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Hi mates,
I am just curious…..How many cues do you write a year approx ?
Of course it depends on for which market you`ll write,
and if you compose easy going corporate cues or mindblowing
Trailer cues….. 🙂I write about 80-100 cues a year (I don`t count Edits)
75% alone and 25% with co-writers.
In 90% of the cases I write music for exclusive PM or Trailer Music
companies.Best,
WildmanI write about 50-60 alone or with my wife Robin. Mostly non-exclusive.
I write 100-150 a year, mostley with co-writers.
I can add to this question: What do you think is the total number of tracks you need in order to make a living out of that? 2000? 4000? 8000?
The number floating around here seems to be 1000-1500 but then you have to define what a “living wage” is.
I’m on a knock-out-a-cue-every-three-days schedule. So, a little over 100/year. Each cue is approx. 10 – 15 stereo tracks – on average.
My goal has always been 3-5 new pieces of music a week, but the longer I’ve been doing this the harder it is to get just 3 pieces of music done a week. I think 3-5 is doable for someone building up their library and is for sure a goal to hit in the first year. Now I am happy to hit 100 new pieces of music a year which is about 2 new pieces of music a week.
I shoot for one per week but then I do this along with a 40 hour regular job. I only have about 120 tracks at this point only because I keep re-doing crappy tracks rather than throw them away. I am also recording live instruments such as guitars and ukes and percussion and do not do much midi based recording which I think slows me down. How many of you out there do this full time or part time ?
Yes, I think 500 tracks with good high end exclusives seems to be the number. But for non-exclusive re-title backend only libraries it’s more of 1500+. If you do 150 a year for ten years you will have 1500.
I shoot for one per week… I only have about 120 tracks at this point only because I keep re-doing crappy tracks rather than throw them away.
Same here. I’m the king of “re-purposing”! 🙂
150+ cues a year is a bit of an overkill.
You`ll get nuts after some yearsAmen!
150+ cues a year is a bit of an overkill.
You`ll get nuts after some yearsI don’t know. I come from a documentary film / video scoring background. I never had the luxury of time. It wasn’t unusual to have maybe two weeks to compose and produce as many as 15 to 20 cues.
I’m already nuts Wildman, maybe that’s why. 😛I work with templates for different styles.
I approach my templates a few different ways, but everything gets its own track, including drums and percussion. So, the kick gets a track, the snare gets a track etc. When I’m doing orchestral cues, I set up FX sends to three tracks, dry, early reflections and tail. So, you can see that tracks/channel strips fill up quickly.Back when I was running a bunch of rack-mounted samplers through
Soundcraft Ghost, I guess I maxed at 24-32 tracks. Now, with DP8
I’ve had cues go up to around 96 tracks. Around 48, would be normal.Enough talk of “back when!” It will be interesting too see what pace I can establish, when reproducing the cues that I’ve collected.
_Michael
I average about 2-3 per week. Depending on how the creative juices are flowing….
Well the guys at a well known library that I wont mention, all I can say is that they are getting a sallary and they produce 7 cues per day. Pretty good, pretty pretty good as our friend larry david says.
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