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I don’t doubt that there is a niche out there for each of us,
There may well be, but if you are a Library Music Composer that niche will have been created by someone else. By definition we serve a marketplace driven by demand, and that demand is fueled by popular entertainment. I have great pride in what I create and even greater satisfaction when it is licensed.
+1
Well said Denis. There is an art and a craft to creating production music. And, successful composers of production music should take pride in their work.
My issue with this thread is that characterizing a certain body of work as “populist schlock” is a judgment call the demeans both the work and its audience.
I totally agree with these last two posts from Michael L and Dennis. Well put!
I agree with Denis and MichaelL on those points completely, and that “demand” is probably the key to this perspective: the sensibilities of those who charge, and are charged, with assessing what kind of music serves that demand, in turn drive that demand.
My intention was not to demean–I did clarify that I find it’s the productions themselves that can be schlock (10 minutes of Bravo TV will attest to this, or am I alone in this?) and if that’s the sort of demand that trained composers are serving… (A sound designer I worked with used to refer to my scoring as “music design”; I’ve come to recognize a real truth in this.)
Getting back to the core thread: one working hypothesis, which could be utterly wrong but that I suspect may prove true, is that one is more likely to find off-the-beaten-path music on non-exclusive sites than on exclusive ones where the contributors are better attuned to the industry’s conventions and to what it has historically licensed.
When I started out I recall hearing a great variety of music on many of the non-exclusive sites–some junk production quality, certainly, and a lot of imitation, but also writing that reflected a real, raw sensibility. By contrast, the other has increasingly struck me as more homogenous and somehow “safer”, even if the production quality is top notch. One very possible cause of this is that fewer composers contribute to those exclusive pools and so there is less overall variation. Is that it?
There may well be, but if you are a Library Music Composer that niche will have been created by someone else.
Actually, this I’m not so sure about. Perhaps “niche”, then, is the wrong word. Everything is ultimately influenced by everything else, but new musical conventions _are_ created and so I don’t think it’s all simply “filling niches”. My 2 cents.
Emlyn, i remember when i first started to compose, there was a lot more freedom and experimentation during those years, there were fewer rules. As we have matured in our art, we tend to rationalize more and imagine less. These are the composers you will find in exclusive libraries, trained to stay on the beaten path. The non exclusive composers are generally more junior and are willing to take more chances, therefore the fresher and not as well produced sounds.
Abbas