10 Lessons on “Breaking In”
I often get asked for a checklist of things one can do to break in to the business. Here is my personal “top ten” of lessons learned.
Read More →Worst Advice for Beginning Composers
When you are starting out, everyone has an opinion. And here’s mine.
Read More →SCOREcast 26: Getting the Gig
For our first show of 2010, SCOREcast contributing editor Randy Knaub fills in at the co-hosting chair for Lee Sanders. Deane and Randy give their Top Gear picks from their trip to the 2010 Winter NAMM Show and follow up on January’s “Getting the Gig” discussions with their own insights.
Read More →Heather Fenoughty: Ten Tips for Getting into the Composing Game
There is no magic bullet to getting a foot into this industry. Not unless you consider hard work, lots of rejection, or a healthy bent toward self-determination a “magic bullet”. Is there an easy way in? The answer, as with most things in life, is “no”. Most things that are worth doing don’t come easy. However, there are many tried and true methods as well as some proven principles that most of us here at SCO can safely say we’ve built our working careers on. While there would never been enough room to list them all, here are ten things that I’ve learned about getting a foothold and gaining some traction as a composer for film and television.
Read More →How to Get onto the Playing Field
For many of you reading SCOREcast, writing music is not a full-time job. You’d like it to be, but you just don’t land enough gigs (yet). In fact, you’re not even sure how to get yourself into the pool of available candidates for enough gigs, often enough, to make it a full-time profession. Read on [...]
Read More →Getting Gigs: Balancing Your Worth With Your Wishes
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar to you. A filmmaker approaches you about a gig, and really wants you for the job. In your excitement, you talk through the particulars and get all of the information that you can… except for the money part. The conversation continues until, finally, there is nothing left to [...]
Read More →POLL: Getting the Gig
Wake up, shower, coffee, power up, check your vitals, relisten to last night’s unfinished cue, try to get back into it, struggle, struggle some more, finally break through, smile, remember to eat something (maybe!), stretch, deal with some phone calls, write some more, “Oh my God, it’s midnight already!”, fix that thing in your template [...]
Read More →Kamen’s Law and Your Attitude
It’s no secret that 2009 was a slow year for a ton of people. Coming off the slump that the world economy has been in for the last two years, for many facets of the entertainment biz, things couldn’t get much worse. As we’ve wrapped up this last year, I have heard numerous sighs of [...]
Read More →How to NOT Compose for Television
It is pretty daunting to look at the TV landscape and the people who are already involved with scoring for television and ask yourself: How in the hell am I ever going to get a shot? So many shows are in production, not to mention the fact that television is not just about the “regular [...]
Read More →Gateway Scores: Men in Black
When Jai asked us to write a Blog this week on the score that got us into the business, or at least opened our eyes to the industry, I was reminded of something I was once told in an interview I had done with a composer called Andrew Sigler. I keep coming back to this [...]
Read More →Jim Well: The Journey
This monthly column, Inside The Outside, takes you inside one man’s ongoing journey to a composing career. I’ll be thinking out loud about challenges as they hit. I can’t say for sure I’ll arrive intact. But if you’re a fellow traveler, we’ll confront the same demons. May The Farce be with us. “Who is this [...]
Read More →“Luck” Has Nothing to Do With It
I’ve been on my back for the last 24 hours with the flu. I don’t know how I got it, except to say that lately I’ve been running pretty hard on very little rest, and so I think it was just my turn. When you’re sick you can’t do much, which is a real pain [...]
Read More →Translator
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