Have you seen that commercial for the lottery where the guy gets dressed and the jumps in the shower? And then he’s on the train and the lady tells him it pays to get the order right? Then he goes to the convenience store and buys a pick 4, straight? Very clever. That’s why these guys get paid the big bucks to write ads. Oh, and the ending is priceless. You’re wet. No kidding Sherlock. Where’d you get your PI’s license from? Anyway, yeah, it pays to get the order right with everything and that includes writing royalty free music on two fronts. We’ll cover both of them in this article.

Let’s start with actually getting the order right. I’m talking about the client’s order, what he’s asked you for. Now a lot of times a client will leave the music creation up to your discretion, especially if he knows nothing about music and is intelligent enough about his business to admit it. But every once in a while, you’re going to get somebody who thinks they’re John Williams cloned and lays out for you EXACTLY what they want the music for their project to sound like.

There was TV show a while ago (I don’t remember which one it was) where the client was asking for music for their commercial that had something to do with selling hamburger or something. And they wanted instruments that sounded beefy. When the composer made suggestions the client wasn’t too happy. They wanted beefy flutes or tubas or something while the composer wanted to use strings. So the composer had to tell them that these would be very beefy strings. It was hilarious if you’re a composer trying to deal with people who have no comprehension of music. If anybody remembers this sitcom please write to me because it’s driving me crazy trying to think of which one it was.

Anyway, my point is this. Sometimes you’re going to get a client like that and they’re not going to be happy with anything other than what they want. Therefor, you need to simply give it to them even if you know in your heart that the music you’re going to be handing to them will not really fit the emotion they’re trying to get across. It doesn’t matter. The customer is always right even when they’re wrong. Now, if you want to stick to your principles and tell them that the music they’re asking for isn’t going to work and refuse to do the job they’re asking, that’s your business. But once you take their money, that’s it. It’s game over. They’re the boss and what they say goes. And trust me, you are going to run into these people. So when they order a piece of music, cooked the way they want it, you better make sure you get the order right and cook it just that way.

Okay, let’s now move on to the next way that you need to get the order right. This is what fouls up a lot of composers and it’s an easy trap to fall into.

In most cases, when a client gives you a job to do, they’ll give you a video or something to work off of. They may have gone through a whole big description of the project but trust me, don’t listen to their description because what they describe and how they describe it may be completely different from what you’re going to see on video. It happens. A lot of people are just not very good at describing things. That’s why it is critical that you view the project BEFORE you write or even think about writing one note of music. You may just find that the actual project conveys a completely different message than what the client thinks. In fact, you might want to point out to them where the project is going as opposed to where they think it’s going. Again, depending on what kind of client you have, this may be a good or bad idea. If it’s the “give me beefy flutes” kind, you’re best to just shut your mouth and hope they like the music you give them.

After you’ve watched the video, you’re still not going to write one note of music. Not yet. What you’re going to do is map out beat points to the video. Make notes of all the high points and where you’re going to want the music to build and then die back down. The video may be short enough so that the whole production is over the top, especially if it’s an action video trailer for a movie and every scene is fighting. Point is, you need to get an overall feel for the entire production before you can start writing themes.

Finally, after you’ve done that, you can start coming up with melodies and motifs for the video. How you actually go about your composing (keyboard or notation software) doesn’t matter. You’ll at least know where you’re going before you sit down to write one thing.

After you have written the score you want to play the video back with the finished score to make sure that everything fits. Actually, you should be doing this as you go along. But the finished product will often feel different than all the little bits and pieces simply because of the way everything ties together. You may find that some parts don’t tie together well even though separately they all sound good. In that case, you may need to rewrite something just to make it “fit” better. Don’t be afraid to change your work and don’t get emotionally attached to it. What matters is that the finished product does what it’s supposed to do.

Of course after you’re done, you hand the production over to the client for his review. If he requests any changes, you make them, no questions asked. Remember what I said, the client is always right.

If you follow this simple outline, you’ll find that dealing with most clients becomes a smooth and painless experience.

That is of course unless they ask you for beefy tubas or something.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

I’m going to get a little analytical in this article. If it seems like I’m also getting nit picky, that’s because this has always been a topic of discussion that I think a lot of people disagree on. Kind of like the age old debate of whether a sports star is more talent or hard work. Personally, I think you need both, but let me not jump ahead of myself. Forgetting about sports stars and war heroes, let’s focus on songwriting. When all is said and done, does coming up with a “good” song more inspiration or perspiration, or hard work? We’re going to tackle that question in the paragraphs to follow.

Let me preface what follows with this question.

Are you born with talent? Is it something that you have or do you need to find some way to develop it? And if you don’t have it, can it be developed?

I don’t think anybody really has an answer to this question. Sure, there have been examples throughout history of musicians who were clearly born with an amazing gift, like Mozart who was composing at a ridiculously young age. And I guess we could look at him and say, yes, because HE was born with talent other people must also be born with talent to some degree. Well, then we get into the debate of what percentage of people are “born” with talent.

Like I said, I’m going to get very nit picky and deep in this one.

As a frame of reference, I’ll use myself because outside of Mozart, I’m the only person I know as to whether or not he was “born” with any talent.

