[mscottweber]

Is anyone aware of a PMA-like conference in the midwest, specifically the Chicago area?

I’m in the Chicago area as well, I’d also love to know of any conferences in the midwest.

[mscottweber]

I’m certainly no industry expert, but it seems like films usually only use production libraries for music that is outside the wheelhouse of their composer.
IE, an action superhero movie probably wouldn’t license an epic orchestral track from a library (because that is what the film’s composer writes), but it might license the generic pop track that plays from a car’s stereo as a character steps out of it, etc.

[mscottweber]

This was my first time getting a check from BMI! I was not expecting it, since I’ve mostly focused on RF libraries since I started writing production music a few years ago. I never even check my BMI statements. One track got a bunch of plays on Fox Sports Monster Jams, and one track got placed on a TV show in Australia. Those, plus $0.11 from Spotify, put my total in the upper three figures. Much better than the zero dollars I was expecting.

I am curious though, is there a way to find out which libraries the placements came from? Could I request cue sheets?

[mscottweber]

If I can pay all of my bills on time I’m happy 🙂

[mscottweber]

I’ve had a Nektar Impact LX61 for going on a year now, and it’s more than suited my needs. I primarily write guitar-based music, so I don’t make extensive use of its features. The knobs and sliders have a decent feel to them (certainly not as solid as nice analog gear, but as good or better than any other midi controller I’ve spent time with), the mod wheel feels nice, and the action is just fine for me (I’m not much a keys player so I don’t really know what “nice” or “poor” action is).

[mscottweber]

I hadn’t actually heard the Marvin Gaye song until a few months ago (does this post show my age?), but when I did I DEFINITELY thought that it was being sampled in Blurred Lines. I did’nt study them back to back (I don’t even think I could hum the melody to Got To Give It Up if I had a gun to my head), but upon casually hearing the Marvin Gay tune for the first time it sounded more than similar to Blurred Lines.

[mscottweber]

It is pretty simple to create a basic site with a bio and music player on WordPress.com. The site/blog itself is free, and then to get a domain through them it costs about $18 a year. So for $1.50 a month, you can have your own simple website with your own custom domain. Hard to argue with that in terms of ROI.

I use Weebly for my personal site. It costs me about $75 a year and is very easy to use.

One of the bands I play in uses Squarespace. Its about $100 a year and even easier than Weebly to use (in my opinion).

[mscottweber]

I’ve got a mahogany tenor made by Gretsch. Picked it up for about $150 USD from The Ukulele Site a little over a year ago and its paid for itself MANY times over 🙂

As others have said, you really should mic it up if you want it to sound decent. I usually just use whatever mic I have up on a stand and close by, most often a Shure SM7B.

[mscottweber]

I’ve got 15 tracks with them, and they’ve been up for close to a year. I can’t look at previous month’s numbers to quote an exact figure, but I know I had a couple hundred plays across a few different stores and hotels, mostly in Europe. All of the plays took place during the month of June.

[mscottweber]

I mentioned this earlier in thread, but it might have gotten lost amidst all the glowing reviews so I’ll mention it again.

I had my first payout from them last month: 0.24 Euros!

Woo hoo 🙂

[mscottweber]

Thanks so much for the feedback!

@Rob – Using distortion/saturation on the strings is a great idea to thicken and brighten them up, and definitely NOT something I would have thought of. Thanks! Regarding the larger sense of space on the choir etc, do you mean a more careful use of reverb to help “place” them in the soundstage with everything else? Or do you simply mean MORE verb to make ’em bigger? Maybe those options are one and the same?

@Mark – That is positively a GOLDMINE of information, much more than I ever expected from this thread! Thanks! I hear you on the traditional orchestral vs modern hybrid thing. Apart from the braams, the rest of the synth stuff was thrown in as an afterthought. I’m glad that it’s good enough for TV though, ha ha!

[mscottweber]

First off, I want to appologize to Art and all for not posting this in the “Critique” forum. I was actually looking for that particular forum but I couldn’t find it at the time; I must have been blind because its clearly there…

@Sean: Thanks for listening, and for the kind words! I agree on the ostinato strings. I like how fragile they sound in the beginning of the middle section, but everywhere else they lack a certain amount of bite.

@bradymusico: Thanks for listening as well, and thanks for the tips on the mix! When you’ve worked on a track for a long time it gets hard to take a step back and hear it objectively. I’ll have to use those techniques, especially the sidechain compression, to clear up the low end for sure. And I agree on the string not being sparkly enough. I used Spitfire’s Albion, and while those strings are incredibly lush and beautiful, sparkly they most certainly aren’t. In the past I’ve always brought in too much of the noise floor inherent to the samples when I’ve tried to add brightness to them via EQ, but maybe brightening up the whole mix would work better? Maybe I need different strings for trailer use…

[mscottweber]

A few years ago, when I was on Pro Tools 7 LE and stuck with RTAS plugs only, I was using Massey Pluggin’s CT4 compressor a lot on the drum bus for exactly that use. It looks like he has since updated it to the CT5, but you can check it here:

http://www.masseyplugins.com/#plugins/ct4

Its not free, but it has an uninhibited demo.

Also, I’d imagine that you’ve got something within your Waves or MacDSP collections that would work as well.

[mscottweber]

I just received my first payment from them too!
0.24 EUR 🙂

[mscottweber]

In RF land it seems like uploading one track a day would be better than batch-uploading, since that would keep your profile more visible on the “New Tracks” section of the site. I started doing that about 6 months ago (write a bunch of tracks, then upload them one per day, then do it again when I’ve accumulated another bunch), but its hard to tell if its really had a positive effect on my sales. Does anyone else take this approach on Royalty Free sites?

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