Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
A bit of cursory observation and experience has left me with the impression that in the last ten or fifteen years or so, we’ve heard more ‘Bottom Up’ construction from Music Designers producing non-scored works, than we might have realized, and by that I mean the songwriting process has given way to the Song Designing process.
If you're unfamiliar with the Top Down Bottom Up MUSIC DESIGN processes I've described in earlier posts, click on any of the links that follow this article for the necessary background.
In brief:
Bottom up constructions are marked by the establishment of TIME and RHYTHM before melody.
Likewise, any time a riff, incomplete melodic information ('complete' implies an entire phrase), or a pitch based sample is used as the conceptual seed from which a music production will evolve, we can say the work is being designed Center Out.
In contrast, Top Down composition is marked by melody (combined with lyrics, in the case of songwriting) first. In the Top Down process melody is defined first, after which all the other musical components are conceived in so far as melody defines their natural selection and direction.
Additionally, when music is conceived in the studio, and built from a loop up, with melody and lyric being afterthoughts to production, it strikes me that this music hasn't been composed at all. Rather, it's been designed.
Multiple points in case: Simpy consider the method by which much modern popular music –electronic, hiphop, dance, commercial pop, contemporary rock, etc– is created:
Fire up a graphic interface. Begin with a beat. Layer loops. Add a pad. Slice, dice and connect samples whose origin may be sourced from anything. The melody might not even become cohesive element until the moment the lyrics are written, sung and pitch corrected. –Or until the ‘right’ sample has been found, licensed and dropped into a the perfectly beat matched production. In fact, melody might be an after thought, or even an accident. You might even forgo the license. In fact, you probably will.
Anytime you're building a song up from a GRID, you're engaged in the act of design.
Of course, it’s not as simple as all that, –as both Top Forty Hit makers and Garage Band aficionados will rush to tell you. But I still think there is some truth to the suggestion that the described process may as well be the paradigm, and I wonder how long it will serve us? –Or when will a new technology come along that suggests yet another way of working?
There are still those who sit down with their musical instrument and create new musical works, performing melody and harmony –and even original lyrics, too– all at once, as though born whole from divine ether.
But in my daily professional experience –working with ad agencies, game developers, theme parks and other special venues, etc– most commissioned music today is designed rather than composed. That is to say, in the same manner a sound designer collages audio –layering sound bytes on top of other sound bytes, and from the bottom up and center out. How can it be otherwise when –on top of everything else– so much of it is also now informed by a Brand message or mandate; reviewed during its development by a collaborative hierarchy of other creative professionals; filtered through focus groups; and created for intended release to a target demographic?
Which brings to mind another defining point contrasting designed audio from composed music: Notwithstanding the licensing of non-designed compositions, Music Design –including Song Designs, generally imply conception for a functional or Utilitarian purpose. Whether conceived as part of an entertainment or marketing strategy –Use or User centered– is of little difference.
Of course, art springs from many sources and no judgment regarding any given process is implied. The author draws inspiration from all the techniques discussed here.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
If you're unfamiliar with the Top Down Bottom Up MUSIC DESIGN processes I've described in earlier posts, click on any of the links that follow this article for the necessary background.
In brief:
Bottom up constructions are marked by the establishment of TIME and RHYTHM before melody.
Likewise, any time a riff, incomplete melodic information ('complete' implies an entire phrase), or a pitch based sample is used as the conceptual seed from which a music production will evolve, we can say the work is being designed Center Out.
In contrast, Top Down composition is marked by melody (combined with lyrics, in the case of songwriting) first. In the Top Down process melody is defined first, after which all the other musical components are conceived in so far as melody defines their natural selection and direction.
Additionally, when music is conceived in the studio, and built from a loop up, with melody and lyric being afterthoughts to production, it strikes me that this music hasn't been composed at all. Rather, it's been designed.
Multiple points in case: Simpy consider the method by which much modern popular music –electronic, hiphop, dance, commercial pop, contemporary rock, etc– is created:
Fire up a graphic interface. Begin with a beat. Layer loops. Add a pad. Slice, dice and connect samples whose origin may be sourced from anything. The melody might not even become cohesive element until the moment the lyrics are written, sung and pitch corrected. –Or until the ‘right’ sample has been found, licensed and dropped into a the perfectly beat matched production. In fact, melody might be an after thought, or even an accident. You might even forgo the license. In fact, you probably will.
Anytime you're building a song up from a GRID, you're engaged in the act of design.
Of course, it’s not as simple as all that, –as both Top Forty Hit makers and Garage Band aficionados will rush to tell you. But I still think there is some truth to the suggestion that the described process may as well be the paradigm, and I wonder how long it will serve us? –Or when will a new technology come along that suggests yet another way of working?
There are still those who sit down with their musical instrument and create new musical works, performing melody and harmony –and even original lyrics, too– all at once, as though born whole from divine ether.
But in my daily professional experience –working with ad agencies, game developers, theme parks and other special venues, etc– most commissioned music today is designed rather than composed. That is to say, in the same manner a sound designer collages audio –layering sound bytes on top of other sound bytes, and from the bottom up and center out. How can it be otherwise when –on top of everything else– so much of it is also now informed by a Brand message or mandate; reviewed during its development by a collaborative hierarchy of other creative professionals; filtered through focus groups; and created for intended release to a target demographic?
Which brings to mind another defining point contrasting designed audio from composed music: Notwithstanding the licensing of non-designed compositions, Music Design –including Song Designs, generally imply conception for a functional or Utilitarian purpose. Whether conceived as part of an entertainment or marketing strategy –Use or User centered– is of little difference.
Of course, art springs from many sources and no judgment regarding any given process is implied. The author draws inspiration from all the techniques discussed here.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Some musical creators will naturally identify themselves as either Top Down composers or Bottom Up constructionists –both are terms I've introduced in previous posts (Click on the links at the bottom of this entry if you require background). The latter, it seems to me, must think more like sound designers than traditional composers.
In fact, the more I think about it, the fewer differences I notice between the modern compositional process and Sound Design (or sound EFX work).
I would like to suggest that this points to an as of yet unidentified trend:
A new kind of sonic artisan has evolved among us. It's as though the lizard has sprouted wings, and its scales turned to beautiful feathers, and we have only now realized that a transformation has taken place because instead of crawling in the muck, something new soars above us along the horizon, and the thing has taken flight.
So what is this new creature, anyway?
This newly emerged commercial sound artist is neither music composer nor EFX artist, but both those things and much more.
There is but a shade of difference here, nevertheless I think important to take note of it: I do not mean that he or she simply possesses a combined skill set, or that they are adept at mixing music and noise together in mix. That in and of itself would be unremarkable.
What I mean is that this newly formed modern audio professional approaches music and noise (and speech for that matter) as equally available sound sources and viable tonal information colors for any given audio work. There is no differentiation in kinds of sound, simply a palette whose spectrum extends to ranges of human hearing.
Sure, there have been composers before, and tape manipulators, and location recordists, and sound EFX artists, and beat makers, and engineers –but we've been looking at those respective skill sets as separate from one another. Fast Forward to the present and we noticed that these unique specialties, have become combined into a more or less unified, well informed, competent, new breed of audio professional.
I call this person by the hybrid label: 'MUSIC DESIGNER'.
A cursory web search will turn up several individuals who already embrace this nomenclature. For instance: Brian Williams, Robert Rich and Dhrubajit Gogoi.
I believe the term itself, 'Music Design', must have been coined sometime in the first part of the twentieth century, and from someone within the film community. In his book 'Film Music: A Neglected Art', first published in 1972, and with a 2nd edition in 1991, Roy M. Prendergast mentions technological advances in sound production initiated by music editing company that called itself 'The Music Design Group'. And then there is, of course, Soundelux Design Music Group, founded in 1985, meaning the appellation is at the very least now a quarter century old.
But today, as of this writing, the term 'AUDIO DESIGNER' appears to be much more common, especially as a designation in the Game industry.
I understand how 'Audio' might be chosen instead of 'Music'. It suggests a neutral term which embraces both music and sound design. However, there's nothing in the label Audio Designer to suggest musicianship. A job description listed on the THQ job site even assures applicants: "Understanding of Music and composition is an advantage but is not required".
Personally I think 'Audio Designer' is a fancy name for 'engineer', and otherwise misses the evolutionary mark. That's why I prefer the Music Designer designation over Audio Designer, given the context which I use it: My intent is to define a multifaceted musician who composes musical experiences using all sound, not describe an engineer who assembles the disparate sonic elements of a media production into a final mix.
You're welcome to come up with a niftier name, or to argue the practice is old hat in Hollywood. My point is not to create a new job title for you, but simply to identify and codify elements of an emerging trend. And this trend may be defined as the acceptance of a range of post production skills and techniques by even the conventional composer.
You already know people like this. Perhaps you are one of them. I'm inclined to think that if you read this blog with any regularity, you probably are. If you produce sound using raw code, MAX, soft synths and a Digital Audio Workstation, consider yourself enlisted. If you think of an electric guitar as less a musical instrument and more of a sound design tool, you absolutely fall into this category. Likewise, if you're one of those sound explorers who run a traditional instrument through a series of dynamic software filters –the way Robin Eubanks often does using Native Instruments Guitar Rig– in order expand tonal range well beyond the natural limitations of his trombone.
For a Music Designer, the actual instrument of tonal or sonic manipulation is considered incidental. That's because any instrument may be transformed by the addition of technology into an interface capable of sonic colors beyond its traditional or intended use, with the result being that any instrument can sound like any other instrument (and a whole lot more).
