I have no doubt that this one is going to generate a lot of debate. Might even ruffle a few feathers. And I had to think long and hard before deciding where I come down on this issue. Honestly, it isn’t something I really gave much thought to…until today. So if you’re feeling adventurous you might want to keep reading. If not, you’re probably going to miss out on an interesting brain exercise.

Sometime in my life I heard somebody say that if a song didn’t sound good without all the glitz (arrangement) it wasn’t a good song. At the time, I kind of dismissed the comment. Admittedly I was into big arrangements at the time so I almost felt like that comment was a dig against the music I was listening to. Yeah, I was very self conscious at the time.

Well, today, for some God forsaken reason, I thought about this subject again. Honestly, for the first time really. I have always tried to be objective about things. I’ve always tried not to be a music snob, which is why I can listen to all kinds of music. And quite honestly, I have trouble telling a “good” song from a bad one anyway, at least as far as popularity goes which is really the only way to clinically evaluate music as it’s a pretty subjective thing anyway. And through most of my life, especially with pop and rock music, if I liked it, it was a commercial flop. Don’t know why, but a lot of my favorite songs from the 70s were all commercial flops. Were they bad songs? Was my taste just different from the rest of the world’s?

I can’t give you a definitive answer to either of those questions but I can say this. If a song is big and glitzy and has a catchy melody, I’ll probably like it. Would I like it as much if it was just played on the piano? In many cases, no. Does that mean it’s a bad song? So the question I’m asking in the title of this article is this. Does it matter if the song is stripped bare good? Or, to put it another way, does it matter if stripped bare it sucks? Does that mean it’s a bad song?

Think about a lot of the music we’ve heard in our lives, especially classical music, that was always played with a full arrangement. This is especially true of symphonies. Would anybody expect Beethoven’s 5th to be played on the piano and sound good? For that matter, could you even play it on the piano and have it even sound like the 5th symphony? Sure, you could play the main motif and a good portion of the notes. But you’re going to lose a lot in the translation. Would it stand up? And if it does or doesn’t, does it even matter?

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. When a song is written and performed a certain way, and that song ends up being performed that way whenever it’s performed, maybe it was just meant to be that way and trying to play it stripped down doesn’t make any sense.

Now sure, a lot of songs sound great played on the piano or even on guitar. But be honest, don’t they sound better played the way they were meant to be played?

Take Mason Williams’ Classical Gas. Sure, lots of people have played that song just on guitar, and it sounds fine. But admit it. There is nothing like the sound of that song done with a full orchestral arrangement.

And there are plenty of examples just like that. But again, we’re still talking about songs that sound good stripped bare. What about the ones that sound horrible on piano or guitar? What does that say about the song? That it’s all performance and no real substance? A lot of dance music (no, I’m not knocking dance music) is like that. They have this big fancy arrangement with all these synths and bass drops and tons of effects and blah, blah, blah and then you try to play these things on the piano and you realize just how much of that song really IS production.

Does that mean it’s a bad song? Did it make you want to dance when you heard the original recording? Did it make you feel good? Did it put a smile on your face? If the answer to those questions is yes then how could the song be bad? It did what it was meant to do.

Let me ask you a question. When you go to a hot dog stand and get a dog with relish, kraut, mustard and chili, and it tastes amazing, but just the plain hot dog alone tastes so-so, does that mean it’s a bad hot dog? Now, if the hot dog tasted bad WITH all that stuff on it, then you could say it was a bad hot dog.

Not everything is meant to be taken out with torn jeans. Some things are meant to be dressed to the nines. Doesn’t mean they’re bad with no clothes on. Though some people really do need to keep them on. But I digress.

I know the purists will say that if the song is REALLY good, it’ll sound good played on a kazoo. I’m not so sure I can agree with that. Otherwise, why bother with all these fancy arrangements? In fact, why is an arranger such an important job in this industry? Why is it that the difference in arrangements has made the difference between a successful record and a flop?

So I’m going to officially go on record today (for the very first time) saying that if a song sounds good arranged then it’s a good song. It doesn’t matter if stripped bare it sounds like absolute trash. I know a lot of people won’t agree, and that’s fine. But after over 50 years of listening to music, I finally have a position on this subject that I can live with and stand behind.

And let the arguments begin.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Okay, this is going to be one strange article. You would expect a composer who is also trying to make a buck answer this question with the obvious “it’s all the best” but that would be pretentious and simply not true. I do specialize in certain kinds of music where others I am fair to good with. So what I’m going to do is try to break this site down so that you can save yourself some time in looking through it.

Let’s start with my very best stuff. This is actually a little hard to do because of my background which was essentially split down the middle between classical and popular music, mostly rock but a lot of other influences as well. My mother was so disappointed in me when I started listening to The Beatles. I don’t know why. I never stopped loving Chopin, Mozart and the rest of the giants. As a result, growing up, I developed an aptitude for a lot of things. I would say the second split, where I started losing touch, came with the arrival of disco, rap and hip hop. By this time, radio stations were very segmented. You couldn’t hear a rock tune and a dance tune on the same station. Ultimately, I had to make a choice or I would have been spending half my day spinning the dial.

Ultimately, what happened was that the advent of electronic music and all its offshoots took over a lot of my time while the more popular hip hop, rap, and other like genres were left behind.