Looking back at my life, having made my first record singing at age 3 (I sang some old standards) I guess I could say I was born with some talent. But oh my God, were those recordings dreadful. Yeah, cute for a 3 year old, but I can now see why I never had a singing career. Point is, I didn’t open my mouth at age 3 and sound like Caruso. Not even close.

Of course a singing voice is also a physical thing. You’re born with a certain kind of voice box and chest. How much sound you get out of yourself naturally is going to be somewhat limited by the way you’re built. But again, we’re not talking about singing here. We’re talking about writing songs. That’s something you can do even if you have the worst voice in the world.

Well, I didn’t try to write my first song until I was 20 years old. Some girl broke my heart and I turned to the piano. I really should thank her because had it not been for her I probably wouldn’t be writing this today.

Needless to say, my first songs were dreadful. They were a repetition of chords that just went on and on and on and on. My mother, God rest her soul, asked me when I was getting off the merry-go-round. Yeah, my stuff was like early Kraftwerk but melodically not nearly as good. Not even close.

So I had to work very hard to begin to write music that was at least listenable. I took some music theory, got a music minor in college and finally “learned” some stuff. In turn, my music at least started to get to the point where you could recognize it as music. But I didn’t get off the merry-go-round until about 1984.

That year, I made my first “album” of songs that were real songs. They were catchy, had a hook. were under 4 minutes and outside of my so-so voice (no, I still can’t sing a lick) were not bad. As a composer, I was getting there. As a performer, I still had a long way to go. My keyboard skills were fair at best. Lots of timing problems and wrong notes that required lots and lots of retakes.

None of it came easy to me. For me, it was almost all perspiration. I never worked so hard at anything in my life, probably because it meant to much to me. Not sure why. In my early years, I really didn’t care much about music outside of listening to it. That’s something I always enjoyed. I remember when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show and how much I loved their first album. Even bought the Beatles dolls with the rubber heads.

But I digress.

Anyway, that’s my story. For me, it’s always been hard work. It’s studying styles of music if I have to write a musical score so I can get a feel for what I need to do. Rarely does a tune go through my head where I’m running to the keyboard to get it down. Today, was actually one of those rare days when inspiration really did smack me right in the face. Check out “Pop Goes The Easel” under Pop at my site wagsrfm.com. It’s actually quite catchy.

But most stuff I have to slave over. I have to keep playing and playing and playing until I come up with something decent. That’s the norm.

What’s the norm for some people? I don’t know. I have no doubt that there are artists who can sit down at the piano and just start playing and what comes out is a Grammy Award winner. I’m still looking to have my first song recorded by an established artist. Something tells me I have a long wait.

When I sit down to write a song for my royalty free music site, I rarely have an idea already in my head. It comes from tinkering around with things. Now, maybe that’s a talent. I don’t know. After 50 something years, you should have enough music in your head to at least come up with something. But again, there’s that 50 years of perspiration.

Maybe for you it’s a little of both. I hope so. Having to constantly work at coming up with something half way decent is not a lot of fun. Well, it is when you’ve finally come up with that something decent.

I just wish it came a little easier.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

You’re going to find over the course of your career, should you decide to get into the business of creating royalty free music for videos, that you’re going to be doing a lot of orchestral scores. In fact, this will probably be your most common piece of work. The reasons aren’t important for the purpose of this article. What is important is knowing how to orchestrate for a full orchestra.

Now you might be thinking, “But I don’t have a full orchestra. All I have are these VSTs.” Well, believe it or not, they serve the same purpose and function. That one note you hold down on your violins VST, if it’s from one of the East West Quantum Leap libraries, could be as many as 19 violins playing at once. And while they may not exactly sound like the real thing, they’ll be close enough. So knowing how to orchestrate for them is going to be just as important as if you were writing for the real thing. Trust me, very few people will be able to hear the difference unless you have a really bad orchestra VST package.

So what do we need to know about orchestration in order to get all these VSTs to sound good, especially given the fact that they’re not real live instruments? In fact, orchestration is more important now than ever because of this fact. A poorly orchestrated real orchestra will at least still sound like a real orchestra. A bunch of VSTs will simply sound like garbage. So it is more critical than ever to know your craft.

In general, knowing how to orchestrate comes down to these few basic things. In future articles we’re going to cover this subject in a lot more detail. For now, I’m just going to cover the main points.

For starters, you need to know what each instrument is and what it sounds like. There is no way you’re going to know that you want 6 French horns in your score if you don’t know what 6 French horns sounds like. So you’re going to have to go through your VSTs and play each one. Get a feel for how each instrument sounds.

After you’ve done that, you’re going to need to dig deeper into each individual instrument as each one will have limitations. The most important of these is the range of each instrument. Some instruments have very large ranges while others are very limited. Fortunately, the best VSTs have these limits put in place so that you can’t play a note that is out of the instrument’s range. But if you’re using a cheap VST, this may not be the case. So you will need to know what a realistic note is and what an impossible note is for each instrument.

But range is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what an instrument is capable of producing sonically. You’re going to have to study the limitations of each instrument as far as technique. What kind of sound is the instrument physically capable of producing? This can be something very subtle or extremely obvious. Some instruments are limited by note duration. Others by how fast you can play them or by pitch bend, vibrato and so on. The question is, how do you familiarize yourself with each instrument and its limitations?

