Stewart Copeland is a composer in Hollywood and Los Angeles who is scoring for film, television, and live concerts.

Stewart Copeland – Successful composers don’t procrastinate

jborum March 7, 2016

Stewart Copeland – Successful composers don’t procrastinate

I am someone who is mystified by procrastination. I don’t even understand how that works. The process of procrastination seems like something so against human nature. To be able to watch TV, or stare out the window, or do anything other than address the mission is incomprehensible to me. I get home from a spotting session and I have the thing half written. I can’t eat, breathe, drink, do anything until I’m on it, and that’s where the obsession hits.

— Stewart Copeland

2016-03-07T21:12:12-08:00

— Stewart Copeland

https://www.guerrillafilmscoring.com/testimonials/stewart-copeland-successful-composers-dont-procrastinate/

Charles Bernstein – Composers can’t always choose their style

Purely on the compositional level our voice is about our personal taste, but unfortunately it’s not always up to us. We have to be really good composers, but we’re not just pleasing ourselves. I sometimes think about the difference between our voice and the voice of the movie. Sometimes we can let our voice come through, but other times we really want to submerge our voice in the message of the movie. When we're writing music we can be a personality, or a chameleon, or somewhere in between. Sometimes a movie allows us to be the self that we’re longing to be and gives us a chance to use the voice that we most enjoy using. Other times we’re completely at the mercy of a style that we just have to do.

— Charles Bernstein

Charles Bernstein – Wild variation in film scoring scenarios

There is an unbelievably large variety of scenarios in which films are scored. John Williams, the most wonderful composer among us, he stands on a box with a stick and has the entire orchestra in the room at the same time. That’s ideal. That’s wonderful. That’s gold. On the other side you have situations where there’s no orchestra, no live players, and you do the score all by yourself. Then you have something in the middle, which is where most scores are written these days. No matter what obstacles or opportunities you're faced with, know that you're not alone and it's totally normal. There is no normal.

— Charles Bernstein

Miriam Cutler – You have to pay your music team well

A lot of what I record I do overdubbing one player at a time in my studio, but it takes a lot more time that way. I’ve always been willing to invest myself into the process, and that’s the only corner I can really cut. I would never cheap out on the musicians. I have to pay my music prep people fairly. I have a really good mixing engineer that I work with. The only place I can really cut corners is myself, so I invest the time and I hope that I’m making an investment in something worthwhile.

— Miriam Cutler

Yoav Goren – Composing trailer music is intense

In the trailer world, in the initial part of a job you usually need something written and produced in 2 days, maybe 3 days. That's generally the average. You work really hard, you pull an all-nighter, and you pull your team together to get the result you want to get. Then you hurry up and wait while they think about it. That is usually the course of action, so you always have to be ready for intense periods of work.

— Yoav Goren

Stewart Copeland – Successful composers don’t procrastinate

— Stewart Copeland

Nathan Furst – How to compose most efficiently

For schedules that are super tight, perhaps 2 or 3 weeks, my schedule is completely governed by the cue sheet. I’ll try to take cues that have a similar vibe, maybe a love theme or an action theme, and group them together. When I do that it helps me move a little faster because I’m already in that mindset. I’ll write all those cues at once and that becomes my schedule. On a longer schedule it becomes more of a complicated nuance.

— Nathan Furst

Austin Wintory – Don’t write a score you can’t deliver well

A good score needs to sound like there is no more expensive version of that music that could exist. You don't want to look back on it later and have a thought like "If we'd only had a little bit more money..." I don't want to punish directors because they can't afford a live orchestra, and in most circumstances I would be if I used samples. A good score does something brilliant with the resources at hand.

— Austin Wintory

Miriam Cutler – Teams are built by word of mouth

Each person’s individual style will dictate how they build their team, but the best team building happens by word of mouth. When I'm looking for people I always go through other people I know, often other composers. We composers talk to each other and we share a lot of musicians. You need to be part of the community, I highly recommend that. That’s what’s so great about the Society of Composers and Lyricists. It creates a space where composers can meet other people at all phases of their career and interact, giving you access to a wealth of resources. It’s very important.

— Miriam Cutler

Nathan Furst – I’m skeptical of universities

I don’t see the long term value in the formal education system. It costs a lot of money, and that puts you deeply in the red when you enter the real world. I’m also incredibly skeptical about a university's capability of keeping their finger on the pulse of how things are done in the real world. The technology and the music evolve too quickly. I don't think university education is a good option for composers. Education, certainly, but it doesn't have to be formal. I’m not the personality type to sit through an education. I’d rather crash and burn a dozen times than learn something formally.

— Nathan Furst

Laura Karpman – Lessons from an insane schedule

The first time I did a large string group in my living room it wasn't because I couldn't afford a studio, it was that I literally didn't have the time to prepare and move my sessions from my studio to another one. I decided do to it in my living room because it would still sound better than it would have without live players. Much to my surprise it sounded great, ergo a new discovery that my living room is a fabulous string room. Necessity is the mother of invention.

— Laura Karpman

Charles Bernstein – I use music copyists selectively

Since I’m almost always working with a few instruments at a time I can usually do my own score prep. On those occasions where I have to go into Capitol or go into a studio and conduct, even if I have only a small orchestra, the music prep is a problem. I can’t do prep on that level. I can do it on the level which I mostly work, but whenever I have larger sessions I farm out the music copyist work.

— Charles Bernstein

Stewart Copeland – Only your ideas matter today

Film music budgets have come down, which is a tragedy, but the technology has gone up, which is a great leveler. There was once a time when the equipment to make a film score was very expensive. The fact that you can now do the same thing and more, much more, on a laptop is a great leveler, which means that that kid with the cool ideas has the same wherewithal to do a score as somebody with all that gear.

— Stewart Copeland

Nathan Furst – Fear can cure writer’s block

Sometimes you get a phone call and suddenly you only have three weeks to write a score. In that situation you don’t have time to have writer’s block, and fear is incredibly helpful. It’s one of the best motivators you can have.

If I ever do have writer's block, what I do to push through it is I just keep writing bad music. Terrible, horrible music. Just keep writing it. The worst stuff, the stuff that makes you want to quit the business by early afternoon. Just keep doing that. The uninspired writing is always a very useful process, because along the way you’ll learn some things. It's all helpful, and eventually you’ll have the opportunity to throw it out.

— Nathan Furst

Charles Bernstein – I never delegate anything

The way I delegate is very simple. I have never had anybody in my studio, never throughout my entire career (except for musicians, of course). I don’t like people around. To me it’s all about the first thing, which is the creative thing. So much of the composition happens in different phases of the work that I’m not comfortable delegating. Everybody I know has a better a life in that regard than I do. I like the idea of having helpers, but I can’t seem to let go well enough.

— Charles Bernstein

Nathan Furst – Baptism by fire is the best way

The composer has to do everything, and that’s not going away. The only thing that will adapt is how a composer accomplishes those things, and that's changing constantly. I believe that baptism by fire is the best way to go in this industry, whether that means that you just try to make it on your own or whether that means you become an apprentice or an assistant to a bigger name composer who knows the ropes. You’ll learn more in 2 months doing that then you will attending 4 years at a university. They can’t keep up with how things are actually happening.

— Nathan Furst

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Help your musicians to be prepared

We have to help our live musicians prepare as much as possible. I’m a big believer in giving players their music early whenever possible. They may look at their music in advance. They may not look at it. They may not need to look at it. But I would like them to have it so they can spend time with it if they choose to do so.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

Bill Brown – Good templates create productivity

To be productive you need to have your tools ready. I have all of the latest sample libraries, create my own custom samples, and record, mix and prepare custom ambiences and loops for each project, regardless of the budget. I also keep the full orchestra with all its articulations up and running on a separate system, connected to the main sequencing system via Ethernet, so any ideas that come to mind can be implemented quickly and efficiently. I’m always updating that orchestra system and my template.

— Bill Brown

Miriam Cutler – Frustrated by programming MIDI

I’m very frustrated by programming MIDI. If I’m going to spend that much time on something, I want it to be real music from a real instrument. It’s much easier to have somebody play something than to get a MIDI thing to sound right. I try to avoid spending too much time programming because I think it’s just a big waste of time.

— Miriam Cutler

Stewart Copeland – Music budget is never a creative restriction

The budget has never been a restricting factor for me. A lot of times a constriction, an obstacle, is a key to a great revelation. If I have a shot that doesn’t work I need to do something. If I’m in G and I need to P minor, how am I going to do that? If you can’t hire an orchestra, what can you do that’s going to be sonorous and sinuous and does what an orchestra does? You solve that problem, and the solution to that problem is going to be revolutionary and really cool. You scratch your head and you come up with something, and that’s called inspiration. So whatever the limitation is, limitations are often a good thing and increase creativity.

— Stewart Copeland

Ryan Shore – Don’t take shortcuts with MIDI

Composers can't take shortcuts with MIDI. If it’s not possible to record with live musicians, the production quality and emotional effectiveness will come from spending lots of time programming the MIDI to make the music sound as real as possible. It's very important that you put as much humanity as possible into all of your synth elements.

— Ryan Shore

Jack Wall – I will only take a job if

I will only take a job if I know I can deliver on time and on budget and high quality. The work will expand or contract to fill the time allotted, and sometimes a schedule is really short. When that happens I'll bring assistants in and get as much help as I need to get the job done. When it comes down to it you have a limited amount of time and there's no choice but to get the job done.

— Jack Wall

Charles Bernstein – Curing writer’s block is about fertility

I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think it’s a misnomer. Nothing is blocked when you have what people call writer’s block. Block implies an impediment that stops your forward progress. I always call it a lack of being pregnant. It’s as if you're not pregnant and you’re thinking `I’ve got to give birth…' The problem happened before that moment! You have to be impregnated. You have to be inspired. There’s something that precedes the moment of creativity that if you don’t do that, then the moment of creativity won’t follow. It’s a natural process. Curing writer's block is about fertility. It's about feeding your creativity so that when birth is required you have gestation preceding it.

— Charles Bernstein

Bruce Broughton – Composer fees massively slashed

From 1967 through 1977 I worked for CBS Television Music Operations. After that time, I was freelancing as a television composer so I'm well acquainted with the fees, which were stable during that period. CBS paid composers $2,000 for their services on a one hour television show. This was a fee; not a package deal. Other studios, like Universal, paid as much as $2,500 for an hour show. Some smaller independent producers paid $1,800. The deal was essentially similar everywhere.

Adjusting for inflation and using two different inflation guides on the web, $2,000 in 1970 is worth approximately $12,055.52 in today's dollars. Unfortunately composers are still often paid about the same DOLLAR amount as in the late '60's, $1,500-$2,000 per episode. To make it worse, that is no longer a fee: it's a package deal from which the composer must fund the production.

— Bruce Broughton

Nathan Furst – I don’t hire my favorite people because

I always try to be budget conscious in the reverse. I don’t want to have to ask people to do me a favor. I always want to pay something that, if it's not great, it at least shows that I respect that person and that I’m making an effort to say `You’re of value to me.' If I can’t do that financially then I try to do everything myself. I start by thinking about everybody I want to bring onto a project, but then I look a the budget. Can I afford a music editor? Can I afford a mixer? And then I take everybody that I’d love to have on my team and I start red inking names.

— Nathan Furst

Yoav Goren – You don’t know much

The number one thing I would say to composers is to continue honing your craft. You don't know much. I don't know anything about composing. I'm always learning, and in order to do that you have to do it regularly, all the time.

— Yoav Goren

Miriam Cutler – How to be a prolific composer

You have to be an endless fountain of ideas, and the best way to be an endless fountain of ideas is to learn to let go of things very quickly. You can’t be attached. You have to believe you’re going to have more ideas. If you think a rejected piece of music is great, then put it aside and use it for something else. Throw it in a bin and let go of it.

— Miriam Cutler

Yoav Goren – I can’t do everything alone

I'm very busy composing and producing for Immediate Music, and I can't do everything. We have a person in our company that is the marketing director, and she does all of the liaising with the clients. It's not that I don't like to talk to my clients, but it's just another thing that takes me away from what I'm trying to get to, which is the music.

— Yoav Goren

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Value of Guerrilla Film Scoring

When you're starting out you truly have to do everything alone, but that's not always a bad thing. Quite the opposite, it can be invaluable. Working as a guerrilla composer gives you skills you didn’t possess before and insight on how to be more effective when managing team members later on.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

Bill Brown – Different ways to notate music for sessions

Sheet music requirements depend on the genre and context, so you have to make sure your music is written appropriately for the session you're doing. If it’s an orchestral recording date, every nuance is on paper. If it’s just myself with a musician or two in the studio, we have more space to improvise and invent as we go. Recording sessions are always the most expensive part of the process, so it's very important that whatever is written down is perfectly clear and perfectly appropriate for the context.

— Bill Brown

Miriam Cutler – Hollywood is brutal

Mainstream Hollywood isn't for everybody. From what I hear from my colleagues who do more mainstream work on tight deadlines, it's brutal. I know that I couldn’t live in such a harsh reality. I just couldn’t. It would kill me. I would just shrivel up.

— Miriam Cutler

Stewart Copeland – Composers have the largest skill set

There is no other musician in the world of music that has more of a skill set than the film composer. He has to write music for every instrument, every genre, every time period, every cultural environment. Wild western, space fiction, period drama, ethnic adventure, the film composer has to go into all types of music that a pure artist would never go into. The film composer has to address a director’s very specific emotional message and to be able to create that, exactly that. A film composer needs a lot of skills.

— Stewart Copeland

Garry Schyman – The usefulness of music stems

In video games sometimes they hire you for 60 or 100 minutes of music, but they need 300 minutes of music and they don’t have enough money to have it all written originally. It's very common to deliver things in lots of different stems so that they can take your music and make different cues out of it. When I worked for Sony I delivered every stem I created separately. Sometimes it’s dozens and maybe as much as 30, 40, 50 stems. Sometimes just one or three stems of a very complex cue can create a very interesting, sparse, bit of music. If they're very familiar with the material and they get really into the weeds with it they can generate a lot of different, interesting cues.

— Garry Schyman

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – Musicians study longer than doctors

How much did you pay for your education? How many years did you spend practicing your instrument? It’s a lifetime of study. I joke with my friends who are doctors and lawyers that I have a much, much deeper education than any of them. How long was med school? I started seriously studying music when I was 7 or 8 and I'm still at it.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Miriam Cutler – Oingo Boingo inspired me to study music

For any education to be successful, the student needs to be motivated. I always played in bands. I come from a musical family but no one ever took music seriously to be a profession. It was never even a possibility. I only got really serious about studying music when I was in the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. I was in a band with really great players, and I realized I needed to supplement my experience with knowledge. That's when I went back to school.

— Miriam Cutler

Laura Karpman – I have a musical morality

I often record live for demos to make them sound as realistic as possible, because nothing is ever wasted. You'll use it somewhere, sometime, someplace. Recording audio locks things in a little bit. If I have to make a change, I either abandon it or I'll use it somewhere else. If I make less money, that's life. I have a musical morality and I won't avoid live performances.

— Laura Karpman

Garry Schyman – The key to efficiency in the studio

The key to efficiency in the studio is prep, prep, prep. A recording session is like a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link. You have to write good music, your Pro Tools sessions have to be ready, the sheet music has to be properly spaced and properly prepared, the engineer has to have things under control, and then of course you need great players. All of those elements need to be present for every session. It's impossible to over-prepare for a recording session.

— Garry Schyman

Miriam Cutler – My most consistent budget problem

When trying to contain a budget, I’d say my biggest problem is always music prep. It's expensive to get really good music prep with experienced people, but it's worth it. That has always been the part of my process that’s the most difficult to control, because it’s hard to pull it off if you have 67 minutes of music and only a week or two to get it together. It’s really difficult to get all the information you need onto the page perfectly.

— Miriam Cutler

Charles Bernstein – All good composers have a team

I’m used to doing it all myself. Writing, recording, conceptualizing, demoing, it feels like it’s all part of the same thing and I find it really hard to delegate, but I admit that it's the wrong way to do it. The proper way to work is to have a team. All good composers have a team, from John Williams on down. A good team is critical. As I hear myself talking, I’m talking myself out of the way I’ve been doing business.

— Charles Bernstein

Yoav Goren – Unlimited potential of music

In the music industry today there are no limitations except the limitations you impose on yourself. You can find all the help you need, you can build a team around you, you can bring on freelance composers, and you can hire an orchestra in Budapest to do a remote session overnight. We're in LA so we're privy to some of the world's best session musicians. Nothing is impossible these days and anything can be had. On a custom composing job it's really important to go all out. If you have the budget to do it, I would always recommend to spend as much out of that budget as you can to make it as good as it can be. Don't cut corners on that, because that leads to other work.

— Yoav Goren

Laura Karpman – Get as much education as you can

Why do formal and informal education have to be in opposition? Get as much education as you can. I have a doctorate from Juilliard, and that education I use every second of every day. I have also taught at several universities. As educators we want to think the tuition is fair. I have been inside of that system, and I know that they really care about that deeply. The fees are not charged lightly. They care about what the value is, what the students are getting, what the curriculum is, and justifying that huge expense. Do graduates keep learning from working? Of course. Does that go 100 times beyond what I or anybody else could have taught them? Absolutely. That's just the way it is.

— Laura Karpman

Charles Bernstein – Don’t worry about the composing process

I never worry when I start out about being efficient or getting the music exactly right. The point where everybody’s pleased and everything works out is an end point, not a beginning for me. In the beginning, just write music. Just do your best. Just get the wheels turning and start moving.

— Charles Bernstein

Bill Brown – What makes music great

Q: Do you have a big gear collection or a few quality go-to pieces? — A: I have some high quality gear, but the greatest music is usually about the theme or the concept, not about the rack of compressors it went through. Experimenting with new instruments can be really inspiring though. For one of the films I worked on this year I purchased a 109 year old upright piano to sample and record for the film and the director was thrilled with the results! The same can be said for using unusual analog gear or stringed instruments to create unexpected sounds.

— Bill Brown

Ron Mendelsohn – How composers maximize efficiency

I think there are questions that each composer needs to answer for themselves. What do they do best and what is best to delegate to somebody else? What is going to maximize their efficiency? I quickly realized that it was not efficient for me to try to do everything, to sketch, orchestrate, find all the sounds, do all the overdubbing, and do the mixing, because that was a very inefficient way for me to work. Every composer needs to build their team and customize their workflow in a way that is uniquely tailored to themselves.

— Ron Mendelsohn

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – Composers must also be players

If you’re a flutist you should put your flute on every cue. Learn how to record yourself playing the flute and do it a lot. Mark Isham is a perfect example, because he’s a damn good trumpet player and he puts trumpet on everything. I’d like to see more composers do that. Especially when you’re younger and you don’t have the budget to hire players, it’s a necessity. You can always edit. The difference between myself and a virtuoso guitarist is only about 2 hours of editing.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Ryan Shore – Music education creates a foundation

I believe one can benefit even more from their practical experience if they already have a solid musical foundation to build upon, so I would I highly recommend starting with formal education first, if possible. Ultimately however, success and growth will come from what is learned and applied. If a formal education isn’t possible, that shouldn’t preclude one from pursuing their goals and learning from practical experiences.

— Ryan Shore

Stewart Copeland – You don’t need big money to score film

Production value is the sum of what you can afford and what your imagination can create. If you're creative, you can create a very fat rich sound on crap equipment. It’s very handy to have a 90 piece orchestra in a big studio, but if that’s not in your budget you’ve got to do something else. Looking for production value can be getting one great player and one great microphone. That should be within the budget.

— Stewart Copeland

John Rodd – Top 3 priorities for mix rooms

When setting up your studio the room dimensions are critical, and there are three things that are equally a top priority. Fire the speakers the long way down the room, put as many good non-foam bass traps as possible in the corners, and avoid listening from the middle of the room. The mixing position should be 1/3 of the way in and the client should be 2/3 of the way in.

— John Rodd

Charles Bernstein – I don’t get too lost in MIDI programming

I make a concerted effort to focus on the music and not on MIDI programming. In the MIDI world there are a lot of shortcuts for programming and editing, so I don’t get lost down the MIDI programming rabbit hole often. It's usually easy to get good results quickly. In certain instruments the character of the sound changes substantially with little micro changes in the MIDI, and that will bring me down a rabbit hole right away. Sometimes there's no way around it because you have to get it right.

— Charles Bernstein

Stewart Copeland – Your degree won’t get you a gig

A director who is considering hiring you as a composer is not going to evaluate you based on your education. He’s going to listen to the music. A demo reel. A show reel. That’s it. I can say I was a member of The Police and that might move my music to the top of the pile so they’ll listen to it first. But they don’t give a rat’s ass what your credentials are, they’re listening to the music. If it rings for them, you’re in. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what your credentials are.

— Stewart Copeland

Stewart Copeland – The basis of high production value

Production value will come from having a good base, and having a good base is setting it up right. I suggest to people that they just slap some music on every scene. Decide where music starts, add a rhythm, something, anything, and move on. Without much thought, work your way down the movie from beginning to end and then go back to the top. Add more detail informed by what you did in other sections, and keep going back around in a circular workflow. This business of whizzing through it sounds like just a dodge, but in fact you’re giving yourself a much better foundation because when you address 1m7, the scene where he meets the girl for the first time, you now know where everything’s going to end up. You’ll address that scene informed by the whole movie rather than just looking at that scene. The basis of what’s going to be your production value is much more solidly founded.

— Stewart Copeland

John Rodd – Composers must be good engineers

A composer who is producing their score needs to constantly make creative decisions that will shape the music. They have to find a way to deliver a good sounding end result regardless of their budget and schedule. The more a composer knows about music mixing, the better they can produce a superior end product. That's true if they are doing the mixing or if they are hiring a professional music mixing engineer, because the composer has to give revisions and overall sonic guidance to the engineer for the end result.

— John Rodd

Nathan Furst – Trust your gut when writing music

If you learn about yourself as a composer long enough, you’ll be very self aware in my opinion. You’ll know where you tend to lean and your personal taste is what you can rely on. If you don’t have any good ideas, then you rely on who you are as a composer and what you always like to do. When you start doing that thing I can almost promise you that you’ll find your way.

— Nathan Furst

Miriam Cutler – Composition absorbs your entire life

You have to think about your life and what kind of life you want. This absorbs your entire life. I have years that I never really left this room, and people just stopped inviting me to things, and it wreaks havoc on relationships, and families. You better love it or you’re going to wake up when you’re 50 or 60 and go "What did I do with my life?"

— Miriam Cutler

John Rodd – The importance of bass traps

Bass traps in the listening environment are of key importance. Many rooms that have been put to use as a listening environment will have significant issues, especially in the bottom end, and bass traps in the corners of the room will generally help the acoustics.

— John Rodd

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – I must write every note

I will never let go of composition. It was really hard for me to let go of orchestration. I’m still mixing everything myself. I still use engineers on projects during recording because I never want to mic an orchestra myself, and when I’m in a recording studio I also don’t want to push the buttons. I want to be focused on the performance and not worry about which tracks are armed. Sure, I engineer for smaller projects, but if it’s not small I don’t do it.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Charles Bernstein – Physical and mental balance is critical

I don’t recommend all-nighters. I don’t recommend stressing or pushing yourself to the point of physical or emotional harm. I see a lot of that and I’ve done a lot of that to myself. It’s always counter-productive. I think good work habits mean you get a full night of sleep, and you eat well, and that you don’t spend every waking hour working. You can't. Even if it’s just small breaks, those are important.

— Charles Bernstein

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – Don’t buy gear, rent it

When it comes to composers doing their own recording, I recommend getting enough of a budget to rent high-end gear. You don’t necessarily have to buy it. Owning and operating expensive gear is a different business from composing. Let the people who have invested in that make their money back, and just rent it for a week.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Jack Wall – My team improves my art

We often work by ourselves. I find that the more I open up my circle the more fulfilling it is, the more fun it is, the more I can do, the more I can create, and the more interesting the results are. It becomes effortless, actually. It becomes easier to do more, and I love that. When you bring more people into the mix suddenly one plus one is larger than two. When you see what your part is in that it becomes really satisfying and fun.

— Jack Wall

Jack Wall – The magic of improv composition

Especially if I’m doing television, I have to move quickly and I’ll just start playing. I do free improvisation. I play what I feel. I just let it happen. You can tap into something that’s not even you. You’re swimming around in a pool of creative juice, and it's pretty magical.

— Jack Wall

Ryan Shore – Music is very subjective

When I'm working with a director I encourage them to direct me in the way that they might direct an actor. Music is very subjective, and everyone hears it differently. Particularly, the way that non-musicians hear music is very different from the way musicians hears it. It can be very difficult to talk about. I usually try to keep conversations not really about music and instrumentation but about emotion, because I feel like that is a language that we can all talk about.

— Ryan Shore

Stewart Copeland – You can survive on talent and skill

People with orchestral chops to write for orchestra, the John Williams of the world, will never be threatened because there are certain types of movies that will only use that kind of music. But this is about guerrilla composing. Setting orchestral scores aside, the industry is actually a great place at the moment because you can survive on the basis of your talents and your skills, not on the basis of the head start that you have.

— Stewart Copeland

John Rodd – The best recording technique is creativity

Ideas are always the most important thing. In my experience as an engineer, great sounding pre-records (be they synth, virtual, samples, or something that the composer has actually recorded themselves) tend to be born from a creative approach rather than a conventional one. If the composer takes the time to create and program unique, ear catching and suitable prerecords, the final music mix of that cue will turn out better. I always recommend that composers not ‘bake in’ reverb into their prerecorded audio tracks, as this can create sonic problems later.

— John Rodd

Peter Golub – One insurmountable scoring limitation

Most limitations a composer faces can be worked around with creativity, but there's one insurmountable limitation. When a low budget film has a need for size it can be a problem, because MIDI can't replicate the combined efforts of an orchestra very well. You can find ways to go in another direction, but that’s certainly a constraint. Not every movie wants size, but when the film is a large canvas it’s a major challenge to score with limited means.

— Peter Golub

Nathan Furst – I meditate before recording sessions

When I'm preparing for a session, I actually try to meditate a little bit to release my stress. When somebody comes in, they’re only here for a few hours and they don’t necessarily know me or the project. I don't want to bring my problems to the table or create a stressful environment. I want it to be a very comfortable atmosphere so that all they’re thinking is "Wow, it’s really nice to just sit here and play." You can’t necessarily do that with money any more, and even if you can it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the best performance. You get the best performance when you cultivate them as people and engage them.

— Nathan Furst

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Composers need a battle plan

Composers have to be able to assess things properly when going into a project, because you don’t want to end up with your own personal horror story. You have to lay it all out in front of you, see what’s coming in, and decide what you'll be able to put out in return. You need to have a solid battle plan so everyone you are directly working with benefits, whether it's the post house or the director. In other words, you want to limit your horror story exposure.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

Ryan Shore – Composers shouldn’t be over-zealous

When scoring I try not to overreach or attempt something musically which we can’t afford to produce, because that sets all of us up for failure. If a music budget can only afford a limited number of live musicians, then I always start by trying to find a musical approach that can be achieved with the musicians we have. In an ideal scenario, I want that approach to be so right for the film that if we had ten million dollars to produce the music we still would have done it with that limited number of musicians. That's when you know you found the right approach.

— Ryan Shore

Miriam Cutler – Composers need community

I think it’s part of each person’s individual style that dictates how they build their team. It’s very important to have a community of composer friends and other music people. They're not necessarily your competition - you need their support too. The industry tends to foster a fluid community of people who have different skills and are available to each other. You pull people in for one project and then you let them go when it’s done, and you hope that they’re available the next time that you need them.

— Miriam Cutler

Bill Brown – Do-it-yourself composer is the new normal

We are seeing mostly package deals with diminishing resources for live players, mixing, and music editing. Many composers including myself have used our entire composer’s fee to hire live players in order to produce the sound the film deserves. We hope for residuals or back-end, but many times it never happens. The landscape is changing towards exactly what this book is about, the ‘do-it-yourself’ composer.

— Bill Brown

Nathan Furst – Short term balance is impossible

I think to create a consistent balance is extremely difficult. We try to do that, but to a certain extent, we don’t get to dictate our own schedules. Missing your deadline is not an option but putting your loved ones on hold, unfortunately, is a possibility. You need to do that sometimes, and then you spend time to refill the well between deadlines. From a life standpoint you hope that you clock in even time, but month to month it’s not going to look balanced.

— Nathan Furst

Jack Wall – My maximum efficiency composing schedule

When I'm writing I like to do what I call 90 minute composing modules. I’ll come in for 90 minutes straight, I won’t answer any phones or emails, and I just write for 90 minutes. I set a timer. Then I take 15 minute break and I come back to do another one. I’ll do 4 or 5 of those a day. If I have to do a minute and a half by lunch then I'll do that minute and a half and at 12:00 I’m printing. It doesn’t matter if it’s done or not. Those are the things I do to make sure I’m on time. It’s 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, you just have to sit down and do the work. I find that if I have a lot to do, that’s the quickest way for me to get it done.

— Jack Wall

Miriam Cutler – Demos for directors can be scary

It’s always scary the first time you show a mockup. You don’t know what they’re going to react to, and whether they’re going to hear past the MIDI. I give them my disclaimers and I say these are the ideas, these are the concepts. We can discuss the sounds, but understand this is about the composition and the tone and the music and how it plays for that scene. Don’t worry about it being beautiful. When musicians play it, it will be beautiful.

— Miriam Cutler

Nathan Furst – Notating music for different contexts

Music notation changes with context and intention. Obviously, with an orchestra you can’t leave anything up to chance. It’s all has to be there. When individual people come in then it varies, but if there’s a melody line or they’re supposed to fit in with the score in a very precise way I write it all out. With orchestral instruments, even solo, I write out every single note and articulation and give it to the player instead of putting them on the spot. When you have great players you often want to leave a little bit of room, because they might do something really interesting and you want to be able to capture that. Especially with world instruments, guitars, or other instruments where improvisation is indigenous, it’s good to have the idea written down, but not so precisely that you contain them.

— Nathan Furst

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – Get involved with the composer community

One of the things I would say to the younger composers is that you really need to get involved with the composer community. It’s the best supplement I know to formal education.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Jack Wall – My super-efficient composing template

My writing template is a little complex, but it helps me prep for recording sessions in as little time as possible. The bottom line is that I mix my demos into into Pro Tools, and my template is built so that I can simply take that session to a scoring stage. It has my stems, my tempo map, and the click track printed. I don't need to spend any time prepping Pro Tools sessions before recording, I just take a drive with me and we’re done. My session prep is finished by the time I mix the first demo.

I use Cubase as my primary DAW for writing and MIDI sequencing. My MIDI goes out to Vienna Ensemble Pro servers and audio comes back into Cuebase. Inside Cuebase I mix the audio down a little bit and then route it to outputs which feed into a Pro Tools system. In Pro Tools I have my mix template. Everything that comes into Pro Tools gets routed first to stems and then to a final mix. The final mix has all the reverb on it. The stems are all split out including what I call reverb sends, but those audio tracks don't have actual reverb. If I'm mixing on a stage those tracks can be sent to reverb and it will sound pretty much like I want it to.

I'm also usually mixing while I'm writing. By the time I'm done writing I just need to print it, and the end result is a fully prepped Pro Tools session.

— Jack Wall

Austin Wintory – Production value doesn’t mean clinically perfect

In the early 2000s music was by and large very meticulously produced, as evidenced by hip hop, trance, house music, and film composers of the time. It was heavily edited, tightly controlled, and totally flawless. Now we've swung the other way, and widely popular bands like the Black Keys and many other indie rock groups keep the chair squeaks, the page turns and other little flaws. People suddenly have a new found appreciation for recordings that are produced in a way that's less sterile. The umbrella of acceptable production decisions has gotten a lot wider, and the benefit is that your production decisions can be more a part of your aesthetic expression.

— Austin Wintory

Ryan Shore – I write while others make the demos

When projects are busy I bring synthestrators onboard my team (people who orchestrate and perform the music on their rigs with samples) so that I can spend more time composing.

— Ryan Shore

Ryan Shore – Obsession is helpful to young composers

When I was began my career, I had very little balance between work and life. I worked and thought about work 24 hours a day. Perhaps that was necessary in the beginning. Due to there being so many people who want to work in this industry, I think in the beginning of a career it may actually be valuable to have a bit of an unhealthy balance, so that you can establish yourself and learn as much as possible.

— Ryan Shore

Miriam Cutler – The top priority at scoring sessions

When at a film scoring recording session, part of my job as a music producer is to keep things completely focused on the task at hand. We need to actualize the music so that it works perfectly with the picture. The filmmaker and I have worked for months together to make it perfect. The recording can't go off track from that, and it has to be an actualization of our particular creation. There are an infinite number of decisions so you have to be assertive, let go of things, and move on as soon as you hit your goal.

— Miriam Cutler

Stewart Copeland – Scoring film is craft, not art

If you understand that film composing is a craft, not pure art, you’ll be more effective as a composer. Even though it’s only craft the film composer can hold his head up high, because the film composer has a wider skill set than any other kind of musician. More than a rock band musician, a songwriter, a symphonic composer, you name it.

— Stewart Copeland

Laura Karpman – Always record live musicians

I have never submitted a score in my life that doesn't have something live recorded on it. If there's air running through a mic it sounds better. Period. When I write I'm not fantasizing that I have a 100 piece orchestra and writing a cheap MIDI score, because no matter how good it gets you can always tell. I ask myself what's right for the project and how I can make it sound good. Always.

— Laura Karpman

Stewart Copeland – Don’t go to college just for film scoring

The skills to score a film can be arrived at very quickly. You just have to be good with computers and you have to do a lot of it, and you’ll pick it up really quickly. I don’t think you need to go to college just for that. What you need to go to college for, the next level, is where it gets really interesting, which is what you aspire to. You want to keep growing, you want to do more than you can just do with a couple little toys. If you get good at it then you want to get really good at it and you want to expand your vocabulary. That’s where training comes in, and growth, and learning. Actually that stuff that they put on the page is really cool. It really is a wonderful thing to put music onto a page and tune it and tweak it and decorate it in such a way that the orchestra really hits with impact.

— Stewart Copeland

Yoav Goren – Remember to listen to a lot of music

I think we all have to remember to listen to a lot of music because it often acts as a spark for creativity. You need to listen to music within your industry. Listen to what you're competitors or what your colleagues are putting out. Trends change very quickly, especially in trailers. If you want to get into trailers you have to listen to trailers all the time. I know guys who do that a couple hours a day. You really have to home in and clearly see what you're shooting for.

— Yoav Goren

Charles Bernstein – How to avoid a deadline crunch

I am a big believer in front loading work in the schedule. I work very hard early on instead of meandering in and then working hard at the end. That way I hopefully have decreasing workload pressures. I recommend that. I also recommend good nutrition and working at good emotional and mental health.

— Charles Bernstein

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Your big break will be random

A very common question is "How did you get your break?" No matter who you ask the answer is a circuitous series of seemingly random connections. It’s intangible. It’s hard to say when you’re first starting out how that’s going to happen to you.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

John Rodd – One of the best ways to learn

I think one of the best ways to learn recording, mixing and mastering, which all composers need to know, is to find an opportunity to assist highly skilled engineers (or composers who happen to be great engineers), and to learn from them. Unfortunately those mentorship opportunities are few and far between. Critical listening skills take years to develop, but you also need an enormous amount of technical knowledge to do great work. I recommend this to all composers in addition to educational facilities.

— John Rodd

Ryan Shore – When your creative juices dry up

When I’m not certain of what I should be composing, I find that there are some basic questions I can always come back to in order to help find the music direction. Specifically: Why is there music in the film? What role will the music play? What is it that we want the music to say or what aspects of the story do we want the music to support? If core questions like these can be answered, that can help create musical direction. It’s of paramount importance that the composer is on the same page with the filmmakers, so that everyone is working towards the same goals together.

— Ryan Shore

Charles Bernstein – A little fear is normal for composers

I would say there’s a pattern to almost every film I’ve ever done, and I’ve done a lot of them. First of all, none of them has ever been a piece of cake. They all have what I would call a healing crisis. There is always a low point somewhere. The very beginning is good, and then somewhere early on I confront a total crisis in which I think I’m not capable of doing the job. There’s a total crisis where I feel completely lost and helpless, and then I climb out of that and it always has turned out well.

— Charles Bernstein

Ryan Shore – How composers stay creative under pressure

By staying organized and scheduling the process carefully, that helps alleviate one of the most largest challenges on any project, which is pressure. I do all I can to remove as much pressure as possible, because when you’re writing music you really don’t want to be feeling those deadlines. You don’t want to be feeling the pressure. You want to be feeling the music.

— Ryan Shore

John Rodd – I do EVERYTHING myself

When I am working at my commercial studio Clearstory Sound I work alone and never delegate. When people hire me to work for them they know that they will get my ears on every sonic decision that is made.

— John Rodd

Nathan Furst – Temp music is great communication

I prefer it when the film doesn't have any temp music, but what I don’t mind at all is temp ideas. If I have a conversation with the director he might say he just listened to a band and he really likes their sound. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go try to sound like them, but I try to extrapolate what was the magical experience for the director when he listened to that piece of music. The better you can read their mind the more on target you will be.

— Nathan Furst

Austin Wintory – How I managed a tight budget

On the game Journey, Sony couldn't afford to hire orchestra for the entirety of the game. To compensate and avoid MIDI, I made the orchestra an emergent component of the dramatic arc of the score. By the end of the game it's a fully orchestral score, but it starts out with cello solos echoing amongst a whole bed of electronics. I often end up doing that sort of thing. I put all my eggs in one basket and figure out how to approach and depart from that moment to build an arc that helps the drama of the story.

— Austin Wintory

Peter Golub – Throw away your ideas and start over

I like to start compositions over. I like to give options to directors, especially in the beginning while I’m still finding my way into a film score. The first idea came on one particular day after one particular lunch. It's good to try something else. If you just do one option and your director doesn’t love it right away, then you have to wait for the next meeting when you’ll have another shot at that scene. It can really slow things down. If you present two options it will give you more information and can cut out an extra meeting because you have something to compare the first one to.

— Peter Golub

Jack Wall – Composers can’t always do all the writing

I know there are guys who insist on writing every single note. I feel very strongly about what I do, but I believe when I work with somebody else they're going to bring another dimension to the music which actually adds more to the project. If the schedule is really tight and I have to bring in somebody to help me write something, I will do that. Creatively I’d rather not, because I love writing music. However, sometimes time will dictate that you must have help.

— Jack Wall

Nathan Furst – Musical ideas trump the music budget

It used to be that if you had a low budget you started creatively changing what your orchestration or your arrangement was based on your budget. Now that’s not necessarily what you do. If the director doesn’t have a lot of money but he still wants it to sound like an 80 piece orchestra then that’s what you shoot for, to the best of your ability. You might do a full mock up with an 80 piece orchestra, bring one or two guys in at a time, and track them in such a way that it sounds like they’re coming from far away. It's not perfect but the connectivity of how they’re playing will infect the MIDI orchestration a little bit, which is helpful.

— Nathan Furst

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – Delegation is quality of life

When I'm deciding how much I do myself versus delegate it all comes down to quality of life. When you have to do everything yourself it means you’re not sleeping. You can play in all the parts of a symphony orchestra, but think of the time for 1 person to play 80 parts versus an 80 piece orchestra playing one part per person. Do the math. It’s a lot more complicated when you’re alone, and it takes a lot more time. Time is money, so sometimes the key to getting fast, good, and cheap is to avoid doing it alone.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Yoav Goren – A university is an unrealistic bubble

As with all the arts, I think it is better to go out and DO even if it means that you're going to spend 8 years in a lowly position somewhere. You need exposure to the environment and to the connections. You need to be out in the real world doing it as opposed to being in a university laboratory which is a bubble.

— Yoav Goren

Stewart Copeland – Don’t make excuses for your music

When it comes to demos my philosophy is no excuses, no explanations. I don’t want to be doing caveats or apologies. I just say "Here, check it out." You might have options, that’s another way to go. Options are a good thing to have when the director says "I don’t like it" and he’s trying not to make eye contact with his producer yet. If you give them a couple great demos then you have a conversation going rather than a rejection.

— Stewart Copeland

Miriam Cutler – How to quickly find artistic direction

The way to get moving quickly is to engage with the filmmaker as quickly as possible and find out if you’re on the right path. There has to be a really solid communication. I need to get into their heads as quickly as possible to make this financially feasible, and also to deliver on time. I don’t care how I get that information. If the director and I get together and drink a bottle of wine and get schnockered, I’ll get to know that person and get to know their likes. Some people will bring in lots of music, we’ll go through it all, and they’ll explain everything they like and don’t like. Sometimes I get very little information from the director and I actually get more information from the editor.

— Miriam Cutler

Miriam Cutler – Don’t argue with the director

If a director isn't convinced by your demos, don't try to convince them. I learned a long time ago to never argue with the director. You might win that argument and get the cue you want, but then for the next 1,000 times they watch that film in festivals they’re going to hate your guts because they’re never going to like it. Every once in a while they may decide "Oh, she was right." Most of the time, because we’re all working off our gut instincts, if their gut instinct is saying no, I’d rather just go with that.

— Miriam Cutler

Austin Wintory – The intersection of budget and creativity

My job as a composer is to find the exact intersection between what we can afford and what we creatively want, because they do intersect. If you think of supply and demand curves in economics, they always meet somewhere. Similarly, what we can afford and what our creative musings lead us to will also meet somewhere. You can produce the perfect score for that budget, you just have to figure out what it is. I've found it often ends up being the most creatively stimulating work, because you wouldn't think that way if someone said money is no object.

— Austin Wintory

Yoav Goren – Writing music doesn’t get easier

You have to write outside of yourself while maintaining your identity. It's always a challenge not to fall back on what you rely on normally, or what you relied on three years ago, or 5 or 10 years ago. You have to go into new directions on every project. It's challenging every time to write well, to not repeat yourself, to push the envelope a little bit, and to get the production value A++. It's challenging even though I've been doing it for 20 years.

— Yoav Goren

Peter Golub – Today’s films are either tiny or massive

The middle of the budget landscape has disappeared. Films with budgets between five and twenty million dollars aren't made much any more. The majority of films are either small or blockbusters. That has impacted every aspect of film making including music. Composers need to make sure the budget will allow them to write the score that the movie needs. In cases where this isn't possible, they have to be creative to get more out of few forces. It's important to be up front with directors and producers early on if they haven't budgeted for what the film requires.

— Peter Golub

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Detailed music notation is critical

I prefer to offer a fair amount of detail in my scores, but I’ve been in situations where players came in and blew my expectations out of the water. It’s wonderful when that happens. I’m open to their ideas, but I want to give people as much information as possible to work from so their job is easy and the final product is satisfying.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

Nathan Furst – Loyalty crucial in music industry

For me personally the most valuable thing in this industry, as a composer but also across the board in my opinion, is loyalty. If you have a creative team in which there’s a sense of loyalty, your success is important to those people as well. If I’m just using a random music editor, a random engineer, a random orchestrator, then I’m just another job. If I’m using people that I have history with, that I have a trusted relationship with, and I’m loyal to those people and I feel like that they do right by me, then it becomes mutual and we all want the same thing. I firmly believe that creates a better product and creates better people at the same time. That’s how you build your team.

— Nathan Furst

John Rodd – Your room is a critical mixing tool

Your room is a critical mixing tool, and bass traps in the listening environment are of key importance. Many rooms that have been put to use as a listening environment will have significant issues - especially in the bottom end - and stuffing as many bass traps in the corners of the room as possible will generally help the acoustics. The better one can hear how they are shaping the sound of a mix, the better mix decisions they will make, and the better that mix will translate to all other playback systems. A good listening environment that has been well treated with bass traps will help with this, as will good quality speakers. The acoustic properties of the listening environment are of key importance.

— John Rodd

Miriam Cutler – Film scoring is not for the meek

I learned over the years to make time between recording sessions to prepare for my next one. I don’t like surprises at my sessions. Half my music budget is in the studio that day, so that's it. The scariest part is that if it fails then I fail, so good preparation is essential. Film scoring is not for the meek, I have to tell you. We all have horror stories in which things go horribly wrong, and yet we still have to pull everything off on our own guerrilla style. There have been times when I thought "I've got to stop doing this. I can't take it any more. I'm going to die. I'm destroying myself physically, and I haven't achieved my goals." But my career has really come together. I can't explain it, but it's been really wonderful. It coalesced over time and my career has been very satisfying.

— Miriam Cutler

Peter Golub – Time deadlines clarify the mind

Time deadlines tend to clarify the mind. When you’re on a movie you have a certain amount of music to write in a fixed number of days. When you realize you need to write 4 or 5 minutes of music each day, then you make it happen. When you only have so many days to produce so many minutes of music you find a way to do it.

— Peter Golub

Nathan Furst – I back-seat drive every mix

Mixing, without a doubt, is an area in which it’s very important for me to collaborate. When I mix a piece of music by myself I’m never happy with it. When I give it to a mixer and don’t interact with them I’m never happy with it either. I’m only happy with a mix when I’ve been involved and yet I’m not the one doing it.

— Nathan Furst

Craig Stuart Garfinkle – The key to high quality recordings

When you really want your music to be good the key is to not rely on the technology, because the humanity is what really makes it good. Even if you only have the budget for one musician, use that one musician.

— Craig Stuart Garfinkle

Cindy Badell-Slaughter – Hustle, but stay balanced

Balance is a key essential ingredient to anyone’s wellbeing and success. Some of the people who work here at Heavy Hitters Music are also composers, and they gig. They work here for 9 hours. They have to rehearse afterwards or play a show, and then they write music all weekend. Monday morning they start the grind all over again. It’s hard to balance business and creative and family life, and you can’t forget your spiritual side either.

— Cindy Badell-Slaughter

Yoav Goren – Composers need to be a little unbalanced

You can't stay balanced. Not in this business. I'm serious. It's different from a lot of careers. You have to think of it as if you're in a crowd of a million people and you're just trying to lift your chin above everybody else. In order to do that you have to every day work on standing on your toes a little more than everybody else.

— Yoav Goren

John Rodd – Mixing is like scuplting

Mixing is a bit like being a fine art sculptor. I have some raw materials to work with, and I need to cut away, accent, shape, add texture, and generally massage the raw materials into something that has depth, drama, dimension, excitement, and beauty.

— John Rodd

Yoav Goren – Inspiration is the result of time spent working

If you hone your craft enough, and that means spending a lot of time doing it, well past any reasonable amount of time that you really should be doing it, then inspiration is what emerges at the end. Inspiration is the result of all that time spent, all that banging your head against the wall, or laughing it up because you found something just incredible. You can't buy that. You can't manufacture it. That time spent results in a true passionate core that comes out.

— Yoav Goren

Jack Wall – Keeping ahead of the steam roller

I worked on a TV show last year, and that was a really fun thing because I’d never done a TV show before. It was fun keeping ahead of the steam roller, because the steam roller just keeps going no matter how fast or slow you’re going. If you stop or get hung up on something it’s going to go right on top of you, because there’s no way the show isn't going to air when it’s scheduled. The pressure can be fun and stimulating and motivating, and I love that.

— Jack Wall

Ryan Shore – Why I delegate when scoring

Delegating responsibility applies to all businesses. For me, the biggest reason I delegate responsibility among my team is so that I can keep my focus on the creative aspects of the work, and to free up as much of my time for composing as possible. By building a team I have been able to create a better life balance for myself without sacrificing the quality or quantity of work. I’m still delivering at the highest level, and I'm still able to deliver all the service that I want to deliver.

— Ryan Shore

Ryan Shore – Composer templates are critical

Good templates are extremely important for composers. My equipment setup is highly tweaked, and I’ve pre-mixed my palette so reverbs and panning are already in place. This way, when I get a call to compose something, I’m ready to go and I can deliver music as quickly to the moment I’m thinking of the music as possible. Building solid sample templates is a very effective way to save time.

— Ryan Shore

Garry Schyman – The right people aren’t only talented

You need to know your team in advance, before you begin a project. There are a lot of composers, orchestrators, editors, and other types of musicians, in LA especially. We are the center of that world. But it’s surprising how some people can be pretty incompetent despite their credits. I’ve had experiences working with people who have a good reputation, and I've found it to be a great frustration because I still have to micromanage. It's important to find the right people for you and your process.

— Garry Schyman

Yoav Goren – You can’t repeat yourself

Of all the varied challenges a composer faces, the biggest challenge is the actual writing. You can't repeat yourself because especially in trailers, where I mostly work, the trends and the styles change very quickly. It's a mind boggling whirlwind and you have to stay on top of the trends.

