All of this thinking led me to the realization that the best, most successful, composers have mastered the art of writing what the client wants and at the same time bringing something of themselves to the music.  This is a delicate balance and it’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that the craft is the art.  The craft is what supports the art, and some of the music will sometimes be a larger percentage of craft than art, depending on the circumstances, but there’s always something of the artist embedded in the music.

Basically a client can “smell” when something isn’t authentic, and I don’t mean authentic stylistically, but authentic in it’s intention and creation.  It’s easy to call up a synth patch and put on an arpeggiator, it’s infinitely more difficult to put one’s own stamp on that relatively simple material.

So what’s the secret to bringing one’s “voice” to the table in everything one writes?  I believe it’s beyond the music, and it’s the way a composer lives and thinks and considers their art and craft.  With art, I believe that a true artist is an artist in every moment of their life, whether it’s taking out the trash or talking on the phone or composing a 1 minute piece for a commercial or a 15 minute symphonic tone poem.  If the composer, no matter what style or gig they are engaged in, brings their entire self to the proceedings and doesn’t mentally or emotionally diminish the work depending on what they’re asked to do, then automatically the work will be infused with something more than just the surface elements of style, groove, etc.

There’s a lot of talk at times of “being in the moment”, and I think the act of practicing that “in the moment” consciousness is what makes the difference between a pedestrian, competent piece of commercial music, and something that moves the listener in some way.  The awakened composer will, even if they don’t realize it, be putting some extra special energy into the music that will make it stand out from the crowded lists of music on production music library websites.

Call me a utopian, or just plain nuts, but I believe that we can bring the sum total of ourselves to bear in every moment, if we’re only willing to let go of preconceptions and past conceptions.

Cheers!

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/2268920

Welcome to my new, updated, optimized website!! On Ariel Hyatt’s recommendation, I hired Nick from Skyrocket Websites http://skyrocketwebsites.com/ and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I’m going to make a few tweaks here and there and continue to update it. Please visit the music pages and have a listen.

Any comments welcome and add your website address so I can come and visit.

That’s my 15 second pitch. Does it give a good impression of who I am and what my music sounds like?

It’s tough to boil it all down to a simple, concise statement, but that’s what’s necessary these days.

Comments welcome and you can put yours up too if you want.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with goals my whole life, I’ve been a free flowing California slacker and an intense, driven entrepreneur and everything in between.  I’ve had goals and I’ve had lots of time when I had no direction or sense of direction at all.

The funny part about all of this is that everytime I’ve actually written down goals, I’ve achieved nearly all of them, even if I didn’t look at them for the entire year!!  I realize that there’s a magic in goals that is fairly well documented and known, even in circles that would poo poo The Law of Attraction and it’s Woo Woo brethren.

I’m not going to share all of my goals for 2010 here because I feel that sharing them with the wide world dilutes their effectiveness, although I do feel that sharing them with a small, supportive group helps give them power.  I don’t know everyone that will possibly read this blog so I want to be more general here and more specific with my close peeps.

Here’s a synopsis of my goals:

Lose some weight, write and place a few dozen pieces of music, organize my studio better ergonomically, make more money, set up a better time management program, make relationships with at least one “player” in the music business, do more collaborations.

There.  Not too specific but hopefully you get the idea.  I’ve also made dates by when I want to accomplish most of the goals and I’m still refining the ones that I can’t seem to figure out how to put an end date on.  Those will probably end up being tasks instead of goals because some are ongoing maintenance type things.

Have a fantastic 2010 and see you next week for the next chapter.

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.