So while I can keep a steady 4/4 beat with drum and snare and emulate dance music to a degree, it’s more from “book” smarts than it is from pure love. To that end, you might find a lot of my dance tracks to be generic and simple. You won’t hear the really slick stuff that comes out of the composers who live and breathe that music.

My electronic is more experimental and similar to the stuff that Tangerine Dream put out. You’ll hear a distinctive 70s sound. If that’s what you need, you’ve probably come to the right place. If it’s more modern, maybe not so much. I kind of lost track of a lot of electronic music when the sub genres started going through the roof. The list of them could choke a horse.

At the same time, I’m also not any kind of an expert at stuff like dub step, jungle and other forms of dance. Again, I can give you the gist, but the hardcore stuff you’re not going to find here.

Before we get to where I shine, let’s just briefly touch on ethnic or world music. My pieces are very stereotypical simply because I didn’t grow up with this stuff. If you want truly authentic and unique ethnic music, you need to get it from somebody who is actually of that ethnicity. Simulators, no matter how talented they are as writers, will always only be that…simulators.

So let’s get to where I shine. That would be four different genres where I am equally as good in each one.

Rock
Pop
Classical
Orchestral

I should probably differentiate between pure classical and orchestral as far as how I break them up on the site.

Classical is anything that has a classical feel to it that doesn’t include your typical orchestral instruments like woodwinds, brass and strings. A typical classical piece might be a piano and violin duet.

Orchestral music is just that, music that has full or nearly full orchestral arrangements. This only includes movie like themes such as the kind of stuff that John Williams writes. However, if you’re looking for John Williams quality, I think I might fall a little short. But then he won’t write for $100 for each minute of music. So you have to look at the plus side of going with somebody like myself. I can definitely get the job done on those orchestral scores.

Moving away from classical music, there’s rock and pop. I break these up based on the sound, period. Rock will have drums, bass, guitars and maybe an organ while pop will have piano, sax, strings and maybe some brass. So where is the line between a pop piece and an orchestral piece? Good question. Sometimes that line is very blurry. And that makes sense as there are so many pieces of music that have been written that cross over genres. So it’s possible you’ll find a piece of music in a particular category that you might think belongs somewhere else. This isn’t an exact science.

As far as quality goes, my rock, pop, classical and orchestral pieces, for the most part, are solid. Sure, there’s some generic stuff mixed in with them (after all, this is a royalty free site and you need to have certain sounds for a generic project) but you’ll find, if you listen carefully, that I have a real feel for these genres, unlike something like Latin that I literally have to listen to dozens of pieces of music just to come up with something that vaguely resembles the genre. I would have to say that Latin is probably my weakest genre on the site with R&B coming in a close second.

I remember at a music workshop one day many years ago, a woman was listening to a recording of a song that one of the composers in the workshop wrote. It was a blues like tune with a female singer. I thought it was pretty good. The woman said, and I quote, “That woman does not know the blues.” These are genres that require somebody who really lives this stuff if you want it to be authentic. As a skinny white boy from New Jersey, I never lived the blues or the Four Tops for that matter. It is what it is.

When I do a custom score, I pretty much only take jobs where the person is looking for orchestral music because for me (it was my first love) it is the easiest to write. So if you need an orchestral score for your video or project, send me an email. You won’t be sorry.

Anyway, there you have it…an honest evaluation of my site. I hope if was helpful.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

I want to discuss song length in this article and how to go about determining it and then mapping it out. The main thing you want to make sure you do when planning song length is not running out of gas before you get to the finish line.

Now if you’re writing for a client, the song length is probably going to be determined by the project itself. If your client has a 30 minute video and he wants 30 minutes of music, well, that’s the ball game. You have to come up with 30 minutes of music. That decision has been made for you.

But what if the client has left things relatively up in the air as far as song length, or the project you’re working on is personal like wanting to have a hit record in a specific genre? In that case, you need to look at a number of things.

Let’s take something simple like wanting to write a country hit. Naturally, as far as the sound goes, you listen to what hit country songs sound like. But what about length? To come up with a song length you would need to look at several things.

First, what kind of country song is it? Is it an uptempo good time country tune or are you planning on writing one of those crying in your beer tear jerkers? If its the latter, those songs, simply by the nature of them being slower and more thoughtful, are usually longer than your uptempo tune. It takes longer to develop the idea than an uptempo tune. Of course don’t tell that to Bob Dylan. Listen to Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts when you get a chance. I think the song is something like 8 minutes long and it’s about as uptempo as you can get.

But for the most part, if you’re going to write a slow country tune, it’s going to be longer than the uptempo kind. So you’re going to want to look at the typical length for your crying in your beer country tune and plan accordingly. For an uptempo tune, you then listen to a cross section of them and do the same.

Can you go against the grain like Don McLean did with “American Pie?” Sure, but you better make sure you have something really special if you’re going to go that route. It’s always easier to go shorter. Shorter songs have several advantages. The two main ones are as follows.

A shorter song goes by quicker so it takes more listens of the song in order for the listener to actually get it down. This is because the song is over so quickly they can’t absorb it as well. There’s no time for the song to simmer. American Pie, but the time you had gotten to the 4th chorus, you could actually sing along and that was on the first listen. The song was already getting familiar because if it’s length.

