Speeding Up Your Workflow with Logic
In this second installment, Logic expert Yaiza Varona explores various techniques that can be used to speed up our workflow. Time is money after all….
Read More →Orchestration 101—Part 1
Mastering the art of orchestration takes a lifetime of study, research and application. But, we all have to start somewhere, right?
Read More →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 →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.
Read More →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 [...]
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 →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 [...]
Read More →Phases of the Game (the Quiz)
A beginning is a delicate time… or so I’ve heard. So I want to begin my column here on SCOREcast with what I’m going to try to cover—which is nearly everything—and a few words about my plan of attack. I like to work “big to small.” In other words, I try to start with the [...]
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 →The Balance of The Byrds
My passion to create music for film drives me. I am still a university student, and therefore am learning the essentials, but the real valuable lessons I have learned about this business have not been from lectures and exercises in harmonic theory. The most important things I’ve learned about building and maintaining a career as [...]
Read More →Maximizing Your Time: The Essentials
So here I am, responsible for getting these columns off to a delinquent start! But, I have a legitimate excuse, which I am going to use to kick off my first post here in my series “Composer as Producer.” Before I get started, I’ll take a quick moment to explain the purpose of my column. [...]
Read More →Translator
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