Home › Forums › General Questions › How many cues do you write ?
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September 18, 2013 at 6:10 am #12368WildmanGuest
The magic is to be a creative machine 🙂
I write and produce music since I am 14 years. Right after I bought my first guitar I bought my first 4 track recorder and a microphone.
I practiced 6-10 hours guitar or I recorded my music every day when I was a teenager. Later on I studied audio engineering and the theory of harmony.
With 18 I already teached guitar at a private school and since some years I teach music at a regular school as well.
Of course I am personally very fast in writing and producing a cue because I know exactly what I am doing.
For things other people need hours and days I need minutes or hours 🙂
I think that is totally normal.
I don`t want to reinvent the wheel. I use well knwon rhythm and chord progressions.
So in fact it`s just a learning process. When I started to write for the production and trailer music market I needed much more hours or even days. Now after nearly 700 cues I need less hours and I work much more efficient.September 18, 2013 at 7:23 am #12369JackGuestIf I’m writing for an exclusive lib it’s usually 10-12 hours writing/arranging and that is usually split up, just so my ears don’t trick me.. I then spend about 2 hours mixing it the following day unless it sounds crap and i have to tweak.. So about 3-4 tracks a week.
When i was wasn’t composing full time it would take a week just to do one track..September 18, 2013 at 7:29 am #12370EdouardoParticipantAaah, when I was a Teenager, the only recording apparatus I could afford was one of these tape recorders with integrated microphones lol. I had to wait for my first salary at 26 (I very did long studies) which went all in the first affordable digital 8-track, a Fostex DMT8 VL, the second month, a Korg M1 second hand that could then be piloted by an ATARI-1040 with Cubase V1.0 (I still have the latter in the corner of my studio btw… no collectors around here ? 😉 ).
Memories memories…
September 18, 2013 at 7:32 am #12371Desire_InspiresParticipantI used to ‘write’ (and I use that term loosely) very quickly when I was working for TV music companies full time. Sometimes we’d be writing 5 or more tracks a day. It was fun to crank out a lot, but it’s unsustainable, and after a while very unsatisfying creatively.
Have you found more joy in slowing down? More success?
September 18, 2013 at 9:19 am #12374MichaelLParticipantFor things other people need hours and days I need minutes or hours
On some levels this is the difference between a professional and a non-professional.
By analogy: I just finished renovating parts of my house. It took me 6 months to accomplish what a professional would have done in 2 months.
The results are very good, but I am not as fast as someone who does this kind of work every day, for a living. Moreover, the results are not at the same level, in many cases, as a professional.The same is true with composing. What you describe Wildman is training, knowledge and experience, all of which take years to aquire, through study and practice. Those are the fundementals that go into becoming a pro, whether you write for orchestra or make beats.
When people say “I do X amount of cues in a day” it’s really not relevant, because it depends on the following:
1) The individual’s skill level. If you don’t have some basic grasp of theory, you are not writing music, you are reinventing it, which will take a lot longer.
2) The kind of music you are writing…no one is producing 3 or 4 cues per day at the compositional level of a cue that Mark Petrie spent a week on. On the other hand, you should be able to do more than one typical reality / cable cue in a day, and
3) the tools (gear) that you have available. That speaks for itself.
If you don’t have good gear, you will waste hours, days, weeks trying to make what you have sound better (and probably still not be happy).If you open up your template and have a full orchestra at your fingertips, and your FX routing set up, you are going to be able to work quickly. It’s the same no matter what genre you’re working in.That’s how top recording engineers work.
The more that you have in your “toolkit” both intellectually and physically, the less time you spend searching for “it,” whether “it” is a sound, or the next chord.
Just my opinion.
Michael
September 18, 2013 at 11:10 am #12379MichaelLParticipantIf you open up your template and have a full orchestra at your fingertips, and your FX routing set up, you are going to be able to work quickly. It’s the same no matter what genre you’re working in.That’s how top recording engineers work.
What I meant to say here is that another way of speeding things up is to streamline your workflow. One way of doing that is with templates. If every cue is a blank page, you are reinventing the wheel.
September 18, 2013 at 12:22 pm #12380More adviceGuestI have asked many pros this very question “How much time do you spend on a broadcast quality cue?” and the answer is always “at least 10 hours.” ‘At Least” is the operative word and I would not be surprised if 12 to 14 is more realistic from composition to live recording overdubs to final mix and mastering.
Let me qualify the type of cue: This is a full length cue, 1.5 minutes minimum, with a full band instrumentation and a melody or lead of some sort. I have to disqualify light “story telling” cues such as pizzicato and light percussion, or even 3 or 4 piece rock cues from this discussion…yes those can take just 2 or 3 or 4 hours.