Unfortunately, the only way to do this is by listening to each instrument in as many different performances as possible. This means listening to a wide range of music. Now, if this isn’t possible or your time is limited, a shortcut is to listen to a piece of music that is going to be similar to the piece you’re thinking of creating. Listen to how the instrument sounds and behaves in that particular piece. If it doesn’t do anything too fancy, it’s best to play it safe and do the same if you’re not sure. The last thing you want to do is create a piece of music where the instruments do not sound realistic, not so much because of the sounds themselves but because of the impossible tasks you have those instruments perform.

We now go a little deeper. The next thing you’re going to need to know how to do when orchestration is how to combine instruments together. Each instrument is not played in a vacuum. Listen to a lot of orchestral music. You will notice that certain instruments play with other instruments more often than not and other combinations are almost completely avoided.

Why is this?

It’s because some instruments simply don’t sound that good when combined with other instruments while other combinations are almost made in heaven. This is because of many reasons. One is the volume of each instrument itself. Some instruments can only play so loud while others take a lot of effort to play quietly or are almost impossible to do so. Harshness of tone is another one. How often do you hear a light flute and a blaring trombone playing together? I’d have to really hunt through the orchestral collection to find such examples.

Finally, you’re going to need to learn the various “schools” of scoring. Yes, there is more than one school of thought and depending on the project that you’re taking on, you might prefer one school of thought over another. There is no right or wrong here, but some schools might actually make your project sound better than others. The only way you’re going to figure out which one is best for you is if you actually know each school. Otherwise, you’re just going to be groping around in the dark playing hit or miss. And believe me, that is no way to orchestrate any piece of music.

Essentially, this all comes down to having a solid foundation of your craft. It will not happen overnight. Learning to orchestrate, even fairly well, can take years. This is why the best orchestrators are in such demand. That’s why if you really learn your craft, you, as a royalty free music creator, can be in great demand as well.

Trust me. The time spent learning all this “stuff” will be well worth it.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

This article really applies to just about any business today. You know the old catch 22, especially when you got out of school and went looking for your first job. The guy interviewing says you need to have 2 years experience for the position, but you can’t get experience until somebody hires you but nobody will hire you because you don’t have experience, and so on.

I went through it when I graduated college in 1981. It took me over a year and a second major to find my first job and I almost didn’t get that one. This was during the Carter administration when interest rates were out of control and nobody was investing in new business. And every interview was the same thing. No experience.

If you’re thinking of getting into the royalty free music business and actually composing scores for people who have real money to spend, they’re going to want to know what you’ve done. They’re going to want to see your portfolio. They’re going to want to see finished videos before they hand over their hard earned money. What do you do if you’re just starting out and have nothing to show them?

I’m going to give you a few suggestions on getting past that hurdle. Any of these can help land you your first paying gig.

At the top of your to-do list should be taking your first job pro bono. You heard me. Offer to do a custom score for somebody in exchange for a testimonial and the right to include the score in your portfolio. The people who will be most open to this arrangement are usually the ones who don’t have the fee to pay you anyway. So why not help out two people in the process, you and the person in need of the music. In the long run, it’s going to be the best thing you ever did. Just make sure the work you do is the best work you can do. It’s going to be what’s going to open the doors for the rest of your career.

Another thing you can do is download royalty free or public domain videos. Just go to the Library of Congress. You’ll find plenty of these.

After you’ve downloaded one of these videos, treat it like a customer’s video. Write a score to it. Now, a lot of videos have no music and are easy to score for. Others already have a full soundtrack so what you’re going to have to do is bring the video into a video editor like Camtasia. Separate the video into a video track and sound track. After you have done this, you will have a plain video track with no sound. Yes, that includes any dialogue was well. So you’re going to have to avoid videos that have dialogue especially if that dialogue is important to the emotional impact the video has.

Once the tracks are separated, you simply take the video and import it into your digital audio workstation (DAW) to work on. You would then start scoring it like you would a customer’s video.

Now, here’s a tip. If the original video came with a musical soundtrack, listen to it. More likely than not, the soundtrack will have fit the video quite nicely. Don’t copy it, because that’s plagiarism, even if the video itself is in the public domain. But emulate the kind of music found in the video. If you do that, you’re likely to come up with something that fits the video just like the original music did.

Another thing you can do is look for an internship scoring. You won’t get paid for doing this but you will get a lot of experience. If you manage to get any jobs to work on, ask your boss if you can add the video to your portfolio. In most cases, they won’t have any problem with this unless the project is for some big client who is asking for certain special accommodations. Usually in the case of an internship, you’re going to find at least one job that you’ll be able to use in your portfolio.

If all else fails, you can try this. It’s a little off the wall but it might get you the work you need. Run a contest on your site. I’m assuming that if you’re starting a royalty free music business that you have your own site. If not, you need to make one as soon as possible.

Why?

Because today, a web presence isn’t just helpful but critical. Almost everything is done online today. People are walking about with their smart phones and what-have-you and are constantly plugged into the WWW. If you think you can get by without a web presence, you’re in for a rude awakening.

But I digress.

