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.

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.

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

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