SCOREcast 32: Tom Salta

Veteran video game composer Tom Salta stops by to chat with the boys about the art and business of scoring video games during SCOREcast’s 5th Anniversary episode.

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.

Tools for Studio Organization

Today’s composer needs to be balanced as a businessperson and writer. Here are some tools to help keep it all running smoothly.

Open Forum Friday: What Has Been Your Biggest Timesaver?

It’s time for a new feature around here that we will be calling “Open Forum Friday”. Every Friday morning, we’ll post a question that relates to the business of audio post-production. You log into the COMMENTS section below each post and give us and the rest of the SCO community your perspective on the matter. Today, we’re kicking it off with something that anyone who’s ever been on a deadline should find very helpful…

Budgets: Putting Your Money Where Your Mock-Up Is

“How much money will I make as a film composer?” That’s the six million dollar question, isn’t it? As much as we can try to come up with a complete answer, the only true answer really is, “Whatever you can!” The bigger question—and the one I want to tackle here—is “How much money do live players eat up during a film score’s production and how do you plan for the bloodshed?” The answer to that questions is… “I wish there was an answer.”

Now that I’ve been no help at all, let’s see if we can figure it out together…

It’s Never Over

This weekend’s post ties together a couple of the topics we’ve touched on during first year here at SCOREcast (has it really been almost a year… we ought to do something to celebrate! Hmm…): delivery and studio organization. The question, then:

Is a gig ever really over? Sometimes it’s clear when you’re finished (especially if things go, how you say, not so well). Other times, though, it seems that these ghosts of gigs past come back to haunt us over and over. More on all of this after the jump.

A-List Film Composer Habits for Any-List Film Schedules

The Creative Process. It’s a tough thing to talk about for me because my creative process (CP) is in such a constant state of flux all of the time. From project to project, my CP changes up drastically. And then sometimes, what worked on one project also works great on the next. What I will offer today is a sneak peek into the creative habits of some of the composers that I’ve worked with over the few years that I’ve been assisting. From these great composers, I’ve gleaned many secrets, tricks, templates, skills, and techniques – some that I use in my own work, and others that I don’t, but might someday. The thing that…

Heather Fenoughty: Quality of Life

In a recent Scorecast article I wrote that I’ve never turned composing work down that I honestly believe I have the time and the skills to work on. That was about 2 months ago, right in the middle of practicing what I preached and jumping in the deep end with my organizational (=juggling) skills. I was already working on several shows back-to-back with Slung Low, the awesome experimental theatre company that consistently attempts to push the boundaries of theatre whilst still remaining faithful to the notion of a story, a narrative structure. Fun stuff, and pretty well paid, working with lovely people, playing at very prestigious theatre houses. Ticked all the boxes. I was also…

The Value of Television Music

As a rule I’m not a fan of cold-water opinion columns. You know the kind: “Here’s the hard, bitter truth about [insert choice of profession here].” The way I see it, more cold water (cold ink?) is simply unnecessary. You know the long hours required to improve, to get your name out there, to advance in this career. You’re already aware that the odds of making a decent living as a composer are comparable to the odds of becoming a pro athlete. You know that fame and glamour are overrated; besides, they’re all but non-existent in our little corner of the music world. And none of that is why you write music anyway. You do…

How to Work on Multiple Projects and Stay Sane

As a media composer, work is like buses. There’s nothing for a while, then three projects come along at once. In the last six months I have been inundated with composing and sound design work for film and theatre and I am constantly thanking my lucky stars. This is exactly what I wanted when I started out many years ago. Isn’t it? Stay sane in the midst of chaos! Just kidding – of course it is, but on a day-to-day basis it can be a little bit of a challenge to keep the many, many minutes of music flowing, pouring out your heart and soul on demand, whilst maintaining a vague level of sanity. It’s…

“Roadmapping” a Score

On the heels of a killer column post from SCOREcast co-host Lee Sanders on Wednesday about “Surviving the Crunch“, James Olszewski asked a very pertinent question: What do you recommend to develop a passable roadmap on a compressed timeline?… I’d like to get a peek at what one of these roadmaps looks like (even if it’s just scribbles and random notes). Being the “planner” I am, I’m already thinking of some sort of template. Maybe something that takes you progressively from random notes to roadmap to spotting to cue sheet…. Does anything like that already exist? This is a great question, and one that could be met with as many different answers as there are…

Comfort is Key

Having worked along side composers like Hans Zimmer, Graeme Revell, and more recently Steve Jablonski, Rupert Gregson-Williams, and SCOREcast founder Deane Ogden, I’ve gleaned much by watching how the big boys do it. One thing I’ve noticed about the really successful composers — They are all healthy. Hans Zimmer rarely gets sick. If he does, it is the kind of sick that is over in a day, and I’ve never seen it cost him anything in terms of down time. Same with my current composer, SCOREcast founder Deane Ogden. When Deane first hired me, one of the first things he told me was to “stay healthy. We are no good to each other if we…