Anyway, set up your site and run a contest. Tell all your readers of your blog (yes, make a blog like this one) that the winner gets a free custom score for their video. Have them post their videos on your blog. That means you’re going to have to allow comments. And you’ll probably get a lot of them including a lot of junk too. it comes with the territory.

After going through all the videos, or as many as you decide to go through, announce that you’ve decided there are going to be first, second and third place winners. This will give everybody more hope AND give you more material for your portfolio. Pick the three videos, score them, post them on your site under a section called “My Work” and that way anybody wanting a custom score will be able to see what you’ve already done. Just make sure you put your best foot forward.

Just so you know, the above suggestions are by no means all inclusive. There are many more things you can do to get past that first hurdle of having work to show prospective clients. Once you’ve gotten that first job, through whatever means, you’ll find (as long as the work is good) that you’ll get more jobs for a long time to come.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you write a lot of royalty free music and get your share of custom gigs, you’re going to get a lot of jobs where you have to score for video. In fact, that might be the most common job you’re going to get. Unless you’ve gone to film school and have formal training in the field. scoring for video or film is a totally different animal than just writing some music for a radio intro or nightclub act. With film scoring, the music has to precisely match the mood that the film is trying to convey at the time. And these moods can change from one second to another. So how do we get good at something that we have very little experience doing when thrown right into the fire? This article will give you a few tips that should get you going in the right direction.

For starters, you want to watch the entire video or film from beginning to end. You may have to do this several times. But why? Can’t you just score it as you go along? You could, but by doing it that way, you may write yourself into a corner or end up going in the wrong direction.

Let me give you an example by taking an actual film. I’ll use Pixar’s “Up”. The start of the movie shows the marriage of Carl and Ellie. The opening music is very bright and cheerful as it depicts their youth and joy of early married life. But as the movie progresses and they age, the music begins to slow down until finally at the end there is Ellie’s funeral where we hear just a piano.

The composer knew to score the movie this way because of how the entire story played out. It was a natural progression of youth to eventual death and because of that, the music, which won an award, was just perfect for the film. You have to know where the film is going at all times so that you know where the music has to go. By watching the whole thing in advance of composing, you can almost map out the entire score right from the start. This makes your job a whole lot easier.

While watching the film or video, make notes at key points or highlights. Those highlights are where you’re going to want your music to stand out. If the entire piece is at one volume, say very loud, nothing stands out. And thus the high points of the movie don’t stand out. This is why in almost all films you will find the music actually starts to build just before the highlight.

Another thing you can do when scoring for a film is doing the opposite of what the audience would expect. You have to be careful when doing this but if done properly, it can be a very effective tool in shaking things up.

An example would be the film “Letting Go.” During the finale when the alien is making it to his ship and looks at the locket of his late mother, back in the old days this scene would have played out with a big emotional orchestral score. Instead, they went in the opposite direction and things got as quiet as can be. Sometimes silence speaks volumes. Yes, when composing for film you need to know when to be quiet or even non existent. Don’t worry, you’ll have your moments to shine.

Another thing you want to do is get yourself out of the box. What I mean is this. A lot of times you’ll see a film and immediately think that it lends itself to a certain type of music. For example, what if you were scoring for a Star Trek film? You’d be tempted to make all the music in the film sound spacey. But look what they did with one of the latest Star Treks made by JJ in the scene where Spock meets older Spock for the first time. The music wasn’t spacey at all. It was more like the kind of music you’d expect when two friends meet each other for the first time. Just plain old regular folk.

Too many times we get wrapped up in the cliche. When we do that, our music tends to sound just that, cliched. And in turn it makes the film or video look bad. Don’t be afraid to branch out and try new things. Not every sci fi has to have space music. At least not all the time.

Another thing you want to keep in mind when scoring for film or video is that not everything has to be “mood” music just drifting aimlessly. People still want melody. Listen to the Star Wars theme. That’s a singable melody. Heck, everybody knows it. Everybody can sing it. You don’t want the music to completely overtake the film unless it’s during a part where there is no dialogue and the music has to carry the action. But you do want the audience to be able to identify with it. Harry Potter films are another great example. Everybody knows Harry’s theme. Come up with a theme for your video and repeat it at the proper places. Don’t overdo it. During the course of a 10 minute video you might repeat that theme maybe a grand total of 3 times, beginning, middle and end and that’s it. Sometimes less is more.

Another tip that will help you a lot is this. Don’t be afraid to borrow ideas from the past. I’m not saying copy the music itself but the style of music. For example, if you’re doing a James Bond like video score, watch a lot of James Bond movies and make a note of the music. If that’s the sound you’re going for, you need to know what it sounds like if you’re going to recreate it.

Finally, and this may be the best advice of all, don’t over think things. Be quick with your decisions. Go with your gut. Sometimes you have so much music to write, because there are so many characters to keep track of, that trying to “think” through each one would turn the process into a mind numbing chore. If you feel something when watching the video, go with it. More often than not, the audience will probably feel the same way.

These are just a few of things you can do to get better at scoring for film or video. In future articles I’ll have some more tips that should help you a lot.

Until then.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Let me start off by saying this so you don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t care if you arrange the living hell out of a song. If the melody is lifeless and dull, the arrangement will only save it so much, if at all. Yes, a lot of pop music is saved by arrangement. But there is still a catchy melody somewhere in the mix, especially when it comes to the top pop songs.