Shorter songs also have the advantage that because they are shorter, it’s harder to get sick of them. You’re less likely to get bored by the song because it IS over so quickly. I remember the first time I heard 1-2-3 Red Light by the 1910 Fruitgum Company. That song was so short (under 2 minutes) that I can’t tell you how many times I played that record when I first bought it. You’re not going to play American Pie more than once in a sitting unless you’ve got some serious obsession issues.

After you decide how long you’re going to make your song, the next thing you have to do is structure it, especially if you’re writing royalty free music.

Regardless of what kind of song you’re writing, it’s going to have a beginning, middle and end. (duh!). But what exactly does that mean?

Most songs aren’t linear. What do I mean? A song, when it starts, usually starts off slowly, even if uptempo, it starts off slowly. What I mean by slowly is arrangement wise.

For example, a song might start with just piano, bass and drums. After the verse ends and the chorus comes in, the strings might join in, or maybe an organ. But something will be added to the arrangement to move the song forward so that it doesn’t remain stagnant.

Are there exceptions? You betcha! Listen to Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” when you get a chance. That song is about as linear as you can get, more or less. Yes, it does have its moments where things change a little, but for the most part, this is a linear song. And it was probably meant to be in order to simulate an actual trip on the Autobahn. Personally, I think it was executed brilliantly. But I digress.

You want your song, for the most part, to move forward as it progresses through the song. If it remains stagnant, it becomes boring. Now, here is where time comes into play.

If the song is a short song, you probably want to hit your various plateaus rather quickly. Let’s take a 3 minute song. You probably want to hit peaks at 1 minute, 2 minutes and on the last chorus. So you have to develop the song quickly.

But what if the song is 10 minutes long? You don’t want to hit a peak too early. If you’re bringing down the house at the 2 minute mark, where is there to go after that? For 8 minutes you’re going to have a very disappointed listener.

Conversely, you don’t want to wait too long either. If nothing goes on for 8 minutes and you basically give the listener the last 2 minutes of “excitement” they may not make it that far. So like with a shorter song, you want to have several peaks during the song. So maybe one at 3 minutes, another at 5 minutes, another at 7 minutes and finally the big finish at around the 9 minute mark.

If you’re writing a symphony that’s 48 minutes long, well, now you’re looking at 4 movements with the first and last being pretty much wall to wall excitement with maybe a few lulls. Nobody is going to sit through 48 minutes of a funeral dirge OR a nuclear blast. You need to have some balance.

Being able to map out your song and decide where the highs and lows are going to fall will make the entire process of songwriting a lot easier and give you a better chance of coming out with a great product.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

It’s so easy to get comfortable and complacent with what we’re doing. When that happens, that’s when we run into trouble because we just start doing the same things over and over and over and end up in a big rut. When that happens, we don’t grow as composers or performers. And that’s not good. So in this article I’m going to talk about stretching yourself to the limit. Some of this might sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many people don’t think of these things. If you’re one of the ones who does, consider yourself lucky. For the rest of you, you just might want to read what’s coming next.

Best way to illustrate what I’m talking about is with a story.

As a composer, I’m pretty good with stretching myself. I write in many different genres, some of which I am not very comfortable with. But there is still one area where I could see I was getting into a rut. My drums beats.

I’d decide on what song I was going to do, rock, pop, dance or whatever, and then I’d say “Okay, dance beat” or whatever, and I’d program the same beat over and over and over. I mean literally the same beat. Kick on 1, 2, 3 and 4. Snare on 2 and 4. High Hat on every 8th note and open high hat on the 16th just before beat 2 of each measure. And this was okay because I was mixing my songs up.

But then I decided to create a collection of dance tracks. And when I say a collection I mean a collection. I’m talking about 150 tracks. Imagine somebody buying a collection of 150 dance tracks and every single one had the exact same beat. Don’t you think that would get a little monotonous after a while?

That’s when I realized that I had to mix things up just a little bit to keep things interesting. So I started experimenting. I started with the kick drum. I’d maybe add in a 16th note slice before beat 2 or maybe put some 8th notes towards the end of each measure.

While I was doing that, I was really mixing things up with the high hat. I’d throw in random slices here and there. I’d maybe do some 16th note triplets. Maybe I’d swing it a little bit.

Then I moved on to adding shakers and and noises to the beat to really spice things up.

When the smoke had cleared, I had some very interesting dance beats. I had stretched myself to the limit by doing nothing but dance music and realizing that I had to have more variety or my tracks would all feel the same.

There’s my short little story. Okay, that’s how I stretched myself to the limit. How can you stretch yourself to the limit? Well, there are lots of ways.

For starters, if you’re used to composer in just one genre all the time, try composing in another one, just for a day. It won’t kill you. So if you’re a dance freak but have never even looked at a classical score, why not give it a shot? Don’t know anything about orchestration? Great! Go buy a book on the subject and read it. Or, if you don’t want to go that route, wing it. That’s right. Just throw caution to the wind and see what comes out. You will never know unless you try.

Another way you can stretch yourself as a composer is by the length of the pieces you write. Let’s say you’re used to writing short little jingles of about 30 seconds to maybe a minute long. Why not try stretching yourself by writing a little 3 minute pop tune. I’m not asking you to write a symphony or anything like that. Just a 3 minute pop tune, just to get a feel for what it’s like to write a longer piece of music. Otherwise you’ll never know if it’s something you’re able to do.

