Through a series of articles, I will present some instrumentation and orchestration principles not in the textbook approach adopted by various other sources, but in a meaningful more structured and concise manner—exactly as I would structure my personal notes for fast and easy reference. Being a geek at heart, I got into the habit of note-taking early on in my academic life and I have found that concise and easy to browse notes can save A LOT of time. If you are like me (i.e. without a 30-year experience in orchestrating), there must be times when you don’t remember something and you find yourself browsing through several books or online sources to find it. That’s exactly what we are looking to avoid here (as well as any bald patches from excessive head scratching)!  So, the idea behind this series (or of any other article in the SCU channel for that matter) is to make our lives easier and help us focus our time and energy in the actual task for writing music.

What This Is

Taking Rimsky-Korsakov’s approach and the excellent framework/structure of “Principles of Orchestration Online”, I will present the essence of instrumentation and orchestration in as a concise, quick and easy manner as possible, adding material from other sources and a good dose of humor where needed. Additionally, our resident musicologist Yaiza Varona will offer an extra dimension to everything; a behind-the-scenes look to help you better understand why orchestration has come to be what it is today.

What to Expect

For each orchestral section you will get two things : instrumentation notes (ranges, registers etc.) and orchestration techniques (how to use the section to play the melody and how to orchestrate the harmony within the section). After the examination of each orchestral section, we will provide you with sequencing, mixing and production techniques relevant to the instruments of that section.

Do not expect to learn to orchestrate like a pro merely by reading these articles. It takes a lifetime of studying, researching and applying to master the art of orchestration. But, we all have to start somewhere, right? Take the notes presented here and try to apply one technique at a time.  Study how the greats have done it and try to understand why. Unfortunately the pill for the ‘ultimate internalization of knowledge’ has not been discovered….yet. Don’t expect – like me a few years back! – to learn everything overnight. Give yourself a break and most of all, ENJOY that you can spend time doing what you love!

A Clarification

When referring to specific pitches, the “Roland” MIDI system is used, where Middle C=C4.

Also, instrument names and abbreviations come in many different shapes and colours. The ones used here are :

So, grab a cup of coffee and let’s get started!

Instrumentation VS Orchestration VS Arrangement

Three different but easily confused terms. Let’s get them straight :

The term Instrumentation is used to describe two things; 1) the selection of instruments used in a composition, and 2) the properties of musical instruments (construction, timbre, sound production, ranges, sound characteristics etc).

Orchestration is the distribution of ‘roles’ to different instruments in a composition. Orchestration usually entails the writing of countermelodies and accompanying lines.

Arrangement is the process of taking a composition/song and altering/adapting it to another form, style or orchestration. The term ‘arrangement’ is very common in jazz music where the so-called ‘jazz-standards’ can be found in many different arrangements. 

So, what does all this have to do with us composers? Let’s say you sat at your keyboard or picked up your guitar and came up with a nice melody and a chord progression. How do you turn this into a full-fledged composition? Having in mind the mood and atmosphere you want your music to exude, one of the main decisions you have to make is what instruments to use in your composition; i.e. choose your instrumentation. That requires a good knowledge of the particular characteristics and capabilities of the instruments available to you.

Having chosen your palette and having in mind a general outline of the form of your piece, next step is to decide how to distribute your material. There are three very basic elements in each orchestration : the foreground material (i.e. your main melody), the middle-ground material (the countermelodies and certain fill-ins, runs etc) and the background material (accompanying lines, mostly the harmony and rhythm). Keep in mind that generally, the ear cannot discern more than three elements at any given time. Therefore, you must have at most 3 different ‘roles’ at the same time otherwise the listener will get lost in translation. This is where a good knowledge of orchestral devices (doublings, instrument combinations etc.) comes in very handy.

One of the most important ‘rules’ of orchestration is variety and surprise. Keep your listeners alert by giving them little surprises every few bars. A good rule of thumb is to change the orchestration or small bits of it every few phrases or at every new section.

Orchestral Ensembles and Mixing Principles

The seating of the orchestra did not come to be what it is today for no reason. The careful placement of each instrument on stage and the size of each section has been carefully determined with mixing in mind, In the time of Beethoven and Wagner, Neve or SSL consoles were a tad expensive and hard to transport and folks preferred to do the mixing completely out of the box…without any box really!

The main principle underlying the nature, formation and seating of the orchestra is balance. Louder and more dominant instruments are placed in the rear and come in small numbers. Instruments with less carrying power (e.g. strings) come in larger numbers and are placed at the front of the orchestra. By learning how to orchestrate you will make the mixing process much easier. Remember that a bad orchestration cannot be fixed in the mixing phase.

Stay tuned for the first installment of String writing coming shortly as well as Yaiza Varona’s Musicological look into the origins of the orchestra!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

If you cannot see the video below, click here.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

If you cannot see the video below, click here.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

If you cannot see the video below, click here.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Episode Description

In this second episode of SCOREcast’s “Developer Series” podcasts for NAMM 2012, SCOREcast founder Deane Ogden chats with Sonokinetic founder Rob Vandenberg about his newest creation, “Vivace”.

Community Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

SoundCloud is a versatile and effective platform for composers and sound content creators of all kinds, and is arguably the next big thing in online audio. Over the last year and a half I have invested hundreds of hours on SoundCloud and would like to spend a few minutes with you to share a few nuggets I’ve picked up along the way, that may help you as a composer, and that may shed some light on the community aspects of the service, as well.

Ten Point Briefing

1. SoundCloud is an audio platform for sharing, promotion and collaboration, with its own social networking framework.
2. SoundCloud is accessed via desktop web browsers, embedded webpage widgets and smartphone apps.
3. SoundCloud began as a music file sharing service in Berlin in 2007, by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, growing from 1 million members in May 2010 to 9 million members in December 2011.
4. Members can upload sound files in all common formats, with public or limited visibility, downloadability and all common licensing options, Buy links and a vanity URL, for example soundcloud.com/the-chemical-brothers.
5. Tracks can have players embedded on external websites with flexible appearance and browser compatibility options.
6. Members can follow other members, provide feedback via timed comments, mark tracks as favourites, keep abreast of other member activity on a dashboard, and create and join groups.
7. Detailed stats are available, showing who played your track, where, when, how often, and who downloaded or saved your track to their favourites list.
8. SoundCloud is well integrated with Twitter, Facebook and other online social networks. At the Facebook f8 conference in September 2011, Facebook announced a strategic technology partnership with SoundCloud, effectively providing SoundCloud embedded exposure to over 800 million Facebook users.
9. Membership is free but there are premium accounts ranging from €29 to €500 offering various levels of storage, stats, widgets, support and other options.
10. Finally, and crucially, SoundCloud is a community.

Who Uses SoundCloud?

Essentially, sound content creators of all types, and listeners of all tastes. From dance music producers like Deadmau5, Skrillex and Swedish House Mafia to A-list pop stars like Lady Gaga, Radiohead and Bjork, from indie singer/songwriters to podcasters, comedians and even newspapers like The Economist, and of course composers.

I asked a handful of film and television composers to share their experiences of SoundCloud, starting with LA-based Kerry Muzzey, who enjoys the community-oriented learning and social aspects of SoundCloud:

I have fallen in love with SoundCloud. I’ve enjoyed it not only for the many musical discoveries I’ve made but also for the ability to interact with other composers. I love that so many have been willing to share their tech tips and secret recipes. Sure, it’s a really simple and slick demo-hosting site: but take some time to go a little deeper and you’ll be surprised at the community you’ll discover: these are people who are passionate about music and about the beauty of sound.

Sean Beeson from Ohio has over 400,000 track plays on SoundCloud and gains from the marketing aspects it offers:

I use SoundCloud to gauge the success of my online marketing campaigns. I can see what sites people are accessing my music from, where in the world they are listening from, and what music the are listening to. It helps me to cater my sets to what music is most listened to in the hopes that I can gain greater exposure for my work.

Geographically, members are spread across the world in roughly the following order: US, UK, Germany, rest of Europe, Canada, Russia, Australia, Japan, rest of world.

UK-based Marie-Anne Fischer, film and television composer and chapter director of SCOREcast: London, has experience with a number of online music platforms including ReverbNation. Marie-Anne shared a little about using SoundCloud for professional showreel and private sharing purposes:

I discovered SoundCloud about 10 months ago when I started writing demos for Sonokinetic because they use SoundCloud to post their demos. I like the direct connection and simplicity. SoundCloud is becoming more interesting to me as I have found more film and media composers on SoundCloud than I had on ReverbNation. I like the group features on SoundCloud where there is no clutter. I tend to be using SoundCloud more recently to link prospective clients to my showreel and being able to share private tracks is a great feature.

Given the fact that there are over 9 million members, of course not all members are professionals in the line of work they present on SoundCloud and membership is arguably weighted towards amateur enthusiasts, but that does not detract from its usefulness in professional spheres.

Can SoundCloud Help Your Career?

SCOREcast: London’s own Dominik Johnson, world music production specialist:

SoundCloud, for me, is one of the best community music tools online at the moment for the pro musician / composer / producer. I know the audio quality on my music (typically 48kHz/24bit) can be lost with some of the upload compression, but to me, that’s a price worth paying. A few months ago an independent film director from Berlin got in touch after hearing a few of my works on there, we got chatting on there, then we starting having Skype calls – and BOOM! I’ve been commissioned to write some tracks for his upcoming feature documentary – and yes, his production team does have a budget for the music.

Dominik touched on a point above with regards to upload/playback quality, which I’ll explore in the Technical section further below.

I know of one case where the SoundCloud user was not necessarily the beneficiary of a career opportunity. LA-based film composer, orchestrator and conductor Deon Vozov has this story:

For me as a composer, no, there’s nothing that’s happened on SoundCloud without my initiation that’s led to a contract. However, because I also do some small music supervision work, I have FOUND tracks on SoundCloud and gotten them placed in projects. The first few were free, but there are starting to be licensing gigs that pay a little something, help build reels, and feel more dignified. And believe me, it is much more fun to approach people with money than with “it’ll be good for your reel” statements of questionable accuracy.

Deon continues with an interesting point about the depth of SoundCloud’s penetration into the upper echelons of film-making:

My clients seem to fall into two categories: producers and directors who are very, or at least comfortably, familiar with SoundCloud but not very well-funded yet, and producers and directors who’ve never heard of SoundCloud but can cut those juicy checks we all love to then spend getting the job done.

In other words, my experience has been that it’s still not an industry standard in audio post production. By gently guiding clients towards it, however, I think it will become more so.

Offering more insights than I could ever have hoped for, Deon goes on to make a point about visual versus audio impact of a demo reel:

That said, it’s not selfless support of SoundCloud that has led me to steer clients to the site. Rather, I like to link even initially skittish clients, and potential clients, to private sets here because it gets them focused on listening with their ears rather than their eyes [emphasis mine].

Everyone wants video links, and they will tell you with a straight face that they’re really listening to the music, and they really do believe that they’re telling the truth when they say that. But the reality is that these are highly visual, highly visually sensitive, and highly visually creative people experiencing audio tracks by way of how they feel about picture.

It is possible to separate picture from music, of course, but difficult, and it will always imprint indelibly upon the track. That can work in one’s favor (an expensive car spot, for example) or against it (a feature that suffers a malaise of some kind or other). By sending clients to a simple, easy-to-navigate, custom-built set, they have an interactive experience and can jump around in the set to find what they want to discuss and, if they’re bold enough to create an account, they can even leave timed comments for us to discuss in relation to their project.

Many of the responses in this section came to me as a result of engaging with the community on SoundCloud directly by publishing a track inviting my followers to share their stories as timed comments. Here’s a handful of other stories, in brief:

Uploaded 1st track, surprised by response. Uploaded more. Got made Soundclouder of the Day and then featured on SoundCloud tour page. Label emailed me and now I have two releases out.
— Russell Knight, London

A few months ago Norwegian Landscape photographer Ole Salomonsen approached me via SoundCloud, asking if he could use my track ‘Counting Stars’ on his latest vid of the Northern Lights. My first piece of paid work.
— Mei-Ling Grey, London

Amidst the success stories, two cautionary tales emerged:

I believe I did *not* get a gig because of the music in my SoundCloud profile. I was considered during the final round of applicants, and when asked for a portfolio I directed them to my SoundCloud profile. Something like two days later I found out they gave the job to someone else. This has led me to reassess the quality of the work I upload to SoundCloud, even though it could be that the work I have on my SoundCloud is quite different from the piece I made for that job.
— Rodrigo Hernández, Mexico City

I signed a contract with a company called [redacted] who have a group here on SoundCloud about three months ago. I had to go to a notary and everything, alas I have not heard from them since and they don’t reply to my emails.
— Andy Carter, Cornwall, UK

The insights I’ve gained from these last two are to keep one’s SoundCloud profile tidy and focused on the target market, and to know who you’re dealing with.

One reason I’m able to share this article with you today is that my own case is potentially one more success story to emerge from SoundCloud, but this is not about me so I’ll save that for the end.

How SoundCloud Compares to Other Audio Platforms

In the user content audio hosting space, SoundCloud competes with, among others, BandCamp, ReverbNation and Myspace.

BandCamp is mainly focused on allowing independent artists to sell their work, and are funded in part on a commission basis. Users can customise the look and feel of their music pages and have their tracks downloadable in many formats. BandCamp has attracted some commercially established artists including Amanda Palmer to abandon their labels and self-promote (interestingly, Amanda Palmer also has a SoundCloud account).

Jeremiah Pena, SCOREcaster, says:

I like Bandcamp. I don’t get as many track plays as Soundcloud, but it’s my main method of selling music to the general public, which SoundCloud doesn’t seem to do very well. It’s also very useful for building email lists, since you can have people supply an email address for free downloads. And it’s free, with no major limits like the free version of SoundCloud. I’m able to put a lot more music than I could there.

I do find SoundCloud much better for getting feedback and it has very good community features (commenting, groups, etc.) that Bandcamp doesn’t have.

— Jeremiah Pena, Film Composer, Utah

In terms of usefulness to composers, BandCamp may serve a function to sell original soundtracks if the production licensing terms permit, but since BandCamp does not offer embedded players, the composer would have to set up a specific BandCamp page outside their main website, which may not be a desirable solution for those who like a one-stop-shop approach to their web presence.

ReverbNation aims to provide a collaboration and communication platform as well as music hosting for independent artists, and have an embeddable player.

SCOREcast’s Marie-Anne Fischer knows ReverbNation well, having ruled the London and UK Classical charts with a regular #1 spot. In her words:

I started using ReverbNation in 2009 because I was able to link my playlist to my Facebook profile as an app. I wasn’t particularly interested at the time in having a Facebook fan page, so this was a great alternative. Unfortunately Facebook subsequently took away the ReverbNation band playlist feature from personal Facebook pages. ‘My Band’ feature could only feature in a fan or group page but I was still able to use the widgets and apps for posting new tracks.

ReverbNation has been great for meeting musicians and I have already collaborated with a couple of them. During 2009 and 2010 I made great use of my ReverbNation site, my website is linked to my profile which I pay for annually.

Marie-Anne also offers us a comparison with her SoundCloud experience:

You can personalise ReverbNation’s profile which you can’t on SoundCloud but that hasn’t stopped me from using SoundCloud.

I like the statistics SoundCloud collects and provides me and also their feature where people can favour a track and leave a comment.

The great big difference between SoundCloud and ReverbNation is that SoundCloud is purely functional and works well where as on ReverbNation you can add your personal touch to your profile, link music to multiple stores, integrate with other websites, create newsletters, blogs and apps are only but a few of their features.

Marie-Anne is right about SoundCloud being less customisable than ReverbNation, which takes a modular approach to the profile page with a lot of control over content and branding. On SoundCloud, personalisation can be applied to player widgets for website-matching style and colour scheme, for user dropbox page branding, for linking other profiles like Twitter, Facebook etc. and for essential items like profile image and an HTML-enabled description area.

In terms of how that translates into commercial opportunities, I would argue that for a composer it is the presentation of your professional website that is more important than the presentation of your profile on the audio hosting website, but that can be debated in the comments below.

One other factor to consider is the service value available to non-paying customers. Although ReverbNation’s free account allows more tracks to be hosted than SoundCloud’s free account, the size of each track is limited to 8MB which forces lossy upload format; the longer the track the lossier it has to be to fit into 8MB.

Myspace does not make for great headlines these days, having been sold to News Corporation for $580 million in 2005 and then bought by Specific Media and Justin Timberlake in 2011 for $35 million. But as a music hosting social networking site with 33 million unique US visitors in August 2011, it cannot be ignored in this comparison.

Oxford-based soundtrack composer, electronica producer and SCOREcast reader ”The Unfinished” (Matt Bowdler) shared his experience with me:

Myspace, I haven’t used for a long time. It may have improved, but I think it has been superceded by SoundCloud from a music hosting perspective and Facebook from a community perspective. The options were limited (I think ten tracks was the maximum) and it just got incredibly spammy. Endless messages from people who were plugging their latest track or gig that was almost always a genre that bore no relevenace to what you were doing. Quite a bit of spam from Myspace themselves as well. Put quite simply, there isn’t anything that Myspace does that isn’t done better elsewhere.

I think Matt’s view is shared by many in the music community including myself: That Myspace is not necessarily the most strategic technology partner for a professional composer. If you disagree, please share your experience in the comments below.

Technical Considerations

How do you get your SoundCloud tracks on your web page? SoundCloud makes it simple.

You can embed SoundCloud widgets in several sizes and styles, with both Flash and HTML5 options. HTML5 is more mobile browser-friendly, especially on iPhones and iPads which can’t play Flash, but some older browsers (e.g. IE6) can’t view HTML5.

To embed a track or set, use the Share menu item at top left of the track or set to access the widget options, customise to taste.

Here are some Flash and HTML5 examples of embedded track players.

Flash examples

Mini

Standard

Rockets by thelittleidiot

Standard Set

Destroyed by thelittleidiot

Artwork

HTML5 examples

Single track

Track set

All of the above have been customised to match SCOREcast Online’s website theme.

The main technical issues reported by professional SoundCloud users are well-known and steps have been taken to address them.

1. SoundCloud playback is compressed at 128kbps, which many audiophiles can discern distinctly from studio-quality uncompressed recording.

In previous email exchanges, SoundCloud staff let me know that they’re always thinking of and considering ways to make the experience better for both creators and listeners. One way for creators to offer higher quality is to enable downloads for their sounds so listeners can access the file in its original quality. They’re regularly discussing this topic internally and are considering changes in the future.

In the meantime, SoundCloud seems to remain the platform of choice for many sound libraries’ demo tracks, including Sonokinetic, 8dio and others, which is a good indicator that the quality, although not perfect, is widely acceptable for professional demo purposes.

2. Flash-based SoundCloud players are subject to the inherent stability and compatibility issues of Flash, particularly where smartphones often have trouble showing Flash controls.

SoundCloud recently released HTML5 versions of their embeddable widgets, addressing both the stability problem and making it compatible with most smartphones and mobile devices including iPhones and iPads. The new HTML5 widgets have been well-received and many say better looking than their Flash predecessors.

3. Some users reported that the encoding produced glitchy playback, particularly in high frequency ranges and at high volume levels.

Up until recently, SoundCloud advised: “This rarely happens but if it does, we suggest uploading in 320kbps 44.1kHz with at least -3dB of headroom” but a recent discovery has revealed that this is no longer required.

FLAC is the recommended upload format for optimal playback quality, but this may not be ideal for download purposes and is probably best-suited for playback-only tracks (non-downloadable). For people who would prefer to have their files available for download, the higher the quality of the lossy file they upload, the higher quality the encoding will be.

The Help Page on this topic offers this advice:

Sometimes our transcoding system can create audio artifacts, as we transcode all tracks to 128 kbps mp3 for streaming playback. Uploading a lossless or high-quality lossy file will usually reduce these to a minimum, but unfortunately there’s not much we can do for the handful of individual tracks that are still affected.