The distinction between musician and sound designer is blurring –has blurred–, while at the same time the distinction between composer and engineer, not to mention Graphic designer (which I'll discuss in a future article (MUSIC BY DESIGN)), also appears to be merging.
The final result of a Music Designer's work maybe but doesn't have to be described as audio collage or merely an interesting organization of sound. Rather, it works in such a way that it begs an informed audience to simply accept what they hear as MUSIC, whatever its components or sonic origins.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
In fact, the more I think about it, the fewer differences I notice between the modern compositional process and Sound Design (or sound EFX work).
I would like to suggest that this points to an as of yet unidentified trend:
A new kind of sonic artisan has evolved among us. It's as though the lizard has sprouted wings, and its scales turned to beautiful feathers, and we have only now realized that a transformation has taken place because instead of crawling in the muck, something new soars above us along the horizon, and the thing has taken flight.
So what is this new creature, anyway?
This newly emerged commercial sound artist is neither music composer nor EFX artist, but both those things and much more.
There is but a shade of difference here, nevertheless I think important to take note of it: I do not mean that he or she simply possesses a combined skill set, or that they are adept at mixing music and noise together in mix. That in and of itself would be unremarkable.
What I mean is that this newly formed modern audio professional approaches music and noise (and speech for that matter) as equally available sound sources and viable tonal information colors for any given audio work. There is no differentiation in kinds of sound, simply a palette whose spectrum extends to ranges of human hearing.
Sure, there have been composers before, and tape manipulators, and location recordists, and sound EFX artists, and beat makers, and engineers –but we've been looking at those respective skill sets as separate from one another. Fast Forward to the present and we noticed that these unique specialties, have become combined into a more or less unified, well informed, competent, new breed of audio professional.
I call this person by the hybrid label: 'MUSIC DESIGNER'.
A cursory web search will turn up several individuals who already embrace this nomenclature. For instance: Brian Williams, Robert Rich and Dhrubajit Gogoi.
I believe the term itself, 'Music Design', must have been coined sometime in the first part of the twentieth century, and from someone within the film community. In his book 'Film Music: A Neglected Art', first published in 1972, and with a 2nd edition in 1991, Roy M. Prendergast mentions technological advances in sound production initiated by music editing company that called itself 'The Music Design Group'. And then there is, of course, Soundelux Design Music Group, founded in 1985, meaning the appellation is at the very least now a quarter century old.
But today, as of this writing, the term 'AUDIO DESIGNER' appears to be much more common, especially as a designation in the Game industry.
I understand how 'Audio' might be chosen instead of 'Music'. It suggests a neutral term which embraces both music and sound design. However, there's nothing in the label Audio Designer to suggest musicianship. A job description listed on the THQ job site even assures applicants: "Understanding of Music and composition is an advantage but is not required".
Personally I think 'Audio Designer' is a fancy name for 'engineer', and otherwise misses the evolutionary mark. That's why I prefer the Music Designer designation over Audio Designer, given the context which I use it: My intent is to define a multifaceted musician who composes musical experiences using all sound, not describe an engineer who assembles the disparate sonic elements of a media production into a final mix.
You're welcome to come up with a niftier name, or to argue the practice is old hat in Hollywood. My point is not to create a new job title for you, but simply to identify and codify elements of an emerging trend. And this trend may be defined as the acceptance of a range of post production skills and techniques by even the conventional composer.
You already know people like this. Perhaps you are one of them. I'm inclined to think that if you read this blog with any regularity, you probably are. If you produce sound using raw code, MAX, soft synths and a Digital Audio Workstation, consider yourself enlisted. If you think of an electric guitar as less a musical instrument and more of a sound design tool, you absolutely fall into this category. Likewise, if you're one of those sound explorers who run a traditional instrument through a series of dynamic software filters –the way Robin Eubanks often does using Native Instruments Guitar Rig– in order expand tonal range well beyond the natural limitations of his trombone.
For a Music Designer, the actual instrument of tonal or sonic manipulation is considered incidental. That's because any instrument may be transformed by the addition of technology into an interface capable of sonic colors beyond its traditional or intended use, with the result being that any instrument can sound like any other instrument (and a whole lot more).
The distinction between musician and sound designer is blurring –has blurred–, while at the same time the distinction between composer and engineer, not to mention Graphic designer (which I'll discuss in a future article (MUSIC BY DESIGN)), also appears to be merging.
The final result of a Music Designer's work maybe but doesn't have to be described as audio collage or merely an interesting organization of sound. Rather, it works in such a way that it begs an informed audience to simply accept what they hear as MUSIC, whatever its components or sonic origins.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Bottom Up Audio Production
In a previous article I proposed that Top-down and Bottom-up Design approaches common to software development might also be applied to modern music composition and production.
This article expands on the concept of Bottom up Music Design.
If you're not familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines Bottom-up Design as follows:
"A bottom-up approach is piecing together systems to give rise to grander systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. In a bottom-up approach the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail. These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed".
In my experience as a producer of music, sound design and sonic branding for a variety of media:
Scoring to moving picture, whether to video or game, often requires a ‘Bottom Up’ construction rather than the Top Down process I've previously described as typical of traditional composition.
A final score may feel as though it in fact drives picture, or one may feel runs a perfect aural parallel with picture, but let us return to its inception. Scored music is created as reaction to events on screen –i.e. the pacing of the edit, and then the content itself, be it visible action or simmering emotion.
Setting pre-scores aside, many composers (when presented with moving picture) begin composing a score by finding a click track that works with the edit. That is, edits will thereafter occur on a click. To a uniformed eye, it looks as though the cuts or edits react to the click. If the editor cut to a temp track, then the composer will almost always match their click to the temp track. in any case, the natural result is a PULSE.
Bottom Up Design and Production is marked by a process whereby TIME and RHYTHM are established before MELODY and HARMONY.
Thus once a click has been created, the Bottom Up designer will as often as not, start by adding and layering RHYTHM parts. In my experience many contemporary video and game composers begin with one or more loops, all beat matched so as to move in sync with each other, the click and the picture.
Some composers might add a bass ‘line’ at this juncture, but most will first jump up the pitch range and indicate a simple harmony, usually in the way of a string pad or guitar rhythm. Only after sketching out the harmony, will they then drop back down the staff in order to add an appropriate bass part.
Only then, when the resulting rhythm bed and accompaniment are in place, will our Bottom Up Constructionist composer consider the melodic needs of the work.
Therefore, in Bottom Up Design, Melody is born out of Harmony and locked to Groove, which is not so unusual when one considers improvisation of any sort, but generally alien to the Top Down Composition process described in a previously.
In an improvised work, a melodic idea might kick off a jam, but new and alternate themes may soon enough evolve based on tonal information delivered via harmony, with the potential of spinning off in every direction.
Without melody, our improvisational jam is simply an extended groove or vamp, a musical bed but arguably not a wholly conceived composition. Add melody and we essentially introduce or enhance story or possibly provide (nonverbal) commentary. We can think of small sound bytes that deliver musical memes as Ear Candy, bursting with potential and exciting our senses with the promise of something else to come.
Ear Candy events are often created as musical cues to visual information, and a series of such events can give form to an apparent theme. And really, unless we are producing main titles or end credits, that might be all we need to satisfy the task of scoring a given scene or cut.
Once a Bottom Design has been established, a composer/designer can use the results as a sort of audio graph paper, a grid, upon which he may know change his process to layer Top Down (or even Center Out) information on it, further enhancing the material or modifying accompaniment to accommodate thematic development, if it’s warranted.
So when I describe ‘Bottom Up’ Audio Design or Construction, I mean a musical work composed in the following manner: Pulse, Beat, Rhythm as the first frame of reference followed by a layering of sonic assets, usually in the following order: Harmony, Musical cues, Theme.
Top Down composition, in direct contrast, evolves in the opposite direction. In Top Down Composition our conceptual seed is the establishment of a complete melody, which then implies harmony and rhythm –i.e., Melody maps out everything.
Practically speaking, I tend to compose Top Down, improvise Center Out and produce from the Bottom Up. Sounds hilarious out of context, I know, but that's how I orient the analysis of musical information for the described creative tasks.
Future Digital Artisans would do well to form an integrated Top-Down Bottom-Up approach to music development, though perhaps by doing so they would then better be described as Music Designers than composers or sound designers, an idea I'll explore further in the next article of this series.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
This article expands on the concept of Bottom up Music Design.
If you're not familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines Bottom-up Design as follows:
"A bottom-up approach is piecing together systems to give rise to grander systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. In a bottom-up approach the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail. These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed".
In my experience as a producer of music, sound design and sonic branding for a variety of media:
Scoring to moving picture, whether to video or game, often requires a ‘Bottom Up’ construction rather than the Top Down process I've previously described as typical of traditional composition.
A final score may feel as though it in fact drives picture, or one may feel runs a perfect aural parallel with picture, but let us return to its inception. Scored music is created as reaction to events on screen –i.e. the pacing of the edit, and then the content itself, be it visible action or simmering emotion.
Setting pre-scores aside, many composers (when presented with moving picture) begin composing a score by finding a click track that works with the edit. That is, edits will thereafter occur on a click. To a uniformed eye, it looks as though the cuts or edits react to the click. If the editor cut to a temp track, then the composer will almost always match their click to the temp track. in any case, the natural result is a PULSE.
