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P5 and ML tend to be the most consistent for me as well (although P5 has dropped a bit this month :/ ) PT is really hit or miss; some months my sales are GREAT, but some months I don’t get anything. I used to have a lot of luck with Revostock, but they’ve slowed down to just a trickle.
I’ve been a full time musician/audio engineer for about 6 months now. I work part time for an entertainment company doing voice over recording, editing and sound design, and the rest of my time is spent teaching private lessons, gigging, and composing. I only started writing production music about a year and a half ago, but I seem to be doing pretty well with it so far!
I also used Sony 7506’s for a long time, and just recently switched to a pair of Shure SRH840’s. Much more comfortable to wear, and they sound WAY less brittle. All of that gunk in the mids that the Sony’s conveniently leave out, I hear it now…
Someone on another message board posted this link, which looks pretty informative:
Antares Autotune doesn’t work correctly in Reaper, if that’s your thing..
I switched to Reaper a few years back when I got a new computer. I had been on Pro Tools 7, but I didn’t want to pay to upgrade to 10 so I decided to give Reaper a try. I’ve been really happy with it; it doesn’t do editing as well as PT, but its way better with midi. Its also the most customizable DAW I’ve ever used.
“Hey baby, you know that youtube video you were just watching? I wrote the music for that.”
Blammo. Gets the girls every time.
I think they key is safe and non-offensive music
Bingo! You probably won’t get famous writing safe music, but you’ll probably make some money.
My best selling tracks are definitely happy rock/pop. I know that someday the demand for U2/Coldplay-inspired tracks is going to drop, but its been a decade since that Coldplay sound hit big and more than 20 years since The Edge started doing that jangly thing on his guitar, and if that sound is still selling as well today is it really going to suddenly drop off in another 5 years?
That being said, my second best selling style is acoustic guitar solos/duos.
Most cues take me between 3-6 hours to complete. More if its a style I’m not too comfortable with, and less if its something more stripped down (my best-selling track so far took me less than an hour).
Were I doing this full-time, I could probably knock out 4 or 5 cues a week and still have time for edits, uploading, tagging, etc. THATS the stuff that eats up most of my time, all of the administrative stuff that goes along with the composing …
Like Art said, my edit’s do sell often enough on RF sites to warrant making them. I don’t go too crazy with them like “Lead and Drums Only”, “No Bass or Piano”, “Kazoo and Drums” etc, but I’ll do “No Leads” and “Drums and Bass”. Then (if applicable) I’ll make 30, 60, Stinger, and a loop or 2 from just the full mix.
One question I DO have, though:
Let’s say you have a 10 sec pad or something at the start of the track before the drums kick in. When making your “Drums and Bass” edit, do you bounce from the beginning of the track so that your edit begins with 10 sec of silence? Or do you just start from where the first instrument enters?
I’m a newb as well, approaching the 1 year mark now. My process has been almost exactly what you described (minus the TAXI membership) and it seems to be working thus far. Write write write, submit submit submit, all the while paying close attention to what works and what doesn’t work.
One thing I try to do, which I think will prove quite fruitful in years to come, is to forge as many relationships as I can with others in the industry (library owners/reps, media producers, other composers, etc.). I try to be prompt and polite in emails, and I’ve had informative and enjoyable phone conversations with some publishers/libraries.
Does anyone here besides me use T-Racks?
I find myself working on several cues at once. Little ideas will pop into my head at random times and I usually try to start writing/recording them as soon as possible. Sometimes this will result in my writing the entire cue in that one sitting, but often times, once I get the basic idea down, I won’t exactly know where to take it so it gets put in a “Cues to finish” folder. About once a week I’ll scan through the folder and listen to all of the cues I have started, and when one of them speaks to me I’ll put some more work into it.
I also end up doing basic mixing as I am tracking, so by the time the piece is fully written and recorded the mix is about 80% there.
This process results in about 1-3 cues a week, depending on how much time I have to write that week. I’ve only been library writing for a few months now, so I’m sure I do not have the most effective system in place yet…