Having said all that, arrangement is still important. Not so much to make up for a lackluster melody but to add character to a good melody in order to make it better. It’s for this reason that outside of some piano music you will rarely hear a track with a solo instrument and nothing else, especially if you’re purchasing royalty free music for the purpose of conveying some feeling or emotion within the context of the project where the music is heard.

Picking the proper arrangement is no easy task, especially not when you’re staring at a bank manuscript. Where do you even begin? Does the song lend itself to a basic band arrangement (drums, bass, guitar, synth) or does it cry out for something more exotic (Taiko Drums, Bansuri, Sitar, Erhu) in order to convey the proper emotion?

In order to answer the question we need to look at several variables. In doing so, we can come up with an idea for an arrangement that we can be fairly sure will work for the track we’re producing.

Probably the first thing we should look at is the project itself. What is it? Are we producing a video about a foreign land? If so, instruments common to that land are probably in order.

What if we’re producing a period piece such as a documentary of the 1920s? In that case, we probably want to listen to music from that era to see how it was arranged and try to simulate the sound as best as we can. Sometimes listening to old recordings it’s difficult to decipher exactly what instruments are being used. In that case it might be a good idea to maybe hunt out sheet music that contains arrangement notes.

For example, some of the anthems we do for our church choir have such arrangement notes on them so that we can see what instruments the piece was intended for outside of the standard church pipe organ.

What if we’re doing a short sting for a sports radio broadcast to be used as an intro? In that case, it might be a good idea to listen to as many radio sports shows as you can in order to get an idea of what kind of music is being used. You will probably find that a lot of it is upbeat with a hard rock sound in order to appeal to the younger crowd.

After you’ve looked at the project itself, should that turn out to be too generic to come up with anything definitive, the next thing you want to look at is the emotion that the project wants to convey.

Let’s say the project is unique. In other words, there are no current examples to copy from or emulate. This could very well be the case with a new product or idea. It does happen. Not everything in the world is recycled. Every once in a while, somebody comes up with something that is truly different. In that case, what do you do?

What I would do in a case like that is speak to the creator of the project. I would ask him what he wants his audience to feel when watching is video, or attending his nightclub act or whatever it is the project entails. Everything in this world makes us feel something. Hopefully, more often than not, the emotion we feel is the emotion the author or creator intended.

For example, let’s take the finale scene of the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life.” It’s no secret that the intention of the author was to make us cry our eyes out, and it does just that. But how? Between a combination of some well chosen words and familiar standards, all with orchestral arrangement and choir.

In fact, watch any of those “tear jerker” movies and you will notice that they all have that one thing in common, a big orchestral arrangement complete with high strings and low horns. Sometimes they’ll go for the more subtle piano solo, but that is rare, especially these days.

Have you checked out some of the recent superhero movies over the last few years like The Avengers, Superman, etc? Have you noticed the big over the top orchestral scores during the “let’s destroy the city while we battle the bad guys” scenes? Those over the top arrangements have become pretty common these days. Sure, we always had exciting music during “fight” scenes, but these days they’ve taken it to a whole other level. That standard will probably remain for quite some time until tastes change again. For now, if you’re writing for something of that nature you’re going to have to let the big guns out. Anything less won’t get the job done.

But we still haven’t answered the most important question. Why is arrangement so important? Well, everything today is pretty much tied into getting your audience to take some kind of action that will ultimately lead to them spending money on something you’ve created. That’s why movie trailers are so lavishly produced. They’re done that way to entice you to go see the movie. I mean you don’t see trailers containing the “quiet” scenes from a movie. They’ll usually try to put their best foot forward.

It is for that reason that intros are so important. The intro to a video could very well determine whether or not the viewer sticks around for the rest of the video. It all comes down to entertainment and capturing the viewer’s attention. If you don’t do that, the rest of the project is meaningless.

You will find that the more you watch videos, regardless of what they’re about, that music plays an important part of most of those videos. And the arrangement of that music can make or break how effective that music is in capturing the viewer’s attention.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

There is an old saying in the music production business that has to do with polishing a turd. Essentially what that means is trying to take a crappy sounding piece of music and making it sound good. No matter how much you polish it, it’s still going to be a turd. What you’re about to read is what to do and not do so that when you reach the point where you’re creating your final mix, you’re not, so to speak, polishing a turd. I hope you find this informative and helpful.

Music producers are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. In theory, the purest sound is the best sound. What I mean by purest is recording an instrument, whatever it is, with absolutely no effects whatsoever. That means no reverb, no EQ, no distortion, no delay, nothing. Just plain raw sound.

However, the problem with plain raw sound is that is lacks character, which is a nice way of saying boring as hell. If you’re creating royalty free music for somebody else to use, the last thing you want is for that music to be boring as hell.

So what do we do?

We add effects to the sound. This helps take away the blandness. It also, unfortunately, muddies the sound. How muddy will depend on how much you do to it. Adding a little EQ isn’t going to do much. Running it through a distortion, overdrive, phaser, flanger and God knows what else is going to turn it into a completely different beast.

Obviously, we need to strike some kind of balance between the two and make it so that when we do our final mix it doesn’t sound like a bad high school band stuck in a black hole.

