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Geez, I knew this would probably happen………
Just to be clear, IMO of course, my choice to spend 10’s of thousands of $$$ on analog gear is it’s the impact on the person CHOOSING the music and on my connection with what I’m writing – not what you can discern under dialog and SFX. You could produce on your iPhone if you judge it under those conditions.
That’s why I do it. It’s not mandatory. I think it gives an advantage over ITB, and I want every advantage I can afford. My personal perspective only.
Good to know Art, thanks. I don’t think I had any links but maybe something I typed? Anyways, I’ll try that.
Agreed. And room treatment to go along with it. 🙂
“Ask and ye shall receive” . . . once again thanks for taking the time and effort to answer my question LAWriter, I dont think anyone has ever broken it down so eloquently and descriptively the way you did here or in any other forum with no holds barred.
Thanks, and you’re welcome. That’s one of the reasons I prefer to stay anonymous – so that I can tell it like I see it. This biz is a lot smaller than one might suspect.
if you are who i think you are
I wouldn’t be so sure. I don’t think my wife even knows who I am….. 🙂 And my soundcloud comment was not directed at you specifically. I suppose I should listen to it then….
Not wishing to get into a debate about this and go off topic BUT “Mind Heist” probably the most successful trailer/library music of the last decade was done “in the box”. I am of an age where we mixed on SSL etc you can have terrible sounding music on either platform, IMHO of course.
I agree. Outstanding music can be done either way, and I don’t want to start and ITB/OTB war here.
But for me, I want my music to sound “different” than the rest of the crowd. I’ve spent a lot of time mixing music for major motion picture releases, academy award winning films, records, etc. where I was paid a lot of money. It doesn’t have to be an SSL. It doesn’t have to be a PTHDX rig. It can be anything as long as it’s 3 dimensional, expensive sounding and — different and standout from the crowd. The more you can do to stand out from the crowd – and I can usually hear an ITB composers mix a mile away – that’s what I’m going to do. I want it to grab the listener and MAKE them want to keep listening because it’s different an intriguing.
If working ITB is your best choice, go for it and make it as good as you can. If you have the chance to try some expensive hardware on your 2 bus, please report back with your findings.
Not to dis the that piece, but that track (might be because it’s on youtube) sounds totally 2 dimensional to me. That’s not what I’m after sonically or emotionally.
thank you for the suggestions. Is this gear only to help make live instruments sound bigger in the mix? Or do you mean that the outboard gear is used when doing the stereo mixdown of both live and virtual/ITB instruments?
sure.
All of the above. It’s all about making the mix pop. Making it 3 dimensional whether it’s a synth or an orchestra. Making it sound like it was mixed on an SSL with a top engineer. IMO (extremely biased) it cannot be duplicated ITB. Once you mix with that stuff, you come away jaded. It’s neither cheap nor easy though. But IMO I wouldn’t do this without it.
LOL! Ahhh.. but what feels better than helping a former-gigging
musician? ?helping one that’s still gigging?? 😀
Beyond a great tracking front end, a killer 2Buss chain would be the #1 thing IMO. There are dozens of pieces that would help out. A Manley Vari-Mu is awesome, a great 2Bus EQ, an SSL compressor…there’s so many to choose from. One of the new saturation boxes like the HG2, Louder Than Liftoff box, or Overstayer MAS can work wonders. All these pieces add a 3 dimensional aspect to your final mix that working ITB won’t give you.
Stand out from the crowd is my motto. If everyone else is cutting corners — don’t.
Dam!!! I’m giving away way to many secrets. 😀
I posted earlier in response to Danny. Not sure why my post was curated or held back. This seems to happen often on this website and I’d really love to know why. Don’t have time to repost it now, and unfortunately, didn’t make a copy before I hit “submit”.
Bottom line – I don’t have a sound cloud acct, and don’t intend to get or use one. No need for me.
I agree with those above – “AMAZING” is in the ear of the user. Not my expectations by any degree. I try to do my best, then push to add 10-20% better and turn it in. That’s all I can do. It turns amazing is when it earns boucou $$$.
I have big money makers that took 3 hours to produce. Then I have (what I thought were) amazing high quality tunes that took a long time to produce, and do not produce meaningful revenue. Only the market decides which tunes will make money.
I wanted to quote this because THIS ^^^^^ is reality. The market decides what is “amazing”. Not us.
I see the word “Amazing” thrown a lot when it comes to the music…I am still uncertain on what that really pertains to.
Amazing Production Music =
1. Eminently Useable. An amazing piece with a 3 minute blazing guitar solo might be musically amazing, but it has minimal usages.
2. Amazing is also defined by being in the right hands. An amazing piece in the hands of a sub par library will fail. If it fails, you fail. If it fails is it amazing? This is quite possibly our #1 nemesis.
3. Produced at the highest level of excellence. You’ve got to be at major feature film, major record label quality in the writing AND in the production. If you’re 100% ITB, you’re already cutting your own throat. Get analog gear involved. There’s simple dumb, and then there’s simple elegant. They are not the same thing and they do not compete. Simple elegant sells. Simple dumb defines you as an amateur and gets you passed over the next time.
3a. To tag off this idea, there should be a recognizable level of musical maturity, production maturity, and uniqueness that pulls your piece above the others. That takes years. You do not accomplish this when starting off. I’ve been producing music for 35 years and am still learning every time I sit down in the studio. Do not expect to produce unique, musically mature, quality produced music right out of the gate. Doesn’t work that way. If you think you can, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll figure that out a decade down the road though…. 🙂
4. Which brings up Unique. If you’re using the same loops, sounds, synth patches etc. as every one else, the music may be excellent, but it will be eminently forgettable – even with a memorable melody and good production.
