. At least that gets them to think harder about what scenes get music because they have to pay for every minute. Sometimes that's hard to do so if you can get a ballpark on their budget and how much music they want, you can see how much per minute you might want to make and see if it makes sense when you run the numbers.

My fee for the film I scored ended up being about 10% of the film budget at the time they hired me. I think they ended up spending way more on post but I'm not sure. Anyway, another way to do it is to find out the budget of the film and charge a percentage of the budget. I ended up composing around 60 minutes of music for the film and I think there was too much music in the film. They wanted me to spot it and I put music over a lot of scenes that would have been fine without it (hindsight is 20/20).. I would try to get a spotting session with the director, we never had one and I'm insisting on having one from here on out. Don't spot it yourself or you might give yourself more work than necessary!!

Profit participation is always an option. A smaller upfront fee in exchange for the backend might be a good deal, but most films don't end up making any money. They end up being a calling card for the director and may get some festival exposure but it's as competitive a business as the music business, if not more. So don't count on much if any backend. If you think this director has some potential, it may be worth it to do the project for less and treat it as a relationship building exercise.

If you think the music might be able to be edited in to library cues (sometimes film cues just don't work outside of a film, some do some don't), then I would insist on keeping the publishing and the copyright so you can make money from the music outside of the film. This may influence your fee as well. If they insist on owning the music (the publishing), then they need to kick down some bigger dollars, IMO.

For the film I scored, I knew they really wanted me because they loved my audition. I really wanted to do the film for the experience and I also knew it was going to be a big job. I knew what I could probably get and would do it for, so I told them "this amount of music and complexity is really a 15K job but I know that's out of your budget, what were you thinking?". This way I got them to play their card first and they came back with the figure I had in mind, and I said, OK!

These are just a few things to think about when taking on a film project. This assumes that you have the composing and dramatic chops to pull it off in the first place. Make sure you have the technological resources and know how to write, record and deliver the score on time and on budget. If not, hire a capable assistant.

Try to get as much information up front as you can before you quote a fee.

Here's a few film composing resources that have been very helpful to me:



Film and Television Composer's Resource Guide

Complete Guide to Film Scoring

The Reel World

Inside Film Music

From Score to Screen

Knowing the Score

The Emerging Film Composer

And last but not least, the best book on film scoring, IMO:

On The Track

Staying Inspired

Some of you who've read my posts on the TAXI forum know that I think that inspiration is over-rated as a creative strategy. At least inspiration as used to describe an artist waiting for the muse to whisper in her ear or waiting for "lighting" to strike.

But I think here I'm talking about a different kind of inspiration, the kind that is necessary to keep alive, even in the face of obstacles (or perceived obstacles) such as rejection, in order to get up every day and do the "work" of creation.

As a deadline driven person, it helps me stay inspired to have things such as TAXI listings or Harpo Library due dates. Also, my long term goal is to quit my day job and just being at my day job sometimes is enough to inspire me to keep my vision alive and to come home and write, even if I'm dog tired.

I'll stop here for now. This was just a little thought and hopefully it will motivate any readers out there to think about what keeps you inspired and pushing forward toward your goals.

One last thought: Enjoy the journey!

Mazz