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.

James Olszewski: Bad Cues and the People Who Write Them

I was writing a cue last night, not for any particular project mind you, but just to write something. Who knows, maybe I’ll need it someday, right? It was pretty clear in my head, but not as crystal clear as other times. Sometimes I feel like I’m just regurgitating what I hear in my head! Not so last night, it was like trying to hold sand with my hands. And it showed in the cue- it was not good. But it still sounded okay in my head, although it was still not totally clear. Times like this make me wonder whether I should “abort mission” and walk away from the cue, or whether I should…

“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…