SCOREcast 31: Total Request (Sorta) LIVE!

In our first Q&A episode, we open up Twitter, Facebook, and a hangout on Google+ to hear what’s on your mind about writing, producing, “politiking”, and navigating the business.

You’re Not Ready

You’ve been told you’re talented. You just graduated music school. You have your plane ticket. You’re gonna be famous. Not so fast, Johnson.

Richard Bellis: Re-Sophisticaton

Advanced technology has merely enabled us to be efficient, but composing music for media is much more than efficiency.

SCOREcast 27: The Long Winter

Deane Ogden and Brian Ralston co-host an edition that is so crammed with new goodies you’ll forget all about the fact that we’ve been in hiding for 10 months!

All Due Respect to The Maestro

I don’t know John, and he doesn’t know me. Which is good… I don’t want him to.

What’s Original?

There are 12 tones, and only so much you can do. Right, James Horner?

What Is Your Biggest Weakness?

It’s hard to talk about what you suck at.

What Is Your Greatest Motivator?

“Motivation” is a strange thing. Be careful how you answer this one: We are certainly aware of the risk involved in even putting this question out there—we are inviting a deluge of the token “writing music is who I am” comments. Honestly, though, if you lost everyone and everything in your life tomorrow, we’d bet money that the least important “treasure” would be all of the shows you’ve worked on.

With that in perspective…. What is your greatest motivator?

Caveats of Convenience—Pt. 2

Part 2 of Deane’s provoking series on “lazy writing”.

Caveats of Convenience: Pt. 1

Things film composers are doing wrong lately, and how to avoid developing the same habits.

Shut Up and Score

This one single piece of advice will change your life, I promise.

James Olszewski: Delivering Micro-Projects

To a do-it-yourself composer working on student films, non-paying gigs, super-low-paying gigs, and other micro-projects (although don’t call them that!), delivery may not seem like that big of a deal.

Sometimes it isn’t; sometimes “delivery” amounts to emailing an attachment to the dude you’re working for and saying, “Here you go.” If your uncle is working on a home video and wants you to throw something together in exchange for him washing your car, go for it—do it that way.

But what happens when your career jumps up from micro-projects to mini-projects; or from mini-projects to legit projects? Wouldn’t you want to already have the professional delivery processes and habits, and lessons-learned in place from the start? Micro-projects are a great learning ground. So go learn—make your mistakes while the stakes aren’t high. All of us, regardless of how small the project is, should at least try to deliver professionally. If you don’t, you won’t make any mistakes at it until it counts, and then it’ll hurt.