Conversely, let’s say you’re one of those long hairs who does nothing but write symphonies and piano concertos. You’ve never written a piece of music under 10 minutes long and even that is short for you. Why not try writing that little jingle? See if you can generate a complete idea in under a minute. It won’t be easy to start but eventually you will get better at it.

For performers there are ways to stretch yourselves too. For one thing, let’s say you’ve only played one instrument your whole life. Let’s say it’s the piano. Why not pick up a guitar one day and see what kind of sound you can get out of it. Sure, at the beginning it’s not going to sound very good. But you’re a talented musician. You’ve 35 years old and you’ve been playing piano since you’re 3. Surely you can pick up a guitar and get some kind of sound out of it.

What about playing speed? Let’s say you’re not the greatest performer in the world and can only play at slow or moderate speeds. You’re never going to be able to play at faster speeds unless you try. So push yourself. Pick out some pieces that are presto and give them a shot. What have you got to lose? The worst thing that can happen is you totally fall on your face. But at least you tried to stretch yourself as a performer.

If I am honest with you and myself, especially myself, it wasn’t until the last couple of years that I really stretched myself as a composer. Last year I wrote my first symphony and piano concerto. Before that I would have never even dreamed of writing such long pieces. But I did it. And while they’re not Mozart by any stretch of the imagination, they’re not all that bad either. They’re certainly listenable. For something that I’d never done prior, that’s quite an accomplishment.

So if I can stretch myself at my age (I’m 56 as of this writing) then you can certainly do it at your age.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

About a week ago I watched the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables. I never knew that Russell Crowe could sing. Who’d a thunk it? But I digress. Anyway, watching this musical tragedy (Victor Hugo does NOT do the happy dance) it got me thinking about other music tragedies. No, I’m not talking about stuff like West Side Story. I’m talking about the musical tragedies that we come up with that are literally just that. They’re terrible. They should have remained in the dark recesses of our brain and yet somehow we let them come out. And the same part is, we know they’re tragedies when we write them. By the time we are finished and listened to the finished “product” we can hardly stand to listen ourselves. But damn the torpedoes. We’re going to unleash these horrors on the outside world anyway.

Why do we do this? Well, there are several reasons. Identifying which one is yours can seriously get you out of the habit of doing such God awful things and maybe even get you to write better music more often. Otherwise, you’re destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

Probably the main reason why we inflict this torture on our audience is sheer stubbornness. And this stubbornness manifests itself on two levels.

First, we just can’t admit to ourselves that the piece of trash we just wrote is actually trash. We’ve brainwashed ourselves to believe that we’ve just created an offbeat masterpiece. And we keep playing it over and over and over again until it actually starts to sound good. Mission accomplished.

Secondly, we’re determined not to ever let a piece of music go to waste. The thought of having spent days if not weeks on a composition won’t allow us to just throw it in the trash when it’s done. We’re going to let the world hear it anyway. If they don’t like it, tough. We didn’t just spend 21 days of blood, sweat and tears for nothing.

Those are the main reasons for the musical tragedies we come up with, but there are others less common but still no less valid. We’ll get to these next.

One is the actual need to do something wretched. Every once in a while a composer gets a little down. Okay, maybe more than a little down. After all, he’s written piece after piece of “good” music with little if any recognition at all. He gets frustrated. He needs to find some outlet to release his frustration. He doesn’t want to go beating up on the neighbor’s dog, especially since it’s a pit bull, so he takes his frustration out on his music. He literally starts banging on the piano with the recorder going. When he’s done, he calls this a musical composition. He adds a few instruments to the mix and now it almost sounds lifelike. I am almost convinced this is what Stravinsky did with “Rite Of Spring” but again, I digress.

Letting out our frustrations on the nearest musical instrument is fine. But when we share those frustrations with the world, well, don’t expect a very cheery reception. In fact, you may get a lot of odd looks.

Then of course there is experimentation. Every once in a while. we get kind of bored with writing the same old same old. We feel a need to branch out. Problem is, we aren’t skilled enough to write other than what we’re comfortable writing. So our attempt at this so called “branching out” leaves us with a composition that is, well, let’s just say, less than musical. In fact, it’s downright awful. Now we can defer to the main reasons I cited above. At this point we can’t admit it’s bad and we refuse to chuck it in the trash. So the outside world gets to suffer right along with us.

Another reason for these musical tragedies is when a new fad comes along. You know what I mean. It doesn’t happen as often as it did in the early days of pop music when a lot of electronic music started coming out of the woodwork. But still, every once in a while, somebody will come out with something new and we just have to see if we can do something like it. The end result is usually pretty bad.

Then of course there is the case (very common I’m afraid) where we are just lousy composers to begin with. Nothing we do is really great. Some of it is okay, but much of it is bad. And when we write a real stinker, oh boy, does it smell. These are the tunes that should never see the light of day and yet we can’t help but at least let our best friend hear it. That we have a best friend afterwards is a miracle, but again, I digress.

What we need to do is be able to identify just what it is that makes us write these pieces of trash. This is hard. Like I said in an earlier article, it’s very difficult to look at your child and admit it has cancer. But until we can do this objectively, we’re never going to get out of the habit of writing bad pieces of music. We have to be able to listen to something we did and say, “This is bad” and scrap it. Delete the project, the wav file, the mp3, whatever. Make it so that it never existed and then get that wretched music out of your mind.