5. Which brings up melody. Often not needed or wanted. If you spend a day out of 5 crafting your melody, you may be wasting your time. They are going to use one of the “bed” alternates. That said, I personally find that anti to what I got into this biz for. BUT, I’ll often put the melody version as an alternate instead of the main theme.
6. It has to be what people want to use. That means style, genre, etc.. If you’re writing string quartets or french horn trio’s, you will probably not get a lot of uses. Forget the probably – you won’t.
7. Which brings up the subject of diversity. If you’re not diversified, you’re killing your chances before you start. If you’ve got 200 EDM tracks and nothing else, you’re competing against yourself. When I get a brief, I ALWAYS choose the pieces that I don’t have a lot of in my catalog. Even if I’m uncomfortable with the style and it means it will take me longer to pull off.
8. Unless (IMO) the genre demands pure electronics, it should have real musicians on it where real musicians are called for. Otherwise it’s cheap.
9. ULTIMATELY, all that matters is that you convince who is searching that it is amazing. Against all the other pieces on their computer screen – YOURS has to stand out. If you fail at that, your music is not amazing – it’s just clutter.
I could go on and on and on and on….. I often listen to soundclouds that people put up as their work. VERY RARELY do I ever hear stuff that I find compelling – or amazing. Yeah, it’s fairly pro – more or less – and will easily work, but it doesn’t inspire me to hear more and find out about the person who’s producing it. If you can’t get beyond that, you’re doomed to obscurity. Being able to write and produce on a “competent level” will not get you noticed.
Bottom line – to be able to write and deliver amazing and have a successful LONG term career :
– your music has to be musically better than 90% of what you hear on A level libraries.
– your music has to be produced, mixed, and mastered better than 90% of what you hear on libraries.
– your music has to be not ITB produced. Not all samples, not all plugins, not mixed ITB with no “real gear”, microphones, outboard, consoles, etc. attached to it.
– your “hustle” has to be 90% better than those you are competing against.
– you need diversity in your music, diversity in styles, diversity in types of placement and NUMBERS. Without that, you will not make it long term. If all you do is EDM, you might be killing it today. But what about 5 years from now when it becomes passé?
– most of all you need a $#!@ ton of luck. It was damn hard when I started. I can’t imagine starting now. The business is so *&^%$%^&*’ed up. I would not do it if I had to start in 2015 or later. I’d keep music for fun, and find a different way to make a living.
And BTW, as an aside, I consider “making a living” something akin to pushing towards 6 figures. Not an extra $1000-1500 a month. Often people are from different regions and even different countries where a thousand a month is the median income and totally livable on. That’s not what I’m talking about.
I don’t know why everyone keeps coming up with “1000 average or mediocre” songs to make a living. IMO, it’s 1000 + AMAZING pieces of music. You need numbers, you need diversity, and you need them in different places. That’s the key. With 200, your accuracy and focus has to be perfect. With 1000-2000 you can make mistakes like we all make. I’ve got a HUGE mistake with over 100 KILLIER tracks signed with A level PMA companies that are stopped dead due to internal politics and poor management. That was unavoidable on my part. I was stoked to place those and sure it would take me over the top. But no, if that was over 50% of my “200”, I’d be dead in the water right now and working at Starbucks.
This perspective, these numbers are what I see from many, many production music writers who have spanned decades. Not just myself.
If one can make a living off of 200, fantastic. But that would – from my experience and from those who went before me – be the exception, not the rule. If you “shoot” for 200, you’ll almost certainly come up short. I might make the bulk of my income from 2-300 tracks, but I had to write close to 2000 to get there.
— It must be stated — You will never know which tracks are going to “make it” until after they have. My dumbest tracks are some of my best earners. Figure that one out?
Quality is key, but if you are being honest, you know that not everything you write is exceptional. Numbers and diversity are your friends like any other investment opportunity. Many will fail, a few will succeed and hold up the failures if you are good enough.
I would not say writing for PMA libraries is the goal. I have many albums with top A level PMA libraries that I was paid great up front buyout money for that are embarrassingly (on their part) unworked. I have no idea why they commissioned me to do them if they didn’t need them or weren’t going to push them, but the cold harsh reality is, this game is a crapshoot, and there are no guarantee’s. I’ve had better success on back end with non-exclusive libraries, and WAY better front end sync’s with non-exclusives. Go figure.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the industry is in such a state of constant change that perpetuity deals are not something I want to take on now. If you’re basing your business model on “back end royalties” to make things work financially, you’d best have a look at what netflix, et al are doing to the composers who have their series, films, shows, etc. ported over to them.
Instead of being able to buy a nice used car like you could if they were aired on network primetime, you’ll be taking your family out to McDonalds with your entire quarterly payout for that show. It’s that bad – and it’s happing in alarming rates. HUGE household name companies are getting into bed with Netflix now.
I held publishing on a handful of songs that was placed on a large studio that had their own cable channel. For 3 quarters, I didn’t get any royalties off them and I was wondering what had happened. They had been a decent steady earner of between $500-800 a quarter for 10+ years. This quarters BMI showed the answer. They have been moved over to Netflix. They paid out less than $10.
From hundreds to $10. If you’re going for the backend model, I sincerely hope you can work on stuff that won’t be moved over to Netflix. EVER. Or your business model is going down faster than the titanic.