If you choose to make your track downloadable though, the version users can download will be an exact copy of the version you uploaded, without any transcoding.

This is an important point with regards to using SoundCloud for track sharing between yourself and the film production co, or for demo or collaborative purposes: The track you download is the exact track that was uploaded, regardless of the playback encoding. So you can happily share your 192kHz 32-bit float wav file if that tickles your fancy, in full trust that that is how it will be received. You can also do so in complete privacy without violating your NDA.

4. SoundCloud has experienced unscheduled downtime in the past.

For 24 hours in October 2011, SoundCloud fell victim to an aggressive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack leading to slow response times and occasional periods of downtime.

No data was lost in the attack and no user profile security was compromised, but better measures have since been put in place to defend against future attacks of that nature. Unfortunately, no website is untouchable from such an attack attempt.

My SoundCloud Story

I joined SoundCloud in August 2010 and from the start had a revelatory and inspirational experience, so much so that by New Year’s Day 2011 I resolved to turn my life-long passion and hobby into a career. This I knew would be a long path but one that would hopefully be rewarding at every step of the way, and as 2011 passed by, I reflected on those intentions in confidence that things were finally moving in the right direction.

My first steps on SoundCloud were like most others—a one-way path of uploading music and hoping it would be heard and liked by someone, somewhere, just as most creative artists hope for their own art to be observed and appreciated. It only really happened for me when I realised that it was more than a music hosting site but a community as well.

And so I started engaging in-depth with other people’s music—going through their entire track lists to understand their own creative processes and leaving comments and, drawing on my own experience, leaving constructive feedback along the way. This revealed the reciprocal nature of SoundCloud interaction when all of a sudden my own tracks started drawing a lot of attention.

Community

The third stage of my SoundCloud involvement began in June when I decided to try tapping into the collective creativity of the SoundCloud community.

• The first crowd-sourcing project was extremely simple: “I invite you to suggest a name for this track”. SoundCloud staff noticed this, thought it was a cool idea, and tweeted it to their then 80,000 followers. My track got absolutely bombed by name suggestions and the winning title and subtitle were really well-suited to the track (White Light Rendezvous: For Those Who Follow). With around 200 followers at the time, I then gained another 200 or so on the back of that mini-project.
• The second project was a little more ambitious. I played a 9 minute piano improvisation and called it “I invite you to suggest an orchestral composition with timed comments on this track.” This got a lot of attention too with comments like “a harp arpeggio phrase for next 8 bars” and after about 100 comments I spent a month composing those elements over the original piano improv. I called the resulting track “SoundCloud Sinfonietta: You Composed This” which quickly racked up over 5,000 plays and was a finalist in the G-Technology Europe Driven Creativity Awards.
• The third project is still on-going and is called “Your Tune” where I invited followers to share a 20-second solo melody and composed a full-length orchestral or band instrumental track using the submitted melody.

Career Break

As well as the community projects I run on SoundCloud, I also produce a lot of original work and get involved in many collaborations. Through a friend on SoundCloud, one of my original tracks “Ochre Threads” was heard by an independent filmmaker in LA, also on SoundCloud, who is working on his 3rd feature-length film and wanted to use the track for a particular scene.

The same filmmaker then spotted a track I released in December 2011—“Of Valour”—and on the strength of that alone gave me the opportunity to score the entire feature-length film, due for release in Summer 2012.

This is potentially the career break I’ve dreamed of for many years and could be my ticket to full-time paid filmscoring work in the future.

SoundCloud Communities

Apart from members who used underhanded spam-like tactics to drive playcount and visibility, the most active and successful accounts are those of people who take the time to listen and provide feedback to other SoundClouders. The communities thrive in the timed comments, the track favouritings, the collaborations and in groups, especially those which have forum-like chat areas. There are also regular live meetups across the world, like this one in October 2011, which Yoko Ono got involved in too.

Naturally I prefer an organically grown community to one built on spam and follow-backs, and contributed “How to Grow Your SoundCloud Community” to SoundCloud HQ, which they keep on the front page of the user guide here: soundcloud.com/101

The SoundCloud community is well supported by dedicated community teams with staff in Berlin, London and San Francisco, headed by Europa Award-Winner David Noël. The team actively promotes community projects via their blog, Facebook page (500,000+ followers) and Twitter account (150,000+ followers), for example a global project collecting translations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in as many languages as possible.

One very charming aspect of the SoundCloud Community Team is their daily SoundClouder Of The Day nomination, where a member is singled out for their community activity or other unique attribute that deserves recognition. SCOTD alumni are then often contacted for input on community questions and feedback, and are given a little boost in follower-ship by means of a shoutout on their social networks.

“This Week in SoundCloud” is another community project highlighting interesting discoveries across the ‘Cloud, in podcast format on a weekly basis (incidentally, the jingle for this podcast was written by me and 2 other SoundClouders).

There is a lot to the SoundCloud platform, it is not just an audio widget on your demo page. I’ll end where I began: SoundCloud is a versatile and effective platform for composers and sound content creators of all kinds. It is arguably the next big thing in online audio, and maybe most important… it is a community.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Every once and a while, a new sample library comes along for us composers that changes everything, or is significant in its contribution to our arsenal of tools at our disposal.  In this SCOREcast product review, we chose to take a look at the new Sample Logic NI Kontakt-based library FANFARE in an attempt to discover if this was one of those libraries.

I have a pretty extensive background with the marching band / drum corps idiom, and my principal instrument is the trumpet, so imagine my excitement when Sample Logic announced the “Definitive Marching Brass Library” in FANFARE. There are not many libraries out there are for marching brass, and certainly none with the pedigree of the Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps brass behind it—the only other one being… well… a bit antiquated at this point.

So…before I began exploring FANFARE, I went to Sample Logic’s website to learn as much as I could about it.

Overview

The FANFARE library is essentially split into two sections.  A Traditional section consisting of a myriad of patches and Kontakt multis to be used in the creation and performance of marching brass in the way they were meant to be heard… playing marching brass arrangements. And then there is a Morphed section of patches and multi’s where, true to Sample Logic’s aesthetic, they have taken their source material and tweaked it, processed it, stretched it and manipulated it to the point where it is barely recognizable as marching brass and can be used in a slew of modern day compositions by composers of most all genres of music. So if you do not write for a marching band or drum corps ensemble, don’t think this library is not for you. But more on that later.

I checked out the demos on the Sample Logic website and I honestly have to say, I was a bit surprised and disappointed, in that a lot of the existing demos on their website were not pieces written to show off the “Traditional” half of the library.  Most everything written (including a beautiful piece entitled “Elegy, Piano and Fanfare” by prolific Film/TV/Game composer Bill Brown) was not a drum corps style composition.  They were modern and somewhat “electronic” compositions.  I had to ask myself…why have a library where its root source material is one of the most celebrated drum corps ensembles in the history of the genre, tout it as the “Definitive marching brass library for educator and arrangers” and not have a demo that shows off that style of writing?  If I were to evaluate the effectiveness of the library’s “Traditional” elements, I would have to be able to determine its ability to replicate the music it was inherently designed to replicate.

Fanfare “Traditional”

The best way I felt I could do this was to replicate, as a MIDI recording using FANFARE, part of one of the original marching band shows I composed in my past.  I chose to render out the opener of a show I wrote a few years ago called “Weather The Storm”.  The show was commissioned by a marching band program in Phoenix, Arizona.

There are some things to take note of before listening to this little demo:

1) This arrangement was for a marching band and not a drum corps—meaning that while very similar in concept, marching bands have woodwind instruments whereas drum corps have all brass in their wind sections. In this arrangement you will hear some flute, clarinet, alto sax, tenor sax and baritone sax parts along with the marching brass.  These woodwind parts were rendered out using other sample libraries, like the Garritan Marching Band library for the saxophones and the East West Symphonic Orchestra Clarinets, Piccolos.

2) I rendered out the trombone parts I wrote using the Euphonium instruments in FANFARE.  While FANFARE does have some trombone patches, there are only a select few. As in the drum corps world, the piston valved euphonium replaces the slide trombone.

3)  No marching battery percussion parts are playing largely because they add a lot of impact to the mix that would make it harder to hear the brass for this review.

4) There is a trill in the horn/mellophone part at the end of the demo that could not be accomplished with FANFARE because there are no trill patches. I used a trill horn patch from the East West Symphonic Brass Library to get the part to sound as it was intended.

Listen to the demo, and then we can dissect how FANFARE did from the inside out. This was produced using the latest Digital Performer 7.24. FANFARE was running on the latest version of Kontakt 5.0.1 on a fairly modest Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.  Here is the opening 2 minutes of the marching band show.

Sounds

After running this library through some paces to achieve this particular quick mock-up, my feelings on it are mixed. First, for marching brass, FANFARE is the best thing out there. Honestly. But that being said, this small corner of the sample library market is so dry, it is not too hard to be the best thing out there. The quality of the source material is excellent and I feel I can finally now get a demo of the composition that will fairly accurately replicate what I intended.

In the creation of this demo, however, I found it a bit frustrating to get the MIDI notes to speak in a consistent manner. I had to do a lot of MIDI tweaking to make it work. One note’s velocity would be just a bit higher than the previous note and the volume triggered would shoot up and be extremely loud—almost distorting. The Blue Devils are a loud group, and recording any drum corps is a very challenging task, but the level of these samples in general seems very hot. Many of the professional recordings out there from the various competitions that Drum Corps International (DCI) has released were recorded with up to 35 mics spread throughout the stadium and the field. Sample Logic’s recordings were both recorded by Leslie Ann Jones at the Scoring Stage at Skywalker Sound (Lucasfilm Ltd Company) and on the field at Ralph Wilson Stadium (home of the Buffalo Bills) by Grammy® Award winner Frank Dorritie. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time going into the MIDI and smoothing out the lines to get consistent playback of the samples.

I also found undesirable results when having the release trigger setting enabled for the Euphonium sustain patches, which were being used a lot for both my 3 trombone parts and 2 baritone parts in my arrangement. Upon release of a note in the Euphonium patches, I would hear a very un-smooth trigger of a second attack sample that would sound on the release of notes. Because of that, I had to turn the release triggers off for my demo, which isn’t something I wanted in the final sound since usually this helps add more realism to the note’s performance. I spoke with Joe Trupiano at Sample Logic about this quirk, and upon investigation, he conceded that there is in fact a bug in the release triggers of the Euphonium patches. Joe assured me that Sample Logic would be releasing an update ASAP after the new year to address this issue I found. He also reassured me that this was one instrument patch in a library of thousands of instruments. By the numbers, he is correct. But it is important to note that half of the library is intended to be used in a traditional marching brass arrangement. There are only 4 instruments in this Traditional half—Trumpets, Mellophones, Euphoniums and Tubas. To have Euphonium patches where their release triggers on the sustained notes are corrupted to the point where you can not really use their sustained patches without turning off the release triggers and manually adjusting the cut-off times via the NI Kontakt interface makes 25% of the traditional instruments next to unusable.  That is, until the updates is released.

GUI/Interface

Secondly, I found the interface for FANFARE, while pretty to look at, a bit complicated to navigate. It can be a hard thing to design an interface that allows the user to have access to all of the features needed, but makes it simple and easy to get done what you need to get done.

Above is the main interface screen for FANFARE. The highlighted “Options” button is actually an incredibly important button—as the underlying menu controls much of what is tweakable about FANFARE. But on the main interface shown here, that button is just a little button not well distinguished from the other elements on the screen. More on this in a minute.

An important thing to distinguish when writing for marching brass…is that by design, one is writing for live players in every case.  That may seem silly to point out…but think about it—you do not render out these compositions for marching brass where that recording is the final product for audience consumption. The final product will be 100+ people performing it live on a football field.  So while writers and arrangers would want their demo recordings to sound as close as possible to what the final product will be (so that show and drill designers can design their elements accurately), the demo will always be just that… a demo. In the film and TV world, the MIDI recording might actually serve as the final recording, so realism is paramount. Realism should be important when mocking up a marching band piece, of course, but it’s not the main focal point of a library claiming to do get you there. In that case, another element should take center stage. And that element is “ease of use.” I wanted the library to just sound great out of the box and yet I found myself having to tweak and tweak to get the notes to speak the way I had in my head. The attacks, particularly in the Euphoniums and Tubas, have this weird little pop on the attacks at the front of the sustain patches.  I am not talking about a technical glitch, but rather it seems it is in the way the sound was captured from the instruments. Was the mic too close and are we hearing the tonguing of the notes being attacked too strongly? I’m not sure. You can change and manipulate the attacks and releases to be more present or less present in the playback, and you can also mix the various close, mid and far mics to get a blend of how you want it to sound.  I am glad those options are there as they allowed me to fix what I was hearing. But that is more time going back in to manipulate the MIDI performance.  I wanted it to just sound natural out of the box.  Most marching band music is actually written and arranged by the directors of the corresponding groups and these folks are not the most technologically savvy people. They want it to just work and sound great without having to go in and manipulate the parameters, and I am not sure they’d experience that with FANFARE. There is just so much control that it’s almost too much. The same thing that makes FANFARE’s “morphed” section of the library so great seems to make their “traditional” section so complicated.  If you tweak the wrong thing too much, then all of a sudden, your Blue Devils brass begin to sound like a casio synth. When using the traditional brass patches, be careful of what you tweak with the included FX.

Multis

Your mileage may vary, but I found many of the multi patches in the traditional section to only be moderately useful. If writing and arranging for a group like this, my work is usually done in Sibelius (or Finale) first, then transferred into a DAW and demoed out from there. I would not be using the FANFARE multi’s in this case as I already have all of the parts separated out, and thus, I would mostly need to use the section patches and individual patches for any ensemble and solo work. The traditional multis—many of which create unison patches of various sections playing at the same time across the keyboard—is just not how one arranges for marching groups.  I found their use limited aside from the occasional unison line or powerful chord, etc. It is also important to note for arrangers and educators that Sample Logic does have a Sibelius Sound Set for Sibelius 7 users that would allow playback directly from Sibelius which will also automatically assigns the correct instruments to the staves in the arrangement—something that  could be a huge time saver in setting up Sibelius playback. I didn’t test this feature for this review, but it could be a huge plus for many people who simply need a quick and accurate playback of what’s coming out of the Sibelius sketch.

Effects

There are instrument patches with FX and without FX. This basically means the FX patches are pre-set with the included reverbs and EQ/compressor tweaking to give the instruments their ambiance. While nice to have and I acknowledge it would be useful for some with close, mid and far mic controls included, I found myself not using the FX patches in the end and turning to Altiverb 6 instead to create my space and depth.

One thing I noticed is that all of the FX patches were defaulting to be monophonic instruments, while the non-FX patches were not. I found this out the hard way when trying to play back my MIDI arrangements of the show with the FX patches: Every time the horn/mellophone or trombone/euphonium line would split into a divisi part, not all of the notes would play. I then spent ten minutes trying to explore what was going on and where I could turn this monophonic setting off. Remember that “Options” button in the first pic above? That is where you will find it. An important future update request from me would to simply make both the non-FX patches and the FX patches polyphonic by default.

Ultimately, I think the end results of FANFARE used in a traditional sense are pretty good, and at the end of the day, they gave me the ability to produce a very acceptable demo of the genre of marching band/drum corps music. Once those release triggers in the Euphonium patches are fixed and updated, this will raise my opinion of the Traditionalhalf of the library considerably.

Fanfare “Morphed”

Where the traditional patches perhaps are a bit frustrating, the morphed patches totally shine. In the same way Spectrasonics has taken real, organic recorded source material and created the monster synth instrument Omnisphere, Sample Logic has donewhat they do best in taking their marching brass source recordings and tweaking them, morphing them, stretching them, and anything else you can think of to create a deep set of sounds one can use in electronic and modern compositional work. The best way to show this is to direct you to the many great examples of this on Sample Logic’s own FANFARE music demo player I suggest you spend some time listening to.

Atmospheres, Impacts and Rhythms

There are rhythmic elements, atmospheric elements, percussive hits, etc… all created from these original brass recordings. It is quite amazing actually, and it’s certainly where Sample Logic’s strengths have always been. If you want to add some power to your cue in a way that hints at brass, but don’t want it to be immediately recognized as such, FANFARE is the perfect tool to use. There are a variety of one key patches that evolve and develop the longer they are sustained, some nice atmospheric pads, and a great selection of stacks that you can go in and further tweak to your heart’s content.

For example, their atmospheric patches are divided up into Ambience and Stinger construction kits. The Ambience section alone is then categoriezed into eight categories describing a general genre of sound from Bizarre, Dark N Scary, Electronic, Euphoric – Spiritual, Low End, Mixed Emotions, Mystery Suspense, and Organic. Each one of those genres of sound then have dozens of instruments for you to use. Aside from the Atmospheres section of the morphed library, there is also an Impacts section, and an Instumental section that is further divided into arpeggiated, melodic and pad instruments.

The interface of FANFARE includes a lot of post-processing options so the user can truly create the sounds they want. It is a little confusing in the interface to figure out where to access these FX tools.  They are represented by the little colorful icons in the FX page…or one can also choose them from a little drop-down word menu in the middle of the screen.  Sample Logic has done a great job of using their sound design talents and creating unique morphed patches from the source material…but then they have also given you access to those tools so you can take what they have done and develop it further.  Two they are particularly proud of are their Arpeggiator and Spinner tools.

Arpeggiator

The arpeggiator does just what you would suspect.  You can use this to create a rhythmic feel to your patch.  Want to create a unique percussive element on top of your groove?  This is your tool. You can copy and paste the patterns you design and really get creative here…twisting those patches even more.

It will allow you to take a sustained pad like this:

FANFARE Morphed Pad

And create a rhythmic element out of it from the same pad as above like this:

FANFARE Morphed ARP

Spinner

With FANFARE, Sample Logic has also introduced their new Spinner tool. With Spinner, you can manipulate any of FANFARE’s multi-mic instruments to not only shift the position of the instrument around the concert hall in all directions, but you can also automate the position of the listener, swirling the sound around the space to create a unique effect.

My only problem with the morphed section of the library in general is that my meager system (well within their minimum recommended specs for the library) was starting to get bogged down in performance when using a lot of the included FX. Anyone running an 8-core Apple MacPro should have absolutely no problem adding thick layers of morphed patches to their compositions, but on an older system or a less powerful laptop like mine used in this review, you will start to notice some playback anomalies the more you use their included effects like the reverb, arpeggiator tool, spinner, etc.

An important note on this is that in the education world, not many directors have the latest and greatest systems out there. School funding for music programs is severely lacking and whatever money they do have is usually put into buying or repairing instruments and not upgrading the office computer. Then again, most education customers will probably just want this library for the traditional side of the instruments offered and will not use many of the FX available, so that may or may not be an issue for most. For commercial music professionals, having older and slower hardware would most certainly be an issue.

Final Thoughts

The true question is whether FANFARE stands up to the challenge. Is it the “Definitive Marching Brass Library” or not?

Value

If FANFARE were a bit lower in price, I could deal with its interface quirks a little easier. At $399.00 USD, I do start to get into the territory of a high expectation of it just working right out of the box without much tweaking.

Functionality

FANFARE is fairly unique in its offerings with both the traditional and morphed instruments, but one place it has room for improvement in is its ease of use and scripting. You may need some time to become comfortable with where everything is located. The way the traditional instrument samples respond and play could be fixed and tweaked in updates if Sample Logic decides to do so. With all of the scripting available in Kontakt now, I am positive some time spent in this area could make my issues with FANFARE’s traditional patches go away since all of my problems seemed to stem from performance and MIDI playback issues inherent in how the library was programmed.

