I'm about to shift my focus to dedicate myself to this genre. It's something that I can hopefully eventually convert into a career change in time, but I recognise that this is not something that happens over night!

Has anyone got any useful advice and/or recommendations for anything related to this genre, be it tutorials, courses, production advice, networking advice, how to break into the industry etc?

Appreciate any help in advance!

 

That can be a very long road. Actually, everything is already taken. The competition is huge.

The quality standards are very high. You first have to have something to show for it. The best thing is to build a website. There you can publish some of your songs.There you can also add references later. On the website you should show your previous work.

Companies tend to go for musicians who have already proven themselves, like Hans Zimmer.
Of course, these musicians also die at some point and a gap is created. How young or old are you?

Your competitors:
The following is a list of notable people who compose or have composed soundtrack music for films (i.e. film scores), television, video games and radio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_score_composers

Become a film composer – tips for starting your dream job!
https://ronaldkah-de.translate.goog...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Source/German: https://ronaldkah.de/filmkomponist-werden/

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2022

There are many ways to do it. You just have to be able to write instrumental music, the faster the better. It can be simple or complex, having your own style is a plus although not a must. You can copy a lot of what is out there and just rearrange it differently.
Advanced mixing and technical knowledge is desired.
Tutorials are a waste of time, listening and applying to yourself is a faster way to gain knowledge.

 

Listen to a lot of film music :
Guy-Roger Duvert is a French film music composer, film director and author.
https://behindtheaudio.com/tag/guy-roger-duvert/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSC9B4tT_9B4J68FCR1aCEw

Infinities

 

That's not a good advice due the copyright law, to do this a permission required or using music from Public Domain

 

Pro composing is based on stealing shit.

 

Stealing is part of the trade!

Ballistic Ecks Vs Sever Soundtrack Track 5 "Time" Parrot

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2022

Ironically, making these tutorials/courses could be the way to go if you want to start a career on that. Streaming related music could also help, for example there are plenty of youtubers who hire people to make their intro/outros, trailers or background music. Independent animators/movie makers are also showing up more and more. Could be good starting points.

As for courses, i've watched a few and i'm not sure i would recomend them, mostly because they are 80% stuff that you probably already know if you have some general music production and music theory knowledge. I strongly advice you search some topic-specific books instead.

With the little practical experience i have on this matter i can't say much more, but here's a few things i think you could find useful:

-Get a nice setup that doesn't get in your way. In incidental music (sepcially if you're doing mockups) you'll want to have access to all the instruments/articulations you need without a lot of hassle which could mean, for example, more use of multis on kontakt instead of single articulation patches. Trust me on this one, it makes a huge difference creatively. You can go back to singles (if needed) once you have a clearer idea of what the result will sound like.

-Make templates. Specially if you're doing some orchestral stuff (which you're almost guaranteed to do sooner or later if you want to make a career out of this), they will save you a lot of time and again, get one more problem out of the way.

-If for some reason you can't load all the instruments you need at once, a popular approach is to do mockups on piano first. Initially because it has a super-wide register, dynamic range, and you don't have to tweak stuff to make it work, but it also works better than other wide-register intruments for some reason. Maybe it's not the best approach for all projects, but never underestimate the power of piano.

-Get a MIDI controller with 88 keys (if you don't have one already), you'll probably be using the whole damn thing and 61 keys will just get in the way. Assignable faders and knobs are always welcome too.

-Get comfy. Get a good chair, work in a clean space with good temperature, watch your posture, put the phone away, etc. You'll want to focus on what you're doing the soundtrack for, not how much your back hurts or how hot/cold it is today.

Hope any of that helps, and bests of lucks. I really enjoy this type of music and it's really nice to see more people going into it.

 

Big difference with creating music for yourself and working for film & games, is that you’ll be working under assignment,
where your customers aren’t always very knowledgable or musical.

It’s daily routine that after working for hours on a piece, your customer will reply with: ‘No, that’s not it.
It should be more.. or less.. or.. you name it. Then it’s up to you to change your composition, or start from scratch.
Until the customer is satisfied. It can also be very stressful, often you’ll be working against tight deadlines.

As a musician for film & games you gotta be able working in that reality.

 

In that particular business connections matter more than pure talent.