This discussion is important because it raises the question for everyone: what is 10 hours of our time worth? I’d like to think that pros should be entitled to $1000 for 10 hours of time. I think this is why exclusives used to pay work for hires $1000 a cue…and commercial spot demos always paid $1500 for the demo.
Oops, somewhere along the line everyone decided to make themselves cheaper. We devalued ourselves. I always set a goal of making the cue good enough to hopefully claw back a grand in earnings through royalties and license fees over time. Easier said than done….
September 18, 2013 at 12:26 pm #12381More adviceGuestAlso I do agree with ML about templates, I use them all the time and you save a ton of time, but still….I probably often put in that good 10 to 15 hours of time on each cue until I am ready to up-load a mastered track.
September 18, 2013 at 12:29 pm #12382Desire_InspiresParticipantOops, somewhere along the line everyone decided to make themselves cheaper. We devalued ourselves. I always set a goal of making the cue good enough to hopefully claw back a grand in earnings through royalties and license fees over time. Easier said than done….
More advice, do you think that you will make a difference and command $1,000 doing work-for-hire assignments? If you already are commanding this, how did you set yourself apart from others?
I am always interested in learning how the successful people got to where they are. I know that many composers, including me, are busy chasing libraries and seeking out work.
I now want to learn about those composers that have stopped chasing opportunities and are now being chased or at least courted by music production companies that pay money for music.
September 18, 2013 at 12:43 pm #12384Art MunsonKeymaster“How much time do you spend on a broadcast quality cue?” and the answer is always “at least 10 hours.” ‘At Least” is the operative word and I would not be surprised if 12 to 14 is more realistic from composition to live recording overdubs to final mix and mastering.
That’s true for me also. I have (and can) crank out cues much faster but I never find it as satisfying. I really do enjoy the process more than the end result. As I mentioned earlier I have had success with those “cranked” cues but they don’t seem to satisfy as much creatively.
September 18, 2013 at 12:53 pm #12385woodsdenisParticipantIf you open up your template and have a full orchestra at your fingertips, and your FX routing set up, you are going to be able to work quickly. It’s the same no matter what genre you’re working in.That’s how top recording engineers work.
This a vital step, I have a few templates for different things. VEPro is also handy for this. I also use the Waves signature series plugins a lot as they get you 60-90% there very quickly. I also have a few mastering templates too that I can recall setups very quickly. It really is worth spending a day organizing this. Also learn what a compressor and eq actually does, I am lucky enough to be trained in one of the last big studios when a compressor was a large silver box.
Looking back at my workflow and catalogue I average 80-100 cues p.a.
September 18, 2013 at 1:35 pm #12387More adviceGuest@DI, I think the 1K per cue work for hires are really disappearing. I never wrote for libraries years ago. I was hired to do $1500 demos for 30 and 60 second post scores for TV and Radio ads which helped me build my catalog up from 1996 to 2009. For $1500 we always cranked out 3 or 4 within that budget.
I then put all of the un-sold demos on the library market in 2010 to see what would happen. So, I was basically already paid to do these tracks, but they never aired nor transferred ownership to the client (Isn’t that a beautiful thing!)
I really think that you have to be just outstandingly exceptional and have an existing relationship to be offered work for hire fees from libraries. There are too many guys tossing free cues at them which needs to taper IMHO. I have no problem sending free cues to NE’s though. Maybe some guys getting work for hires can chime in.
September 18, 2013 at 1:49 pm #12388More adviceGuestDI, I forgot to add that there is no secret to hard work and success and creating a situation where the phone rings and someone asks you to write for their project for a contracted fee. It simply takes lots of hard work , lots of phone calls and e-mails and relationship building over many, many years. You have to deliver very good quality every time.
September 18, 2013 at 1:53 pm #12389Mark_PetrieParticipantHave you found more joy in slowing down? More success?
A lot more, the $ earned per minute of slower, more refined music is noticeable.
September 18, 2013 at 2:56 pm #12390Desire_InspiresParticipantA lot more, the $ earned per minute of slower, more refined music is noticeable.
That is good.
I have a bunch of music out there already. The money will come eventually, or not! But the chase for royalties isn’t fun anymore. I remembered when I started out a few years ago.
Companies that didn’t pay upfront always stressed the importance of backend royalties growing and growing every year. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. At least not for me.
They go up and down pretty wildly. I do not know what to expect anymore. Even though I have music in more shows, I do not necessarily expect a big increase in PRO money. That is unfortunate considering the amount of time I spent making music. My music is not mind-blowing, but I get staedy placements in shows. That shows that I have some talent and a marketable product.
Anyway, thanks for the tips guys.
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