How do we do this?

For starters, you want to make sure the sound is not only recorded cleanly but at the right level. What’s the right level? Under 0 db but loud enough so that pumping it up with EQ or compression doesn’t distort it. If the original sound is recorded too loud or too soft, it’s going to be close to impossible to get right in the final mix.

Another thing you want to do is make sure you get the stereo field right. If you’re recording in mono, the only thing you have to worry about is levels. However, with stereo, you want to make sure each instrument sits properly in the mix. Do no try to make it so that every instrument is heard perfectly. It won’t happen. Something has to give, especially if you have a lot going on in the mix. That 16th note high-hat slice is probably not going to be heard over a screaming lead guitar and a Hammond B3 with the Lesley cranked up. The key is knowing what instruments need to be up front in the mix and what instruments can take a backseat. And that’s going to depend on what kind of music you’re doing.

You also want to make sure that the instruments in your mix actually mix well together. One of the biggest problems producers run into, especially if they’re using VSTs, is using one sound that is completely dry to start with and another sound that was originally recorded with some reverb. This is common with a lot of orchestral instruments. If you’re mixing dry and reverberated instruments together, you will want to do one of two things. You’ll either want to lower the volume of the dry instrument so as not to completely overpower the reverberated one or add reverb to the dry instrument. Ultimately, in the end, you want the instruments to sound like they were all recorded in the same place. Otherwise, they will sound out of place.

Getting away from the sound issues, you want to make sure that when you record each track that they are in time with each other. No amount of processing is going to cover up a song played out of time. This is pretty easy to accomplish by simply either recording to a metronome or inputting the music step time. Another option is to score the music in something like Finale and then export the MIDI file into your digital audio workstation. From there you can add processing to each instrument. Which brings me to my next point.

Process each instrument separately. Let’s say you have a piano, bass, drums and guitar in your track. You want to take each instrument, one at a time, and add the EQ, reverb or whatever else you want to add to the sound, independent of the other sounds. After the individual processing is completed, there will actually be less to do with the track in general. That isn’t to say that you won’t have to do some post processing after creating your initial mix. You might want to EQ, compress and even limit the entire track together, especially if you’re doing a dance track and want to pump the whole thing up. But get each instrument as alive as possible so there isn’t as much to do in the final mix and what IS done isn’t, as they say, polishing a turd.

Finally, use your ears, a lot. Don’t mix with headphones because they won’t give you an accurate representation of your final mix.

Now, having said all this, you may decide that the particular song you’re doing is one that you WANT to sound all gritty and dirty. And that’s all well and good. But you want controlled dirtiness. And the only way to get that is to make sure that the original sounds are clean and processed correctly individually. Otherwise, the resulting sound is going to be worse than dirty. It’s going to be pure chaos and unorganized filth. And that is never good for a music mix no matter what kind of music you’re making.

Anyway, while this article isn’t all inclusive of everything you can do to get a clean mix, hopefully it will give you a good head start so that your next mix doesn’t end up as a polished turd.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re a composer of royalty free music or a potential customer, there are a few things you need to know about these, what I call, music farms. I’m going to explain what they are and what the pros and cons of using them are and how they differ from other royalty free music sites.

Let’s take my site as a baseline. It is not a music farm. All the tracks on my site are written by me and the process is a slow one, so you won’t come here on day one and find X number of songs and then on day 10 find X plus 1,000 songs, or some other crazy number. The site grows gradually and naturally.

Also, when it comes to custom scores, I am a one man operation. I do all the writing and producing myself. So if I’m in the process of doing a job, you’ll have to wait until I am done with that job before I can get to yours.

That’s a basic, one man operation, royalty free music site.

Okay, so what’s a music farm, as I like to call them? These are sites that, while owned by one person, do not feature just one composer on their site. The largest music farms can feature hundreds if not thousands of composers. They are, in a word, massive.

With a music farm, you can very well go there on day one and the next day go there and find 1,000 more tracks uploaded. The reason for this is because the way these farms work is simple.

They have a link on their site where you apply to be a writer for them. You probably have to send them a sample of your work in some cases. Other sites don’t really care. They’ll take anybody.

So now you have this site with say 2,000 writers. If each one wrote, recorded and uploaded just one new song a day, that’s 2,000 more songs than what were on the site the day before.

Okay, so what are the pros and cons of such a site as they relate not only to the composer but to the potential customer. Let’s take it from the composer’s point of view first.

For the most part, these sites usually get a lot of traffic because they appear near the top of the search engines. That means that these composers have the potential to get a lot of exposure to their work. Notice I used the word potential. I will explain why shortly. This also means that they can sell a lot of songs or even get custom work. Add to that the fact that they don’t have to maintain their own web site like I do, you can see how on the surface this appears to be a pretty good deal.

The downside is this. Because these sites are so huge and because they have so many writers writing for them, the chance of any one writer getting exposure is slim. Let’s say the site has 2,000 writers and each month the site sells 10,000 songs. That means, on average, each writer sells about 5 songs a month. Some will sell more and some will sell less.

Let’s say each track sells for $20 and the writer’s cut is 70% with the site keeping 30%. That means the writer gets $14 per song. Multiply that by 5 and each writer gets, on average, about $70 per month. Certainly not enough to live on. In fact, the total income for the year comes out to less than $1,000.