Quality

For the marching brass/drum corps folks out there, FANFARE is the best thing you will currently find on the market for demos of your arrangements. When that promised update comes out to fix the release triggers, it will be even better. The quality of the recordings and source material is excellent. Top notch. The originality and variety of the morphed patches is a great addition to anyone’s sampled library arsenal, and between all of the one key patches, stacks and beds, there is a huge amount of unique material for you to explore and incorporate into your compositional work.

Key Points

• Over 1200 instruments and multis, originally recorded and processed at 88.2KHz/24-bit and delivered at 44.1KHz/24-bit
• 30GB of content compressed down to 20GB via NI’s Kontact Compression.
• FANFARE is available in both boxed and direct download formats and will run Standalone, VST, AU, DXI or RTAS.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Daunting isn’t it? Especially since each of these crafts alone could take a lifetime to master. As we cannot learn and master every harmonization or orchestration or even mixing technique a specialist would know, there must be systems in place to handle the parts where we are forced, either by budget or lack of connection, to handle those for ourselves. And when we ultimately do find ourselves in the enviable position of being able to hire out the necessary parts of production to a team of seasoned specialists, it becomes even more important that we know and understand a little about each area in order to be an effective manager and leader for the team overall.

That’s exactly why we’ve created SCOREcast University (SCU). Through a series of white papers, reference materials, and strategic tools over the next year, SCOREcast University aims to supply you with essential harmony, composition, orchestration and technology understanding to improve the quality of your work and help you take the next steps in building a successful career.

SCU will serve a dual purpose. First, it will be used as a ‘reference room’ which articles from other channels will refer to for further and background information. Second, it will serve as a ‘go-to’ library for easily locating information that would otherwise take you precious time to find.

SCOREcast University

While often cross-pollinate and not as distinct, there are six phases from the initial idea/concept of a score to the final product, and SCOREcast University will focus on each one through interconnected resource material.

Conception

The essential work every composer needs to do before sitting down to write music. Themes such as how to plan your time and your project, how to read a script and ‘interpret’ the director’s words, how to attend a meeting with the director and avoid unpleasant surprises, how to research your project, and how to develop the basic concept for the project will be covered here.

Composition

In conjunction with SCOREcast’s Composition channel (spearheaded by Ryan Leach), SCOREcast University will provide you with useful information regarding Tonal, Jazz and 20th Century harmonic devices as well as resources and specifics on turning your themes into full-fledged compositions.

Orchestration

For each orchestral section (strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion) we will provide you with important instrumentation information as well as a variety of techniques and devices you can use to make the most of the orchestral forces you have available.

Sequencing/Mockup

Aside from expensive sample libraries, the other most important factor in creating realistic mockups is the use of appropriate sequencing techniques. This category will contain resources for everything from sequencing for strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and band instruments, DAW-specific techniques, sample library specifications, blending different libraries, and efficient template set-up.

Score Preparation/Recording

How to prepare your score and parts either using a notation program or using your DAW’s printout, best practices for working with session musicians, how to run a successful scoring session, how to layer recorded instruments with sample libraries, and much much more… the prep and recording section of SCOREcast University will resource all of these concentrations.

Mixing/Mastering

A detailed overview of the basic techniques involved in mixing and mastering your work; how to use panning, EQ, compression and FX to make your productions come alive, mastering techniques for specific genres, etc.

Delivery

An often neglected but equally important step in the chain of production scoring. This section will contain references designed help you see your project through to completion; specifications for industry standard deliveries, resources for physical or electronic delivery, checklists for dubbing and mixing sessions, cue sheet protocol, after-sales service and more.

In building SCOREcast University, we are putting together the world’s first online repository of resources specifically designed for the orking film music professional. With resources built by the pros in the trenches who are in the trenches everyday in Hollywood and London, we hope that the SCU database will quickly become a go-to tool for you and your team and that it will help you become quicker and more effective as a content provider by handling some of the more technical and mundane tasks that come with with job.

For those of you taking your first steps, SCOREcast University might serve you well as a starting point. For those of you already there, it can help you freshen up your memory. In any case, we hope it will help make your lives easier!

See? Life doesn’t have to be so hard!

SCOREcast University launches February 1st, 2012, first with a set of comprehensive orchestration tools. Keep your eyes on the front page for further information.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Episode Description

The first in SCOREcast’s “Developer Series” podcasts for NAMM 2012, Brian Ralston chats with Audiobro’s Andrew Keresztes and Sebastian Katz about one of the composing community’s most highly anticipated orchestral library updates, LA Scoring Strings’ version 2.0.

Community Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

The Winner of SCOREcast’s 2nd Annual Cue Contest

and the new owner of Spitfire Audio’s SOLO STRINGS is

Jeremy Mayne

for his composition

“Contemplation”

(click here to listen)

About Jeremy Mayne’s “Contemplation”

Jeremy Mayne is a 28-year-old composer based in the United Kingdom. His winning cue, selected from 548 submitted entries, was written for piano, harp and solo cello. The cue was chosen by our adjudication panel of five A-list film and television composers for its outstanding marks in the following three areas:

• Featured use of solo instrument
• Production value
• Utilization of limitations (instrument choices and compositional decisions)

Jeremy used the following plugins/sound libraries as his palette in “Contemplation”:

• LASS First Chair Solo Cello
• Native Instruments “Alicia’s Keys” Grand Piano
• VSL Harp – the version included in Kontakt 5

Judges’ Comments

“I’d put the playing up against anything I’ve heard or recorded on my own stuff, whether here [Los Angeles] or in London.”

“Top notch writing!”

“The interplay between the piano and the harp is pretty advanced.”

“The ebb and flow of the piece is very organic. Great use of liquidity and motion.”

“Not only is he a gifted composer, but his skills as a player are on display here as well.”

Head over to Jeremy Mayne’s Soundcloud profile and give him some love of your own on his winning track!

Congratulations to Jeremy for winning the contest, and a very special thanks to all who submitted and entered the contest. The level of writing, crafting, and production in the SCOREcast composing community is simply some of the best out there!

Stay tuned for our next contest and your chance to win again… coming up VERY soon!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012

Now into the marketplace comes a completely new offering: Spitfire Audio Solo Strings. In contrast to LASS, which is relatively dry, Spitfire makes their space an integral part of the library, recording at the world renowned Air Studios in London. Perhaps even more significant, this is a rare beast among sample libraries – it features named players. This reflects Spitfire’s policy to support live musicians, and the three players will receive an ongoing royalty from sales of the product.

Overview

The two libraries aren’t like-for-like in terms of instruments. Unlike Solo Strings, LASS First Chair features a contrabass alongside the expect cello, viola and 1^st violin. LASS First Chair also has two other violins – a bonus legato violin from the original test recordings, and a separate 2^nd violin. This uses the same sample set as the main first violin, but uses a clever trick of employing adjacent samples and different EQ so they genuinely do sound different. Spitfire say that they will release an update to Solo Strings with a 2^nd violin that uses similar techniques.

While Solo Strings has only three instruments vs six, we at least know the names of all three players – Andrew Haveron, Bruce White and Caroline Dale. Each CV is impeccable – Andrew, for example, is frequently guest lead at the London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic, while Caroline’s broad credits range from the Royal Philharmonic to U2.

LASS stands for LA Scoring Strings, and the library was recorded on an unnamed LA scoring stage. It has a natural live feel, but although the stage has a 30 ft high ceiling, the net result sounds relatively small and subtle – it will typically require additional processing to put it in a bigger space. The plus side is that this makes it versatile – LASS is a great choice if you need a more intimate soundstage. It has only one microphone option.

Solo Strings has a totally different approach. It has three microphones available – close, Decca tree (stage) and ambient – and even the close mics are far wetter than LASS. There is an important caveat to the three microphone arrangement – the all-important legato patches are one microphone only, and Spitfire have said they have no plans to change this going forward – in their experience this single position sounds the most convincing with least unwanted side-effects. In fact, the legato is actually a combination of the tree and ambient mics.

One final and important distinction on the basics – while both libraries use Kontakt, only LASS First Chair is a fully-fledged Kontakt library, which comes bundled with the free Kontakt player. To use Spitfire Small Strings, you will need the full version of Kontakt 4 or above, it cannot be used with the free player. LASS First Chair is 16 bit (downconverted from 24bit, the original session was class A preamps straight to Nuendo bypassing the desk completely), and takes only a miraculous 1GB of install space.  Solo Strings, with its three microphone positions and 24 bit (originally recorded at 96k through Prism converters), takes a still-SSD-friendly 5GB. Both use Native Instruments’ proprietary NCW lossless compression sample format, and both are download-only.

Both libraries are similarly priced from the companies’ own websites – depending on where you live when you buy it, VAT issues etc, each will set you back around $300.

Articulations

Again, there are significant differences between the two libraries. LASS is commendable for its consistency across the instruments. All have legato with portamento option; Espressivo Sustain; Spiccato; Staccato; Pizzicato; Tremolos and Trills (maj and min). In addition, all but cellos and double bass have gliss – a much slower slide between notes than the portamento. The speed of the portamento itself can be adjusted via cc83. There are options for DFD streaming or RAM-only patches, with various features included or excluded to save RAM.

Solo Strings is still in its infancy, and Spitfire promise additional articulations to come which fill in some of the current gaps. As it is, for the shorts we have Spiccato, Staccato, Pizzicato, and Harmonics for the violin. The cello drops off the staccato, the viola drops off everything except spiccato. However, crucially (unlike LASS First Chair) there is a non-vibrato sustain option for all three instruments. There’s a purge feature on the multimic patches to save RAM on unused articulations.

What LASS calls regular “legato”, Spitfire calls “slurred legato”. What LASS calls “gliss”, Solo Strings doesn’t have. What LASS calls “portamento”, Spitfire calls “gliss”, though its speed is fixed. However, SSS has an extra trick up it’s sleeve – violin and cello both have “bowed legato” on the high key velocity, a sound created by a more aggressive re-bow – it doesn’t perhaps sound like legato at all as we usually think of it in the sample world, but it’s a very common bowing technique and a welcome addition to the cannon.

Controls, Bells and Whistles

Both libraries use the modwheel (cc1) to control the velocity of sustains and legato patches, and both use similar dead-easy methods to implement the legato transitions. Overlap a note when playing and it becomes a transition. With LASS the softest key press is gliss, next is portamento, hardest is regular legato (if you choose a patch with all three options). Similarly in Solo Strings, softest is gliss, next is slurred, hardest is bowed. Sadly, currently you can’t adjust these thresholds in Solo Strings, while everything is configurable in LASS – velocity curves, CCs, pretty much everything.

Solo Strings legato patches are almost bare (but beautiful) visually – a graphic representation of what your modwheel is up to, and a “hall size” control to try to tame the natural ambiance by reducing the releases (which doesn’t sound too convincing, in truth). With both of these you can reassign the midi controllers by right-clicking, though at the time of writing there is no way to stop the modwheel controlling velocity – Spitfire are looking into this. The only other thing to look at is the three musical score representations of the legato styles, which turn red when played.

Solo Strings has just two patches per instrument – the legato and the multi-mic (well, a third patch has just snuck itself in, more on that later). The multi-mic has all the articulations on keyswitches, and also the vibrato level is adjustable and can be assigned to a midi cc of choice. Currently, however, this isn’t a smooth increase of vibrato, rather it switches between the two articulations quite abruptly at the half way point. The transitions don’t sound harsh or clipped as such, they don’t always sound too musical either – natural transitions are smoother and slower than that. Spitfire have told us that the whole issue of controlling vibrato is still a work in progress.

Both have wizardry under the hood for patterns for your short artics. LASS has the A.R.T – a simple pattern generator activated by the sustain pedal, which works amazingly well on the famed LASS spiccatos in particular. Spitfire has its shiny new Ostinatum, which adds pitch information – it’s dead clever in that you determine the order of the notes of the chord you play – 1^st finger, 4^th finger, 2^nd finger and so on. Great fun and pretty easy to use.

LASS First Chair also has multis and the auto-arranger – some amazing cleverness whereby you can play a chord and the scripting determines which instrument should be playing which note. It takes some getting used to, and tends to work best on slow passages.

Sound and Playability

You can compare the tone of the two libraries in the following audio demos. It’s one simple, short legato line played on each instrument in turn, which features all available legato transitions and a wide dyamnic range. With Solo Strings there are versions for the normal patches and the semi-official nv-v BPD ones (more on this below), for LASS First Chair versions with and without impulse response early reflections and tails (included with the library). Each example has had velocities and CCs adjusted to best suit the instrument. LASS comes with a default EQ switched on, and is enabled in these demos.

LA Scoring Strings: First Chair

LASS First Chair Cello +IRs

LASS First Chair Cello

LASS First Chair Viola +IRs

LASS First Chair Viola

LASS First Chair Violin +IRs

LASS First Chair Violin

Spitfire Solo Strings

Spitfire Solo Strings Cello

Spitfire Solo Strings Cello (v-nv)

Spitfire Solo Strings Viola

Spitfire Solo Strings Viola (v-nv)

Spitfire Solo Strings Violin

Spitfire Solo Strings Violin (v-nv)

Audiobro founder Andrew Keresztes goes to some extraordinary lengths to get consistency in his library and make it playable. LASS First Chair fits perfectly in its intended role within the wider LASS canon – the transitions all follow each other with incredible precision. Also, he’s got the dynamics absolutely spot on – the lowest velocity at the bottom of the modwheel is a little more subtle on the vibrato and it takes a little longer to ease in, and the higher up the wheel you go, the more vibrato you get alongside the volume. Although this isn’t the only natural way to play a violin, it’s a pretty damn good starting point for a dynamic that has good – if slightly conservative – emotional range. Nothing leaps out, there’s nothing overly dramatic but it’s not too tame either. It’s exceptionally well programmed and executed.

Spitfire is looser all round. This is – at least in part – by design, and part of the Spitfire philosophy to keep it real. For the most part it works – it’s a much warmer tone and there is generally more character here, and with the bowed legato there’s an extra layer you can build into a performance – that designed imperfection works really well. It’s also worth stressing that the general legato performance is excellent, and it’s a very challenging area in an ambient environment. The bowed legato can add a new level of expression into a passage.

However, there are a couple of problems too. First, there is the occasional bloom or drop in ambiance during some of the transitions – nothing too major, fortunately, just the occasional little glitch and likely to be ironed out in successive revisions, and usually easy enough to work around by – say – choosing an alternate transition. However there is another problem – there is no way to adjust the vibrato in the legato patches, and the lowest velocity still has a healthy load of it. There’s just no way to dial it back. It doesn’t take long before this can become wearing to listen to, a general over-emoting.

Fortunately, the Spitfire team have added some special BPD nv-v patches with controllable vibrato within a few weeks of the initial release. To quote the manual – BPD “stands for By Popular Demand, as means of a disclaimer” – in other words, these patches do have some rough edges. They won’t be fully supported in the regular way, so think of them as a bonus.

On the BPD patches, the vibrato fader (even though it’s effectively a 2-way switch) last seen on the multimic patches makes a welcome re-appearance, and can of course be assigned to a midi cc of choice. Be warned, however – learning to ride this and the mod wheel and getting a solid-sounding performance takes a little practice. For some reason the violin works least well on its patch, it’s quite tricky to get the transitions smooth, but the cello in particular can work very nicely indeed. With some perseverance, amazing performances are possible, but our demos also highlight the shortcomings.

Future Plans and Conclusions

These are two excellent products, and both have a bright future ahead of them. Although LASS First Chair won’t get the full treatment come the imminent 2.0 full library upgrade (no Stage and Color, the timbral impulse response engine), there will be new additions including legato tremolos, intelligent legato trills, updated microtuning and aleatoric patches along with updates to the CC scripts, Auto Arranger and A.R.T. Spitfire, meanwhile, promise a new recording session to pick up the missing viola articulations, giving the library greater consistency.

Audiobro’s Andrew Keresztes has really set the bar in terms of meticulous editing and scripting to achieve his vision of three unified divisi sections and a first chair – one shudders to imagine the sheer mind-numbing tedium involved in the editing man hours of the LASS project. It plays pretty much perfect out of the box, and users can adjust almost everything they’d ever need. The two drawbacks are that the tone won’t be to everyone’s liking, and if using as a solo instrument, the emotional range is good but hardly touches virtuoso levels (it’s not designed to, after all).

Spitfire Small Strings is a different and wilder beast. A few more rough edges can be either helpful quirks or irritants depending on the context, and you’ll need to look elsewhere if you need a dry sound. But the gorgeous tone and the passion – without relying on phrases or a myriad of keyswitches – are currently without equal in the VI world.

Right now, that kinda makes it a score draw. However, with significant updates in the works for both products, this may yet change.

Look out also for our upcoming SCOREcast review of VSL Solo Strings with an introduction to the VI Pro 2 sample player.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Win Spitfire Audio’s Newest Creation

SOLO STRINGS

in SCOREcast’s 2nd Annual Cue Contest

This year, SCOREcast is teaming up with Spitfire Audio to give away a copy of their hot new sample library, SOLO STRINGS—the premiere solo string library for Kontakt.

SCOREcast wants to hear what you can do with limited instrumentation, and if you blow our minds, you’ll win your very own copy of SOLO STRINGS by Spitfire! To enter to win, all you need to do is compose a melodic cue that is 60 to 90 seconds long, and uses THREE virtual instruments—one of them being a solo instrument of your choice. So, get your palette together, dream up a memorable melody line, and get to crackin! The contest starts TODAY!

We’ll get to the complete contest rules and eligibility requirements in a second, but right now, here’s the scoop on your prize from Spitfire Audio:

SOLO STRINGS by Spitfire

With three legendary players and one legendary studio, Spitfire Audio continues to roll out a definitive set of composers tools with SOLO STRINGS. For this release, Andrew Haveron (violin), Bruce White (viola) and Caroline Dale (cello) were recorded in situ’ the “Spitfire Way” at Lyndhurst Hall, Air Studios—arguably one of the finest in the world and home to hundreds of Hollywood blockbuster films and many top recording artists of our age.

Each instrument features two classes of patch: Legato and Multi Mic.

In Legato mode, three interval types are included: Glissandi, Slur, and Detache—all selectable via velocity, with up to four layers of dynamics selectable via the modulation wheel.

In Multi Mic mode, the various articulations can be dialed in via keyswitches, including long, staccato, spiccato, pizzicato, and harmonics, both long and short. These patches are polyphonic with 3-way mic control, including close, tree and ambient, enabling you to mix and shape your sound to desired levels of room ambience, and route for a true 5.1 experience. Dial just the tree mics in whilst you’re sketching on your laptop for ease on your system, then render back on your “big rig” in full 5.1 before presenting your demos to your director.

SOLO STRINGS by Spitfire features the finest of session skill talents available in the UK today. These are three players you have heard many many times already, whether in concerts around the world, on any recent Hollywood blockbuster recorded in the UK, or a raft of exceptional independent movie appearances and top tracks from a who’s who of pop and rock.

How to Enter the Contest

1. Meet the Eligibility Requirements (below).
2. Read and understand the General Conditions and Releases (below).
3. Compose and produce your entry (cue) based on the Official Rules and Restrictions (below).
4. Enter your composition in the Contest by sending an email with your NAME (first and last), your MAILING ADDRESS, your AGE, a LIST of plug-in instruments (including sample libraries) used in your entry, the TITLE of your cue entry, and a direct LINK (Soundcloud® links are also permitted) to your cue to at scorecastonline@gmail.com. Limit one entry per person. If multiple entries are received from any person, only the first entry will qualify for the contest.

By participating in this contest, all entrants agree to abide by the official rules and restrictions, eligibility requirements, and general conditions and releases, as outlined below.

Official Rules and Restrictions

Please read through these conditions carefully, and be sure to follow them exactly when composing your cue entry.

