Composing

I can't speak for outside the U.S. and it also depends on exactly what you are looking to learn. Your request spans two very broad area - audio engineering and write songs which overlaps with general composing. You also need to determine if you want to want to take formal courses for a degree or just take courses, or perhaps just read books or watch youtube video which teach various things. It will also depend on your budget.

Now last night I watched two films / biopics that showed the diversity of ways you can approach songwriting - first there was the biopic on Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys considered one of the top pop songwriters of the 20th century). My understanding was he was totally self taught. BTW - my understanding was that Irving Berlin, again one of the most well known songwriters of the 20th century could not read or write music. Then I watched "Rocket Man" about Sir Elton John who followed more of a 'traditional" path learning classical at the Royal Academy Of Music.

The basics of audio engineering is learning about the software tools (which often have user manuals and tutorials) and the design, constructions, and setup of studios. You can definately take a formal academic route, learn by reading and seeing, and/or intern in a studio and learn from others who are doing.

So as you can sort of discern here, books can be written just to answer your question. And there is no single tried and true solution. Alot of it has to do with the way you learn and your budgetary constraints and limitations.

I went into the composing business in 2003 by signing up for the same courses that students would take for a degree in music. I went through the standard 2 years of theory and ear training and then took instrument lessons and learn how to compose for orchestra by section. So while my original instrument was piano, I spent 3 semesters on violin to learn string quartets and then ditto for woodwinds learning clarinet. Sort of learning by living with the natives. Iearnt multipart harmonies by first transcribing music of the 30s and 40s for a big band (5 part trumpet, sax,, and trobone plus rhythm section). Then I took composing classes to create my own 'sound' which spans classical, film, and jazz. I still to this day take classes and write both film and live music (this was performed 4 days ago which I wrote the previous week - www.soundcloud.com/joelirwin/luna).

From an economic point of view I was blessed with a local 'community college' whose courses and faculty (Houston Community College) was on par with the four year colleges (though not as famous as other local schools like Rice University). What I liked was I didn't have to audition to get in, I didn't have to go for a degree, and initially my semester costs were between $1,000 and $1,500 (US$) - thousands less than full 4 year colleges. Now I am taking classes for FREE since the state of Texas allows me to take up to 7 credits of classes for free (as I am over 65).

I did for a while consider Berklee School Of Music (in Boston) which is a popular choice of those here in Stage32. But it can be expensive and it would be virtual as I do not live near Boston. Instead, I listened to a lot of different genres of music - both in and out of film - wrote both my own works and transcribed and arranged others, and studied both others scores (full orchestra scores), played jazz lead sheets of standards.

Hope this helps give you at least some perspective. Learn the rules and then you can decide what to keep and what to throw away. All the songwriters and composers - even the best ones 'borrow' without 'plagiarizing' - even Mozart, Beethoven and the Beatles! :) You need to decide what types of music are your passion and pleasure and how you want you music to sound - like others, unique, or perhaps you even what to forge a totally new genre - be happy with what you are doing, be your own best fan, don't be concerned about the competition other than to fully understand where you want to fit in the mix. Your a content creator - you will appeal to some and not to others.

Interesting to know. I hope you get some response.

I write demos to get inspired by the story and then when I get the film, I try to write to the film as much as possible. But personally I would much prefer to write away from the film so that you can get out of your own way and just create the score you feel is right for the project.

I have done both. Sometimes I watch the film once (or read the script) - to get the 'lay of the land'. That helps inspire me for the 'thematic material' and the 'longer' cues. Though (so far), I do not have the style of constantly repeating material throughout the cues - perhaps limiting that to one or more places. So when it comes down to the actual cues given the scenes, I first look and listen to the temp tracks to get a feel for what the director/filmmaker wants, then I go away and create some music without the film and see where it wants to take me. Then I come back to merge and synchronize the musical cue into the scene.

Occasionally, I write a 'suite' - for me a suite is a self-contained structured musical entity that can be merged with a film. It can have 'mood swings' to match the action of the film. I have done it for a few films including the two documentaries I scored and both of those documentaries won their competitions.

Last year was the first time I scored 'in the blind'. I knew the film was about autistic young adults leaving their homes in Austin, Texas. I knew the film maker wanted 'wall to wall' music and exactly how long the music needed to be. I went ahead and wrote the complete score before I ever saw the film. I am not a big fan of scoring a documentary that way - especially music always behind dialog. But that is what the filmmaker wanted and he and the producer loved the score - so it is to a certain extent about happy customers :) and it was one of the two winning documentaries. And yes - I a very happy with and love that score myself.

I would say it's highly contingent on how much time I have. If I don't have time to write a suite or demo then I don't have time. But if there is time, that is definitely the route I like to go. I've found that watching the film is enough inspiration to get me going. But if I am looking at a specific clip and I have a click track going in with zero ideas, i've found that I'm not nearly as creative. Whereas if I step away from the film after being inspired, write and develop a few malleable musical ideas, I can work them into multiple parts of the film with much more ease and they come off sounding more creative (instead of just writing in a box).

Do you have any questions for us composers or a request for some sort of feedback or do you want to share some part of your 'journey' either business or artistic. That is what we do here.

If you are looking to get work or promote something, this is not were you would get your visibility. Most of us are in the music biz like you. Try the 'your stage' lounge or look for work in the 'jobs' section.

Hi David, I'm looking for a composer for a 40minute short film. Let's have a chat. ;-) Cheers, Fivaz

Hey John Zachary I'll hit you up sometime today.

Hey how are you Whats been UP lately.

Looking forward to working with Balikoowa and Joseph for the full feature of The Sojouner, which is in now in the planning Stages. THANKS STAGE 32 This is a great platform to connect with others who love to Create.

Dorico Pro 2 and higher has Video now, so one can write music with the video clip.

Logic X also has (insert) Video, which works pretty good.

Think the features in Dorico's Video engine are pretty nice.

See the details in the Instructional video. It's over 11 mins, though

going right to the detail how to do things.

I've tried it; it does take a little getting use to. Julian is prob. use to it, since similar controls are probably there, as stated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzehGY6AsYM&t=30s

Hi julian what's up.

Really interesting way to look at things Alessandro Machi and I laughed out loud when you said you could go on and on BECAUSE you are on a keyboard, but I feel the same way about the written word vs. the typed word. It's certainly changing the way we write our thoughts comprehensively.

Same can be said for synthesizer VSTs or instrument samples - don't they dumb down live musicians?

Pretty funny. You are right. I actually have brought a great deal of brevity to my verbal interchanges because I know you eventually get to the point of the ellipsis and "expand comment" as above. Therefore, I try not be as loquacious anymore and consider my place in the twitterverse, realizing I am just a small speck in this enormous chasm of reality. So I try to keep it short. And when I do, I think of Martin Short, who used to live around the corner from where I live now...

Joel Irwin, your question is definitely out of my pay grade.

There's definitely more screen space on a computer, freeing your eyes to do better music / thinking, in my opinion. an Ipad might be better, though still the ideas with a keyboard and music notation, laptop or computer, and the right composition within one's head is probably much better to create music. Yes, I agree with you, Alessandro.

Hey Rachel Walker! :)

Hi Mara, what about some Indian Music in it ?

Hello Mara, did you find a composer to help you? If not, or your looking for a composer for another project, kindly visit my Youtube channel, you might like my music :) screenshot added.

Contact Allan Phillips - does some great stuff.

Hi Mara, I have a song I think you'd love. It's titled "Now It's Goodbye", contact me if you like.

I think it probably, or hopefully, gets to the point for most composers where it's just no longer possible to work for free. When you're starting out, it's probably important to say yes to almost anything for a bit, but once you start working and once you leave your day job to do it full time, there quickly becomes not enough hours in the day to be able to work for free. When I'm not working on a film, I have to continuously compose and produce music that I can then license out to TV or such to keep up my passive income, and when not doing that, I try to carve out some time for purely musically creative endeavors. It's a tough balance. Sometimes you get things that come your way that you just like and would like to contribute to, even without pay, but you just can't. One also has to be very careful of getting a reputation of being willing to work for free or on the cheap. One can quickly lose the respect of the community that way and then when the filmmakers do have a budget, they then move on to composers who fully charge.

It really has a lot to do with the 'community and the life situation that the crew member is in. As one looks outside the major communities such as LA and NY or even the smaller communities such as Atlanta and Austin (not to mention the communities outside the U.S.), the 'terrain' looks much different.

For example here in Houston (Texas), very few paid features come to town and when they do, very often the film uses local talent for production, but the post production rarely stays unless the producers and stakeholders are local. In the film composing world, Houston has no film specific sound stage that I am aware of - very few orchestras and ensembles --- most of the audio work is done in recording studios used for non-film projects as well.

As far as what is happening in the Houston composing world which may mimick other small(er) composing markets in the U.S. - those who work full time as composers do not earn their predominant money (imho) for film scoring. Two of the most prolific composers here in town (with credits in larger budget features), work in production (for location sound), do corporate and commercial work, teach at local universities, etc. Sure they earn in film music and I am obviously not familiar with every composer in a city as large as ours (4th largest in the U.S.), but based my years of attending local festivals, professional groups, and local networking events, the count of full time composers (earning all or most their money in films) in Houston is probably less than 10.

So most of the actors/actresses/crew here likely have day jobs. Some of those jobs could be connected to film work (actors/actresses work for talent and modelling agencies - some even are prince and princesses at kids parties ! :) - others like me are part of the wedding videography business. Point is, they do not rely on income from the film business as their primary source - I don't.

So then we can address the 'concept' that people who do film here do so only as a stepping stool to something bigger perhaps moving to a larger market. Perhaps - I am sure there are some. But I have also worked with crew and acting people here for over 10 years that are going nowhere - they are happy to live and work here in Houston. I am certainly not planning on going to LA or NY (and I am a native NY'er - born in Brooklyn :) ). Most of my family lives and works here and Texas is a great and inexpensive place to live (if you don't mind the 8 months of heat and humidity and the occasional hurricane).

With that in mind, we can now turn to the question of pay. Would it be nice to get a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for the most common film made here - a short? Yes, that would be nice but clearly with the budgets of a short, a few hundred would be nice but that could be a substantial part of the filmmaker's budget and a large majority (possibly larger) of the shorts made here (and even the out of town ones I have worked on) do not pay any of the crew (except perhaps the screenwriter). In addition, many of the shorts are made for competitive festivals such as the 48 hour film project (we just had 38 teams compete in that last month) or the 168 film festival in Burbank coming up in three weeks (I have two scored films showing) and these festival prohibit payment.

So many of the acting and crew people including myself are involved in our local communities because we have passion about our products and the filmmaking industry and we enjoy what we do and we would rather work at little to no cost than not work at all.

I can not provide myself accurate data, but my experience here has shown that most local filmmakers have never worked with professional composers and either don't use music at all, purchase packages of music online that they have to figure out how to break into parts and place into the film appropriately, or they work with bands or individual musicians most of whom are interested in fame and fortune in the country, rock or jazz genres.

So we can discuss the general issue of whether we believe that people who create music deserve to be paid for their intellectual creations - great idea in concept, but in reality in places like Houston - composers would not earn much money from their creations and could be more interested in participating in a vibrant and close knit community when they are not working their day jobs.

I have now scored 30+ shorts and have yet to get paid for any of them (other than informally through gift certificates and other small items and things of value). And I am OK with that. I do charge for features and any film over 30 minutes.

An equitable professional barter is always acceptable. I've scored projects in exchange for a director cutting my reel together, or setting up my website, or directing a music video for me. As long as I feel respected and valued as a professional, money isn't everything. That being said, I always accepted these jobs on the understanding that more would happen in the future with actual money attached.(9 times out of 10, that pays off, as well.)

I have a rate. Like many professions and people existing, I have bills to pay. However, I understand the low budget film predicament. I have worked on a number of projects for free. Some I've never wanted to see again, but others are some of my best work with my favorite collaborators (some who HAVE paid me real rates on previous projects, but for whatever reason may not have a budget for music for a personal project or non-profit type thing).

If you're able to pay someone to hold a boom or edit hours of footage, you should be able to budget in music, that's part of the process and the reason to create a budget. Talk to the composer first and see what their rates are and how you can fit that in. Negotiate, we're usually OK with that (or at least, used to it!).

I do music, because, that's what God gave me to do, along with a whole host of other blessings. upfront, backend or free it all works out the same for me. I have over 400+ songs written and am getting ready to update my BMI soon. my thought is, What good is the music if no-one hears it or uses it? It's not about me, it's about you and how the music sits in your film. is it right for the scene? if someone was to contact me and ask for a song and tells me I have very little money or no money, at all but will give me credit and a plug. 9 themes out of 10, I'd give them the song. AS LONG AS IT's LEGAL AND NOT IN POOR TASTE OR ANY PORN (I WILL NOT GIVE OR LEND MY MUSIC TO ANY PORN) I DON'T DO PORN. Everything is not about getting paid for me. I have a song you have a scene. I filled your need and you helped me out. That is how it's supposed to work.

Kenny

Many years ago I used to run RAID. But the odds of losing 'static' data such as samples is extremely low and I don't create many files a day which the software backs up on a regular basis. So the bottom line for me is that I am willing to take the risk of losing up to one day of dynamically changing data (my composing files).

Here is why:

1. My desktop and laptop have two bays each. I put the critical software (composing, video, etc.), my operating system, and all my samples on the C drive. Everything else goes on a D drive. Both are SSDs.

2. I have software called Allway Sync. I have routines I have defined for it to synchronize between my desktop and laptop. I sync at least once a day and sometimes a few times a day. So I can do anything on one that I can on the other EXACTLY (just a bit slower on the laptop). In fact, I composer on my laptop in coach on a plane (with a small midi keyboard which goes in front of the tray table). So when I get back to the studio - a single sync and everything is now usable on the desktop.

3. I also backup todays data to an SD card once a day - usually only a couple of files.

4. Every 4 to 6 months I do an image backup of both the C and D drives to a 3 TB external hard disk (which normally has room for two backups for each drive).

So for me, I see no benefit for RAID - I much rather have my laptop and desktop duplicate/sync each other exactly.

Here's a discussion on RAID systems and if they're worth it to composers: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/raid-0-no-benefit-on-my-end.77970

I don't use a RAID system myself. Between my use of VEPro on my main hub-PC and two satellite-PCs, and Digital Performer's V-Rack, my workflow is such that I can load in my film's template once and leave it up. So load-time isn't much of an issue with me. But if you're loading in sounds for every cue, I could see where a RAID system might save some time.

Hi Chris, great stuff! Thanks for sharing!