That’s the problem with these music farms as far as the writers go. It’s really a no win proposition for them. There is too much competition. The site makes tons of money while each individual composer makes very little. If you have any marketing experience, I’m sure this situation sounds very familiar to you.

But what about the pros and cons as they apply to the person looking for music?

Well, on the plus side, there is a lot to choose from. Certainly a site like my own can’t possibly give you the amount of variety that a music farm can give you.

However, this has a huge downside which you will soon come to realize once you start actually going through these sites looking for something.

Because these sites are so huge, it takes an extremely long time to go through all these songs. And because of the nature of these music farms (composers not being really committed to them once they see how poor they are for income earning) the quality of a lot o the material is sub par. The tracks that you see pimped on the front page are the ones that have been cherry picked by the site itself. If you don’t find anything useful in them, not so much in quality but because they don’t fit the kind of music you’re looking for, you are then relegated to sifting through the mess. That can turn very discouraging, very fast.

On top of that, you’re supporting a site that is essentially exploiting its composers for pennies. They don’t care about any one composer’s welfare. All they care about is that there is enough music on the site to make the money they expect to make.

Again, this has to sound very familiar as it pertains to a lot of other businesses as well.

It is for these reasons that I would never join a music farm. I know that the chances of me earning any money through them are slim to none.

I would also never purchase royalty free music from one of these music farms because I don’t feel it’s fair the way they exploit their writers and don’t want to support their business model.

So there you have it, the pros and cons of music farms. Forgetting about the moral issue with them, I’m pretty sure that you’ll find that if you go to one and try to find something to use for your project that you’re going to come away from the experience quite unsatisfied.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

It would be really nice, when sitting down to compose a custom score for somebody, to be able to just do whatever you pleased. No restrictions. Well, when you’re doing custom work, restrictions, constrictions, whatever you want to call them, do exist and there is no getting around them. The question is, what are they and how do you deal with them? Are there some that are beyond your control to the point where concessions will have to be made? In this article, I’m going to cover a few of the constrictions that you’ll find when composing royalty free music and how best to handle them. Hopefully, what follows will be of some use to you.

Before you ever sit down to write one note of music, the first constriction you’re going to have to deal with is your client’s budget. Not everybody is made out of money. Some clients will have very limited budgets. Now, there are quite a few ways to deal with these. The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

John Doe needs a Celtic soundtrack for a 10 minute video. Your normal rates are about $100 for each minute of music created. You make a quote to the client of $1,000. Your client tells you that they are only budgeted for $500. What do you do?

You have several options that I can think of off the top of my head. I have no doubt that there will be more.

1) You can take the job for $500. As a new writer, this may actually be your best option in order to build your reputation.

2) You can suggest to your client to take 5 minutes of music and either cut the video to 5 minutes or sprinkle the 5 minutes of music throughout the 10 minute video.

3) You can cut down on your production time for the music by maybe leaving out some instrumentation that you would normally put in and simplify the arrangement. You need to make your client aware that this will be a stripped down arrangement in advance.

4) You can turn down the job.

After you have finally ironed out the details of the project the next constriction that you’re going to have to deal with is the video itself. As I pointed out in another article, certain types of videos lend to certain styles of music. Trying to go against the grain will, more times than not, lead to a poor product, especially in the eyes of the client if they’re expecting a certain kind of sound in their video.

While the constriction of the type of music comes into play, this also brings up the problem of how this music is going to be recreated. Do you have all the VSTs that you’ll need in order to duplicate the sound that you’ll need?

For example, just recently I decided to do a country western series. Unfortunately, missing from my arsenal was a good slide guitar and pedal steel guitar. There was no way I was going to pull this series off so I had no choice but to go out and get these two instruments. Ran me about $150.

When you’re in the business of creating music for people, you’re going to run into times when you’re going to need things that you don’t already have. You need to be willing to continue to invest in your business if it’s going to be successful.

After you’ve gotten the details of the track down, then there is the constriction of time. Oh my, how I wish there were more hours in the day.

Every client is going to have different requirements in regard to time. Some will need their project within a week while others can wait months for it if need be. It’s best you find this out when you take the deal. The last thing you want is to agree to a project that can’t possibly be completed in the time required.

So what about scheduling? Remember, you’re probably going to have more than one client if you’re successful at all. How often do you accept jobs? Do you work on just one at a time or is it possible to take on multiple clients?

Personally, I will never take on more than one client at a time. My goal is to make THAT client as happy as possible. I can’t do that if my efforts aren’t concentrated on that one project. You’ll have to decide what’s best for you. Just remember, there are only 24 hours in a day and you can’t promise work that can’t possibly be delivered in the time frame required if you take on too much. That’s the best way to damage your reputation.

After scheduling is worked out, the next thing you have to deal with (yes, it happens) is changes in the client’s needs or if the client isn’t happy with the work that’s been done.

Like it or not, your client probably has a certain kind of music in mind for their video. If what they hear from the finished product doesn’t match their expectations, they’re not going to be happy and they’re going to request a rewrite. You have to decide, and let them know up front, how many rewrites you’ll allow.