People are lazy, especially in broadcasts and film and will just usually ask around for recommendations than go out of their way to look for 'new' talent. The most common 'in' is submission or recognition from a showcased project or film festival. Look at all the shit casting and shit directing especially as of late. Same faces, same direction, same shit and TBH everyone is OK with it because it makes enough money and dealing with the devil you know is better than opening up a can of WTF when it comes to deadlines and overruns.

TLDR version.

Find someone making films or make a film yourself that can get some attention and do the soundtrack, it might give you a chance. The UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe are more accessible for emerging talent than other markets especially if you are a product of one of their art schools, but not always necessarily. Just like dealing drugs, you need a CONNECT.

 

I too am thinking about it. I have found some insight watching TAXI you tube videos. They have suggestions about what characteristics make music with greater placement potential.

 

Last edited: Mar 23, 2022

grab some movie trailers online and try to score them,
grab some pc gameplay videos online and try to score them,
learn your tools efficiently,
game audio is quite different than film sound, on top of that there's TV, dubbing etc...

I recommend checking what you like (games, movies etc..), find who made music/audio in those, some of them have online videos you can learn from, as an example, Celldweller is one worth checking (if you're into that specific genre), he has tutorials, but also playlist of his work/portfolio so you get an idea on what he does: https://www.youtube.com/user/celldweller

ps: I love games and movies music and ambience, so there's definitely lot to explore if you're just starting out in that genre

 

Some answers here are completely ridiculous but thats normal I guess, anyway...
I work on 3 games right now and I have made music and soundfx for 15 games in the past. Everybody wants to be a game/movie composer now that you cannot make money from songs. Most people fail, cause they just want to make music. They don't love games or films etc. Yeah you play a game or watch a movie here and there but that's not love. So if you are not a gamer, dont know anything about game dev in general, dont have a passion to make your own games, maybe its not the place for you. Most devs ask me to make something similar to the x game. And if you dont know the x game you are fucked. Of course you can open youtube and watch some gameplay, but this is not the same, as being a fan of a game, played the game and know exactly what this game is about. The same goes for movies.

There are thousands of game composers out there, who work for free just to put their name on a shitty mobile game that a 12y.o made. Again the same goes for a shitty short movie that a film student made. In one of the games that I work now, we made a template email to reply to all the game composers who send us mails asking to work on the game. The guys just made a generic reply so they dont lose time answering to all the game composers. Thats what is going on in our field.

So my experience is this. If you can support yourself financially for at least 5 years, you are passionate about game developing or film making then you can try. You also must mix and master at a very good level. Learn how to implement music and sound fx on various game engines and middleware. Be able to make at least on track per day, on various genres.

So yeah you need many skills here. Technical, people skills, handling money, decision making and luck.

On the plus side you can do this job with a laptop, and a 25 key midi keyboard. You also dont have to be hans zimmer.
Do something you are passionate about. The money will follow.

 

This isn't a best or even a good advice...
the best solutions are Hypersonic, Edirol Orchestral and TTS-1,
they have 16 channels each, and all the orchestra instruments on the board, also they are very light on HDD and CPU,
then again, using one of them or altogether all the listed, you'll hear the sound of orchestra (if that's your goal)
not the single piano...

 

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Very true.
As in almost every other (selfemployed) business heavy networking is a must.
Ones music may be incredibly good, but the problem is getting the word out and meeting the right people who can help.

p.s.: If you do not live in an area where you can directly connect with film producers, it might be good to approach people who make, for example, industrial films. In this business, at least in my area, you can still earn good money and the filmmaker usually also has a budget for suitable music instead of this horrible ready-made music from the Internet.

 

Last edited: Mar 26, 2022

Not for game but for film, tv and media; I can suggest that website/group:
https://perspectiveforum.net

By that site, you're gonna feel like you're on the same table with many famous composers from the business. You also need to be on the same table with directors and producers. That's up to you but don't hurry up. I underline the 5 years period mentioned earlier. It will take time to get a decent job and money.

 

That's the point, if you can't (or just don't want to) load the whole set of instruments for some reason (even lighter stuff), piano is a good choice. Not the only one, sure, but it's mostly everywhere and an instument like that could be helpful if you don't know where to start or which instrument will do what.