Bottom Up Design and Production is marked by a process whereby TIME and RHYTHM are established before MELODY and HARMONY.
Thus once a click has been created, the Bottom Up designer will as often as not, start by adding and layering RHYTHM parts. In my experience many contemporary video and game composers begin with one or more loops, all beat matched so as to move in sync with each other, the click and the picture.
Some composers might add a bass ‘line’ at this juncture, but most will first jump up the pitch range and indicate a simple harmony, usually in the way of a string pad or guitar rhythm. Only after sketching out the harmony, will they then drop back down the staff in order to add an appropriate bass part.
Only then, when the resulting rhythm bed and accompaniment are in place, will our Bottom Up Constructionist composer consider the melodic needs of the work.
Therefore, in Bottom Up Design, Melody is born out of Harmony and locked to Groove, which is not so unusual when one considers improvisation of any sort, but generally alien to the Top Down Composition process described in a previously.
In an improvised work, a melodic idea might kick off a jam, but new and alternate themes may soon enough evolve based on tonal information delivered via harmony, with the potential of spinning off in every direction.
Without melody, our improvisational jam is simply an extended groove or vamp, a musical bed but arguably not a wholly conceived composition. Add melody and we essentially introduce or enhance story or possibly provide (nonverbal) commentary. We can think of small sound bytes that deliver musical memes as Ear Candy, bursting with potential and exciting our senses with the promise of something else to come.
Ear Candy events are often created as musical cues to visual information, and a series of such events can give form to an apparent theme. And really, unless we are producing main titles or end credits, that might be all we need to satisfy the task of scoring a given scene or cut.
Once a Bottom Design has been established, a composer/designer can use the results as a sort of audio graph paper, a grid, upon which he may know change his process to layer Top Down (or even Center Out) information on it, further enhancing the material or modifying accompaniment to accommodate thematic development, if it’s warranted.
So when I describe ‘Bottom Up’ Audio Design or Construction, I mean a musical work composed in the following manner: Pulse, Beat, Rhythm as the first frame of reference followed by a layering of sonic assets, usually in the following order: Harmony, Musical cues, Theme.
Top Down composition, in direct contrast, evolves in the opposite direction. In Top Down Composition our conceptual seed is the establishment of a complete melody, which then implies harmony and rhythm –i.e., Melody maps out everything.
Practically speaking, I tend to compose Top Down, improvise Center Out and produce from the Bottom Up. Sounds hilarious out of context, I know, but that's how I orient the analysis of musical information for the described creative tasks.
Future Digital Artisans would do well to form an integrated Top-Down Bottom-Up approach to music development, though perhaps by doing so they would then better be described as Music Designers than composers or sound designers, an idea I'll explore further in the next article of this series.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Top Down Music Composition
In a previous article I proposed that Top-down and Bottom-up Design approaches common to software development might also be applied to modern music composition and production.This article expands on the concept of Top-Down composition.
If you're not familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines Top-down as follows:
"...essentially breaking down a system to gain insight into its compositional sub-systems. In a top-down approach an overview of the system is first formulated, specifying but not detailing any first-level subsystems. Each subsystem is then refined in yet greater detail, sometimes in many additional subsystem levels, until the entire specification is reduced to base elements".
Traditional music composition is, by and large, a 'Top Down' process. Let me explain by first beginning with a postulation:
Melody is a series of pitches that relate to one another in a sequential and linear fashion. In traditional composition a composer is first inspired by a melody, or that melody is the result of inspiration resulting from impressionable thought, enlightenment or experience.
This initial melodic information may be small, a motif perhaps, or it may be a fully developed musical statement, comprised of several variations upon a single motif and include a series of phrases in its development and eventual conclusion.
Any melody –in fact, every melody– will by itself imply a suitable harmony, a result we intuit based on intervallic relationships we experience as we step through the series of tones.
Typically, melodic information is sounded using tonal information performed with higher pitches relative to the accompanying harmony. In fact, we perceive the tonal information that makes up the harmony as supportive of the melody and we call its specific arrangement an accompaniment.
Think of a singer, especially a soprano, delivering a vocal expression seemingly 'above' an orchestra or band. Beneath the singer we can hear the bass at the very bottom of the register. In between we have 'inner voices' inhabiting a mid range.
Whether you look at a notated score or use only your ears to judge, it is natural to sense melody as positioned ‘on top' of all other sonic information.
Clever composers, improvisers and songwriters will suggest or play around with chord substitutions, but for the purposes of this entry, let's stick with basic implied harmony.
However a work of music is arranged, a basic harmony part (or parts) is usually performed using tonal information below the register inhabited by the melody. We say harmony supports melody, and therefore think of harmony as beneath melody even though up and down is really just a construct of our own making.
So when I describe ‘Top Down’ Composition, I mean a musical work composed in the following manner: Melody as the first frame of reference followed by harmony made manifest in so far as it may be implied by the melody (albeit arranged into an accompaniment of the composer's choosing).
Bottom Up music construction, which I'll describe further in the next article, shares more in common with sound design than with traditional composition.
Center Out, meanwhile, is marked by organic meandering common in processes that expand outward from an undeveloped idea. Whenever the germ of the idea is less than a complete melody, the process is Center Out (or a combination of Center Out and Bottom Up if Time and Rhythm have been established).
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Friday, February 01, 2008
Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
This article identifies Top-down and Bottom-up design approaches in modern music design, production and composition.Persons engaged with the software development are no doubt familiar with the related, albeit contrasting, concepts of Top-down and Bottom-up development.
If you've never heard these terms before, Wikipedia combines the contrasting approaches as a single philosophy, described as follows:
Top-down and Bottom-up Design: "Strategies of information processing and knowledge ordering, mostly involving software, but also other humanistic and scientific theories...In practice, they can be seen as a style of thinking and teaching. In many cases top-down is used as a synonym of analysis or decomposition, and bottom-up of synthesis.".
As a producer of music, sound design and sonic branding for various media, it occurred to me that these two contrasting approaches could also be applied to the music composition process.
In this regard, I think of traditional composition as Top Down Composition, and contemporary composition using digital tools as Bottom Up Audio Design
I arrived at this concept as soon as I realized that my own process for music composition changed depending on whether I was beginning with a melody and writing a song (Top Down), or starting with a pulse and scoring picture (Bottom Up).
For songs, I generally do begin with melody –usually words married to a linear series of pitches. With melody in place, I can easily rock out a rhythmic accompaniment using the natural harmony implied by the melodic information.
My song (Top Down) composition process develops in the following order:
Resulting from Inspiration: Melody (with or without Lyric), Rhythm/Harmony, Drums/Bass, Ear Candy (and inner voices, if any), –ending with a performance (and possibly recording and mix thereof).
The other approach –Bottom Up Design– is born of the evolved combination of electronic studio shortcuts, sound design, pop production and film scoring, all of which seem to dovetail each other when I sit down with the intent of providing moving picture with a music treatment.
For scores, I typically begin with a pulse or a loop, lay down a ‘pad’ and then build musical content upon this foundation, ending eventually with a theme (if any).
My Bottom Up Audio Design process typically looks like this:
Reacting to Visual Cues: Click, Loop, Pad, Bass, Inner Voices/Ear Candy, Licks/Riffs/Motif, Thematic Melody, Mix.
Of course, you can use either methodology to create music of any genre. And practically speaking, in a given production both methods are oft combined (and in no particular order).
If I begin with a riff, a lick or otherwise ornamental gesture and then expand outward from there, it may help me to think of the process as 'Center Out'. But Center Out is more dabble and experiment than focused, planned design or composition.
Center Out might also be conceived as those activities one generally associates with orchestration.
Anytime I get stuck I often discover it's because I'm writing Center Out, that is, orchestrating before the essential musical idea is fully fleshed out. Center Out is like a conceptual seed that can sprout in any direction, and as a result can cause creative paralysis by virtue of the number of choices available to the writer.
For instance, say you start with a series of chords. If the the act of conceiving those chords arrives as a result of an inspired pulse, then the chords are born of a Bottom Up process. Alternatively, if the act of conceiving those chords arrives as a result of supporting a melody, then their creation is more closely aligned with a Top Down process. However, once once begins substituting block chords and their associated voicing with passing tones, counter melodies, rests, runs, ostinatos and arpeggios, or riffs and hooks in popular music, then one is clearly in the domain of Center Out composition.
Still speaking theoretically, I find Top Down a more natural approach for composing music that is meant to be performed in real time by human beings and experienced live. Although, in practice we often hear improvisational musicians reworking a Top Down composition from the Bottom Up.
Bottom Up Design is experienced best as a recorded statement, media composition, and often synchronized to picture or movement in the service of enhancing a story, third party content, a brand message, ride experience or game play. Any time TIME is organized before MELODY, and voices are first born from a primordial pulse, the process is Bottom Up.
Which method to pursue if creating an audio experience for a specific ENVIRONMENT? My guess is it would have to do with whether one was reacting to visual information or navigational concerns (Bottom Up), or branding a volume of space (Top Down, Center Out –or just hire a smart DJ with curatorial sensibilities).
Of course, all of us who straddle both traditional composition and contemporary music design should strive for an integrated Bottom-up and Top-down skill set.
* * *
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the six-part series detailing the changing relationship between Traditional Music Composition and Modern Music Production:
EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC DESIGNER
Part 1: Top Down, Center Out and Bottoms Up
Part 2: Top Down Music Composition
Part 3: Bottom Up Audio Production
Part 4: Film Composer, Sound Maker or Music Designer?