Here is how I handle this. I allow an unlimited number of rewrites but reserve the right to terminate the project if I see that it’s not going anywhere. You’ll get a pretty good feel for this when your client has just rejected your fifth draft that this is probably a lost cause. Eventually, you need to cut rope and take the loss of time and income.

And you’re going to run into other things along the way that might only pop up once in a blue moon. How you handle them will contribute to the success or failure of your business.

Creating royalty free music is an exciting career. Each day can be different. Each day can be an adventure. So my advice to you is simple.

Enjoy the ride.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re looking to get into the royalty free music business or if you’re wondering how hard it is to create so you can get a better appreciation for what creators have to go through, you might want to read this article. It very well may turn into a real eye opener for you. Or it may just be what you suspected all along.

Creating any kind of music, whether it’s royalty free or not, is a difficult process. For some people it comes easier than for others but I don’t think there is anybody on this planet (including the top composers) who will tell you that it’s easy.

For starters, there is coming up with the idea itself. What kind of music are you going to create? There are so many different styles of music. Just go to Wiki and look up “list of musical genres” and your mind will be totally blown away. Just in the broad genre of electronic music there are dozens of sub genres. Yes, the types of music out there are staggering in numbers.

Now fortunately, a lot of the decision making process is going to be determined by the demand. If you’re writing a custom piece for somebody and they’ve got a certain kind of video that lends itself to a certain music style (like a circus video) you’re going to almost be locked into a certain style of music. Doing anything else would probably not fit into the video itself.

But quite often you’re staring at a blank canvas that can go into many different directions and choosing a genre becomes a very difficult thing. When that happens, I find it’s always best to go with my strengths. What music do I feel most comfortable creating? I answer that question and then move on to the actual creation process.

But the creation process doesn’t end with the genre of music. What key is that music going to be in. What’s the tempo going to be? What instruments are you going to use? How long will the piece be? These, and many other questions, need to be answered. You’re not going to just sit down and start banging on the keyboard. Well, I guess you could. But rarely does that turn into anything productive.

After all that is mapped out and you know exactly what you’re going to write and have answered all those other questions, the next stumbling block is the technology end of it. How are you going to piece this together?

Having a digital audio workstation (DAW) can make a lot of the process easier to navigate. A DAW is very flexible. It can accommodate just about any method of working.

For example, one way to piece a song together is to insert a separate track for each instrument (VST) that you’re going to use. This is probably the most common way of putting a musical track together but it’s not the only way.

Another thing you can do is create a loop track using some kind of sequencer. Now sequencers have come a long way from the old days. In the old days a sequencer could only play one part, monophonically, and with a limited number of notes.

Today, sequencers are much more complex.

For example, Cubase 7 comes with something called Loop Mash. What this is can be explained this way.

Loop Mash can take a number of different tracks of sounds and combine them together. The sounds can be mixed in a variety of ways controlled by sliders. Sounds can be faded in and out. Random patterns can be created. Fill ins can be added on the fly using other controls.

I personally use Loop Mash for some of my dance tracks as it’s great for beat music where you want a little variety in your beats and want to be able to control that variety in real time.

Loop Mash takes a little bit of time to get used to but it’s time well spent as it’s a very versatile instrument.

After you’ve decided how you’re going to put your music together the next step is actually recording the song. How are you going to do this> Are you going to play everything in real time? Are you going to input the notes in step time or import them from a musical scoring software like Finale? Are you going to play the notes at reduced speed, especially if there are some tricky runs and you’re not the best performer in the world? All of these questions need to be answered.

What about after the music is all recorded? Are you going to add effects in the post processing? A lot of what you hear on songs that makes them sound good is the effects processing.

The most common effects processing is reverb. That’s how so many songs sound like they’re coming from a big concert hall. But if you do use reverb, what kind? Will you use a big hall or a plate? Will it be an analog reverb or a digital reverb? How dry or wet will it be? Wet reverb meand there is more reverb sound than natural sound. Will you use reverb on the whole song or just certain tracks?

How many different effects will you use? Just some of the common ones are reverb, distortion, overdrive, delay, compression, bit crunching and phase shifting. For some tracks, too many effects will muddy it. For other tracks, too few won’t make the tracks sound authentic for that genre.

For a dance track, are you going to compress the crap out of it or are you going to allow it to have a more natural sound? There are so many different levels and kinds of compression.

A fat dance master compression will essentially equalize the levels of each instrument across the whole track and pump up the volume greatly. A more subtle compression will do some equalization of levels but not pump up the volume as much. Which is more appropriate for the track you’re doing?

These are all questions you have to answer.

And then finally, after the song is actually finished, you need to document everything including come up with a description for the song so that somebody reading it can get a pretty good idea of what it will sound like before they preview it. This saves them time listening to tracks that won’t even be close to what they’re looking for.

Sometimes writing the description is the hardest part of the whole process. Describing music is not easy.

And I haven’t even covered the actual purchase process of all the things you’ll need. What if you’re on a limited budget? What instruments must you have and what can you live without?

Then there is marketing your business. Contrary to what you may believe, build it and they will come doesn’t work anymore. You need to promote, promote and promote some more.

So as you can see, creating royalty free music is a complex process. If you’re going to do this for a living, you better love what you’re doing.

It will make the whole process a whole lot easier.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim