Common Questions About Building A Composing Career, Answered

No preamble, I'll just dive into it. I've also recorded an audio accompaniment if you absorb information more easily that way.

Do I Need To Go To Music School?

No. Music school helps you to work on your knowledge and technique in a structured way, and surrounds you with capable peers who are all working toward similar goals. The main benefit is the environment, which is significant, but music school, especially in the USA, is extremely expensive, and may not be worth putting yourself in debt for.

No one cares about your degree if your work is amazing and you are a subject matter expert.

Books, online tutorials, online courses, and online composing communities such as Orchestration Online offer a plethora of educational alternatives if you have the discipline and the desire to apply yourself to obtain and practice all this knowledge.

You don't need to go to music school, but you need to know things. If you want to work as a professional composer and you do not know how to prepare a score for a recording session, or communicate your desires to collaborators, or follow specific theoretical rubrics set by a lead composer/audio director.... you will be making life difficult for yourself.

Whether or not you go to school for music, you must demonstrate excellent musicianship.

Do You Think The Market Is Saturated?

In general, music is extremely competitive regardless of your specific chosen vertical, but it depends on the tier of quality/ability that you operate in. If you are a fresh graduate or beginning composer with rudimentary orchestration and mixing skills, you will find it extremely difficult to land the low-level gigs you are eligible for simply because it's crowded at the bottom.

Every kid with a laptop is a competitor, and that is not a good place to be for your business.

The good news though, is that the better you get, the less crowded it will seem.

If you chase after AAA game composing work, then you will also find it very difficult, because everyone wants to do it, and there are few gigs to be had in the first place. If you focus on mobile or casual games, you might find it a little less saturated, but it is a space that is becoming more competitive by the day due to the improving rates and the significant financial resources of the folks in this space.

The same principles apply to film, advertising, and other music verticals - try not to seek out opportunities that literally everyone else is chasing, or at least do it differently. Find a niche sector, or brand yourself in such a way that you are difficult to replace. Over and above all of this - network.

The more friends you have, the less forbidding the industry is.

How Do You Deal With Creative Blocks

Write something. Anything.

It doesn't matter if it's bad, it just matters that you do it.

There are two "personalities" living inside you as a creative person - the child, and the editor. The child just wants to make stuff and does not worry about what anyone thinks or whether the result is "good". The editor is the necessary but much more boring part of yourself that is focused on, well... editing.

Creative blocks often occur when both of these personalities try to work at the same time and get in each others' way. You write something, judge yourself before the idea is even complete, and destroy it. The cycle repeats until you find yourself with nothing produced even hours later.

It makes you frustrated and anxious, and these two emotions are sure to frighten your inner child into silence.

So write something, anything. In fact, try to write something bad. Write something that is such absolute laughable crap that you cannot help but gaze upon it and chortle. When you stop taking yourself too seriously, it is easier to engineer a more ideal and safer emotional environment for your inner child to go to work.

How To Be Original

Let's just remember that large portions of the Star Wars soundtracks are almost entirely ripped wholesale from certain public domain orchestral works. As a professional composer, it is less important to be a unique flower and more important to successfully establish the correct emotional context using your musical abilities.

Originality, in many ways, is misunderstood. Can you write an original blues song? Can you write an original jazz song? Many musical forms that we study and write in today are derived from traditions that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. The more we study the history of our chosen genres, the more we will know how to break from tradition in a way that injects a fresh, revitalized sound into our music.

If you are speaking as an artist creating work primarily for yourself, then I'm afraid I don't have too much experience in that area other than to say that experimentation starting from basic principles is probably key. If you only paint in blue colors for a year, your eventual boredom will probably lead you to experiment with the color in ways you might never have attempted before.

What Are Most Young Composers Not Aware Of?

Most young composers are not sufficiently and specifically aware of their musical shortcomings - this knowledge is essential to close the gap between themselves and established professionals.

Sure, some young composers have a generalized sense of inferiority and false humility, but these are not necessarily informed by facts or rational analysis. If you want to improve and get to a professional standard, you have to take that to the next level - knowing where you stand in specific areas and knowing exactly what you need to work on.

If you listen to your music and compare it with a leading industry example, where do you fall short exactly? Your control of bass frequencies? Your orchestration? The repetitiveness of your ideas? The blockiness of your chord voicings?

Having a more specific idea of where you fall short will tell you what to seek out knowledge on and practice. This is absolutely key to rapid improvement.

Imposter Syndrome

Here are two pieces I've written before on the subject:

What's The Rough Ratio Between Pure Musical Skill And Networking For Success?

There is no such ratio. Both are necessary. Even if there were a ratio, it would be meaningless. Your head is 8% of your body weight, but cut it off and the rest of you would cease to function - everything works together in a complex system.

The real subtext to this question is "how necessary is networking?" or more to the point "do I really have to network?"

The hard answer: you need to be really good at both in order to have your career take off. Here's an article I wrote on why networking is so difficult and how you can hack your brain to get better at it.

How Does One Make Themselves Sit Down And Write Consistently?

First off - I'd like you to know that this is something that I don't do. A fixed time-based routine does not work for everyone and it certainly does not work for me. However, early on in my career, to train myself to be better at certain things, I did set myself small composing goals that I knew I could achieve.

So, if you're having a hard time disciplining yourself to sit down and write, try framing it in the context of a deliverable rather than time. Write an 8 bar melody. Write a 16 bar melody. Harmonize it in a 1920s jazz context. Now take that forward by 20 years - how different might it sound?

Start small, give yourself small victories, and you can gradually increase the intensity and difficulty of your efforts in a way that doesn't cause you to fall off the wagon - think of it as going to the gym.