If you’re the experimenter, you need to be able to admit to yourself that experimentation isn’t your thing, that you need to stick with what you’re good at. And if you feel the need to let your frustrations out, do so with the understanding that when you’re done, you’re going to immediately delete all the evidence.

Les Miserables may have been a musical tragedy, but some of the music we write is just tragic, period.

Don’t let it tarnish what could have been a really great career.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

This might seem like a weird article to be writing about music, but hang in there. By the time you’re done reading this, you’re going to understand where I’m coming from.

Okay, first just a brief definition of what tit for tat is as applied to game theory. Tit for tat is simple. If your opponent cooperates with you (assuming some kind of alliance is needed to achieve your goals) you cooperate with him. If he lashes out, you lash back. This way, he’ll begin to see that he gets more out of the alliance if he cooperates than if he fights you.

Great, so how does this apply to writing music for clients?

You’re going to get all kinds of clients. Some will be very easy going. Either that, or they’ll be so clueless when it comes to music, they’ll simply trust your judgment when it comes to what you’re going to write for them.

Unfortunately, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most people have very strong opinions and feel that they need to be in charge of every situation. So you’re going to get a lot of clients who will tell you what they want and will have a problem with almost everything you put out until you finally realize that you can’t please them.

How do you figure this out BEFORE you waste a ton of time with them? Simple…by applying tit for tat game theory.

When you first get together with the client, the first thing you need to do, and this is critical, is have them map out, as clearly as possible, EXACTLY what it is that they’re looking for. When you do this, one of three things are going to happen.

1) They will give you a very specific blueprint of what they want right down to the most minute detail. They will practically write the music for you, telling you where they want the music to build and where they want it to be quiet and so on. They have a vision and they give you their vision in ridiculous detail.

2) They aren’t completely clueless. They have some idea of what they want, such as stating a specific musical genre. Maybe they’ll give you a recording of what they’d like the piece to sound like. And then they’ll finish up their request with “something like that.”

3) They have no clue.

Let’s take number 3 to start with. If your client has no idea of what they want, you simply say to them “Do you trust me?” They may not know how to answer at first but keep talking. Assure them that you’ve been doing this a long time and you know what kind of music will be good for their presentation. You then wait for them to agree to this and then when they give you the go ahead you start work on the project. At this point you should have no problems. Why?

If they come back to you after you give them their music and they say something like “this isn’t what I wanted” you simply respond with, “But you said you didn’t know what you wanted and you said you trusted me to give you the music that would be best for your project.” At this point, you will get one of two responses. Either they will realize that they agreed that they’d trust you and agree to take what you’ve written for them or they’ll continue with “Well, it’s not what I want.” If they respond with the latter then you simply say, “Well, then tell me what you do want.” If they can’t give you an answer then you simply say “Well, then there’s no point in going on.” When you do know specifically what you want, get back to me and if I have time to work on your project at that time, I will. At this point they will either realize that they’re being difficult and take what you wrote or they’ll move on and you probably won’t hear from them again. Either way, you’ve saved yourself the trouble of doing more work for somebody who doesn’t know what they want and most likely won’t be happy with anything.

Number 2 is the hardest one to handle. They have some idea but they don’t have specifics. You’re taking a big chance with this project unless you use game theory. What you say is this.

“Okay, I can give you a piece that sounds something like that. Without more specifics, I can’t be any more precise. So if you have something definite in mind please let em know now.”

At this point they will either be more specific or they’ll say “No, something like that will be fine.”

From here, after you’ve given them something like what they wanted, they will either accept it or they’ll say “It’s not what I want.” From there, you handle it just the way you handled number 3. You tell them to come back when they’re more certain what it is they want. They’ll either take what you wrote or they’ll move on.

Either way, you’re not doing more work for nothing.

Finally, we have the guy who knows exactly what he wants. He’s mapped out the whole piece for you. Maybe he’s a composer himself and just doesn’t have the time to do the piece. This should be a piece of cake. You write the piece to his specs and then you give it to him.

At this point in time, he’ll either accept it or he’ll have very specific things that he wants changed and he’ll make each spot in the piece that he wants modified. This shouldn’t take long. At least you have a definite road map for the changes. Unfortunately, as I said, these are the exceptions and not the rule.

By using tit for tat game theory in dealing with your clients, you save yourself countless numbers of modifications to the work you did that end up sucking up weeks of your time, if not longer.

Try it sometime. You might be surprised at the results.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

My mom, may she rest is piece, had a saying about music that I will never forget. She said, “It is not to astonish but to move.” At the time, all of maybe 16 years old, I really didn’t understand what she meant. But now that I’m 40 years past that age and crying at TV commercials, I get it.

There is a lot that can be said about today’s music that isn’t all that flattering. But I think the biggest problem with a lot of it comes down to what my mom said 40 years ago in 1974 when the Hollies came out with a song called “The Air That I Breathe.” I don’t know if you remember if (I sure do) but that was a song that wasn’t written to astonish. It was meant to move and it did it in spades.

“All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.”

Imagine saying that to someone you love and really meaning it. Think that just might move the person?

It sure as heck beats “I cannot lie I like big butts” or whatever the stupid words to that song are. Please don’t get me started on Sir Mix A Lot or whatever his name is.

So now that I’ve probably alienated about half of my readership, I can speak to the rest of you. Please understand, this is just my personal opinion and not based at all on fact. That’s the beauty of music.

In an earlier article I talked about “rules” in music and essentially said it’s okay to break them as long as what comes out in the process is real and people enjoy it. Yeah, I know…a lot of people loved Sir Mix A Lot. Point well taken (as I shake my head)

Truth is, there are many ways to move people. Going through a box of tissues after hearing Les Miserables is not the only way. Any kind of emotion that you can illicit out of somebody is moving them. And there are lots of emotions in this world. Fear, anger, love, sadness and joy are just a few of them. And yes, you can add lust and sexual arousal to the list too. That’s why so much jazz music is popular with the younger crowd and the saxophone is their favorite instrument. Why oh why does every sex scene on TV have a sax playing? I still don’t get it, though I have to admit I sometimes feel it. But I digress.

But the bigger truth than the many ways to move people is that music in itself, because of its very nature, should move people. In fact, if you’ve written a piece of music and it doesn’t illicit any kind of emotion out of anybody, you are doing something terribly wrong. In fact, I can’t even imagine a piece of music being so sterile that it leaves people stone cold dead. Kraftwerk probably comes close but even they have their emotional side. I think. Don’t get me wrong. I love Kraftwerk, but sometimes I have to ask myself why. Those were some strange dudes.

And because music is such a deeply personal thing, no one song is going to generate the same reaction out of everybody. Some people will love it, others hate it, some will cry to it while others will think it’s corny.

True story. About a week ago, my wife and I were watching Les Mis off the DVD. I was crying my eyes out and she was essentially sitting there waiting for the torture to be over. I get it, she doesn’t really like tragic stories like that. She said Victor Hugo doesn’t know how to write happy. No, he doesn’t.

Point is, here we were, two different people watching the same movie, listening to the same music that was without a doubt written to move and not astonish and only one of us was moved to tears.

So just because you DO set out to move somebody with your music doesn’t mean you’re going to succeed. Taste is very subjective and not everybody is going to “get it.”

Does that mean we don’t bother trying? If we spend a month writing a symphony and then play it for our friends and they all sit there bored out of their skulls, does that mean we give up, stop writing, throw in the towel and get a job at Quick Check? No, it means we keep trying, especially if music is all we know.

When I first started writing and arranging, I thought that everything had to be big, bigger and biggest. Everything had these over the top strings and thunderous pads. My songs were wall to wall sound. I figured I’d blow them out of the room with my songs to get them to like my music.

Boy, was I so wrong.

Listen to a simple piano sonata and tell me you’re not moved by some more than others. You don’t have to blow the doors off the room to get people to like your music. The finale to Les Mis, for the most part, at least up to the last minute or so, is relatively subdued. And when Jean Valjean sings “to love another person is to see the face of God” you can just about hear him and the music. There was no trying to astonish there. That was all moving baby. That was about as moving as it gets.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a place for big flashy, splashy scores with crashing cymbals and blaring horns. But if done within context of what it is you’re trying to convey to the audience, it can move them in some way. If nothing else, it can get them evry excited, even make them smile.

Even Kraftwerk had their moment with Ohn Sweet Ohm. If you’ve never heard that tune, give it a listen. It was quite unusual for them.

I think my mom got it right. It is not to astonish but to move.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Probably one of the biggest problems royalty free music creators run into when laying down a track is finding room in the mix for all the instruments that they want to include. So what I’m going to do in this article is share a few simple tips that will make finding that room a little easier. I hope you will find these helpful.

Let me start off by saying this. I don’t care how hard you try or what you do. Not everything in your mix is going to stand out. It’s not physically possible. Something has to be in the background. If you try to get everything up front, it’s going to sound like a mess. The key is to learn how to get a mix where the instruments in the background are noticeable enough that if they were missing you’d know. Otherwise, you’re fighting a losing battle, especially if you have a lot going on in your song.

Okay, so the first thing you want to do is make use of your stereo field. Not everything has to be, or should be, dead center in the mix. By panning instruments you can turn a muddy track into one where everything is present to some degree.

For example, let’s take a track where you have a double guitar lead going on, say one Strat and one Les Paul dueling for the big prize. If you’ve got them both dead center in the mix there is a big chance, depending on what notes are being played, that they’re going to bump into each other and produce a muddy mess. By taking the two guitars and panning one left and the other one right, even just slightly, you’ve given them their own space in the mix. The more you pan them, the more space you’ve given them. This will also allow you to lower the volume of each guitar, thus giving the other instruments in the mix a chance to shine through. So panning is one way of making room in the mix.

Another way is by making sure that the instruments you’re using aren’t bumping into each other in the low, mid and high ends. The way to do this is by using EQ.

For example, your kick drum and bass guitar don’t need any highs in the mix so they can be cut out. Conversely, your high hat doesn’t need any lows so they can all be cut out. By focusing on each instruments range and cutting out the other frequencies, you will end up with a cleaner mix just from this one act. Yes, EQ can cure a lot of ills if used properly.