Part 5: Songwriter Vs. Song Designer
Part 6: Music By Design
Friday, January 04, 2008
Sing Me a Song (or Contrapuntal Conversation)
Birds sing and so do dogs and whales. So when I was a little kid I wondered why humans spoke with a 'conversational voice', a 'speaking tone', instead of singing communications to one another via song. I may have been reprimanded for an interruption while adults were speaking. I may have been asked to 'tone it down'.
Silence may be golden, but at some point, the musician in the child realized that contrapuntal conversation would allow for the simultaneous flow of conversation, including interruptive comments, while never once forsaking clarity.
In fact, singing allows for two or more people to deliver a message at the same time, assuming they follow a few rules regarding key, rhythm and harmony. Given this scenario, no one would ever have to tone it down, ever, and resulting participants in a conversation could voice their thoughts and concerns, as well as receive and comprehend content delivered by others all at the same time!
Because if one is a singer, one doesn’t have to pause in order to give someone else the floor, but rather –as you have no doubt witnessed in opera and musical theater– several people can communicate completely different thoughts and yet remain intelligible, if they deliver their words via separate, individual and harmonized melodies.
Naturally this would require each and every person to work on their pitch, timing and tone as they grew from childhood to adulthood, but wouldn't we be a better species for it? Not to say musicality would bring peace, not when some of the most memorable music is born of strife.
Although there are instances when musical communications really could diminish the potential for conflict. Instead of telling noisy children or movie theater patrons to shut up or be quiet, you would simply ask the offending party to harmonize or vocalize pianissimo.
Overlapping musical lines would result in interesting situations: At Presidential or political debates, all the candidates or participants could talk at once and be fully understood by all. Moreover, the events themselves would last mere minutes, and might actually be enjoyable, even entertaining as well as informative.
Instead of race or gender being issues, the press and pundits might get in trouble for suggesting that one candidate or another is more or less deserving of office because the person in question either has or doesn't have rhythm.
A circumstance might even arrive where we all suspect one of the major party players uses Autotune or lip syncs his arguments when he or she is on stage.
Now, that would be a scandal!
Can you imagine war? Not only would we have Morse code, but spies recruited out of musical theater programs and ballet academies would also be trained in tap code, passing secrets across the dance floor from underground hoofers and Special Tango Forces to covert drummers until the message could at last be crooned or beat boxed to allied command.
Even more interesting, perhaps, how would transcripts appear in a newspaper?
I wonder if the musicality of a given orator or editor would influence my conclusions about a given argument, as much as the opinion itself would.
Regardless, I love the idea of perhaps being able to sit down and read two opposing op-ed pieces presented as a fugue, and then discussing the contents with friends, presenting our own ideas as a variations on the theme.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Kindle's Impact on the Music Industry?
The two most interesting things to me about the new Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle are:
(If I understand Bezos correctly...)
A) Once a person makes an e-book purchase, Amazon allows the buyer free access to all his or her purchases via storage on their server, at no additional cost. So if you own 300 e-books and carry around 200 at any given time, you can always swap out any titles any time you want to. In effect, your library rests on their servers.
B) Kindle is completely self reliant, no personal computer required.
Therefore a person can purchase and own all the e-books they want, forever, so long as they pay for them once; and so long as he or she accesses the content via hardware which isn't connected to the Internet, thereby preventing the copyright content from unauthorized duplication.
To me, this actually sounds like a reasonable model for distributing music files and other digital media.
I don't mean to suggest consumers should be prevented from amplifying the music they own from more than one device. Rather, if one allows that one can dock an iPod, for instance, on a variety of playback devices, from boom box to home stereo to car audio system, then allow that another similar device might also allow the consumer to amplify the music anyway they cared to, without also permitting them the capacity to move the actual files themselves from drive to drive.
This is unlike a subscription model whereby consumers 'rent' music, and lose access to it if they stop payment. Some suggest subscriptions as a viable future distribution method, but I like the Kindle plan better, where consumers pay once and retain free access to their music forever.
It follows that as long as one has unlimited and eternal access to his or her music, and the capacity to carry on their person as much as can fit on a given device at any given time –hundreds and thousands of selections– then both music producer and music consumer are served.
One member of an online discussion where I first initiated this idea (Kindle's Impact on Music Industry) queried how this model differed from previous protection technologies, such as copy protected CDs and DRM?
Here's the answer:
Consumers resist Copy protection on CDs because they want to be able to rip CDs to portable hard drives in order to customize playback. Of course, some also want to be able to copy content so that they may freely distribute it to others. I suspect that widespread general resistance to the format weighed more heavily on the former, although I do not have sufficient data to argue one way or the other. In my own case, I thought: if you can't listen to the music on your iPod, then what good is it?
I think it's also fair to say that even CD manufacturers don't believe copy protection works, or doesn't work for long anyway. Sooner or later, someone always cracks the code.
But even if it did, such CDs (at least as music transportation devices) would still only protect new music recordings, not recordings already ripped. Not to mention that generally speaking, CDs are simply becoming obsolete as the world goes increasingly digital.
As for Digital Rights Management, does DRM even work? Again, certainly not for files you’ve already ripped from your own CDs.
An ideal content distribution scheme must be easy, acceptable and convenient for producers, manufacturers, distributors and consumers alike, –even as it secures the rights of copyright holders.
As it happens, the Kindle appears to promise just that to authors, publishers and readers of the digital equivalent to novels, e-books.
The actual physical device aside, the content distribution and consumption model created by Amazon for Kindle content rests on these three points:
1) Consumers own the e-books they buy; free digital copies remain accessible on Amazon's server: They must purchase content from an authorized seller; in this case, obviously, Amazon. But once they do so, they are free to the change the content on their playback device at will, provided that the content –the e-book files– rest either on an Amazon server, or in their Kindle. Since a Kindle can hold upwards of 200 novels, plus access to a dictionary and Wikipedia, readers are guaranteed a virtual bookshelf of books and references to carry with them at any one time.
2) Proprietary file format: If a consumer purchases more than 200 e-books (@$9.99/e-book), the e-books that do not fit on their Kindle are stored on an Amazon server. The device is outfitted with a USB connection and spillover can also be stored on an SD card, but it's not as though you'll be able to open those files on Sony's e-book reader, Sony Reader. Back in September the New York Times explained "Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies..."(NYT: Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books).
So, one wonders if the convenience of free storage at Amazon will be enough to dissuade consumers from trying to crack the files in order to make their own digital copies –if they know they can go back to Amazon at any time in the future in order to swap out any number of e-books for other previously purchased selections, at no extra charge, as many times as they like, forever (provided the number does not exceed the Kindle’s physical storage capacity). Further, one doesn’t actually swap out books off the Amazon server. The Amazon server preserves a copy of the e-book. Like the iPod, swapping off the Kindle amounts to deleting the file in order to make room for new content.
But the fact remains: You bought the book, and therefore you own it. Your copy simply and perpetually sits on Amazon's bookshelf, rather than your own hard drive (where it is subject to damage and accidental erasure, by the way). There it remains until you want to read it, which you may do as many times as you like, now and in the future.
3) Free wireless broadband distribution. Can you lend a book to a friend? Sure, the device allows you to email excerpts, but if you want to loan out an entire novel, just give them your Kindle –as you would a physical book. However, consumers are not given the capacity to rip Kindle content to their computer's hard drive, thereby making wholesale unauthorized distribution theoretically impossible.
Instead content is swapped in and out of the Kindle, and to and from Amazon, via a cellular connection. In this case by way of a direct EvDO radio connection to Amazon (and for which the book consumer need not sign up with Sprint to enable). Amazon makes the transfer of content from their store (or your library) to your Kindle as transparent as possible. Buying a book is just like getting a ringtone.
The bottom line: Consumers get access to all the books they can afford (at a fair price). They get unlimited access to all the books they purchased, anytime they want, forever. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience the books on a portable device that apparently fulfills reader experience expectations in every way that matters.
WHAT IF WE APPLY THE ABOVE MODEL TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF DIGITAL MUSIC FILES?
Of course, we can't literally use a Kindle because while it plays mp3s, its slow E Ink display isn't the optimal choice for navigating through a music library. Nor can we use the current Apple or MSN (or other) set-ups. We need a new device that operates within a suitably closed system: Let’s call it a 'kPod' (although I’d rather call it a Cryptonomicon [nerdy humor alert]), and you fill it up with content at the kTunes store. (For the sake of this overview: Despite some cries of monopoly, Apple's iTunes/iPod set-up is defined as an open system here because although Apple's AAC files are theoretically copy protected, a consumer's own files are not; not to mention the set-up is connected to the Internet, allowing files to move freely).
I imagine that a consumer might access the kTunes store via a Mac or PC in order to peruse selections, make purchases and manage their library. But the kPod itself will not connect to one's computer. Rather the Ktunes store sends the kPod content, just as Amazon sends the Kindle content, over a free wireless cellular broadband service.
As consumers retain eternal access to their purchased content they can therefore access previously purchase content at no additional cost. You bought the music; you own it.
If a consumer damages their kPod, they will certainly be liable for the cost of a kPod replacement, as they would be with any consumer purchase. But they will not be required to re-purchase music that they already own. All they have to do is log into their kTunes account and download their content from their library.
While the kPod is incapable of burning CDs, or making readable copies to external drives, secondary kPods or home computers, consumers will nevertheless be able to dock their kPod to any number of commercially available playback devices, such as their home stereo, a car sound system, or some other 3rd party amplification system. Docking will allow consumers to amplify the audio from a kPod, but it will not allow them to actually transfer digital files from a kPod to another device (capable of reading those files).
The bottom line is: Consumers get access to all the music they can afford (at a fair price). Unlike a music subscription, they get unlimited access to all the music they purchased, anytime they want, forever. They will certainly have to pay for any new music they desire, but they will only have to do so once. They will never again have to purchase the same song twice. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience their music on a portable device that fulfills listener experience expectations in every way that matters, and still protect the rights of copyright holders.
Add to that a store that offers every single recording ever made, from anywhere in the world, and free content from the public domain, and you may be on to something big.
One question remains: How will current owners with existing digitized collections of music get this content into the kPod without giving the kPod reciprocal ability to export content to distribution channels? Maybe there is no way (to do so). Or maybe imported content will be automatically transformed into the kPods proprietary file format before becoming functional (which in effect would also take care of DRM).
Whatever the decision or method, if producers of music can convince young consumers to choose kPods over iPods, they can offer those consumers something Apple isn't even doing: They can help a new generation begin building non-destructible music collections, and from a very young age, saving every title they purchase for future and unlimited use, on and from a perpetually accessible server, in an account in their possession –if not on their person– for their entire lifetime.
Or maybe music should just be free.
(If I understand Bezos correctly...)
A) Once a person makes an e-book purchase, Amazon allows the buyer free access to all his or her purchases via storage on their server, at no additional cost. So if you own 300 e-books and carry around 200 at any given time, you can always swap out any titles any time you want to. In effect, your library rests on their servers.
B) Kindle is completely self reliant, no personal computer required.
Therefore a person can purchase and own all the e-books they want, forever, so long as they pay for them once; and so long as he or she accesses the content via hardware which isn't connected to the Internet, thereby preventing the copyright content from unauthorized duplication.
To me, this actually sounds like a reasonable model for distributing music files and other digital media.
I don't mean to suggest consumers should be prevented from amplifying the music they own from more than one device. Rather, if one allows that one can dock an iPod, for instance, on a variety of playback devices, from boom box to home stereo to car audio system, then allow that another similar device might also allow the consumer to amplify the music anyway they cared to, without also permitting them the capacity to move the actual files themselves from drive to drive.
This is unlike a subscription model whereby consumers 'rent' music, and lose access to it if they stop payment. Some suggest subscriptions as a viable future distribution method, but I like the Kindle plan better, where consumers pay once and retain free access to their music forever.
It follows that as long as one has unlimited and eternal access to his or her music, and the capacity to carry on their person as much as can fit on a given device at any given time –hundreds and thousands of selections– then both music producer and music consumer are served.
One member of an online discussion where I first initiated this idea (Kindle's Impact on Music Industry) queried how this model differed from previous protection technologies, such as copy protected CDs and DRM?
Here's the answer:
Consumers resist Copy protection on CDs because they want to be able to rip CDs to portable hard drives in order to customize playback. Of course, some also want to be able to copy content so that they may freely distribute it to others. I suspect that widespread general resistance to the format weighed more heavily on the former, although I do not have sufficient data to argue one way or the other. In my own case, I thought: if you can't listen to the music on your iPod, then what good is it?
I think it's also fair to say that even CD manufacturers don't believe copy protection works, or doesn't work for long anyway. Sooner or later, someone always cracks the code.
But even if it did, such CDs (at least as music transportation devices) would still only protect new music recordings, not recordings already ripped. Not to mention that generally speaking, CDs are simply becoming obsolete as the world goes increasingly digital.
As for Digital Rights Management, does DRM even work? Again, certainly not for files you’ve already ripped from your own CDs.
An ideal content distribution scheme must be easy, acceptable and convenient for producers, manufacturers, distributors and consumers alike, –even as it secures the rights of copyright holders.
As it happens, the Kindle appears to promise just that to authors, publishers and readers of the digital equivalent to novels, e-books.
The actual physical device aside, the content distribution and consumption model created by Amazon for Kindle content rests on these three points:
1) Consumers own the e-books they buy; free digital copies remain accessible on Amazon's server: They must purchase content from an authorized seller; in this case, obviously, Amazon. But once they do so, they are free to the change the content on their playback device at will, provided that the content –the e-book files– rest either on an Amazon server, or in their Kindle. Since a Kindle can hold upwards of 200 novels, plus access to a dictionary and Wikipedia, readers are guaranteed a virtual bookshelf of books and references to carry with them at any one time.
2) Proprietary file format: If a consumer purchases more than 200 e-books (@$9.99/e-book), the e-books that do not fit on their Kindle are stored on an Amazon server. The device is outfitted with a USB connection and spillover can also be stored on an SD card, but it's not as though you'll be able to open those files on Sony's e-book reader, Sony Reader. Back in September the New York Times explained "Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies..."(NYT: Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books).
So, one wonders if the convenience of free storage at Amazon will be enough to dissuade consumers from trying to crack the files in order to make their own digital copies –if they know they can go back to Amazon at any time in the future in order to swap out any number of e-books for other previously purchased selections, at no extra charge, as many times as they like, forever (provided the number does not exceed the Kindle’s physical storage capacity). Further, one doesn’t actually swap out books off the Amazon server. The Amazon server preserves a copy of the e-book. Like the iPod, swapping off the Kindle amounts to deleting the file in order to make room for new content.
But the fact remains: You bought the book, and therefore you own it. Your copy simply and perpetually sits on Amazon's bookshelf, rather than your own hard drive (where it is subject to damage and accidental erasure, by the way). There it remains until you want to read it, which you may do as many times as you like, now and in the future.
3) Free wireless broadband distribution. Can you lend a book to a friend? Sure, the device allows you to email excerpts, but if you want to loan out an entire novel, just give them your Kindle –as you would a physical book. However, consumers are not given the capacity to rip Kindle content to their computer's hard drive, thereby making wholesale unauthorized distribution theoretically impossible.
Instead content is swapped in and out of the Kindle, and to and from Amazon, via a cellular connection. In this case by way of a direct EvDO radio connection to Amazon (and for which the book consumer need not sign up with Sprint to enable). Amazon makes the transfer of content from their store (or your library) to your Kindle as transparent as possible. Buying a book is just like getting a ringtone.
The bottom line: Consumers get access to all the books they can afford (at a fair price). They get unlimited access to all the books they purchased, anytime they want, forever. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience the books on a portable device that apparently fulfills reader experience expectations in every way that matters.
WHAT IF WE APPLY THE ABOVE MODEL TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF DIGITAL MUSIC FILES?
Of course, we can't literally use a Kindle because while it plays mp3s, its slow E Ink display isn't the optimal choice for navigating through a music library. Nor can we use the current Apple or MSN (or other) set-ups. We need a new device that operates within a suitably closed system: Let’s call it a 'kPod' (although I’d rather call it a Cryptonomicon [nerdy humor alert]), and you fill it up with content at the kTunes store. (For the sake of this overview: Despite some cries of monopoly, Apple's iTunes/iPod set-up is defined as an open system here because although Apple's AAC files are theoretically copy protected, a consumer's own files are not; not to mention the set-up is connected to the Internet, allowing files to move freely).
I imagine that a consumer might access the kTunes store via a Mac or PC in order to peruse selections, make purchases and manage their library. But the kPod itself will not connect to one's computer. Rather the Ktunes store sends the kPod content, just as Amazon sends the Kindle content, over a free wireless cellular broadband service.
As consumers retain eternal access to their purchased content they can therefore access previously purchase content at no additional cost. You bought the music; you own it.
If a consumer damages their kPod, they will certainly be liable for the cost of a kPod replacement, as they would be with any consumer purchase. But they will not be required to re-purchase music that they already own. All they have to do is log into their kTunes account and download their content from their library.
While the kPod is incapable of burning CDs, or making readable copies to external drives, secondary kPods or home computers, consumers will nevertheless be able to dock their kPod to any number of commercially available playback devices, such as their home stereo, a car sound system, or some other 3rd party amplification system. Docking will allow consumers to amplify the audio from a kPod, but it will not allow them to actually transfer digital files from a kPod to another device (capable of reading those files).
The bottom line is: Consumers get access to all the music they can afford (at a fair price). Unlike a music subscription, they get unlimited access to all the music they purchased, anytime they want, forever. They will certainly have to pay for any new music they desire, but they will only have to do so once. They will never again have to purchase the same song twice. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience their music on a portable device that fulfills listener experience expectations in every way that matters, and still protect the rights of copyright holders.
Add to that a store that offers every single recording ever made, from anywhere in the world, and free content from the public domain, and you may be on to something big.
One question remains: How will current owners with existing digitized collections of music get this content into the kPod without giving the kPod reciprocal ability to export content to distribution channels? Maybe there is no way (to do so). Or maybe imported content will be automatically transformed into the kPods proprietary file format before becoming functional (which in effect would also take care of DRM).
Whatever the decision or method, if producers of music can convince young consumers to choose kPods over iPods, they can offer those consumers something Apple isn't even doing: They can help a new generation begin building non-destructible music collections, and from a very young age, saving every title they purchase for future and unlimited use, on and from a perpetually accessible server, in an account in their possession –if not on their person– for their entire lifetime.
Or maybe music should just be free.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Breaking Into the Ad Music Biz
While browsing the Sound-On-Sound Music Business Forum recently, I came across a conversation regarding the trials and tribulations one might expect attempting a career creating music for advertising. As it happens, I have had to give the subject considerable and repeated thought given five earlier commissions over the last five years by clients seeking to gain entry to the industry, or by established firms seeking to expand services. This as a result of having held the position of Executive Producer for two leading U.S. production companies, and the entrepreneurial experience I later gained as co-founder and Executive Producer of a pioneering interactive music outfit in the late nineties called Blister Media, and whose uniquely combined studio practices the publishers of Mix Magazine, in their April 2001 Internet Audio supplement, suggested was a portent to ‘The Future of Music Production’.
Sound-On-Sound is a British publication and while I'm not deeply familiar with the U.K. scene, I do have a passing familiarity with it as one client I provided consultation services to was and is a U.K. concern interested in setting up shop in the United States. As I'm not currently bound by any non-disclosure agreements, I therefore decided to throw in my two cents and offer some background and advice to the aspiring freelance or newly independent commercial composer or young music producer. As my post to the forum turned out to be a little longer and detailed than I intended, I thought it might make for good reprint here on the CRITICAL NOISE blog.
So with minor alteration and enhancements, and without out any further ado:
Having produced music, sound design and sonic branding projects for two leading US production co.'s., perhaps I can offer some helpful background and advice to those looking to break into this arena:
It's increasingly difficult for an unknown composer to break in to the business of writing music for advertising for at least three reasons:
A) More and more commercials use licensed tracks from recording artists or license libraries. That means fewer commissions for original music.
B) While commissions have diminished (for TV Commercials), competition has increased by an exponential number. When I started my first job for Elias Arts in 1991, ten U.S. music production houses of note were listed in a national industry registry. By the time I left Machine Head in 1998 to start my own shop, Blister Media, there were at least fifty good ones nationwide I could name –and now it seems there are also hundreds of boutiques located in every major production center, such as LA, New York, London, etc.
Moreover, as a result of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild in the late nineties, U.S. agencies began producing more work overseas. Once exposed to talents in Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, South Africa, England and elsewhere, –and receiving top shelf creative at a lower cost–, US vendors in every area of production found themselves having to adjust their bids in order to compete with new overseas competitors. More so than other post production professionals, employees of US music houses suffered especially so because their income was also based (and still is) on performance royalties. As you might imagine, the Internet (and global access to non union talent) has, among other things, made the competition pool that much wider. Not only is the pie smaller, there are more people who want a piece of it.
In an attempt to gain an advantage over the increasing competition, established houses began providing more demos for the buck to their clients, and presenting them nearer to what might call the final stages of completion. What was once an original fee for one semi-produced demo now has to be amortized over several full-up tracks, only it really can't. And what was once the possibility of a profit on demo budgets, now has dwindled to the break even point, and often not even that.
In 1993 the company I worked for produced an average of four or five demos per project. By 2001, it wasn’t unheard of to deliver up to twenty demos per project –from a single house! Multiply that by the three or four other houses and you realize advertising agencies may consider forty, fifty or sixty original tracks in demo stage, before they settle on one.
Fortunately the quality of samples is much higher than it once was, saving the cost conscious composer from having to hire session musicians for demos, (or even finals much of the time). But that circumstance comes with its own set of problems (When Marketers Hear Double). If you think you have a hard time as a composer getting work, be thankful you're not trying to make a living strictly as a studio drummer.
C) Errors and Omissions. Agencies generally now require composers to carry insurance against the odd claim of copyright infringement. E&O is essentially malpractice insurance for musicians. It may be that it was always required of vendors, but when I first started in the business no one ever demanded that I actually produce evidence of holding the policy. Now agencies regularly ask new, prospective vendors to produce a copy before allowing them to participate in the bidding process. In the 'old days' some people I know didn't really carry the policy, but said they did in order to secure work. Rather, they signed the agency's work-for-hire agreement that stipulated they carry the policy, even if they didn't. Then they crossed their fingers and prayed they wouldn't get sued.
Of course, most composers will tell you they are highly original and that they would never plagiarize another musical work, so carrying an E&O policy isn't an issue for them. But as I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog (The Cinematic Reincarnation of Classical Music), composers of music for film and video, –whether they are scoring a two hour movie or a thirty second TV commercial– are frequently asked to use another work as a model and reference. In fact, such temp tracks often arrive with the rough cut, and the expectation is that the commissioned composer's new music will work with picture bearing a substantial degree of similarity to the temp track, without actually infringing.
If you don't want to carry an E&O policy, or can't afford to, remain freelance and solicit work from the big production companies that do carry it.
The good news is that what was bad for the big boys –i.e. union strikes, lower production budgets, non union workers, global competition, etc– actually sometimes works in favor of those trying to break into the business, whether they are local or working over the Internet. And increasingly, the big houses are moving from –if they haven't already– from hosting exclusive staff composers to representing armies of freelance independent talents. Recently SOS published a profile of Amsterdam based music house Massive, describing the company as having relationships with "a worldwide pool of approximately 75 freelance composers".
Ten years ago a company might exercise discretion regarding any use of freelancers, fearing outward perception that the core of the brand lacked the necessary wherewithal to execute a given creative vision internally. It's sort of like hearing your favorite band had to call in a session guitarist to do the leads. But today, that notion has been completely turned on its head, and the stigma (of using freelancers) faded. Music houses have become less like film studios retaining exclusive talent, and more representatives of free agents.
Naturally, this has good and bad aspects for the modern independent composer. It's good, because you now have a better chance of succeeding than you did before: Someone, somewhere is likely to give you a shot, eventually; but the negative is that you're also up against an even greater amount of competition than your predecessors, and everyone is equally and adequately armed with ProTools.
In the April 2001 issue of Shoot Magazine I argued that while the broadcast advertising pie was getting smaller, and the amount of competition increasing, there was still room for everybody (Too Many Notes To Choose From?). I still think this is true, but as I said then, only if your business model allows for multiple streams of income. If you're relying only on thirty second TV advertising commercials for income, then it's likely you have already gone out of business. A music house today, even a freelance composer, needs to be able to solicit work for, and accommodate projects from, across a wide swath of media options: advertising, film, electronic game, interactive media, theme parks, special venues, in store locations and other on site platforms, as well as get into the business of licensing a library of works. It can be a daunting exercise.
By the way, if you think of yourself more as a songwriter who would like to license tracks rather than as a composer who takes on commissions for original music, follow this link to read more about How To License Your Songs.
It bears mentioning that the barrier to entry is indeed lower than it once was, at least when it comes to equipment and building costs. So long as you work as freelancer to other music production companies, no one will care what you made your music on so long as it sounds great, does the job, and you are able to deliver it according to the technical specifications required of you. Additionally, if you've been retained by a music house, your employer is the de facto client liaison, and thus you won't also need to lay out the cash to build out a gorgeous facility for entertaining said clients. One day you might: Tomorrow you could very well be a first call Sonic Branding guru. But for now, let's concentrate on getting your foot in the door.
Regardless of whether you chose to solicit work from music production companies, or directly from agencies, studios and other clients, you will need to build a reel demonstrating your talent. Your 'reel' may not be an actual reel. It may simply be a website with quicktime samples of your work. In all likelihood you will need to create hard copies for distribution as well, in the form of a DVD.
Some question whether it is ethical to build a demo reel by scoring existing TV film, adverts or video footage. I say: Do it, do it, do it. Get on the Internet and find ten to fifteen beautiful or über cool TV commercials to download and score them, and/or add sound design. If you can't mix, have someone else mix them down for you. To be honest, if you want to compose music for advertising, you are going to have to learn how to record and mix. Schedules often move too fast for anyone to wait around for a dedicated engineer to do his or her thing. Your demo reel has to sound ready for broadcast, and you should really be capable of executing such a task. But even if you do mix yourself, get another pair of ears to judge your work. In advertising you will have many people review and criticize your work before it goes final. Get used to accommodating other people's opinions now.
That said, pairing a musician/composer with a musical engineer or creative producer makes for a great team, but no one's going to pay you twice as much to get the job done. You'll have to split the budget between you. Mind you, many established music houses were founded by dynamic duos, so if you do work as a duo, money may be tighter at the beginning but your collective energies may pay off later as you build a business.
As for the reel you build, as you gather video also collect the agency and the director info for each spot. Once you've assembled the credits, note them on the label and/or on your site, along with the title for each spot or project: Each item might be therefore be labeled something like this:
Product/Title/Length/Agency/Director/Demo or Final
For instance:
CRITICAL NOISE COMMERCIAL DEMO REEL
1) Title: Adidas ‘Sport’ :30
Agency: Harajuku Worldwide
Dir: Ridley Scott (Demo)
But if what happens if you then send your music to the actual music house that produced the actual track that went final, or the ad agency that produced it? Well, they might like it, they might hate, they might ignore it. The music house might even think that your score was a demo the agency had someone else do, which happens all the time as I mentioned above. As for the agency, I suspect they will probably be flattered –if the people who review your work are even the same people who created the original spot. Given the number of people who work at a large multinational advertising agency, and the growing number of freelancers working at these agencies, the creators of the original spot may never come across your reel. In fact, it's unlikely that they will unless i) Someone at the agency recommends they look at your reel or ii) You actually contact them personally and ask them to review the music and/or sound design you composed inspired by their work (this is actually a good way to make a connection as it provides a reason for what is otherwise a cold call).
Anyway, as you weren't formally commissioned, you therefore didn't need to consider any branding issues or need to work around a Voice Over. Ostensibly you were free to treat the video as art. Theoretically then, your composition, in contrast to the final music, is not compromised by any utilitarian marketing function and is therefore creative for its own sake. I suspect agency and production people will undoubtedly appreciate your efforts (assuming you are competent, and if your work is also engaging as an entertainment piece, as it should be).
In fact, if you sent me to your web site and I couldn't help but notice that all the featured work was demos, I wouldn't necessarily know that you weren't formerly commissioned to participate in the demo process. For all I would know, you were one of several participants, and it so happens that this particular work did not go final.
Also, presenting demos doesn't mean you haven't ever produced a final. What do you think plays better on a reel? A demo for a cool car spot or a final for toilet paper? Even established houses will present a demo that didn't go final if the picture is better than anything else that went final. The trick though is to make sure you present the demo music against final picture, not the rough cut. How do you get the final cut? Off the Internet. The companies who produced the spot will often host them on their site, as will the Industry trades. Or you make friends with someone who works in the business and they serve as your connection to quality video. Sounds like a dirty little business, doesn't it?
Another word about not going final when you haven't actually gone final: Not going final is not an indication of quality. It does not mean you or your work is incapable of the task. Assuming you are actually competent at scoring picture and/or experience, it simply means your work did not adequately score the brand or support the story in the way someone at the agency wanted it to, on that particular day. For whatever reason, something else went final.
By the same token, if a track did go final, that in and of itself doesn't mean that everyone who participated in its production is happy with the final music. This happens ALL the time. That's why even the directors who shoot TV commercials, or the editors who cut the spot, or even the advertising agency staff themselves will sometimes have a different composer score the spot for their own reel (the director’s cut, the editor’s cut, the agency cut, even the animator’s or designer’s cut, as opposed to the final version).
In fact, doing director’s cuts is an excellent way to build up a reel, not to mention make contacts. To do this, offer your creative services for free (or for no more than a typical demo budget if it requires live musicians/technical personnel/studio other than yourself and your rig) to produce a full up direction of music that fulfills the director's (or whomever’s) musical vision. You find these people by approaching production companies, 'repping*' firms or agents who represent directors or production and post-production companies and pitch them on your availability to compose treatments for director's cuts. If you find them on MySpace, shoot them an email with a link back to other samples of your work.
*Reps and Repping firms are individuals or companies that represent talent to the advertising agencies. Typically reps represent directors, film production companies, post production companies, editorial firms, and yes, even music and sound design houses.
On your website, or printed label, you would then neither notate ‘Final’ or ‘Demo’, but ‘Directors Cut’ or which ever party you composed the alternate version to. Make no mistake these alternate versions have a bit of caché to them, sometimes even more than the Finals, depending who you did the work for and who is viewing it. Do you think that anyone in the business cares what went final, if Ridley Scott uses something else on his own reel? Only the composer of the former and his or her mother cares about what went final.
But if you really don't want to produce a track that already is final, you can still find killer looking video by working with designers, who now amazingly seem to outnumber musicians these days. Here's a link from Digital Thread that purports to feature the Best of Breed Design firms. If you begin by offering your services for free (or a very nominal cost covering fee) people who to this creative group, in a year or two you may have a show reel that will get you work and launch your career.
By the way, I don't just mean to approach the businesses that you'll find if you follow the link (which span the gamut from one man shops to multimillion dollar operations); but rather in the case of a multimillion dollar shop, try approaching individual creative artisans who work for those businesses and who are likely doing independent work of their own. How do you get the names of individual creative artisans who work at multimillion dollar sites? Well, check out the websites first. You can run searches on major social networking sites, too. Run the name of a business on MySpace for instance and see who comes up. Or simply run a search on your favorite search engine that pairs the name of the design firm your interested in with a likely job title like 'Art Director' or 'Junior Designer', etc. In other words, you need to dig.
Along the way you will make contact, acquire acquaintances and make friends and build your professional network. Don't expect first contact to result in a job unless you are very lucky. Typically the people you want to work for may already have booked other professionals for the jobs on deck for months on out. You will need to keep at it without being annoying. A rep will do this for you, but at this stage you are likely your own rep, as well your own intern, producer, composer, receptionist. The silver lining in this is that the relationships you make will be your own, not your reps. It will feel right when it feels social. It will be feel wrong when it feels like selling. This too takes practice.
One disclaimer before I close: as you might imagine, it is not enough to simply follow the steps outlined here. One must also be talented, and I think immensely so, and in ways that are specific to the nature of the form. You won't possess all the skills when you start out, but you can learn as you go, and you should learn all you can.
Sound-On-Sound is a British publication and while I'm not deeply familiar with the U.K. scene, I do have a passing familiarity with it as one client I provided consultation services to was and is a U.K. concern interested in setting up shop in the United States. As I'm not currently bound by any non-disclosure agreements, I therefore decided to throw in my two cents and offer some background and advice to the aspiring freelance or newly independent commercial composer or young music producer. As my post to the forum turned out to be a little longer and detailed than I intended, I thought it might make for good reprint here on the CRITICAL NOISE blog.
So with minor alteration and enhancements, and without out any further ado:
Having produced music, sound design and sonic branding projects for two leading US production co.'s., perhaps I can offer some helpful background and advice to those looking to break into this arena:
It's increasingly difficult for an unknown composer to break in to the business of writing music for advertising for at least three reasons:
A) More and more commercials use licensed tracks from recording artists or license libraries. That means fewer commissions for original music.
B) While commissions have diminished (for TV Commercials), competition has increased by an exponential number. When I started my first job for Elias Arts in 1991, ten U.S. music production houses of note were listed in a national industry registry. By the time I left Machine Head in 1998 to start my own shop, Blister Media, there were at least fifty good ones nationwide I could name –and now it seems there are also hundreds of boutiques located in every major production center, such as LA, New York, London, etc.
Moreover, as a result of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild in the late nineties, U.S. agencies began producing more work overseas. Once exposed to talents in Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, South Africa, England and elsewhere, –and receiving top shelf creative at a lower cost–, US vendors in every area of production found themselves having to adjust their bids in order to compete with new overseas competitors. More so than other post production professionals, employees of US music houses suffered especially so because their income was also based (and still is) on performance royalties. As you might imagine, the Internet (and global access to non union talent) has, among other things, made the competition pool that much wider. Not only is the pie smaller, there are more people who want a piece of it.
In an attempt to gain an advantage over the increasing competition, established houses began providing more demos for the buck to their clients, and presenting them nearer to what might call the final stages of completion. What was once an original fee for one semi-produced demo now has to be amortized over several full-up tracks, only it really can't. And what was once the possibility of a profit on demo budgets, now has dwindled to the break even point, and often not even that.
In 1993 the company I worked for produced an average of four or five demos per project. By 2001, it wasn’t unheard of to deliver up to twenty demos per project –from a single house! Multiply that by the three or four other houses and you realize advertising agencies may consider forty, fifty or sixty original tracks in demo stage, before they settle on one.
Fortunately the quality of samples is much higher than it once was, saving the cost conscious composer from having to hire session musicians for demos, (or even finals much of the time). But that circumstance comes with its own set of problems (When Marketers Hear Double). If you think you have a hard time as a composer getting work, be thankful you're not trying to make a living strictly as a studio drummer.
C) Errors and Omissions. Agencies generally now require composers to carry insurance against the odd claim of copyright infringement. E&O is essentially malpractice insurance for musicians. It may be that it was always required of vendors, but when I first started in the business no one ever demanded that I actually produce evidence of holding the policy. Now agencies regularly ask new, prospective vendors to produce a copy before allowing them to participate in the bidding process. In the 'old days' some people I know didn't really carry the policy, but said they did in order to secure work. Rather, they signed the agency's work-for-hire agreement that stipulated they carry the policy, even if they didn't. Then they crossed their fingers and prayed they wouldn't get sued.
Of course, most composers will tell you they are highly original and that they would never plagiarize another musical work, so carrying an E&O policy isn't an issue for them. But as I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog (The Cinematic Reincarnation of Classical Music), composers of music for film and video, –whether they are scoring a two hour movie or a thirty second TV commercial– are frequently asked to use another work as a model and reference. In fact, such temp tracks often arrive with the rough cut, and the expectation is that the commissioned composer's new music will work with picture bearing a substantial degree of similarity to the temp track, without actually infringing.
If you don't want to carry an E&O policy, or can't afford to, remain freelance and solicit work from the big production companies that do carry it.
The good news is that what was bad for the big boys –i.e. union strikes, lower production budgets, non union workers, global competition, etc– actually sometimes works in favor of those trying to break into the business, whether they are local or working over the Internet. And increasingly, the big houses are moving from –if they haven't already– from hosting exclusive staff composers to representing armies of freelance independent talents. Recently SOS published a profile of Amsterdam based music house Massive, describing the company as having relationships with "a worldwide pool of approximately 75 freelance composers".
Ten years ago a company might exercise discretion regarding any use of freelancers, fearing outward perception that the core of the brand lacked the necessary wherewithal to execute a given creative vision internally. It's sort of like hearing your favorite band had to call in a session guitarist to do the leads. But today, that notion has been completely turned on its head, and the stigma (of using freelancers) faded. Music houses have become less like film studios retaining exclusive talent, and more representatives of free agents.
Naturally, this has good and bad aspects for the modern independent composer. It's good, because you now have a better chance of succeeding than you did before: Someone, somewhere is likely to give you a shot, eventually; but the negative is that you're also up against an even greater amount of competition than your predecessors, and everyone is equally and adequately armed with ProTools.
In the April 2001 issue of Shoot Magazine I argued that while the broadcast advertising pie was getting smaller, and the amount of competition increasing, there was still room for everybody (Too Many Notes To Choose From?). I still think this is true, but as I said then, only if your business model allows for multiple streams of income. If you're relying only on thirty second TV advertising commercials for income, then it's likely you have already gone out of business. A music house today, even a freelance composer, needs to be able to solicit work for, and accommodate projects from, across a wide swath of media options: advertising, film, electronic game, interactive media, theme parks, special venues, in store locations and other on site platforms, as well as get into the business of licensing a library of works. It can be a daunting exercise.
By the way, if you think of yourself more as a songwriter who would like to license tracks rather than as a composer who takes on commissions for original music, follow this link to read more about How To License Your Songs.
It bears mentioning that the barrier to entry is indeed lower than it once was, at least when it comes to equipment and building costs. So long as you work as freelancer to other music production companies, no one will care what you made your music on so long as it sounds great, does the job, and you are able to deliver it according to the technical specifications required of you. Additionally, if you've been retained by a music house, your employer is the de facto client liaison, and thus you won't also need to lay out the cash to build out a gorgeous facility for entertaining said clients. One day you might: Tomorrow you could very well be a first call Sonic Branding guru. But for now, let's concentrate on getting your foot in the door.
Regardless of whether you chose to solicit work from music production companies, or directly from agencies, studios and other clients, you will need to build a reel demonstrating your talent. Your 'reel' may not be an actual reel. It may simply be a website with quicktime samples of your work. In all likelihood you will need to create hard copies for distribution as well, in the form of a DVD.
Some question whether it is ethical to build a demo reel by scoring existing TV film, adverts or video footage. I say: Do it, do it, do it. Get on the Internet and find ten to fifteen beautiful or über cool TV commercials to download and score them, and/or add sound design. If you can't mix, have someone else mix them down for you. To be honest, if you want to compose music for advertising, you are going to have to learn how to record and mix. Schedules often move too fast for anyone to wait around for a dedicated engineer to do his or her thing. Your demo reel has to sound ready for broadcast, and you should really be capable of executing such a task. But even if you do mix yourself, get another pair of ears to judge your work. In advertising you will have many people review and criticize your work before it goes final. Get used to accommodating other people's opinions now.
That said, pairing a musician/composer with a musical engineer or creative producer makes for a great team, but no one's going to pay you twice as much to get the job done. You'll have to split the budget between you. Mind you, many established music houses were founded by dynamic duos, so if you do work as a duo, money may be tighter at the beginning but your collective energies may pay off later as you build a business.
As for the reel you build, as you gather video also collect the agency and the director info for each spot. Once you've assembled the credits, note them on the label and/or on your site, along with the title for each spot or project: Each item might be therefore be labeled something like this:
Product/Title/Length/Agency/Director/Demo or Final
For instance:
CRITICAL NOISE COMMERCIAL DEMO REEL
1) Title: Adidas ‘Sport’ :30
Agency: Harajuku Worldwide
Dir: Ridley Scott (Demo)
But if what happens if you then send your music to the actual music house that produced the actual track that went final, or the ad agency that produced it? Well, they might like it, they might hate, they might ignore it. The music house might even think that your score was a demo the agency had someone else do, which happens all the time as I mentioned above. As for the agency, I suspect they will probably be flattered –if the people who review your work are even the same people who created the original spot. Given the number of people who work at a large multinational advertising agency, and the growing number of freelancers working at these agencies, the creators of the original spot may never come across your reel. In fact, it's unlikely that they will unless i) Someone at the agency recommends they look at your reel or ii) You actually contact them personally and ask them to review the music and/or sound design you composed inspired by their work (this is actually a good way to make a connection as it provides a reason for what is otherwise a cold call).
Anyway, as you weren't formally commissioned, you therefore didn't need to consider any branding issues or need to work around a Voice Over. Ostensibly you were free to treat the video as art. Theoretically then, your composition, in contrast to the final music, is not compromised by any utilitarian marketing function and is therefore creative for its own sake. I suspect agency and production people will undoubtedly appreciate your efforts (assuming you are competent, and if your work is also engaging as an entertainment piece, as it should be).
In fact, if you sent me to your web site and I couldn't help but notice that all the featured work was demos, I wouldn't necessarily know that you weren't formerly commissioned to participate in the demo process. For all I would know, you were one of several participants, and it so happens that this particular work did not go final.
Also, presenting demos doesn't mean you haven't ever produced a final. What do you think plays better on a reel? A demo for a cool car spot or a final for toilet paper? Even established houses will present a demo that didn't go final if the picture is better than anything else that went final. The trick though is to make sure you present the demo music against final picture, not the rough cut. How do you get the final cut? Off the Internet. The companies who produced the spot will often host them on their site, as will the Industry trades. Or you make friends with someone who works in the business and they serve as your connection to quality video. Sounds like a dirty little business, doesn't it?
Another word about not going final when you haven't actually gone final: Not going final is not an indication of quality. It does not mean you or your work is incapable of the task. Assuming you are actually competent at scoring picture and/or experience, it simply means your work did not adequately score the brand or support the story in the way someone at the agency wanted it to, on that particular day. For whatever reason, something else went final.
By the same token, if a track did go final, that in and of itself doesn't mean that everyone who participated in its production is happy with the final music. This happens ALL the time. That's why even the directors who shoot TV commercials, or the editors who cut the spot, or even the advertising agency staff themselves will sometimes have a different composer score the spot for their own reel (the director’s cut, the editor’s cut, the agency cut, even the animator’s or designer’s cut, as opposed to the final version).
In fact, doing director’s cuts is an excellent way to build up a reel, not to mention make contacts. To do this, offer your creative services for free (or for no more than a typical demo budget if it requires live musicians/technical personnel/studio other than yourself and your rig) to produce a full up direction of music that fulfills the director's (or whomever’s) musical vision. You find these people by approaching production companies, 'repping*' firms or agents who represent directors or production and post-production companies and pitch them on your availability to compose treatments for director's cuts. If you find them on MySpace, shoot them an email with a link back to other samples of your work.
*Reps and Repping firms are individuals or companies that represent talent to the advertising agencies. Typically reps represent directors, film production companies, post production companies, editorial firms, and yes, even music and sound design houses.
On your website, or printed label, you would then neither notate ‘Final’ or ‘Demo’, but ‘Directors Cut’ or which ever party you composed the alternate version to. Make no mistake these alternate versions have a bit of caché to them, sometimes even more than the Finals, depending who you did the work for and who is viewing it. Do you think that anyone in the business cares what went final, if Ridley Scott uses something else on his own reel? Only the composer of the former and his or her mother cares about what went final.
But if you really don't want to produce a track that already is final, you can still find killer looking video by working with designers, who now amazingly seem to outnumber musicians these days. Here's a link from Digital Thread that purports to feature the Best of Breed Design firms. If you begin by offering your services for free (or a very nominal cost covering fee) people who to this creative group, in a year or two you may have a show reel that will get you work and launch your career.
By the way, I don't just mean to approach the businesses that you'll find if you follow the link (which span the gamut from one man shops to multimillion dollar operations); but rather in the case of a multimillion dollar shop, try approaching individual creative artisans who work for those businesses and who are likely doing independent work of their own. How do you get the names of individual creative artisans who work at multimillion dollar sites? Well, check out the websites first. You can run searches on major social networking sites, too. Run the name of a business on MySpace for instance and see who comes up. Or simply run a search on your favorite search engine that pairs the name of the design firm your interested in with a likely job title like 'Art Director' or 'Junior Designer', etc. In other words, you need to dig.
Along the way you will make contact, acquire acquaintances and make friends and build your professional network. Don't expect first contact to result in a job unless you are very lucky. Typically the people you want to work for may already have booked other professionals for the jobs on deck for months on out. You will need to keep at it without being annoying. A rep will do this for you, but at this stage you are likely your own rep, as well your own intern, producer, composer, receptionist. The silver lining in this is that the relationships you make will be your own, not your reps. It will feel right when it feels social. It will be feel wrong when it feels like selling. This too takes practice.
One disclaimer before I close: as you might imagine, it is not enough to simply follow the steps outlined here. One must also be talented, and I think immensely so, and in ways that are specific to the nature of the form. You won't possess all the skills when you start out, but you can learn as you go, and you should learn all you can.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Music As Collateral: Concepts in Co-Branding
Click on any link below to read all the articles in the three-part November 2007 MUSIC AS COLLATERAL series exploring exploring the new paradigms for Music Distribution:
Part 1: Compatible Archetypes
Part 2: Collaborative Marketing Concepts for Musicians
Part 3: The Hottest Brand in the World
This Series link also includes the May 2006 explaining Camelback Collateral.
Bonus Article: ADDED VALUE AUDIO.
* * *
Like this Topic? Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:
1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy
Part 1: Compatible Archetypes
Part 2: Collaborative Marketing Concepts for Musicians
Part 3: The Hottest Brand in the World
This Series link also includes the May 2006 explaining Camelback Collateral.
Bonus Article: ADDED VALUE AUDIO.
* * *
Like this Topic? Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:
1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy
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