1. Cue must be original and composed by you.
2. Cue may not contain any pre-recorded melodic elements and can not be based on an existing piece of music.
3. Cue must ONLY utilize virtual plugin instruments. No live instrumentation allowed.
4. Cue must be submitted along with an itemized list of plugin instruments used.
5. Cue must be at least 60 seconds long, but no longer than 90 seconds.
6. Cue must utilize (3) total virtual instruments, one of which must cover a solo melody (not necessarily a VST dedicated to a solo instrument, but rather a solo instrument of your choice).
7. Entries will be judged based on the following criteria:
• Featured use of solo instrument
• Production value
• Utilization of limitations (instrument choices and compositional decisions)

Contest Deadline

1. All entries for SCOREcast’s 2nd Annual Cue Contest must be received on or before December 22, 2011, 5pm Pacific Standard Time.
2. Winner will be announced December 26, 2011 on SCOREcastOnline.com.

Eligibility Requirements

1. This Contest is open to people 18 years of age or older. Proof of age may be required.
2. Employees/contributors of SCOREcast, LLC and its affiliated companies, employees of the prize sponsor (Spitfire Audio) and its affiliates, and members of such employees’ immediate families or households, whether past or present, are ineligible to participate in this Contest.

Winner Notification

1. The winner of this Contest will be announced on SCOREcastOnline.com, and the winner will also be notified through email.
2. Any attempted second entry shall be discarded, and the entrant may be disqualified from the Contest.
3. Adjudication of entries will be conducted under the supervision of SCOREcastOnline.com and SCOREcast, LLC. The decisions are final and binding in all matters relating to this Contest.
4. Entries are the property of their respective owners, but will not be returned.
5. Entrants need not be present during adjudication to win.
6. If a winner cannot be reached after a reasonable effort has been made within five (5) business days of our first attempt, or if an entrant is found to be ineligible, an alternate winner may be selected.

General Conditions and Releases

This Contest is void where and to the extent prohibited by law and is subject to all applicable laws, including, without limitation, federal, state, and local laws and regulations. In the event of non-compliance by any winner with the official rules of this Contest, an alternate winner may be selected. Prizes are non-transferable. Return of any prize or prize notification as undeliverable will result in a disqualification of the winner and an alternate winner may be selected. All prizes will be awarded. Except where legally prohibited, acceptance of any prize constitutes permission for SCOREcast, LLC/SCOREcastOnline.com to use each winner’s name, photograph, likeness, voice, address (city and state) and testimonials, in printed, broadcast or other media, whether now known or hereafter developed, in perpetuity, in any manner it deems appropriate in connection with promoting this or any other Contest and/or promotion sponsored by it, without further compensation to the winner. By participating, entrants agree that SCOREcast, LLC/SCOREcastOnline.com, those involved in the development, production (including prize suppliers Spitfire Audio), implementation and distribution of this Contest and their respective parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, service providers, and agencies, and their directors, officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and any other person or entity associated with such entities and/or promotion (hereinafter collectively called “Promoters”), shall not be liable for any claims, damages, losses or injuries, including any third party claims, arising from or relating to, in whole or in part, this Contest, including entry and participation in this Contest and acceptance, possession, use or misuse of the prizes. All entrants further agree that in the event of any third party claims, damages, losses or injuries, arising from or relating to such entrant’s participation in this Contest, such entrant will indemnify and hold Promoters harmless from and against any and all such claims, including reasonable attorneys’ fees related thereto. Failure by entrants to provide a direct link to their entry cue may result in disqualification. Promoters shall not be liable for entries that are delayed, lost, misdirected, misdelivered, incorrect or incomplete, and such entries will be not be eligible for this Contest. Promoters shall not be responsible for any technical malfunctions of any telephone network, computer on-line system, computer equipment or software; program malfunctions or other failures; delayed computer transactions or network connections; any errors of any kind, whether human, mechanical or electronic; or any combination thereof, including, without limitation, any injury or damage to the computer of any entrant or any other person related to or resulting from downloading any part of this Contest. Any person attempting to defraud or in any way tamper with this Contest will be ineligible for prizes and may be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. SCOREcast, LLC/SCOREcastOnline.com reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel or suspend this Contest should viruses, bugs or other causes beyond its control corrupt the proper administration or security of the Contest. SCOREcast, LLC/SCOREcastOnline.com reserves the right to modify the rules of the Contest in any way or at any time, as long as reasonable notice is given. All taxes on any prize won are the sole responsibility of each winner, including, without limitation, any federal, state, or local taxes which may be deemed applicable in such winner’s jurisdiction of residence. This Contest shall be governed by the laws of the State of California in the United States of America. By participating in this contest, entrants agree that the state and federal courts located in the State of California shall have jurisdiction over any dispute or litigation arising from or relating to this Contest and that venue for such litigation shall be only in the Circuit Court for the City of Los Angeles, CA or the The United States District Court, Los Angeles County.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

As SCOREcast’s 5th Anniversary celebration rolls on this month, there couldn’t be a better time for some of those faces to be added to the leadership ranks within SCOREcast, providing for an even richer experience for our readers, listeners and community members.

For two-and-a-half years, London-based composer James Semple has nurtured and faithfully led our SCOREcast: London community chapter using a variety of events including meet-ups, seminars, and the popular SCOREcast Composiums to grow the group into London’s premiere network of media composers. As SCOREcast: London has gained notoriety across Europe (with composers flying in from as far as Greece and Germany to attend group events), James has established himself as a lightening-rod organizer who knows how to forge a strong community around a common cause and bond people together through industry camaraderie.

It is with great pleasure that SCOREcast announces James Semple as our newly appointed Director of Global Community. In his new role, James will work closely with all of our community leaders to effectively build and strengthen our SCOREcast Chapter Community program, as well as lead a team that will develop and plant new community chapters in strategic cities around the world.

Equally as exciting is the appointment of Marie-Anne Fischer as James’ successor at SCOREcast: London. Marie-Anne has been a member of the chapter since it’s launch in 2008, and has already been working along-side James as a principal coordinator in the group for some time. Marie-Anne brings with her a long history of experience and respect within the London film community, deep relationships with European software developers, and as an accomplished composer, a body of work that truly speaks for itself. As James and I have fully considered the future of the London chapter, we’ve both agreed that the perfect choice to lead the SCOREcast: London chapter is Marie-Anne, and we are already thrilled with her enthusiasm to boldly jump right in and begin positioning SCOREcast: London for even greater feats through 2012 and beyond.

Please join me in welcoming Marie-Anne Fischer to the SCOREcast team, welcoming James Semple to his new post within our administration, and congratulating them both on their tireless service to the London composing community as well as the industry at large.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

We can’t be quantified or packaged. We’re artists, darling. Our art speaks for itself. All true… but all the art out there is vying equally for all of your potential clients’ attentions. And those attention spans are short and very demanding. If you want to make your art into a business, i.e. make money at it, you’ve no choice – you have to brand yourself and then market your art. No getting away from it.

And as film composers and sound designers, we’re usually selling art that’s yet to be created. So what might be a more effective overall marketing strategy is to think of how we can sell ourselves, our persona, our fun-to-work-with-ness, our attitudes to career and life, how you and I collaborating together will without a doubt create something more awesome than we could possibly have done separately.

So marketing is very important to the film music composer or sound designer. But it need not be boring, time-consuming or expensive. Marketing for us film sound creators can be quick, easy, painless, fun, interesting, and very cheap if you take a little time to think creatively about it. Even if you’re totally anti-marketing/branding/selling your soul, you’re probably doing some of it already without even realising it (I’ve talked about some of this in Personality Branding).

And… if it sells more of your work or your services, what you complainin’ about? :-)

Here are all of the ways I can think of (so far) that a film music composer may market themselves. I’ve separated them out into whether I’ve used them or not, and how useful they’ve been up ’til now. Hopefully you can pick out a few to start forming an easy strategy for marketing your wares and yourself.

This turned into rather a long list so stick with it…

Marketing Stuff that really works – directly led to sales:

• Online portfolio website with music and contact details
• DVD Showreel ready to go upon request
• Tailored CD submissions
• Music licensing on other site which led to commissions
• Content marketing (fancy name for blog attached to website): writing blog posts about opinions and thoughts about my experiences. This is all about building a connection with audience, fleshing out a more thorough picture of yourself, what you’re like as a person to work with rather than just a faceless, personality-less, unknown quantity.
• Networking in person and seeing it as an opportunity to make connections for people with other people.
• Having an elevator pitch ready to go… then getting out of the way, asking questions, listening, really engaging in creating the potential for a new business relationship.
• Twitter for both forging new relationships and developing ones already made through other methods.
• Maintaining and keeping tabs on pre-made business relationships on Facebook.
• Word of Mouth recommendations from people you’ve worked with before. Isn’t as tricky as you might first think – be easy to work with, go above and beyond, add value, and make the client feel special (‘cos they are – they’re working with you aren’t they?).
• Working in associated roles – this is really a form of networking. The word-of-mouth that you can gain about you being a really cool person and being great to work with works wonders when you hear about new projects coming up and you offer music composition/sound design!
• Collaborating with other artists in relevant areas for free or as equally paid co-creators in order to raise both of our profiles.
• Doing really awesome work with awesome people on awesome shows with high profile venues/channels with massive audiences is worth its weight in gold (though this probably counts a word of mouth too).
• Giving away free CDs of pre-composed music to trusted filmmakers to license whenever they might like to in the future. Sometimes they’ll come back to you for a bespoke version or even a new commission.
• Participating on relevant trade forums.
• Sending showreel CDs out to local and national production companies. I actually did this without checking whether they wanted to hear it first, tut tut. Even though it worked for me, right at the start of my career when I was a little fraidy-cat when it came to cold calling, it was such a small response – 3 replies from 100+ CDs sent out – that really, I spent an awful lot of money that could have been saved just by making a few phone calls. Though you never know…

Marketing stuff that probably worked indirectly, though I don’t know for sure, or methods I’ve implemented so recently that’s it’s hard to say what effect it’s yet to have:

• Website SEO (search engine optimisation)
• Building a website with a CMS or ‘Content Management System’ (e.g. wordpress, joomla) that’s very easily update-able with news, presents a more unified site where the blog isn’t just an add on, and where you don’t need to go into the code to make site-wide changes.
• Asking for testimonials for your website – also reminds the client how great it was working with you. ;-)
• Following up with email note after networking meetings (‘great to meet you’ type stuff).
• Business cards handed out at networking events and included in showreel mailouts.
• Trade press and general newspaper interviews.
• Relevant website interviews.
• Writing articles for relevant websites (such as this one).
• Email signature including links to my latest work on- or off-line.
• Twitter-driven traffic to my website – these visitors tend to stay around on the website a little longer than the average.
• Scheduling tweets for Twitter to maintain a more consistent, steady online presence and reach more followers in all the different timezones.

Marketing stuff I’ve tried that hasn’t worked for me so far (but might for you… but it’s dubious, and if you don’t have time or money or energy, then maybe don’t bother):

• Private online music store selling mp3s and music licenses for media attached to my website.
• A website built on flash – very little search engine traffic at all as most of it can’t be indexed.
• “Faking it ’til you make it”/exaggerating your achievements/pretending to be something you’re not personality-wise – you get found out eventually! It’s so tiring to keep up the facade consistently.
• Following general marketing gurus and social media ‘experts’ on Twitter.
• Following lots and lots of people on Twitter – signal to noise ratio gets less and less favourable, even though your follow stats are high. They aren’t really a targeted audience.
• Premium, i.e. paid-for, online portfolio/cv sites – e.g. Productionbase
• “Working the Room” at industry networking events – no real, viable relationships formed as a result of constantly looking for instant ‘usefulness’ indicators in conversations, looking over shoulders at other people who might be more ‘useful.” This behavior doesn’t really give the best impression.
• Music “giveaways.” I tried this once and it didn’t work… but it might next time.
• Myspace page (although I didn’t put a lot of effort into it)

Stuff I haven’t tried yet so can’t say either way. But these tips might send your business into the stratosphere, so am not ruling them out yet:

• Professional logo design.
• Headshots/professional photography (technically I have but it was for a different business – a live string group – and wasn’t really the right style for what I wanted to promote for my freelance composition).
• Professional web design.
• Hired professional PR and marketing services.
• Email list marketing (round-robins, news updates)
• Using bookmarking sites and comments on other blogs to drive traffic to my site (not intentionally anyway)
• Paid-for ghostwriters for blog content.
• Paid advertisements – e.g. Telephone directories on and offline, in trade magazines, on relevant trade websites.
• Real-world thank you notes (vs email, which I actually do quite a lot).
• Professionally printed branded headed note paper, ‘with compliments’ slips, holiday cards etc.
• Pursuing the press e.g. having a press pack ready, calling the press with a pre-made story or angle.
• Video interviews/vlog (e.g. on your blog).
• Branded associated merchandise – hats, cups, tshirts, bags, stuffed animals…
• Reverbnation page (technically I’ve got a page. but I’ve not put anything of interest on it. So can’t really claim to be an authority on this one)
• Publicity “stunts.”
• Cold-calling production companies. (I take the easy route and ask my working friends and colleagues who I’ve met through networking or working alongside in related media who work at those companies, what’s going on there. So, technically, it’s warm-calling).

Final word – and this is as technical as I’m going to get…

As media composers and sound designers, we are B2B – business to business – rather than B2C – business to consumer. We sell our services or our previously composed music to producers of other media as raw material for them to sculpt into the product that will be sold to the consumer – the audience. So a lot of the advice for marketing for musicians you may find on the web or offline, unless specifically for media music composers and sound designers, isn’t actually that relevant.

Ultimately, rather than focussing on the product, we’re aiming to be service providers – you’re selling you: your working personality, your style of collaboration, your creativity-on-tap. You can’t really afford to just let the music ‘speak for itself’. That’s your past. What you’re selling is in your future. Who you are as an artist. Your creative soul.

If that doesn’t scare you then you’re probably in the right business. Go get ‘em, tiger.

Which marketing strategies do you use? What’s worked and what hasn’t? What would you add to these lists, and what points here are you inspired to take away and implement immediately? Tell us in the comments below.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

And with them comes a huge load of deals perfectly suited for a serious shopping spree. We have compiled a list of the best deals out there, including convenient links to the respective websites and details about the nature of the deals.

With this list, which will be maintained and updated in the future we would also like to introduce you as our readership to our brand-new SCOREcast Technology Team, bringing you reviews, tutorials and the latest and greatest information about music technology.

We hope you enjoy the list and find some deals that will put your credit card to use!

8dio

All products

30% off until November 27th, 2011
use “gimmegimme” at checkout

Analogfactory

All products
50% off until December 5th, 2011

Antares

Autotune
Buy and Register Auto-Tune 7 Native or TDM by January 1, 2011 and Get a Free Copy of Mic Mod EFX!

Big Fish Audio

All products
“until Sunday the 27th of November.

• 25% OFF all orders of $199 or more. Use code: TGS25
• 15% OFF all orders of $99 to $198. Use code: TGS15
• 10% OFF all orders less then $99. Use code: TGS10″

Bluezone Corporation

All DL products
20% discount on all downloads until 30th November 2011

Cinesamples

All excl. CineBrass

Most products 40% off
Voxos/Hollywoodwinds 30% off
Until November 28th

DiscoDSP

All products
Black Friday Sale 50% OFF Until November 25th

EastWest

• Hollywood Brass
  “20% off for new licenses
  30% off for HollwoodStrings to HWBrass crossgrades
  30% off for HWS/HWB bundle”
• 2-for-1 Deal (buy one, get the 2nd of equal or lesser value FREE)
  HW Strings Diamond, HW Strings Gold, Spaces, The Dark Side, Symphonic Choirs Bundle/Single, EWQLSO Bundle/Platinum/Platinum Plus/Gold, Ministry of Rock 1 & 2, Goliath, Stormdrum Bundle/2, Silk, Gypsy, Pianos/Gold Edition, Ra, Fab Four, Voices of Passion

Groove3

• Music DAW / Production Tutorials
  During the entire month of November, you can save 50% off all downloads and you can get our 1-Year All-Access pass for only $99! That’s full online access to everything, for 1 year, for less than $100

Heaviocity

• Evolve: $309 $229
• Evolve Crossgrade 1: $269 $199
• Evolve Crossgrade 2: $229 $169
• Evolve KU Crossgrade:$229 $169
• Evolve 1.5 Upgrade: $29.95 $4.95″

Kirk Hunter

All titles
Group buy – 75% off

Loop Boutique

All DL products
Loop Boutique offers a 20% discount on all of their downloads until November 30th 2011

Musicians Friend

Hundreds (Too many to list)
Serious discounts, most items ship internationally

Native Instruments

• Amazon has Komplete 6 for $276.00
• Native-Instruments.com—50% off Komplete instruments and FX until November 28, 2011

Soniccouture

All products

• Starting on December 1st – “Buy One, Get One Free!”
• Also, current bundle deals include:
  Buy any 3, get 20% off: Enter Code – 77JW42VC3R
  Buy any 4, get 25% off: Enter Code -SIY6HC86JT

Sonivox

All, including Broadway Big Band libs
25% off, coupon “TURKEY”

Sonnox

Oxford plugin bundles
50% off

Soundiron

All products except Reqiem Light
33% off

Sugar Bytes

All products
Discounts vary until December 31st (visit site for more info)

Time & Space

Rob Papen Delay & Distort
£10 for the pair

XLN Audio

Addictive Drums
$99 instead of $249 (60% off)

Zero-G

All titles
30% off regular retail/Ends December 31st, 2011

iTunes RSS Link

Episode Description

We are celebrating five years on the air with a special visit from veteran video game composer extraordinaire Tom Salta. Tom stops by to chat with the boys about scoring games, the state of the game industry, the tools he uses, why he hates listening to film and game scores, and his work as alter-ego Atlas Plug. Deane and Brian also give an update on SCOREcast’s plans for the 2012 NAMM Show in Anaheim, and talk through all of the killer details surrounding this month’s SCOREcast 5th Anniversary celebration. It’s a whopping 2-hour episode that is chock-full of anniversary goodness, and definitely one that you don’t want to miss!

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? There are now two ways to do it:
1) Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com
2) Call the SCOREcast Hotline and leave a voicemail at (757) SCORE-60 [757-726-7360]

As we move into yet another incarnation of the website, the podcast, and the new horizons of community-building across the film music universe, I am excited for the future of SCOREcast and I want to tell you personally how grateful I am for the part that you have played in our success. We are excited to bring even more awareness, information, opinion, editorial, review, and debate to the already incredibly diverse SCOREcast audience in this fifth year.

SCOREcastOnline.com

We’ve redesigned the website—the third version since its launch in July of 2009. The new site will push to the web today, in conjunction with our anniversary festivities (watch the site for details on all that’s happening this month for our anniversary!). I believe the new design brings with it several key features that are going to revolutionize much of the way our film music community interacts with one another. Forums (in beta now… with much input and guidance from all of you), multi-author collaboration, videocasts, product reviews, and reader-submitted content are only a few of the new features that we are implementing for this re-launch.

Channel Content

We have divided the site up into “channels”: Business, Technology, Community, Workflow, and Composition. Each channel has a senior editor, with a cadre of contributing authors working with that person to bring the most up-to-date and relevant content to the forefront on each channel. More on this in a second…

Advertising

We are also opening up the site and podcast to outside advertisers for the first time in SCOREcast history. Manufacturers and developers have hounded us about this for years, but I’ve been a big proponent of us thoroughly researching this tactic before we actually pulled the trigger. I have always believed that the unique authority we’ve built so quickly within the community has come about partly because we are beholden to no one—we’ve never taken corporate sponsors, advertising money, or endorsements by anyone other than the aforementioned academic institutions. After years of careful research, thought and consideration, the Advisory Board has devised a way to enable software and gear manufacturers to partner with SCOREcast in advertising to our community without a muzzle being placed on our contributors, product reviewers, and authors. I am very pleased and excited about this model for advertising on SCOREcastOnline.com, and you will start seeing the first of these partnerships towards the beginning of 2012.

Chapter Communities

In 2009, we launched SCOREcast: London—our very first international Chapter Community. James Semple, our SCOREcast: London chapter director, has done one hell of an amazing job cultivating and caring for the large SCOREcast community of UK composers in that region of the world. Off the success of SCOREcast: London, we also launched SCOREcast: Hollywood, which blew up with over 125 community members within the first two hours of launching, and is being spearheaded by Los Angeles composer Johnny Knittle and his team. We are now training chapter directors for Boston, Austin, Berlin, and Toronto with our “SCO In a Box” program, and we plan to launch several more Community Chapters throughout 2012.

Senior Editorial Staff

To better serve our readership and community, we are adding to the editorial staff that will oversee each of the previously mentioned channels. Our international team of contributing writers, reviewers, community managers, and forum moderators has grown exponentially and we are excited to introduce all of these people to you over the next three weeks as we roll out our anniversary festivities.

Thank YOU

Thank you. Thank YOU. You have been huge in this, and you may not even realize it. All of the commenting, the visits, the Retweets, the Facebook status messages, the discussion, the debate, the disagreeing, the nods of approval, the sharing… it all has meant so much to us. It really keeps us going. It makes this all worthwhile in every way. Please don’t stop. Keep helping us spread the message that a career in the film, television, and game music industry is one of the most rewarding and creative careers out there.

Thank you for sticking with us for five long years. We’re ALL excited to see what happens this year. If you want to be even more involved than you are now—to take the next step and become part of the team around here—drop us a line and let us know what you have in mind. There are many places to serve. It’s a big community!

(reprinted from DeaneOgden.com)

iTunes RSS Link

Episode Description

In this episode, the boys answer your questions in our very first social media-centric episode of SCOREcast. Nothing is sacred—topics include samples versus live instruments, composer copyright issues, dealing with your first film project, handling directors, where to live when starting a film scoring career, and much, much more. We’ll also give you a sneak peek into what we have planned for SCOREcast’s 5th Anniversary, and how you can get the full scoop coming up on what’s ahead for the website and podcast. Check it out!

Community Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? There are now two ways to do it:
1) Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com
2) Call the SCOREcast Hotline and leave a voicemail at (757) SCORE-60 [757-726-7360]

Steve Jobs’ Legacy

Apple changed the music industry forever with iTunes. One need only look at the fact a CD in a store is hard to come by anymore—an attribute that tracks directly back to the ingenuity of Steve Jobs. As a film composer, I look around my studio and see how so much of my business is based on products that Steve touched. Is it a tribute or a tragic irony that I learned of the death of Steve Jobs on a device he created, and then followed the coverage of his death on that device for the rest of the evening as I propagated through the remainder of my schedule?

The legacy of Steve Jobs will be different for everyone. For me, the most important lesson from Steve’s successful life is not a tangible product. It is not the iPad, the iPhone, the MacBook Pro, or my MacPro that is used to create music every day. It is not even the stories of Pixar, which time after time seem to find a home in the hearts of people around the world. To me, the most important legacy and lesson from Steve’s life is simply the way he lived his life.

You see, Steve followed his passion in every sense of the word. For him, that passion was not just computers. It was making the world better with the products he touched and invented. It was not selling the most of any one product. It was making the technology we use everyday more human and more connected to our lives. That quest was Steve’s passion. The fact that he lived his passion and found success with it is a huge inspiration to me.

What I’ve Learned About “Passion”

Many years ago, I was not on a path to composing music or scoring films. My life was headed in a much different direction. I actually have a degree in Biochemistry, and  I was a nationally certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). I worked for a neurologist for three years doing clinical research in the areas of Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and Peripheral Neuropathy. I took the MCATs and was beginning my medical school interviews when I had an epiphany—a soul searching moment that would end up changing the direction of my life forever. I asked myself, “Why am I doing this? Is this really what I love?” Sure I enjoyed the science of it and I enjoyed helping those in need. But was it my passion?

My answer was a surprising and resounding “NO!” My true passion was music—specifically, I wanted to be a film composer. After seeing Star Wars and Superman as a kid, it was what I wanted to do. And now I was standing at a definite fork in the road of life and had to make a decision. Ultimately, my decision was to follow my passion. I left my medical roots and began walking down the path of music. I never looked back. It led me to USC’s film scoring program, and as it is in our industry, one job has always led to the next. And I don’t regret any of it.

Steve Jobs’ True Legacy

I guess that is why, in my mind at least, Steve Jobs’ real legacy is the fact that he followed his passion. I believe that his quest to live his passion day-in and day-out is the single reason his life was so successful.

The entertainment industry is pretty cut-throat. It will chew you up and spit you out. Thousands of people flood into this industry every year thinking they are different and that they will find easy success. Yet every year, thousands are spit out as they crawl back home with their tail between their legs and their soul seemingly sucked dry. But you know what? In a way, I feel somewhat immune to that fear. Why? Because I am following my passion. I can’t think of anything else in my life that I would want to do on a daily basis. That is the true test, isn’t it? The day you get up and hate what you are doing, you better do something else or you will get eaten up and spit out, too. I have met some in this industry who are truly passionate about what they are doing, but I have also met some who are not. The most successful ones are NOT the ones just going through the motions. They are the ones who emote their passion for this field—their passion for film composing. It is a different beast than songwriting, a different trade skill, to be sure. We tell a story with our music. We help support what is onscreen. In order to do that well, we must be able to recognize the emotional heart of the story at hand.

I have a passion for film scoring. Following that passion against all odds is what convinces me I am on the right track in life. I’ll leave you with some words from Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford commencement address.  This was not long after he first discovered he had pancreatic cancer.

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” — Steven P. Jobs (1955-2011)

10 Lessons on “Breaking In”

I learn something new on every film and further hone my craft and skill with each project.  There are some truly fundamental things I have learned in the last few years.  Many years ago, fresh out of USC’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program, I was given one particular piece of advice, from a highly respected composer that influenced me greatly as I set out on my composing career.  I would like to share this advice as well as some of my own lessons with you.  Here is my “top ten” list of lessons learned while breaking into the industry as a composer.

1) You have to break into the business of tomorrow, not the business of today.

Basil Poledouris said that. Today’s working directors and producers already have established composer relationships they go back to over and over. You have to find the up and coming directors and producers of “tomorrow” and work with them now before they make it in Hollywood. When they eventually get their first studio gig, they will usually go back to the people they know and trust from when they were struggling themselves. Hopefully you will be one of those people on their team.

2) Everyone’s path is different.

So don’t think if you do what the guy next to you is doing, you will get the same result.  Some composers are at the right place (or on the right film) at the right time, and their preparation synergistically meets with their opportunity.  Some pound the grind stone for years and years before getting noticed.  Careers are like snowflakes.  No two career paths are alike.

3) Set a precedent as Department Head.

Music Composer (as on-screen credited on a film or show) is a “department head” job. The only way you will get bigger and better department head jobs (on multi-million dollar films) is to have a proven track record AS A DEPARTMENT HEAD on previous SUCCESSFUL films. Being the composer’s assistant, ghostwriter, orchestrator or musician on studio films do not count as a DEPARTMENT HEAD and will not help a studio see you as less of a risk in the composer job. I have learned this from 4 different studio level producers. This is all I have been hearing for the last 8-9 years.  Don’t get me wrong, composer assistants, orchestrators, etc…are positions to be respected and it is valid work.  It just usually does not lead to a career as the lead composer.  And it certainly will not give you the freedom to develop your own “sound” which is also very important in building your brand as a composer.   Remember, your sound is what you will get hired for.

4) Main title, on-screen credits matter most.

If you are not the on-screen credited person, the credit really will not count to a producer hiring you to be their lead composer.  This is a subtle difference.  Again…working under the wing of another composer is valuable experience and work to be proud of, but you were not the lead composer in charge.  Your reputation was not the one on the line.  It is that on-screen, single, main title card credit of “music by…” that really matters most on your resumé.

5) Recommendations are key.

A word of mouth recommendation is a more powerful influence to getting a gig than anything else. If you get a strong recommendation from someone a director or producer respects, they will hire you nine times out of ten. One job truly leads to the next in this business.  And it is not just about getting “the gig” but also getting their next gig.  If the people you are working for hire you over and over again, you are probably doing something right.  If not, you may have to do some self evaluation.

6) The entertainment industry is a business of relationships.

Those relationships take years to establish. Trust takes a long time to build and a short time to fall.  You better be in this for the long haul.  Do not expect to arrive in town and think you are going to quickly find work.  It may take a good 5-7 years to start composing on films where people will start to notice you and another 5-7 to build off of that.  Ask yourself, are you in this for the long haul?

7) Be a good listener. Be a good communicator.

I could go on and on about this one in an article by itself. But to be successful in your job, you will have to be a master at both of these tasks.

8) Be “production friendly.”

Meaning… don’t be myopic to the music department issues only. Learn about every other step of the process in making a film. Heck…produce your own film sometime to learn about all the other issues one has to deal with in shooting and budgeting for a film. It will not only help you better communicate with a director as the composer, but it WILL make you a better composer in the long run. You will understand where everyone has just come from on a shoot and why things are the way they are in Post (which is usually the only thing composers care about).

9) You must be well rounded in your skills.

A successful composer in Hollywood is not just successful because they are good at composing music. Most all of them are great business people as well. They know how to market themselves. They know how to work a room at a meeting or at a social event. And, they know how to make a director feel like their film is the best film of the year. I know plenty of great composers.  The ones who do not make it usually fail due to issues completely unrelated to being a composer. The ones who have made it to various degrees (while competent in their craft) were not always the best composers…but were great at all of the other things. They were pleasant to be around and had a work ethic and professionalism that pushed them above the rest.  And thus…they kept getting hired.

10) Refer back to #1.

Holding true to these lessons over the last few years while working and following my own path has led me to conclude that doing my own music, developing my own sound, and networking to get my own composer gigs was the path for me. Maybe it isn’t for you. Perhaps you may want to experience the industry from the perspective of being someone’s assistant for a while; you can obtain real world experience and at least make a living while working in the field of music. Again for me, I would much rather spend all of my time on building my own credit list, reputation and skills as the lead composer.

Thinkers Welcome.

What are your “lessons learned”? COMMENTS are wide open below, and I’d love to hear your list!

Episode Description

In this SCOREcast Session episode originally recorded on June 4, 2011, Brian Ralston sat down with composer James Horner’s long-time music editor Jim Henrikson and Cuetime software developer and music editor Dan Brock to discuss the role of the music editor in the Hollywood feature filmmaking process. Get ready for an incredibly entertaining episode full of stories from some of filmmaking’s greatest moments, including a behind-the-scenes rundown on how the music for James Cameron’s 3D sensation Avatar was recorded. This is one episode you will not want to miss!

Community Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? There are now two ways to do it:

1) Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com
2) Call the SCOREcast Hotline and leave a voicemail at (757) SCORE-60 [757-726-7360]

Why am I saying that Google+ will have huge advantages for composers and musicians in general? (Please keep in mind that I am not trying to compare it to other social networks. We all know what’s possible with them … and what’s not!)

Circles

At first sight it might look a bit irritating, but once understood, the concept of Circles make big sense. Basically, Circles are nothing more than lists you are able to create for specific people. You can create a Circle for all your clients, or one for all the musicians you might considering hiring for your next project. You may create a Circle for friends and one for family.

The possibilities are almost endless. Just a few examples:

• You have close friends, spread around the globe and you feel like sharing some private news but don’t feel like involving all of your clients? Simply set up a specific Circle by only involving your friends!
• You are looking for a guitar player to hire for your next project. Isn’t it a great option to only send a post out to your “hire musicians” Circle and leave the stream “uncluttered” for your clients or friends?
• One of your hobbies might be Lucid Dreaming and you want to share and spread your experience but also learn from other people. Put them all in a Circle.

Hang Outs

This is really a great feature! A Hang Out is nothing less than a group video chat conference. Wouldn’t it be simply cool to hang out with your bandmates who are spread around the country and working out a new idea? Wouldn’t it be of great advantage to have a video conference between an audio director and a co-working composer discussing an upcoming project? Wouldn’t it be awesome to directly talk to your hired remote musician to discus that violin arrangement?

Huddles

Woot? Yes, a huddle is basically a “text chat” between two or several members on your mobile phone. It works really well and gives you the option to arrange, e.g. a changing meeting, letting several people know that you might be late due to a traffic jam or whatever … you get the idea!

The Stream and your posts

There is really lot to the Stream and how you can post content on Google+. One of the strongest features is that you are not limited to 140 characters—you can almost write a full-length blog post. I couldn’t say it better than +Mike Elgan did:

Instead of saying, ‘I’m going to write a blog post now,’ or ‘I’m going to send an e-mail,’ or ‘I think I’ll tweet something,’ you simply say what you have to say, then decide who you’re going to say it to.

If you address it to “Public” it’s a blog post.
If you address it to “Your Circles” it’s a tweet.
If you address it to your “My Customers” Circle it’s a business newsletter.
If you address it to a single person, it can be a letter to your mother.
I’d say this is pretty revolutionary.

I simply have to agree with him!

I hope I was able to give you a bit of an insight of what is possible with Google+. In my opinion, social networking is vital, important, and necessary—especially as a self employed composer. Please consider that Google+ is still in beta and I am sure there are lots of awesome features to come.

iTunes RSS Link

Episode Description

The boys are back, they’re mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore!
In this episode, things get pretty heated as Deane and Brian hash through some controversial topics including the new composer agency at WME, UJam’s songwriting software being actively endorsed by the Zimmer camp, and a recap of recent unionization news. Finally, in a segment that will be valuable to most people struggling to get started in the business, Deane and Brian dissect a real-life scenario regarding the right way to begin a professional media composing career. Add to that a look inside the creation of Cinesamples’ Cinebrass library as well as our ever popular Top Picks segment, and you’ve got an episode that packs a pretty powerful punch. With almost 90 minutes of rapid-fire content, this episode is one you are not going to want to miss!

Community Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? There are now two ways to do it:
1) Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com
2) Call the SCOREcast Hotline and leave a voicemail at (757) SCORE-60 [757-726-7360]

“WHAT? You’re moving to Los Angeles to do WHAT?”

That was the reaction from the majority of my Oregonian friends when I unveiled my plan to come to Hollywood and score films full-time. To this day, I catch shit from my friends up north for “going California”. They don’t understand how I could just voluntarily forfeit the simple life of Oregon to live and work in one of America’s busiest and most expensive cities… not to mention in an industry that serves up entertainment and fictional escapism as its mainstay product. (We won’t mention the fact that they flock to the cinemas in droves on weekends to sample what we are serving up. We’ll just pretend we don’t know about that little tidbit.)

I love this city. I’ve been here for over a decade now. Although my work over the years has forced me to become more of a citizen of the world, it’s always a great feeling when my key hits the lock at my home in Los Angeles. However, that luxury has come with a lot of trial and error. When I moved to Los Angeles to do this gig, I didn’t know a soul. I had no family here, no friends, no acquaintances. For about the first 12 to 18 months, I was shooting in the dark. I didn’t know anything about the studio system, and I had no connections to people who did. Even though I had been moderately successful as a player and could come in from that side every once in a great while on something, it was almost always a playing gig—Nice for paying the rent, but not so hot for advancing my career as a film composer. I wasn’t coming in straight out of USC, UCLA, or NYU, so I had no residual school relationships that were of any value to me in my new environment. I was, as Paladin’s calling card read, a knight without armor in a savage land.

However, as I began to find my way around, I met a few people here and there and started to pay attention to the community happenings that were being advertised throughout town. “Film Music Magazine presents a Film Music Panel at the Beverly Garland Hotel – Friday night, 7pm.” “ASCAP Music Expo – $300 bucks for three days of great stuff!” “The SCL presents an Evening with Thomas Newman – free for all members, or $35 for non-members.” This stuff was everywhere, and once I figured out how to access all of it, I started attending anything and everything that had the words “film music” in the title. At these various seminars and events, I started to receive all sorts of information and advice from people on how to get a sure footing right out of the gate. The advertising for many of these events read like a magic bullet for my woes: “Get Started Making Money NOW in the Exciting World of Music for Media.” Everyone had a program. There were schools, seminars, events, panels, expos, classes, salons, meetings, mixers, showcases, symposiums, groups, websites, forums… a plethora of “help” for newly transplanted aspiring composers.

The problem was… they didn’t help.

As I banged my head against the wall, I really started to analyze what it was that I had actually done. My inner compass started speaking, and I discovered where I had gone wrong:

I’d moved to a place I knew virtually nothing about, amongst people who didn’t know I existed, and yet I expected them to all of a sudden stand up and take notice of me.

How ridiculously unrealistic (not to mention self-absorbed) was that? All the time I spent blaming Hollywood for being an “exclusive closed-off” community, and here I was approaching a long-established system without a proper understanding of that system’s schematics. The blame, I discovered quickly, was all on me.

I think I speak for many composers out there who are now working successfully after years of “paying dues” when I say that while a lot of the frustration and confusion of trying to “break in” can be be attributed to the fact that it’s just plain tough to do so, the majority of the struggle of a beginning composer can be adequately described as a dangerous cocktail of inexperience, desperation, over-eagerness, and naivety. Said another way, I believe that most beginning composers do way more to hamstring themselves than Hollywood could ever do. It is so easy to blame “The System”, but if we’re being honest, it is operator error that is at the root of most beginning composers’ inability to grab a foothold in the community of film music.

There are hundreds of possible missteps on the way to even a modestly successful career in film music, but I want to outline a specific five that I believe will trip you up quickest as a beginning composer fresh off the truck in Los Angeles (or New York, if that’s more your speed). But before we get into this, I want to make you a deal: Agree with me that eradicating any of these things from your life (or any combination of them) is not going to guarantee you anything in terms of success. Success will only come to you like it comes to everybody else embarking on any purposed endeavor in life: through staunch persistence, absolute flexibility, unwavering resilience, self-motivation, careful and strategic planning… and just plain dumb luck. I cannot tell you how to achieve any of those characteristics—I’m not sure anyone really can. You sort of either have them or you don’t. But I will highlight some practical temptations that I think are worth avoiding… and I’d like to know if you’ve had experiences with any of them, positive or negative. Log-in below and leave a comment. I’ll be watching them this week.

Worst Advice #1: MOVE TO LOS ANGELES AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

I know. Everyone is telling you (me included) that to really get serious about this gig, you have to be in Los Angeles. That’s true. There are all sorts of reasons why I say that, and I won’t go into them here because of time restraints, but the main reason is one of proximity—the studios just simply need you close to them. It’s really that simple. If you want to play in the major leagues (the studio system) you need to be able to walk into the league offices anytime they need you to. Where are the league offices of the film music world? In Los Angeles, California.

Are there alternatives? Sure. It is entirely possible to score films in outposts such as Austin, Berlin, Atlanta, Tokyo, Seattle, Philly, Brussels, or Boston… but understand that unless you are an established proven entity with released features already under your belt, you are not going to be considered seriously for work in the Hollywood studio system. If you are okay with that, then stay put and work your ass off. There are plenty of composers who carve out a great living doing indies in their own area. But studio feature composers all live and work here. That’s just the way it is. The studios like their people close by, especially people they are entrusting several-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars to in exchange for an award-winning score. Think about that for a minute and then ask yourself again if you are better off staying in Hoboken. See the difference?

Having said all that, do not jump on a train today to get here tomorrow. In fact, that’s probably the dumbest thing you could do. A move to a new metropolitan area anywhere in the world takes a lot of planning and consideration before the first action step can even be determined. Have you through through how you plan to survive once you get here? Living in California is expensive, especially southern California. A one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles (that you don’t have to share with someone who won’t put up with your composing hours) is going to run you upwards of $1,300/month, and that’s on the frugal end of the spectrum. Food doesn’t come cheap either, unless you are super-into Top Ramen or Taco Bell’s “99¢ Menu”. What about transportation? You have to have it if you want to take meetings. If you are planning to bring your car into California, it needs to pass a California State Emissions Inspection, otherwise known as a “smog test”. The test itself will only run you about 25 bucks, but if your automobile fails the test, you are looking at a hefty sum to bring the car to standard in order to pass. State law renders the automobile “non-operational” until it passes inspection, so this could be a huge problem if you have an older car or a problematic one. Additionally, the fee to register your vehicle in California is based on the blue-book value of the automobile. If you have an older car, this might not be that big a deal for you. However, if you are driving a newer car, be careful—you could easily pay up to $700 to register your car in California. Figure in gasoline expenses on top of all this—over $4 per gallon at the time of this writing—and operating your own car in LA can put a dent in the pocketbook fast.

Not bringing your own car? Fine, but you’ll still need plenty of cash in order to get around. Unlike New York City, Paris, or Tokyo, taxis in Los Angeles are not a financially viable option for transportation. A ride across town will cost you at least $25, and that’s if you are traveling during low-peak traffic times. This city is flat, spread out, and definitely not built with expansion in mind. Getting from a meeting at Sony in Culver City (south/central) to your next meeting at Warner Bros. in Burbank (northeast) can easily be an all-day excursion. Most cab rides from Santa Monica to Burbank run about $32 bucks. Conversely, the Metro system (LA’s answer to underground public rail) will get you there cheaper, but not any faster. Navigating the Metro’s transferring system (which you’ll have to do at least twice if traveling north and south) is frustrating and nerve-wracking when you have an appointment that you cannot be late for.

You need to think about these things BEFORE you get here, not after. Too many people take the gung-ho approach of “I’ll figure it out! If I don’t go NOW, I’ll never go!” While I applaud the tenacity behind that kind of beach-storming approach, it’s not a smart way to go. Take some time, develop a plan, and think it through from every angle possible. Line up a day job prior to moving here. Have at least three or four months of income saved up and in reserve upon arrival. It will go fast, trust me. You have no idea. Plan, plan, plan, plan, and plan some more. Don’t be stupid. Take care of yourself first. You want to make this move ONE time, and one time only. If you have the talent, it will be the most important and strategic move of your life. Don’t blow it by being overanxious. This isn’t American Idol, where “there will always be next year”. There is no next year. You’ve got one shot—do it right and make it count.

Worst Advice #2: PICK YOUR MEDIUM: FILM OR TV, BUT NOT BOTH.

It used to be that it was smarter to pick your focus and run with it. TV or film, but not both. Times have drastically changed, however, and virtually every film composer who is still working has had to learn to diversify out of necessity. Most working composers are involved in a combination of film, television, video games, concert works, and custom library production. If you ever hear the words, “You shouldn’t do both, you have to pick one,” whether it be from an agent, a producer, or another composer, chances are that person came up in a different generation and may be operating in an area of the business that still honors his/her long-held relationships.  In other words, that person has been at it so long that they have a built in clientele that rarely goes elsewhere for music, hence they are almost always working in the same medium.

In today’s market, a person who does not have their fingers in as many pies as possible is simply not thinking ahead as a businessperson. From June 2010 to June 2011, I scored three films, wrote music for eight television shows, wrote the music for a live international theatrical production, and played drums on four Top 40 records. I also edited SCOREcastOnline.com, started a bi-weekly newsletter for Creatives, and closely maintained my social connections in the community. I do a lot. Even still, I am constantly seeking out new opportunities to do more and to keep my two companies, Deane Ogden Music™ and Ogden Creative, barreling down the tracks in full creative splendor.

The myth of selecting one course of focus in the film industry is long gone. Jon Favreau used to act. Now he acts and directs. Steven Spielberg used to direct. Now he directs and produces. Hans Zimmer used to score features. Now he scores features, scores video games, and develops software. It is a different world out there than it was even ten years ago. You have to get yourself positioned to handle multiple avenues of creative output if you want to survive in the new creative climate.

Worst Advice #3: GET AN AGENT.

There isn’t enough space here for me to adequately or completely explain how premature it is for you to be at all concerned about representation by an agent or a manager without first building some momentum in your career. If you are a recent transplant to LA, just take my word for it… you aren’t ready for an agent/manager. Since you haven’t done anything yet that scales to an identifiable or potential box-office success, you don’t have the kind of traction that will attract legitimate representation. Contrary to popular belief, the agent/client relationship is a two-way street: You must be valuable to them, too. Not just the other way around. The best agent/client relationships are the ones where each party serves the other.

The very phrase, “Get an agent” is misleading anyhow because that’s not the way it works. If the agent is at all legitimate, he or she will already have clients before you ever come along, and in that case, “getting” them isn’t likely unless you are Trent Reznor and coming from a successful run in another part of the industry. You have to bring something to the party. They have to “get” you. A few short films and your college roommate’s senior thesis project isn’t going to cut it. An agent/manager will not care about your cousin’s indie thriller that you scored back home in Wisconsin. Why? Because they need to eat just as badly as you do. They aren’t doing this for free, anymore than you should be (more on that in a minute). If you have nothing happening that the agent/manager can leverage to bolster your career, their hands are tied. Momentum is the name of the game for an agent/manager.

Sure, they need to pull their weight and be actively putting you up for jobs, signing you for as many as they can, but that doesn’t mean you can sit idly back and drink Margarita’s by the pool. A composer gets hired, almost always, based on his or her track record with the principals in charge or because of a relationship with the music team that is already on the project. I’ve been at this awhile, and I’ve hustled for each one of my own gigs, save for a small few. I didn’t have an agent until I was well into the second season of my first network television show. Up until then, I was so concerned with keeping my head above water with a weekly writing assignment that I never had time to even think about representation. I had my attorney negotiate my contracts and left it at that. My agent found me, not the other way around. Once I was “gettable” (read: valuable), agents and managers started calling.

Being concerned about getting an agent within the first year or so of landing in LA is like being worried about getting your drivers license before you are legally old enough to drive. It’s just not where you should be concentrating your efforts. Get out there and hustle for yourself. When you get a gig, write the best music of your life. That’s where your focus should be. Make yourself “gettable”. Then, the agents and the managers will find you.

Worst Advice #4: GET ALL THE LATEST GEAR.

Logic would follow that in order to make great things, you have to have the tools to be able to do it and do it in a way that the industry demands. Therefore, building your studio—having it ready to roll at a moment’s notice, with all of the top gear and software titles at your disposal—seems like a best practice in an industry that literally could come calling five minutes from now with a request that could change your life. But here is the dirty little secret: You’re going to be building your studio for the rest of your career. It is going to be something that never ends. You will always be one step behind what the developers and manufacturers are putting out there.

Waiting around to start creating and working until you have your studio in place, in just the way you’ve always wanted it, is a complete waste of time. I have a beautiful studio. I love all of the pieces that have gone into making my creative space totally work for me when I need to sit down and write, produce, record, or sketch something out. But am I completely satisfied with it? Not even close. In fact, there is a piece of software I just purchased this morning that would have been nice to have on my last project, but I was too busy and in way too deep creatively to stop and figure out how to integrate it mid-project. Having it in my arsenal would have saved me time and effort, but integrating it mid-stream would have been tempting fate, so I laid back and waited. And you know what? That isn’t a new phenomenon for me. It happens constantly, and you just have to accept it and move ahead with what is in front of you to complete. After you turn in your finished mix stems, then you can tweak, tinker, and toy with new goodies until the next thing is due.

My advice? Buy what is absolutely necessary to start writing music, and leave it at that until you can afford to intelligently purchase more. That might mean that you buy a computer, an interface, and a set of near-field monitors. It might mean that you go spend $20 on a ream of staff paper and a box of No. 2 pencils. By intelligently, I’m talking about the point at which you have enough discretionary income to make an intentional purchase that will not squeeze you financially. Remember what I said in #1: You have to always take care of yourself first. Do not put yourself in a position where you have to take another day job just to fund your studio gear habit. At that point you are a slave to your stuff, which is a horrible position to be in. Your first priority is to write. Get what is absolutely critical, buy the best you can afford at the time, and start writing music.

Worst Advice #5: TAKE EVERY GIG.

If you’ve heard this once, you’ve heard it a million times…. and from probably every composer you’ve come in contact with. “Take every gig.” Take every, every, every, every gig!” “Did I mention… take EVERY gig?!”

When the “take every gig” thing was at its peak, it was actually pretty sound advice because, well… there weren’t that many gigs! If you didn’t take the one being offered you, you were essentially passing up what was probably a golden opportunity to move your career forward in a positive direction. Since the gigs that were out there were all bonafide studio pictures, the majority of them paid quite well and often led to other work for the same producers/director. But times have changed. What sometimes passes for a “gig” these days has put a blight on our craft of filmmaking, and any dope with a camera and a pirated copy of Final Cut Pro can string together a “film”.  That is all complicated by the fact that there are more composers than there are “gigs”, so when a gig does comes along, it may or may not have dollars waiting on the other side of it. If it is an amateur project with no money behind it, you might refuse to work for free, but the 1,002 aspiring composers behind you who are perfectly willing to do that gig just to be “scoring something” will easily fill the void in your absence.

My take? DON’T take every gig, unless it pays you something. I’ve written about this before here, so I won’t rehash it too much, but EVERY gig should pay you SOMETHING. It doesn’t have to be cash money, because God knows unless you happened to become bosom buddies with Neal Moritz over a caramel macchiato at Starbucks yesterday afternoon, you are going to be on smaller projects until you develop into a full-fledged known quantity. So, don’t be as worried about the form of payment as much as you are about being given something of value in return for you handing over your very valuable music. Never work for free, but be creative in how you take payment. I once worked a small logo gig for a company that was launching their first production shingle. The entire conversation started out with them asking me for a favor, hat in hand. “I love you guys, but I don’t work for free,” I told them. “But we don’t have any money to spend on this,” they said. I responded, “Who said anything about money? I just won’t do it for nothing. I’m really into the gig, so let’s get creative and figure something out.”

A deal was struck, and I created a nice little :10 second musical logo for their fanfare. They bought me a brand new loaded Mac Pro for my second studio room. While not as nice as cash in hand, it still equated a value of around $8,200 at the time. They put it on a credit card and took it as a tax write-off. I sold the computer and deposited $7,500 into my bank account. Everybody wins.

Something happens when you are “on a gig”: You put your head down. You do the gig. If your head is down, you aren’t looking for other gigs. You are doing the gig that is in front of you, as you should be. So why would you give up other work to be on a project that is not paying you anything? That’s stupid. I think you get the point.

—–

In closing, each of these things I’ve talked about are real things you’ll hear, if you haven’t already. It’s not that people are trying to screw you—at least I personally don’t believe that it is. But you have to be smart, and you have to think above the standard that you’ve probably grown accustomed to living “outside the beltway”. Your bullshit detector probably needs a little dusting off. My dad is fond of saying, “Trust everyone, but cut the cards.” In other words, do the work of researching people’s promises. Don’t get caught up in the hype of “Make Money Now!”… odds are, you won’t. In fact, try to think outside of the confines of dollars and cents, altogether. You’ll do a lot more in a far shorter amount of time if you can break free of that mentality and instead start thinking strategically and creatively. Go for win-win situations instead of settling for whatever anyone tries to sell you.

Always remember that this is YOUR business… not theirs. If your business crumbled tomorrow, who would it really affect? You, of course. Not them. They don’t have anything at stake, so it is nothing for them to simply steer you into whatever they think might help you the best. Hey… who’s to say it won’t? Maybe it will… but it is up to you to check things out, gather lots of information, and make informed decisions that you can stand behind and own.

• If you don’t like movies, you’re not ready.
• If fear makes all your decisions for you, you’re not ready.
• If you can’t bring yourself to consider a location change to where the industry is, you’re not ready.
• If you dislike having to be flexible, you’re not ready.
• If you pout when people tell you “no”, you’re not ready.
• If your friends and family are the only people who have told you you should be in film music, you’re not ready.
• If you have a hard time making choices, you’re not ready.
• If you have a large Twitter following, but they’re all composers, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t know how to operate a DAW, you’re not ready.
• If you think you need an agent, you’re not ready.

If you want to be famous, you’re not ready.

• If you want to get rich, you’re not ready.
• If you’ve never A/B’d your music against professionally produced material, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t know how royalties work, you’re not ready.
• If you illegally download your music or software, you’re not ready.
• If you have never created a budget for anything in your life, you’re not ready.
• If you can’t work with a team, you’re not ready.
• If you can’t handle criticism, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t have a website, you’re not ready.

If you snap under pressure, you’re not ready.

• If people tend to accuse you of being disorganized, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t know what “counterpoint” is, you’re not ready.
• If you lack everyday common business skills (i.e. returning correspondence, being punctual, etc.), you’re not ready.
• If you get paralyzed by fear in networking situations, you’re not ready.
• If you can’t “sell an idea” to someone behind a desk, you’re not ready.
• If you never connect emotionally with fictional characters, you’re not ready.
• If you are “waiting for someone to give you your big break”, you’re not ready.
• If the acronym “IMDb” is Greek to you, you’re not ready.
• If you attend meetings in t-shirts or flip-flops, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t understand pacing, you’re not ready.

If you talk more than you listen, you’re not ready.

• If you don’t like to negotiate, you’re not ready.
• If you “only want to write the music”, you’re not ready.
• If you think loops are enough, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t care about the greater film music community, you’re not ready.
• If most of what you write is at 120 bpm and in “C”, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t have a demo reel, you’re not ready.
• If you think you are irreplaceable, you’re not ready.
• If you don’t understand the difference between the “independent system” and the “studio system”, you’re not ready.
• If you are searching for an easy way, you’re not ready.

If you think this list is unreasonable (or in any way complete)… you’re not ready.

iTunes RSS Link

Episode Description

Chipmunks, Spartans, and bunny rabbits——Oh my!! In our 29th episode, Emmy-nominated composer Christopher Lennertz (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Marmaduke, Hop!) stops in to hang out with Deane and Brian and talk about everything from scoring features, games, and television to didgeridoos and chocolate bunny rabbits! The boys also discuss a new film music financing model that is gaining traction in industry circles, and they continue the ongoing discussion of the proposed composers union in order to highlight a few very interesting recent developments. If this episode sounds like it is packed to the gills, that’s because IT IS! Hunker down and take it all in!

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? There are now two ways to do it:
1) Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com
2) Call the SCOREcast Hotline and leave a voicemail at (757) SCORE-60 [757-726-7360]

COMMENTS/DISCUSSION
Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

That’s why we were excited when our own Brian Ralston got a chance to chill out with Andrew Keresztes and Sebastian Katz of Audiobro for a few minutes at the 2011 NAMM Show and get the scoop on some upcoming additions to this already incredibly useful string library. Here’s the latest—straight from the source!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Have you tried out Cinematic Guitars yet? What’s your take on it? Let us know in the COMMENTS below!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Are you a MOTU or an ADAM Audio user? Log into the COMMENTS below and share your experiences with these companies.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Are you already a fan of Ilio’s collection of virtual instruments? Log in to the COMMENTS below and let us know how you’ve used them in your work.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Log in to the COMMENTS below and let us know what you think about your experience with Cinesamples’ CineOrch and Deep Percussion Beds!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Yet one can’t ignore Pro Tools completely, largely because it’s so firmly entrenched in audio-for-video post-production, scoring and dub stages, and almost all commercial recording studios. Often, composers are asked to provide finished mixes or stems in Pro Tools compatible format, or in some cases, spotted into a Pro Tools session file. Or, they may do part of their composing, programming, or mixing in their personal studio, but then go to a commercial studio or soundstage for orchestral recording or other parts of the production.

Lately I’ve received a barrage of e-mail promotions from Avid (formerly Digidesign), touting their new Pro Tools 9 software. Finding the hype generated more confusion than clarity, I’ve done some research. With Pro Tools 9, Avid has finally taken steps to make their products more compatible and more competitive in the composer’s world, and maybe even help a few composers finally cross over the line to a Pro Tools purchase.

Unlike last year’s NAMM Show, at which Avid showed… benches (!), this year’s promises to be center of a lot of interest. Here’s what it’s all about:

Pro Tools 9
First of all, to review, Pro Tools has always consisted of two distinct product lines: Pro Tools HD, the “high-end” version with TDM hardware, time code and all the other features; and Pro Tools LE, the “junior” version, which included the various M-Box, M-Powered, 003 etc. hardware. Despite being priced competitively with Logic and DP systems, Pro Tools LE always came up short, with puny maximum track count, and—the real deal breaker for composers—no timecode functionality. Additionally, Pro Tools (both versions) has always strictly required the use of their own branded audio hardware. No others need apply.

The new Pro Tools 9 is a continuation of the lower-level line but with several welcome improvements. (They’ve dropped the “LE” designation.) You now get the timecode ruler and functionality. Maximum number of mono or stereo tracks has been increased to 96 (which finally seems like a decent number). And, although they still have a line of hardware interfaces, Pro Tools 9 can now be used with virtually any AU compatible interface regardless of brand—that means your MOTU, RME, Apogee, or other audio input and output boxes are good to go.

They’ve also included a few other features that used to be extra charge, such as “Digi Translator” which lets you convert files to or from other software using OMF or AAF file protocols, and MP3 file conversion and export.

Avid/Digidesign has always put its fullest features and functions in the high-end HD version, and then “dumbed down” the LE version, removing features that they reserved only for the pros who paid the big bucks. The company has long had the policy of offering additional functional features in extra-charge “Toolkit” options. They have dropped most of these, but there’s one still available, the “Complete Production Toolkit 2”, which adds surround audio tracks, greater track count, and other features to make PT 9 basically identical in features to ProTools HD 9. Let’s just say, it’s a step in the right direction. More about in a minute.

Pro Tools 9 HD
Now that I’ve busted them a bit, I have to say in fairness that Pro Tools, and particularly Pro Tools HD, really is a “tool for pros”, with especially powerful features for mixing and editing. I didn’t really get this until I got my own system and got up to speed, but unlike the lower budget good-enough copycat features in the competing software, you really can mix faster and better, edit faster and better, accommodate larger projects with larger numbers of tracks, buses, and inputs and outputs.

Both versions include simple sensible functionality, such as the ability to assign any number of channels all at the same time to any bus, input, output, or automation status. (Anyone who’s slogged through assigning auxes to buses one stinkin’ channel at a time in DP can appreciate this—hello MOTU??) Once you’ve learned your “keyboard command focus” technique, you can plow through a huge editing project quickly, which is why it’s so popular for post-production. Its tools for automated mixing are simply the way that sort of thing ought to work, made even better if you get a chance to use one of their Icon hardware mix controllers.

The new DSP functionality that appeared in Pro Tools 8, “Elastic Time”, is head and shoulders better than anything that comes with the competition. Mixing larger score projects, which may include multiple stems and surround routing, is really where Pro Tools HD shines and the others run out of capability. And mixing in Pro Tools HD simply sounds great, whether “in the box” or with a board. I’ve heard engineers argue about whether it’s TDM or other aspects that make it sound good, but it’s obvious that Avid (and other third-party developers as well) have really taken the sound of it very seriously.

It should be noted, too, that Pro Tools phone tech support is exactly what support should be for a product that one uses to make a living: it costs money, you get to talk to someone who’s trained, and there’s less waiting on hold (or busy signals). It’s easier to find out and then get back to work. Doesn’t it seem fair to pay for something like that, and wouldn’t you offer to do that with the other companies, if they would just be professional about it? I know I would.

One other interesting thing: Pro Tools HD 9 still must be purchased with some sort of hardware system (or as an upgrade for owners of such systems), but once it’s authorized on your iLok, it can also be installed and will run on any computer (such as a laptop) with any brand native-type audio hardware, or no hardware at all. For me that definitely gets a “hmmm…!”

Pro Tools Native
The e-mail blurb on this came through a few weeks ago, then seems to have gotten lost in all the other hype, but this could definitely be of interest to composers. This is actually a hardware package, an interface with a PCI Express card, and also comes with Pro Tools HD 9 software. It includes all the features, large track count, surround, etc., only lacking compatibility with TDM plug-ins.

It’s not exactly cheap at a bit under $6,000 (depending upon hardware interface choices), but starts to look better if you compare it to the five-figure price of some HD TDM systems. And if you’re into plug-ins, native (RTAS) plug-ins are widely available and often of very high quality. Many custom plug-in packages are available both in native and TDM, but the native versions are often less costly. All of this could better put it in the affordability range for working composers who have shied away up until now.

How is it for composers?
To make a long story short, I don’t work as a composer or MIDI programmer, so I don’t have firsthand experience with all the features that a composer would value. I do know that as of version 8, they put in many new advanced features for professional composers, and some composers are using it quite successfully. For more information on that, I would suggest posing your questions in the COMMENTS below. Several SCOREcasters are Pro Tools gurus and I’m sure would be more than happy to chime in with opinions.

Full function: the most cost-effective way to go
If you’ve always thought it would come in handy to have Pro Tools, but it’s just too darn expensive, and you don’t want to put up with limited feature sets, I’ve saved the best for last:

1. First, buy Pro Tools 9 software alone for $600.
2. Then, purchase the “Complete Production Toolkit 2” upgrade for $2000. (Stop choking; yes I know that stuff should come with it, but, hey, it’s Pro Tools.) This gives you all of the features of HD: large track count, surround mixing, all the extra mix functionality, only excluding TDM.

You can use this on your Mac Pro with whatever audio hardware you already have. Fully functional professional Pro Tools, for mid-$2000’s. Couldn’t do that before, could you?

Credit & caveat
I want to thank local Avid rep Jon Connolly for bringing me up to speed on all this. If you visit NAMM, go say hi to him at booth #6700. I just want to mention, at this point all of this is new product information, and he said that he was trying to make sure he had all his facts and details straight. If this is something that’s of interest to you, the dealers (at least the good ones that care about professional users) should be getting all the info on this as well, so check with one of them if you have further questions.

You do go out of your way to patronize truly authoritative pro-audio dealers, don’t you? It’s not always about the last dime. Okay, I’m biting my tongue, ouch!

Stay tuned for more articles, columns, video and more from the NAMM Show floor… and I hope to see you at the show!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

TOPICAL LIST

COMMENTS/DISCUSSION
Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS below to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

Increasingly Powerful Sample Libraries
By the end of 2009, the idea of running comprehensive orchestral templates from a single machine seemed a real possibility. In 2010, however, the stakes have been raised again with bigger libraries demanding more power than ever. Last year we saw increased multi-core support, CPU power advancements, huge amounts of RAM, 64-bit compatibility, and an increased uptake of SSDs. In addition, Vienna Ensemble Pro (released late 2009) made it cost-effective and easy to set up multiple machines. Developers are now seizing this opportunity to increase the power of their libraries. Sample playback engines such as Kontakt and PLAY continue to grow in sophistication meaning that modern libraries are being able to truly take advantage of multiple microphone positions, complex scripting, customized interfaces with more velocity layers and larger pools of round-robin samples. All of these demand more and more power from DAWs.

New Standards in Sampling
From extensive string projects with top Hollywood engineers to percussion libraries recorded in premiere London studios, new standards were set in the recording of sample libraries. Multiple microphone positions, improved legato/portamento, customized interfaces and more intuitive programming mean that the bar continues to be raised.

Improved Workflow
In 2010 there were a lot of developments in areas designed to help with composers’ workflows. It’s amazing to think that only twelve months ago, there were no string or choir libraries with polyphonic legato. Now you have Hollywood Strings, Requiem, and Voxos. In addition, VSL released Vienna Instrument Pro adding polyphonic legato to their enormous catalog of sample libraries. AudioBro went one step further adding polyphonic legato linked to a smart divisi script to create their LASS Auto-Arranger. Native Instruments released Session Strings with the automator for easily creating rapid spiccato passages. Symphobia 2 focused on pre-recorded unison/octave ensembles and pre-orchestrated textures. Although late in the year, Cinesamples’ CineOrch may have truly been one of the most remarkable and controversial releases featuring fully orchestrated tutti chords and octaves.

Highly-focused Products
Although we had some extensive libraries, we also saw a lot of highly-focused products. Rather than try to be the ultimate string library or piano library we had pianos focused on soft, slow playing and libraries of just string runs or percussion releases of a single percussive instrument. Given the high initial outlay for creating new products and the fact that many potential buyers will already own a lot of high-quality libraries, such niche products seem to be a particularly attractive move for developers.

Download Delivery

In conjunction with small, focused products we have seen an increase in vendors offering download versions of their products. In some cases there are only download versions. In 2010, some surprisingly large libraries have also been offered as download-only. Given the removal of packaging/shipping costs and the fact that (like many composers) I may suddenly need to buy a library at 2am on Sunday, downloads are very attractive to most customers… and do I really need to mention the instant gratification when impulse buying shiny new libraries?

Light Version of Libraries
While some vendors have offered stripped-down versions of their libraries in the past, 2010 saw a number of ‘light’ versions of major libraries with clearly explained upgrade paths. In such economically trying times, this has been a wise idea allowing consumers to buy-in cheaply without feeling that they’re wasting their cash. In certain cases, the reduced system demands of the light libraries have made them particularly desirable as alternatives to the full version.

The Return of Algorithmic Reverb
While many have never stopped loving algorithmic reverb, I think most will agree that convolution has been the darling for the last couple of years. In 2010, algorithmic reverbs came back big-time. The big news was that Lexicon finally released a software plugin of their highly esteemed PCM hardware reverbs (I then bought a PCM 90 at a great price on eBay!). New versions of the popular reverb continued to improve on their fantastic sound. The fantastic Reverberate plug-in combined convolution with some algorithmic reverb qualities and the word is that the next version of Altiverb (unfortunately not released in 2010) will also feature more of a hybrid convolution/algorithmic design.

What’s Next?
Considering the current state of the industry, with budgets and schedules being forever squeezed, 2010 must have been a tough year to be a sample developer. Personally, I feel that most have responded in an incredibly positive and ingenious manner, continuing to produce game-changing offerings and providing amazing deals to customers. With the Winter NAMM Show happening this week in the USA, I guess it’s time to make some incredibly inaccurate predictions! Nonetheless, here are a few things I’m hoping for in 2011:

• EastWest/Quantum Leap to release a brass library to compliment Hollywood Strings
• Spitfire to release more commercial libraries
• Spectrasonics (who were suspiciously quiet in 2010) to wow us all again with… something (?)
• 64-bit Cubase on Mac
• Further developments in the style of Cinesamples’ CineOrch

Conclusion
Of course this is all only my viewpoint here. I did buy a lot of sample libraries in 2010 but not all of them, and I didn’t want to make any direct comparisons when I only own two of the three big string libraries or one of the two recent choir releases. I’m sure a lot of you have opinions on this subject, so let’s hear them in the COMMENTS below! What were your favorite sample libraries from 2010?

If the current composing community was comprised solely of a limited number of veteran composers, adjustments in the price of a film score—either due to the economy or because the composer just wanted to do a particular low-budget project—would be made based on a reduction of their regular price. However, with so many of the available composers being of emerging status or those just starting to build their career, and without a regular or established price or the representation to engage in negotiations, the price too often becomes whatever is perceived as a “competitive edge” (currently zero dollars with IMDB credit).  This, then, becomes an industry norm and is perceived to be the value or worth of music for that particular category of media.

Deane Ogden makes a good point in his recent SCOREcast article Community Counts.  Advanced technology has merely enabled us to be efficient, but composing music for film is much more than efficiency.  It is the composer’s ability to diagnose how much music and of what kind the music should be.  Then to create, not from whatever samples are available but from one’s musical background and intellect, the perfect score for that production—and that particular film maker.  And, in addition, to offer input to that filmmaker even when he/she may not agree.  This last duty, if not coming from a place of experience, must then rely upon an extensive backlog of viewing and analysis of film scores coupled with the tact and charm of presentation.

Let’s “re-sophisticate” our profession.

Two of the four words above deserve some reflection—Sophisticate and Profession.

Defining the Role of Composing

• Artist = An unrestricted creative
• Artisan = Creativity with functionality
• Professional = (used as a noun)  Highly educated, mostly salaried workers, who enjoy considerable work autonomy, a comfortable salary, and are commonly engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work. Less technically, it may also refer to a person having impressive competence in a particular activity.
• Profession = A calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation.
• Craftsperson = A person who practices a craft with great skill.  Creates to specification.
• Worker = A person who is employed to do physical or mental work for wages.

I would like to think of composing for media as neither the first nor the last of the definitions above.  I’m afraid that we might be slipping toward the “worker” category due to a perception stemming from technology and supply-and-demand ratios.

• Sophistication (Synonyms)
  —refinement
  —elegance
  —finesse
  —poise
  —tact

• Sophistication (Definition)
  — sophisticated character, ideas, tastes, or ways as the result of education, worldly experience, etc.

Yes, the hardware and software with which we work is sophisticated but it is also readily available to everyone – including the film maker (think Garage Band and Apple Loops).

The sophistication of our profession comes from our experience as players and listeners; our musical education; our musical taste and our ability to write only what is needed and no more (a.k.a. discrimination).  Hardware, software and the people to operate them are in plentiful supply but the musical and mental skill-sets of a true media composer are what is rarer and of greatest value.

What we, as composers, need to focus on are the skills and talents which cannot be purchased online or in a music equipment store.  As “machine operators” we are worth slightly more than minimum wage, but as professionals we are worth what I consider to be far more appropriate compensation.

What do you think?

Secondly, you might notice we’ve done a little bit of year-end sprucing up around here a bit at SCOREcastOnline.com. I’ve challenged our contributor team this year to really focus on one thing with as much intent as they can: Community.

Community Chapters

Community is really the driving force behind everything that we do at SCOREcast, and it is community that will unite us across all borders and help to keep our profession of putting notes on paper thriving through the next season of filmmaking evolution. We have already begun to take some major steps to bring our global composing community together through the creation of community chapters, beginning with the recent launch of our first international

The 2010 Inaugural SCO LA Meet-Up

community chapter, SCOREcast: London. As I mentioned in my announcement of the London chapter, I’ve also started talking to potential SCO community leaders in Austin, New York, Rio, Ubeda, Moscow, and several other cities around the world. We will be announcing several more SCO communities in the next year, but if you feel that you live in an area that would benefit from organizing a local SCO chapter, I want to invite you to give us a shout and let us know.

With the professional film music community expanding exponentially every year, one of our goals at SCO is to enable the industry to grow smaller as it grows larger. Your community chapters will feature local meet-ups, organized social and professional events, and special arrangements with orchestras and scoring stages in your area. There are a lot of incredible things that we’ll be launching, so keep your eyes and ears tuned to the website for more info as we roll this out.

SCO Community Integration

Internally, we are also taking some very exciting steps to bridge the gaps between composers and post-production professionals. With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all of the other social networking sites that are available, the community feels a little bit fractured—some people are on Twitter but not on Facebook, while others aren’t using any social networking tools at all. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all of that functionality in one place where we can all trade insider secrets and talk shop on a single organized platform? Well, we are in the final stages of tweaking a platform here on SCOREcastOnline.com that will enable us to do just that. I cannot let the cat out of the bag just yet, but I’m excited to be let a little out: I’ll be launching a very cool new project with our contributor team this year that will be unlike anything that has ever been made available for professional composers. And “professional” is the key word—it is very important to the unique mission of SCOREcast that we stay true to the fact that we are all working pros. We aren’t a fan site, a film music collector’s blog, or a forum for plug-ins and software. We may talk about those kinds of things from time to time, but there are far better sites that cater to those crowds and I highly recommend them if that’s your thing.

That being said, what we do well around here is that we cater to pros as well as emerging composers. In fact, we conducted an extensive survey this summer of our readership—many of you got the memo and participated. It turns out the the majority of people actively reading SCOREcastOnline.com and listening to the SCOREcast Podcast are working professional composers (composers that are currently scoring a feature film for release or a network television series) in London and Berlin, New York and Los Angeles. Our second largest audience are film music students. So, essentially, we have two very distinct audiences, and neither has much in common with the other, frankly. As a lot of you know, there is a vast gap between film school graduation and the real world of scoring feature films.

A Sophisticated Framework…

I’m telling you all of this because I want to prepare you for the new way that we will roll out features this year. Some of what we have coming will be of a “premium” nature, while other things we do will be as free as it has always been. Some of the stuff we launch will be by “invitation only” at first, while the majority of it will be open to all. Before you panic, I will tell you that the things that are going to cost you dough to participate in are not “seminars” at a banquet hall in Chatsworth or some clumsy “eBook” that we throw together and charge you twenty bucks for. My biggest impetus for designing SCOREcast five years ago was to try to keep anyone else from ever being taken advantage of again by any seminar, snake-oil salesman, or book that tried to sell you “the way to the top”. No… anything with a premium on it around here will be things that you would certainly have no problem paying for if your budget allows—things that are well worth your time and attention. We are not in this to make money. There is no need for that. However, as a central voice in the professional film music community, our team has access to people and places that many other resources do not, and since quality often demands a price, we’ll be paying a price to bring you those resources. In turn, we’ll cover part of those costs via premium tuition and pricing.

…For a Sophisticated Community

The reason we are looking at doing things that way is because of the sophistication of our craft and what SCO’s role in preserving that sophistication will be moving forward. Richard Bellis and I have been talking about that a lot lately, actually, and it is a very necessary shift that we all need to make in our minds. Film music is not what it used to be, and this community of people is not the comradeship it once was, either. I’m not a huge proponent of looking backward, but I think we can safely deduce that while technology has advanced us in the area of efficiency, it has also stolen from us a bit in the area of intimacy. We don’t interact with one another the way we once did, and that is a contributing factor to why the perceived value of our craft is declining over time. It is time to put the brakes to any further erosion and work together to educate the masses as to the sophistication of film composing again. It isn’t a laptop and a copy of Reason. The Teamsters get that, orchestras get that, executives even get that. Now it is time or us to get it, too.

This has just been the very tip of the iceberg. In the next several weeks, we are going to be crazy busy launching what I think is the best stack of stuff we’ve put out there yet. I want to thank EVERYONE who has worked super hard these last few weeks to put all of this together. Many of you reading this right now had a hand in the creation of some of the tools we are positioning for, and I owe you a lot for that dedication.

Here’s to 2011—the year of community!

The quality of film music born out of the United Kingdom is legendary and needs no introduction. With several talented orchestras and many skilled composers, the UK has become a major player in the film music industry, and a go-to destination for realizing a film score with supremely talented musicians.

Today, I’m excited to announce SCOREcast’s very first organized international chapter, SCOREcast: LONDON. Headed by London-based composer James Semple, SCOREcast: LONDON will provide a local community structure for film music professionals who are working in and around the greater London area. With a strong following already in place—thanks to Semple’s former Composium group—SCOREcast: LONDON will move ahead in 2011 with regular chapter meetings, organized events, and continued partnerships with the London Symphony Orchestra, English Session Orchestra, and a wonderful roster of studios in metropolitan London. Along side future SCOREcast chapters, SCOREcast: LONDON will also endeavor to help find strategic ways to bridge working relationships between composers worldwide.

SCOREcast is pleased to welcome all UK composers into the SCOREcast family, and we ALL are looking forward to a busy and musical 2011!

Looking toward the future of our craft,

Deane Ogden
Founder/Editor-in-chief, SCOREcastOnline.com

WE ARE BACK! In our first show since January (holy freakin’ crap it’s been a long time!), we are excited to be back with a vengeance. The new dynamic duo of Deane Ogden and Brian Ralston will catch you up on all of the things that have taken place lately, including the winner of our SCOREcast Theme Contest from February, the latest in film music news and events, an update on the proposed Composers Union, and a preview of the upcoming NAMM Show next month in Anaheim, CA. Get ready for an episode chock-full of goodies as we close an extremely busy 2010 and look forward to a full docket of SCOREcast episodes in 2011!

COMMENTS/DISCUSSION:
Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Log into the COMMENTS to leave your opinions and participate in the discussion!

As I get a little more “edumacated”, however, I am finding that all of those things, as cool as they seemed when I was little, aren’t the least bit cool now. And why? Well, sadly, most of them were a product of the consumer machine that much of our society is still chugging away at today, it’s just that back then it all looked a little more unsophisticated, a little more raw and rough. But still, it’s the same machine, and because I was younger I bought into it. In reality, most of that stuff has not stood the test of time, and now, when the opportunity comes to try and get back into it, I can’t go there.

Here is a sad, very sad example: Commando was on a few days ago on Cinemax Action. Now, I’ve always loved old Schwarzenegger movies. They’re a complete riot. But after I finished laughing at Ahnold’s silly one-liners, the weight of just how goofy a film like Commando is nowadays was too much for me to bear. I was crushed. “Dammit,” I thought to myself. “This movie was so damned’ cool! Sully’s demise was so much funnier on Laserdisc than it is on Skin-emax! What the hell happened?”

Time, man. TIME happened. Time is the “cool” killer—the cool disintegrator. The recipe that made shows like Commando so cool back in the day consisted of one cool effect after another, layer upon layer of “cool”. Now, though, layers and layers of what was cool no longer make any sense in the context of our “economy of cool”. Again, it’s a time thing. The film is dated now, to the point of it literally being just one big fat gigantic ridiculous mess of “uncool”.

The same happens today, only with CGI. Films like G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra and the remake of Clash of the Titans might have been amazingly creative had the filmmakers not gone for the cheap thrill by just stringing together one CGI set-piece after another, until the film finally feels like one big giant ridiculous mess of, yes… uncool. In twenty years, movie-making will have gone through several more incarnations of “cool”, and we’ll be having this conversation again, except we’ll be talking about Avatar. Is it cool? Of course. But, emphasis on “is”. “Is” is current. Will it be cool? is a question that can only be answered later on.

The question, then, becomes, “What kinds of things remain “cool” no matter what time has to say about them?” Well, one could argue that “story” is still cool. Personally, I don’t like animated films, but the storylines in most Pixar films are unarguably at least half of what makes them so successful. Toy Story 3 might not look as amazing in twenty years as it did this summer because the technology will have changed so drastically by then, but my bet is that the storyline of the film will still be cool enough to choke up a new generation of viewers.

In the context of film music, we could observe the same effectual deterioration of our artform. Harmonic theory and melody have given way, in a lot of cases, to drones and the recently popular, yet musically ambiguous “ambient music design”. It takes a little doing these days to find a score for a popular tentpole that isn’t reliant on pads and drones—”atmospheric” is the buzzword I keep hearing around the studio I work at. It feels like people are a little more concerned sometimes with being “cool” with their choices of sounds and atmospheres (there’s that word again!) and less “cool”, or “creative”, in making sure that they figure a unique way to write for a character or story point. All but lost is the art of creating something uniquely suited to a character or story point in the narrative from a “aural” perspective.

I wonder what would happen if we, as composers, focused less on being “cool” and more on being “creative”? Would we need to give the “Best Picture” treatment to composers at the Oscars and expand the “Best Score” category to ten nominations as well? Would there be so many killer melodic scores with outstanding orchestration that we’d have trouble choosing? Would the line between “sound design” and “score” become even more clear, as sound designers would be more free to create without fear that the composer was going to cover it all up with atmosphere?

What does that mean to you in your work? How can you be less cool and more creative? What are YOUR personal definitions of “uncool” and how do you carefully navigate around them in your work?

COMMENTS are open below. Lurkers: Time to come out and play!

But the giant elephant in the room is something that was recently discussed in a private community meeting that A-list Hollywood oboist Tom Boyd and SCO founder Deane Ogden put together in late September.

The original topic: How to get more film scoring dates to come back to Los Angeles.
The NEW topic: Does anybody care?

In the spirit of  discussion which makes SCOREcastOnline.com what it is, we go to YOU—the actual people being affected here.

Read this article (and the associated links therein) and tell us what you think if it all. Are musicians living in a fantasy world? What’s YOUR take?

COMMENTS are open below.

Even if you take the time to observe a holiday, you still might have felt the pressure of a deadline breathing down your neck. Some of us here at SCO most certainly did feel something like that yesterday, as the Thanksgiving holiday was in full swing in our homes, yet we were in full swing behind the workstation. One SCOREcaster even Tweeted: “Spending Thanksgiving on-set behind a boom. Eat some turkey for me!”

During this time of year, as Hollywood is prepping for its customary December 15-January 10 shutdown, many composers are hard at work in their studios, cranking out the year’s last few notes… so that they can at least have a taste of the turkey on December 25th. But what about you? Did you work yesterday? Are most holidays “family” days or days away from the family? How do you balance holidays and “time off” with family time and “down time”? Do you feel like your family “gets it” when you have to be in your studio on what might traditionally be a “family day”? What specific steps do you take to insure that you spend enough time with the people that need your attention?

COMMENTS are open below, and we’d love to hear you sound off on this one!

Gotcha!

In addition to the recent issues we’ve had with the RSS feed of the older podcast episodes (issues that are now fixed, by the way!), I’m sure you’ve noticed that we haven’t posted a new podcast episode since me and Randy Knaub’s wrap-up of the 2010 NAMM Show back in January of this year. Many of you have written in from all over the world to ask the obvious questions: “Is it over?” “Is there ever going to be another SCOREcast podcast episode?” “Why did you stop doing the podcast?”

Well… I’m thrilled to report that we will be posting SCOREcast Episode 27 in the next few weeks, and that the podcast will resume its regular episodic schedule throughout 2011.

I know it’s been awhile, but yes… we are back, and I’m more excited than ever about what is in store for the podcast during the coming year. We’ll be shaking up the format quite a bit by adding some cool new segments including new roundtables with some of film music’s most respected composers, music editors, and directors, as well as more interviews, listener mail, and current film music industry news and commentary.

On top of all that, we also have a giant glaring question to answer: Who won our “SCOREcast Theme Contest”?

All of these things—and MORE!—will be answered and dealt with in SCOREcast Episode 27. Look for the new episode in the coming weeks!

Where Have We Been?
First of all—it’s all my fault. I made the call to put the podcast on ice back in February for a few reasons:

Reason #1: We were crispy.
It takes a lot to produce an episode of SCOREcast. When I started SCOREcast in 2006, I made it a personal rule to never allow the SCOREcast podcast or the SCOREcastOnline.com website (SCO) to eclipse any of our contributors’ careers, or mine. By January 2010, three solid years of producing the podcast had caught up with me and the rest of the team and we needed a break. Now granted, that “break” was never intended to be quite so long… but stuff happens, work takes over, people get busy, and things get put on the back burner. Bottom line is—we are back and it’s going to be a great new year with fresh energy, new features, and a few new personalities that I’m excited for you to meet and get to know.

Reason #2: We needed more help.
As a circumstance of SCOREcastOnline.com’s growing audience (we are now read by over 90,000 people every week), we needed to expand the SCO contributor team and concentrate on making sure that our infrastructure was able to withstand a continued run of the podcast show. One thing we have learned for sure is that the SCOREcast podcast remains the biggest viral gateway to SCOREcastOnline.com, therefore drilling into the website to improve some areas that we found lacking was a necessary focus over the summer. The production of the podcast would need to be temporarily suspended if we were going find the time to do that effectively.

Reason #3: We needed to find out a little more about YOU.
Podcast technology is pretty damned amazing. The fact that anyone can produce a radio show, put it online, syndicate it worldwide, and build a constituency that they wouldn’t normally have access to is downright amazing. However, the technology is still in its infancy and one of the things that is yet to be perfected is the ability to keep track of exactly who is downloading and listening to your content. Syndication is a both a blessing and a curse. Yes, your content gets dispersed all over the Internet and rebroadcast from multiple outlets, giving you access to a huge potential audience. However, that process also makes it virtually impossible for you to track your audience via any hard data.

But that’s not even the big problem. It’s even harder to track whether or not your content is even useful to your audience once they have access to it. Because of that limitation, I needed convincing that we were providing the very best content that we could for all of you. In an effort to get a grip on what you guys are after from SCOREcast, we sent out a survey to a random selection of our SCO readership last month. Based on the data we received back from the survey, I think we’ve come up with a format and feature-set that will better serve our community overall. We’re going to run with it, and it’s full steam ahead from here on!

Onward and Upward
In hindsight, I’m pleased with the results that our hiatus produced, and I think you’ll agree that whatever annoyance our absence may have caused you has well been worth it. That being said, the responsibility of producing a successful podcast show is something I definitely do not take lightly, and I have learned a ton in the four years that I’ve been doing it. As with everything here at SCOREcast, the podcast is something that we all give to in our spare time. We may occasionally go AWOL, but we will always return.

And I promise… it will never again be as long a vacation as this one was!

My sincerest thanks to each and every one of you in the SCO Army who have hung in there with us.
YOU are the true heroes of this community.

My very best,
Deane Ogden
Founder and Editor-in-Chief, SCOREcastOnline.com

Amongst composers, “I design all my own sounds” seems to be a phrase that we like to use. Of course, we cannot be JUST LIKE everyone else, right? However, if you are a composer yourself, then you know the intrinsic value of not having to reinvent the wheel on every single project you take on. With abbreviated schedules being what they are nowadays, who has the time?

That being said, what sounds do you feel get overused? What sounds do you think are now dated and need to be retired? What priority do you place on original sound design, and how do you feel about organic sound design versus ready-made presets from top sound designers in the form of packaged collections?

Furthermore, is original sound design in film scoring (sometimes referred to as “score design”) still a necessary step in the creation of a medium that could essentially be scheduled out to only a few weeks? Do you find that you have the time it takes to truly “design” original sounds for the films you score?

Add your opinion in a COMMENT below!

The employer is offering to give an employee money. The negotiation centers around whether or not the potential employee is willing to do the things required in order to accept that money. This negotiation is uneven from its very inception. The potential employee is obviously not currently employed or he/she would not be looking for employment. This gives the significant advantage to the employer.

When many people are unemployed either due to an economic state such as we are currently experiencing or, due to an abundance of potential employees such as the composer community is currently experiencing, the employer’s advantage increases.

What people are willing to put up with in order to land that job, varies. We might think of this as people with various pain thresholds.

So, what mechanism is necessary to “level the playing field” between employer and potential employee?

In the United States there are two statuses for workers designed to act as equalizers. The first of these is the official status, “Employee”. In its purest sense, employee status is given to those who meet certain criteria such as (but not limited to) being told where and when to do their work and being provided the tools with which to do that work. Workers who are deemed “Employees” are allowed to collectively bargain with the employer and are afforded a benefits package consisting of a pension or retirement fund and some kind of healthcare coverage. Those employees who create something as part of their job description are, most often, required to concede ownership rights to the employer.

The second status, for those who do not meet the Employee criteria, is “Independent Contractor”. Independent contractors who create something actually do own it. It is that ownership and the subsequent negotiation for access to that which has been created—either by license or sale—which is considered the equalizing factor for the independent contractor.

Composers and lyricists who worked on the studio lot in the forties and fifties, writing on paper provided by the studio and working in an office and on a piano or typewriter which the studio owned, were considered Employees and consequently allowed to form a guild or union and collectively bargain with their employers.

Today, there would be reason for great deliberation over which classification (Employee or Independent Contractor) would be most beneficial to media composers and lyricists if it wasn’t for one significant wrinkle: Work-Made-For-Hire.

Without going into the establishment of Work-Made-For-Hire, suffice it to say that it is today, for media composers in all but the most innocent or ignorant production circumstances, a “condition of employment”.

Here, then, is the situation in which media composers and lyricists find themselves:

We are currently Independent Contractors working under a Work-Made-for-Hire agreement (the contract document is the Certificate of Authorship). The result of this is to strip the Independent Contractor of ownership making him/her a “temporary” Employee without the right to collectively bargain nor the benefits package normally appropriate for Employees.

It is, for the media composer/lyricist, the worst of both worlds. For the employer, it is the best of both worlds thereby increasing the employer’s advantage exponentially.

The possibility of overturning work-made-for-hire is remote as it is part of the U.S. Copyright Act. The possibility of becoming, officially, Employees, and achieving the right to collectively bargain and receive benefits is before us and obtainable.

The status quo should not be a consideration as it offers us a continuation of hybrid status which only benefits the employer in what can only be considered a “buyer’s market”.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011

Lately, I have been talking to some industry friends of mine about their career philosophies and techniques for getting work. And while everyone has a different take on how they approach their careers, one fact to getting work seems to remain true among most all of them: Being busy seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The individuals who go from one job to the next and have their year of work ahead planned out seem to further benefit from the very fact that they are busy. I was speaking with a good friend of mine who is a well respected Hollywood producer and he was discussing hiring crew for a film. The director of a film he is working on said he wanted to hire a specific production designer and that they had to make this person an offer early because they are busy. They wanted to “lock them in” early so they would not lose them to another project six months from now when they would actually need their services. In turn, my producer friend said he wanted to bring in and introduce a sound designer that the director had not worked with before and he was able to use the “busy” argument for her as well, even though she would not be needed until post-production even further down the line.

You see, this sound designer is busy. She seems to go from film to film. Some of her films you have never heard of. Some go to Sundance every year. Some of her work even stretches into the video game world. Regardless of the type of project, the very fact that she is always working puts her in a position to get an early offer for more work.

The executive producer said, “Well…she is always busy, so she must be good. Let’s get her.”

I have always felt that there is a fine line between being busy and building a credit list that is respectable and ever-increasing in size and scope. I have carefully chosen the projects I have worked on and have gone after specifically because I want each project to not only be one people respect, but to also be bigger in budget and scope than the last one. But there is a fine line: One can’t let the fear of remaining stagnant in their careers keep them from getting work, either. There has to be some middle ground.

I do not subscribe to the philosophy that you never turn down work. Sometimes the film or project may not be a good fit for you creatively and if your career is going to be hurt by your involvement, perhaps it is not a project worth taking on. Also, you may have certain financial obligations that prohibit you from taking some jobs that may—how should I say this?—require you to become an investor in the film. We have all been there.

Then again, if you are not busy and the phone isn’t ringing as much as you would like (especially in this economy), perhaps being busy, regardless of the type of project, would be a good thing. It creates momentum. Being busy creates demand for your work. As humans, we subconsciously see what everyone else is getting and we want that, too. Ultimately, you do want to create demand for yourself and your music, and perhaps the simple act of being a busy composer, regardless of what you are busy with… will do that for you.

What are your thoughts on being busy? Tell me in the COMMENTS below.

I’ll never have to worry about competing with John Williams. I know what you are thinking: “NO shit!”

No, I mean it. John Williams will never sound like I can. He’s not able. You might say, “Um, Deane, excuse me, but John Williams is arguably the single greatest composer living today. He can do anything.” To which I respond, “Yes he is… and no he cannot.”

John Williams can never be Deane Ogden, or James Newton Howard, or Alain Mayrand, or John Debney, or Brian Ralston, or Alexandre Desplat, or Sharon Farber, or Chris Young, or Adrian Ellis, or Hans Zimmer, or Brian Satterwhite, or Richard Bellis, or Tim Montijo, or Alan Silvestri. As long as he has written for the screen, as hard as he might try, as much as he may study, he’ll never get there. Our music flows from a place that John Williams could never understand or even come close to comprehending. He could not possibly get it and he never will.

Conversely, as hard as we try, as hard as we study, and as hard as we practice, we will never sound like John Williams. John Williams never has to worry you nor I. Why? Because none of us could ever fathom what John Williams had to go through to write his most recent note. We will never know what place that John Williams writes from. We don’t get him, and we never ever will.

We are all different people with different lives, different sets of experiences, born of different parents, facing radically different futures. Therefore, competition, at least in the form by which we usually refer to it, doesn’t exist.

People talk about competition all the time. I hear constantly from players how hard it is to compete with the convenience of samples (not the quality of them…. the convenience of them—I feel the letters from the AFM on their way to me already!). Of course, we all have experienced the “competition” within our own ranks—being put up against each other by our own representative agencies for projects, always with that same reassurance from them, “Hey don’t worry… this one’s got YOU written all over it!” Uh huh.

Professional golfers say often that there is no competition amongst their tribe, but rather only that which exists between each golfer and the golf course itself. To a pro golfer, the other golfer on the course is not the competitor, but the curve of a fairway or the placement of a hazard. I’ve always found that concept fascinating and I’ve often pondered how it might apply to our situation as music and film Creatives. There really is no one entity in the film music community that you need ever have to worry about competing with, save for one… your own music. Yes, the most fierce competition out there that you’ll face as a composer is the last score you wrote. Your true nemesis resides right there, in the pit of your own stomach—the drive to better yourself. To set a goal, achieve it, set a loftier goal, achieve that, and so on, and so forth. Creatives have it in their guts to up their own ante. As Creatives, we are our own fiercest competition, our own worst enemies.

Creatives are different than other people. It’s politically correct to say that we aren’t—that we are just like construction workers, attorneys, corporate buyers, or police officers—but when you get honest about it, we most certainly AREN’T like any of those people. We are a different animal. We don’t think, analyze, opine, or expend our energy the way non-creatives do. We also don’t rest, work, vacation, engage, or “unplug” the way that non-creatives do. We rarely ever stop creating, whether we are writing at our workstations or writing in our heads at the dinner table. We often get accused of not being “present” during conversations or engaged in our surroundings (sound familiar?). We daydream a lot. We also have a greater need for solitude and seclusion and often are told that we lean towards being “reclusive”. By all counts, we are simply different. And what drives us is different, also.

Creatives are driven in a way that no other human tribe is. We are driven to create, yet in that process of creating—when we are really down in it— composers in particular tend to lose track of something that is vital to long-term success: Self-Improvement. So many composers—even the A-listers who some view as “leading the pack” in terms of pushing the boundaries of the craft—rely on their same old bag of tricks, their tried-and-true methods of creating… the things that have always worked for them. The crutches. The old standards. The “reliables”.

It gets worse as you move up the ladder. I recently sat with an A-list composer friend of mine and we talked about the differences between the terraces of the film composing career. We talked about the contrasts of handling 1-2 million dollar studio budgets versus 30-90k indie budgets, managing a team of 25 versus an army of One, and working with our agencies as opposed to negotiating our own deals. But when we started talking creativity, I ask him what the major differences were that he saw between his A-list position and when he first started out as an indie film guy. Here’s what he said:

“Deane, when you have done this as long as I’ve been fortunate to, you develop a sound. And that sound is what you then become known for. Once you have your sound, in a strange way, it’s over for you creatively. That’s all they want. That sound. You don’t get to experiment, they don’t want you to try anything new. They just want the sound. Then it is up to you. You have to then figure out a way to manipulate that sound—the sound that is YOU—so that it evolves and changes, yet to them, it is still that sound. But to you, it becomes something else. Something different every time. And it’s always got to be better than the last time, because if it’s not, then what’s the point for you? If you aren’t doing better work each and every time you score a picture, you are cheating yourself and at that point it really is just a service job. It’s heartless, then. No life. I’m not saying that’s easy, Deane. Getting to the point of besting yourself each time out is a hard thing to do, and most composers haven’t figured out how to do it. But it is possible if you work at it. But that’s the rub—it takes a lot of patience and a lot of hard work.”

The Passion to Be You

Finding your own voice—or as my friend put it… “the sound”—can be daunting at best and impossible at worst. What IS your sound? Is it something you can just conjure up, or must it come to you organically, born out of “doing” film music for long periods of time? Who knows. It’s probably different for everybody. But certainly, the commonality exists that you must be conscious of it before you set out to be original. In doing so, however, be careful not to set out to be different from everyone else. If you do, you’ll be looking at others more than you should be. When you focus too much on outside factors, you begin to lose track of what you are trying to accomplish in your own craft.

Exerting effort to be better than the next person will get you nowhere. Well… that’s not entirely true… it will get you somewhere, but somewhere is a place that you won’t like very much. Better to concentrate instead on besting yourself. You’ll never be better than John Williams at what he does. Williams is the best Williams there is. You’ll never do Tom Newman better than Tom Newman does Tom Newman. I’m not talking about not having to “live up” to the temp, or having to create something with the same vibe as what the director has been infatuated with since the beginning of post. In fact, I believe that “temp love” is less about the music and more about the feeling of the scene. (There has never been a situation in my own career when I wasn’t able to talk the director off the steep cliff of “recreating the temp”. It’s easy to do if you can articulate how the music is not really the issue—the scene is.)

What am I suggesting? Am I saying that competition isn’t productive? Of course not. What I’m saying is that competing against yourself—allowing your own brand of greatness to slowly unfold—is better than buzzing harder to keep up with the swarm.

Allow your music to do the talking.

The Classical forms like Rondo, Sonata, Compound Ternary, etc. all serve as extremely useful road-maps for developing musical material. The Rondo form, for example (ie. ABACA), gives us a blueprint for balancing a main theme with contrasting sections. After the main theme we have a contrasting section, and after every contrasting section we return to the main theme. Thus, the perfect sense of coherence and unity by repetitions of the main theme, balanced by variety and interest from the contrasting sections.

All of this is great to know when you’re sitting down to write a new composition to be performed in a concert hall. But how does this information stay relevant when scoring to picture? What do you do when your entire musical structure depends on the visual?

Picture is king. Even if you are struck with inspiration and would love nothing more than to have your main theme run off into a fugue, you’re not entirely in charge. If it doesn’t support the picture, it doesn’t make the score.

As you have probably already experienced either in your own scores or while watching other films, sometimes it doesn’t take much for the music to be dramatically effective. Even just a slowly thumping bass drum can be enough to support the picture in a compelling way. Where are the balanced sections in that cue? The audience isn’t particularly interested in how you transitioned from the B section back to the main theme, they’re interested in what’s happening on screen.

It would seem that perhaps the classical forms are backwards thinking, while a film cue is forward thinking. The structured forms are about developing the material that you’ve already heard; the contrasting B section isn’t a contrast if you haven’t yet heard A. But film music seems to be more about the present and future moments, building tension and preparing (or in some cases defying) expectations.

If there is still a place for form in film music, perhaps it’s only in those places where the audience is actually paying attention to the music. In the main titles, for example, or a montage that is mostly score driven.

So what do you think? Is musical form relevant when writing to picture? Are the traditional methods of organizing musical material still useful in the world of film scoring?

The comments are open below.

For some, the team is the group of people doing everything that would keep you from writing so that you can concentrate on the all-consuming task of… uh, writing. Said another way: they do the things you could be doing, but shouldn’t. Examples of people on this kind of team could include an assistant, an intern, a studio manger, etc.

Quite another definition of team illustrates a group of  people that are actually doing the writing… so that the person that is supposed to be doing the writing can be doing other things… instead of… uh, writing. Examples of this could include ghost writers, additional music personnel, or in a more extreme sense, some of these organizations that are popping up that take on a film with the strategy of piecing it out amongst dozens of their “member” composers to get the score finished, while possibly (or possibly not) giving credits to the participating composers.

Some of these definitions of the concept of “team” are a little looser than others, obviously. But we are curious what YOU think of these and whether you agree or disagree with any of them as models of getting this gig done. In addition to your opinions on those particular examples, what are some of the ways that you incorporate your team in your process?

The COMMENTS are wide open, so Lurkers—it’s time to come out and get loud! And… should any ghosters want to come out and spill the beans—you don’t have to register to leave a comment. We’re just sayin’. ;-)