Another great trick that you can do with EQ if you want something to appear like it is in back of the mix, aside from lowering the volume, which I will discuss below, is to roll off the top end of the sound. You can also get rid of the low end below 150 hz. This will give the illusion of distance.

Volume is also key. A big mistake that a lot of people make is starting off with the foundation of the track too loud. If you’re already way up here, there is no place left to go with the instruments that you layer on after. Your headroom is nil. You have essentially boxed yourself into a corner. Start your levels low and raise them as needed. By doing this and using panning for your instruments, you can actually start lowering your levels in some cases.

Reverb is another killer of mixes. The more reverb you use, the muddier your mixes are going to be. So if you want more room in your mix, you either want to use light reverb or early reflections or mix dry. Music of the 70s and 80s was notorious for its use of reverb. Today, less is more. Of course if your music calls for that feel, then by all means, reverb away. But just understand that this is going to lead to a mix with less room in it.

Similarly, echo is another great way of creating the feel of distance in your mix. As with the reverb, you will want to keep it light and maybe roll of the high and low ends.

If you have a pad that needs to sit in the back of the mix, one way to do this is through the use of chorus, which tends to make the sound less focused. By mixing chorus with reverb or lack of it, such as with a lead guitar, you can control how far back or up front the sound is in the mix.

Contrast is critical in any mix. What I mean by contrast is this. Let’s say you have six different instruments in your mix, drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, piano and pad. If all six instruments are brought up front, the mix will sound too busy. If all six instruments are sent to the back through the use of reverb, chorus or whatever else you use, the mix will sound empty and muddy. You need to have contrast. So maybe send the piano and pad to the back of the mix. Have the drums and bass taking up one space in the mix and the rhythm guitar slightly in back of the lead which should be above everything else. And we can do this by using the methods I’ve gone over above.

Finally, and this may be the most important thing of all, there is the arrangement itself. You don’t want your instruments fighting each other. Some have to be up front while others have to be in the background. If you want your pad in the background, using a dull pad sound will be easier to get it there than if you use a harsh pad sound with lots of highs. These are more difficult to push to the back of the mix. If you try, you’re fighting a very tough battle not matter how much processing you do on the sound.

So, you have to train your ears to recognize when something just isn’t going to work no matter how hard you try. If you want your drums up front, synth drums are fine. But if you want them to lay in the background, you’re better off using acoustic drums.

These are just the basics, obviously. But by using just these few little tips and tricks, you will find your mixes sounding a whole lot better.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Let’s face it, we live in a very stressful world during very stressful times. The economy is in the toilet, our leaders are corrupt, costs are out of control and the air isn’t fit to breathe. And on top of all that, you have to earn a living just to keep a roof over your head and eat. Where is there any time for fun? Well, some of us are luckier than others. We have good jobs that pay well and we can actually take time off to have fun. But what about the rest of us?

If you write music for a living, like I do, much of what you write is for your business, if not all of it. And when you’re done writing for the day, do you really want to spend more time writing for your own enjoyment? I mean if you’ve got the time to do that, wouldn’t you rather make your writing session be productive towards your business? I don’t know about you but I feel guilty if I’m writing and it’s not directly related to earning a living, especially since money is kind of tight on this end. It makes it hard to relax and have a good time.

So if you’re like me, what do you do?

Well, I’m actually kind of lucky. See, I don’t mind writing all day for some project. Music is music as far as I’m concerned. Sure, every once in a while I might want to work on something that doesn’t have to be a 170 beats per minute dance track, or whatever my project is, but for the most part, I’m happy doing what I’m doing.

But what about for the rest of us? As much as a lot of people love music, not everybody wants to spend all day working on some musical project, no matter how exciting it is.

Admit it, every once in a while you get sick of writing for your business and the last thing you want to do is sit down and write some more for “fun” as if that was even possible at this point.

So the answer for many of us is, no, there is really no time to write for fun. After the work day is over, the last thing we want to do is look at a DAW or transcription program. So what do we do?

We do something else.

Yes, hard to believe but composers have a life outside of music. I actually have another interest that takes up a couple days of my time. I’m into a collective card game called Magic The Gathering. It’s a lot of fun and it gives me a chance to do something other than write music.

In fact, I haven’t written a piece of music for my own pleasure since September of last year. Before that, I completed some classical works including a piano concerto and a symphony. But that was it after September 2013 hit. And it may be a long time before I write another piece for pleasure again.

Not everybody can do this, however. Some people need that free time to write something just for themselves. When that happens, it’s time to schedule. You simply make your mind up to spend X number of hours in the day to write for your business and Y number of hours to work on your hobbies. So if you have to write dance tracks for clients but need to write classical pieces for your own enjoyment, do it. Take an hour or two out of your day to devote to your music for music’s sake.

Feeling guilty for doing that? Don’t be. Life is too short for guilt over something that is relatively so trivial. Look, you can’t work 24/7. Nobody can. So decide to take 8 hours out of your day for working on your music and then some time for enjoying your music.

Make the time.

Before I wrap this one up, I want to tell you a little story. It’s how I really started getting into writing music for myself.

I was bowling in this league back when I was about 20 years old. Hard to believe that’s 36 years ago. Anyway, on my team was this girl who I ended up liking a lot. I asked her out, kind of, but after avoiding the subject long enough she finally said we could only be friends. Needless to say I was pretty broken up about it. At age 20 you get broken up over lots of stuff. Today, it wouldn’t even register a blip.

Anyway, I needed to do something to get my mind off of her. Well, my mother had a baby grand piano in the living room. I would play it now and then just for fun but I never really cared enough to do anything serious with it.

Well, I started hitting that piano every single day. I started to write my own music. Yeah, it was horrible music, but it was therapeutic. The more I wrote, the more it got my mind off of this girl.

Eventually, it lead to me going to my local musical instrument store and picking up my first keyboards, a Stringvox and Moog. This was so cool to me, having this kind of technology that the big boys were using in their bands. I never had anything like this before.

After that, I picked up a Teac A3440 4 track tape recorder and started doing multi track recording for the first time. It was a blast.

Today, 36 years later, I have Cubase 7 and more synths than I could have ever dreamed of back then. Sure, they’re all virtual synths, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the same thing.

I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like had I not met this girl who broke my heart in two. I may have never gotten into music at all. In short, my therapy turned into my passion which ultimately turned into my livelihood.

So give yourself a break from work and enjoy your music while you can.

Because it goes oh so quickly.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

In going over the list of articles I’ve written to day, I noticed that I have yet to ask this question.

What is good music?

I love to open up a can of worms and this one should prove to be a whopper. We may even be able to go on a fishing trip after this one.

Okay, so what is good music? Good question. Can it even be answered?

You constantly hear your friends or people in general say things like “That’s a great song.” Oh, why? Because you say so? Who died and made you critic of the world’s music? I certainly didn’t.

Over the years, as I’ve acquired more and more wisdom, I’ve learned to never say things like “That’s a great song.” At best, I’ll say things like “I like that song” or “I love that song” or “I don’t like that song.” And I’ll leave it at that.

I used to say terrible things like “Rap isn’t music.” Talk about an elitist, pompous remark. Just because I didn’t like it I proclaimed it not to be music? Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like pure rap though I do like Linkin Park.

See, the truth is, this is all subjective. However, having said that, there are times when you have to determine what is “good” music or you may be out of a job.

Let me explain.

While one’s love or hate for a piece of music is subjective, the masses love or hate for a piece of music, depending on what that music has been written for, is dollars and cents and can make or break an artist or company.

Imagine if a record label came into existence, we’ll call it Wagtunes Records, and every song it released was a total flop. After a while, the label would go out of business. I don’t care how good YOU think the music is. If the public doesn’t agree, you don’t make money. It’s that simple.

So, for that reason alone, we have to strive to make good music. But what is good music? Well, in this context, it’s music that is liked by the masses or at least enough people to keep us profitable.

Kind of horrible way to look at something that should be stirring our emotions and not our pocketbooks. But that’s kind of how life works. In many fields, how “good” something is, is solely determined by how well it sells.

Welcome to capitalism.

There have been many pieces of music that I have heard over the years that I have loved that didn’t sell. I am baffled by it but obviously my taste in music is much different, in many cases, from the masses. Does that make this music bad?

Well, if we’re talking dollars and cents, then yes. The music is bad. It certainly didn’t achieve it’s goal of making money.

Truth is, we can’t really qualify music as good or bad. Each piece of music written has a different goal. Not every piece of music was written to make money. And if you think that a piece of music can be classified as “good” or “bad” simply by playing it for a few people, that’s a pretty bad way of determining goodness or badness. The sample size you would need to do that would have to be quite large. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the funds for such an experiment.

As for my own music, I’ve had some people tell me they like it (maybe they were being polite) and others tell me they hated it and it stunk (maybe they just didn’t like me and were being mean). Who knows where the truth lies? And you can’t really evaluate your own music as you’re too close to it. Again, as I said in another article, it’s hard to look at your own child and admit that it has cancer. Few people can do that.

The ones who can, however, are the ones who are usually successful or, at the very least, realize that they have little or no talent and move onto something else.

It took me many years to finally realize that I am an average composer at best. Having said that, sometimes average is all you need to get the job done.

Think about it. How much royalty free music is really great? Most of it is pretty generic stuff. It’s supposed to be. It’s not supposed to distract listeners from the main point of the presentation, whether it be a advertisement or radio show intro or whatever. It is meant to add to the presentation, not overpower it.

For this reason, creating royalty free music is an art. You have to know when to hold back and be a little subtle and let the presentation do its thing. Can you imagine a company advertising fabric softener and you come in with horns blaring? That would totally destroy the presentation. The ad would not work because the blaring horns would be out of place. In this case, the music is definitely NOT good. It could be the most majestic and amazing piece of music ever written, but if it kills the commercial, it’s bad music.

When a composer can finally reach that point where he can look at the task at hand and understand what’s needed and what should be avoided, that’s when he can finally sit down and write some “good” music. Until then, he’s just grasping at straws. John Williams’ scores work not just because they’re great musical works but because they work in the context in which they were written. That’s why John Williams is such an amazing composer. He knows just what to do and when to do it.

I want you to do this. Go to YouTube and look up some commercials. It doesn’t matter which ones. I want you to watch them first without paying any attention to the music. Just watch the message. Then I want you to watch them again focusing solely on the music. I think you will find that is sounds totally different on the second listen.

What is good music?

You’ll know it when you hear it.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim