Tips for success - Composer Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
One of the qualities that I have, that I'm glad I have, is the tenacity to get it right. Meaning that I will spend the time, the hours, to create music that fits. And if it doesn't work, I stay up. Many times I've written through the night and finally got the idea. Or I think there was one time, just popped in my mind, I went to dinner with my wife and a couple other couples and through the dinner conversation, I just kept thinking about this cue I was writing and how it didn't work and what could I do. And in the restaurant, I got the idea of how to fix it. And I went home after there and rewrote the cue a little bit. So tenacity is important.
Video 2 Transcript
Well, I think the main thing is be a sponge. Listen to everything the director wants you to do by his talking about the film and the dramatics and what he's trying to say. Be a sponge in looking at the film over and over and the specific scenes that you're going to write. Avoid putting your fingers on the keyboard, as it were, and start writing until you've sort of embraced the score, the scene. And I met a young composer once who wanted to tell me all the things he knew. And I couldn't get a word in edgewise. He just talked about how great he was. He'd never scored anything. He played me some music he'd written and it wasn't that good. He wasn't willing to learn from me or anyone else. He was just a little arrogant, terrible.
Video 3 Transcript
Okay, I'm going to give you my quickest tips for success. Number one, write what you want to say. If you just write something that fits with the meter and rhymes but it doesn't say what you want to say, don't put it out there. Write what you want to say first and then try to make it fit with the meter and the rhyme. You can almost always figure out how to do that given some time. Rhymes are incredibly important though, so try to rhyme. I love rhymes and I rhyme as much as I can. Another thing is don't try to say everything. I have that tendency all the time to try to put other things that I think about or other thoughts into a song, but the best songs are songs that just focus on one thing. So focus on one thing and try to write the best you can about that one thing.
Video 4 Transcript
One of the biggest tips for success that I could possibly give as a composer is to learn how to be a good translator when you're working with clients because sometimes people will say things or even use musical terms but they're thinking something different in their head. So look for clues, use your musical knowledge and your musical intuition to look beyond what they're saying to what they're actually meaning and your communication will go a lot smoother that way.
Video 5 Transcript
My main tip for composers is you need to compose music as a composer, but then you need to market and promote the music and think of your music from a business perspective. To make a living as a composer in today's society, in the past it was easier, but in today's society it can be challenging. But you need to think about how you can create products, how you can market and sell those products. You need to think of yourself, yes, as a composer, but then you need to think of yourself as a business. So create and compose like a composer would, but then market and promote like an ad agency or a marketer, and then start to work and function like a business. Think about how you can retain the copyrights, how you can create products, books, albums, whatever it may be. Become a business and act like one. It will help.
Video 6 Transcript
Tips for success. I think one of the most important things is to be very open-minded as you get into building a career as a composer or a musician in general. I mean there's a lot of different ways that one can be a composer and a lot of different media and sort of outlets and platforms that one can compose for and it's important to be open-minded to all of them. I think if you go through academia perhaps your teachers might sort of funnel you into one one path or another but you know the truth is the more open-minded you are to things like who you're writing for, what you're writing for, a genre that you're writing in, things like that you'll find that there are a lot of different ways to make a living as a composer and it's up to you to find what resonates with you the most and you should be true to whatever style resonates with you the most because at the end of the day it's very important to cultivate your own voice.