— Yoav Goren

Stewart Copeland – How to write good music quickly

To write music quickly, grab the low hanging fruit first and keep moving. Don’t get hung up on anything. The thing about moving fast is that you’re having more fun, and if you’re having more fun the creative sparks are gonna fly. If you’re stuck on a problem and you can’t move forward, if you’re beginning to self-doubt or get bored, move right past it. Stick to the fun stuff. Go for the low hanging fruit and gather it all up, because that high hanging fruit somehow gets closer. When you start solving those easy problems, other things that you thought were going to be a problem end up solved.

— Stewart Copeland

Timothy Andrew Edwards – Composing speed is always mandatory

I do a lot of TV and those schedules are always insane, always. You more often than not get called on a Friday night for a Monday delivery for some reason. Speed is always mandatory, and it comes from doing it over and over so that your turnaround time is next to immediate. I always create a sound palette, a concept for the score. When time is short I decide on using limited instrumentation, if it's appropriate for the project of course, but something that is going to be exactly the right thing to serve the film so I can also move quickly. This is an old Bernard Hermann trick. When you’re working with a tight schedule, limiting yourself to a small ensemble can yield incredible results.

— Timothy Andrew Edwards

Charles Bernstein – The gear composers should invest in

The quality of gear we can get at affordable prices today is fantastic. You can go a long way on a nickel these days and compete with people that have very high-end stuff, and a lot of hardware can be replaced with plugins. But, there are certain areas where it pays to have good equipment. Certainly you need a really powerful computer, and great mics and preamps. You can't get around that. That front end equipment is probably the best place for composers to invest.

— Charles Bernstein

Bill Brown – You MUST sound unique

We all have access to the same software products, and if you want to sound unique you can't be using old libraries that are everywhere. I have all of the latest sample libraries; create my own custom samples; and record, mix, and prepare custom ambiences and loops for each project regardless of the budget. I also keep the full orchestra with all its articulations up and running on a separate system, connected to the main sequencing system via Ethernet, so any ideas that come to mind can be implemented quickly and efficiently. I’m always updating that orchestra system and my template to make sure that my sound is fresh and doesn't sound mass-produced.

— Bill Brown

John Rodd – My usual gear advice to composers

Everyone will define "high-end" cost differently, but the price to performance ratio is currently at an all-time low. The very definition of professional audio gear has changed dramatically over the last decade. My usual advice to composers is to find a balance between cost and quality. Armed with a good recording interface, a few good mics, a decent acoustic space, and some knowledge of mic placement, skilled composers can make great recordings without massive investment these days.

— John Rodd

Nathan Furst – Production values are everything

You can have the most amazing piece of music that’s ever been written on the face of the earth, but if it sounds like it’s coming out of a 1990's synth no one’s going to care. All they’ll say is "God, that sounds like a bad video game from decades ago." They don't listen to only the notes, they hear the whole production. One note that sounds amazing is more valuable than a Rachmaninov score with bad MIDI.

— Nathan Furst

John Rodd – Pro Tools session prep is a huge responsibility

When a composer does not have the resources to hire an expert to prepare their Pro Tools sessions, a huge responsibility falls on their shoulders. The most common mistakes I see are surrounding frame rates, Quicktime movie frame rates, bars and beats, temp music, sample rates, bit rates, tempo changes, and sync. Most composers could benefit from studying these technical things a bit better, because being well prepared for recording sessions is critical for efficiency and quality.

— John Rodd

Ryan Shore – I don’t actively try to define my style

I have not focused much on trying to find my voice. In fact, I try not to spend time consciously thinking about what a new piece of music might mean in the context of other music I’ve written in my career. I only focus on the film I’m working on in that moment and what I feel would be my best musical contribution for it. If over time I’m developing a voice of my own, great. But I never try to shoehorn in "my voice" and put that above the needs of the project.

— Ryan Shore

Austin Wintory – Many composers never went to college

I know plenty of successful composers who never went to college. By successful I don't mean financially successful, though they may be, I mean people that are happy with the course their life has taken.

— Austin Wintory

Charles Bernstein – The industry’s massive evolution

I’ve been able to watch the entire evolution of the industry because when I started out the composer's tool set was pretty much just pencil, paper, metronome, and stopwatch. I think there were roughly 250 working film composers at that point, it was pretty small. The advent of computers democratized everything and spread everything so wide that the supply and demand ratio is extremely different. Now there are probably tens of thousands of film composers across the world as opposed to several hundred, and because of supply and demand economics you can get people to score cheaply. The democratization is both positive and negative. One of the negative effects is that it brought the price down. But one of the main reasons why we have so many film composers is that it’s just easy and fun. Who wouldn’t want to score films under these conditions?

— Charles Bernstein

Nathan Furst – Serve your director at all costs

I'm not there to sell directors something they're not buying. If they’re not behind what I’ve written 100%, I’m not going to spend any time convincing them. I’d rather rewrite the cue. I want them to think there’s literally no other composer that could have written their film score and no other notes that could have gone in that frame. The job is to serve the director at all costs, so only when I get to that point am I personally happy.

— Nathan Furst

Peter Golub – I write every single note myself

Usually I have a music editor and a mixer. I have faith in them and I hand it over to them. I have never been a situation where I didn’t do the writing for myself. Even if I on occasion had an assistant flesh something out it’s still my music, and of course I give comments and notes and fixes, so I’m deeply involved.

— Peter Golub

Yoav Goren – Inefficient composing can be valuable too

It's important to not be worried about wasting time. I used to worry when I'd sit and play for a couple hours and nothing great happened but I adapted my thinking to a different way where those two hours were not a waste. The whole process was a very valuable building block into something unknown in the future.

— Yoav Goren

Austin Wintory – Successful careers are a function of luck

What I always say to people is that successful careers are a function of luck. Most people hear that and they shut off. They think "That sucks. I just have to get lucky." Except, you can manifest luck by being in the right place at the right time. Being in the right place is easy. The right place is mainly a state of mind, but it is also actively engaging in the industry, going to events, constantly meeting people, and just projecting outward in all directions that you give a damn about all of this, because people are drawn to passion. The right time, as in an opportunity, happens constantly.

— Austin Wintory

Peter Golub – The best education is trial and error

I think one is very fortunate to find mentors that inspire you, and the best education is a combination of study and trial and error. You don’t really learn it until you try it.

— Peter Golub

Jack Wall – How to elevate the sound of MIDI

The budget is definitely a creative constraint. It allows you to have boundaries, and you work within those boundaries to come up with great stuff no matter what the constraints are. We can use MIDI to fake any size ensemble, but no matter what I always record something live on top of it as ear candy. The minute you bring one person in to record on top, it elevates the entire piece to a whole new place. We all use the same libraries, right? So record as much as possible live. It’s a matter of trying to humanize it as much as you can and differentiate yourself from everybody else.

— Jack Wall

Bill Brown – Composers aren’t magicians

Generally, if you’re under the gun and have no budget for players or help, you’re not going to have the time or resources it takes to pull off a complex, high quality score, regardless of how talented you are.

— Bill Brown

John Rodd – Never been asked for my degree

A person is the sum of their experiences, and there are innumerable ways to get great learning experiences outside of a university setting. In over three decades of professional work I have not once been asked if I have a university degree, although I do have one. I did, however, learn an enormous amount while I attended university and I always try to learn new things daily.

— John Rodd

Stewart Copeland – Successful composers don’t procrastinate

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