THE PROFESSIONAL COMPOSER’S GUIDE B U S I N E S S A N D C R E AT I V I T Y
By Paul Thomson
THE PROFESSIONAL COMPOSER’S GUIDE BUSINESS AND CREATIVITY
By Paul Thomson
This edition is published by Spitfire Audio Books in 2022. Copyright © Paul Thomson, 2022 The right of Paul Thomson to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover or form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Spitfire Audio Books, an imprint of Spitfire Audio Holdings Limited, website: www.spitfireaudio.com While the author has made every effort to provide accurate internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites nor their content. A catalogue record for this title is available on request from the British Library ISBN (eBook): 978-1-3999-1884-8 Unless otherwise indicated, all illustrations and photos in this book are the property of the author. Front cover and author photos by Lee Kirby. This book refers to many companies’ products throughout. All trademarks, service marks and company names are the property of their respective owners. Cover design by Aspa Founti Typeset by Pete Barnsley
To my wonderful wife Hannah and children Caitlin, Tallulah, Tabitha and Beatrix, for their encouragement, love and endless patience over the years with me filling various rooms in the house with noisy metal boxes in racks.
CONTENTS Acknowledgements.............................................................................. 1 About the author................................................................................... 3 Introduction............................................................................................. 5 PART A: BUSINESS
Chapter 1: An overview of the opportunities available............... 11 Chapter 2: Equipment and delivery formats – a brief guide........ 25 Chapter 3: Organisation...................................................................... 53 Chapter 4: Budgeting........................................................................... 65 Chapter 5: Showreels and marketing.............................................. 87 Chapter 6: Demos and presentation................................................ 95 Chapter 7: From demo to master recording.................................. 101 Chapter 8: Registrations and royalties............................................ 117 PART B: CREATIVITY
Chapter 9: Creativity in composition................................................ 127 Chapter 10: Creativity in recording................................................... 157 Chapter 11: Creativity in mixing.......................................................... 173 Chapter 12: Make the most of what you’ve got............................. 185 Chapter 13: Understanding your client............................................ 191
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Chapter 14: Self-starting projects...................................................... 197 Chapter 15: Down time and how to use it effectively.................. 207 Conclusion.............................................................................................. 215 Appendix A: Musicians’ Unions......................................................... 217 Appendix B: Useful contacts, UK...................................................... 219 Appendix C: Useful contacts, USA................................................... 221 Appendix D: Royalty Collection Agencies, worldwide................ 223 Appendix E: Recommended further reading................................. 227 Appendix F: Spitfire Audio.................................................................. 231 Appendix G: Trade mark acknowledgements............................... 235
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book was started in 2006, and then promptly shelved. It managed to survive being copied from one laptop to the next over many years until finally in 2021 a global pandemic helped it to emerge blinking into the light. There are a few people without whom it certainly wouldn’t have made it. Christian Henson, my dear friend and partner in sampling, whose endless encouragement to step out of my comfort zone, and whose enthusiasm for music and life never wavers. Farren Blackburn, my oldest and closest friend with whom I’ve shared highs and lows, success and failure, and who has always been an encouragement and an inspiration. My friends and colleagues at Spitfire Audio Holdings Limited (‘Spitfire Audio’), in particular Will Evans and Mike Warriner, who saw early unfinished versions and didn’t tell me to immediately delete it and get on with writing some more music. My editor Lucy Warriner, whose corrections and suggestions to the text have vastly improved it by some strange alchemy that I don’t really understand but am very grateful for. The design gurus Pro Constantinou and Aspa Founti, plus my typesetter Pete Barnsley who have wrestled with my complete lack of any visual artistic sense and made it look beautiful. Grace Colebeck-Smith and Charlotte Ratcliffe for their efficient and calm organisational skills that got me across the finish line without having a nervous breakdown. James Bellamy who despite being one of the finest music editors in the industry, also has a Neo-like ability to conjure up webby things and write code Acknowledgements | 1
that is incomprehensible to me. Ben Moore and Ben DeVille whose ability to spot impending doom before it arrives have helped the birth of this project to be painless and calm. I’d like to thank my contributors – not only for the huge honour for me that they have shared their insights into the world of composition and scoring, but also for being my inspiration for my career in composition. One of the greatest joys of Spitfire Audio is that I’ve been able to meet and work with some of the great composers of our time, who have been heroes of mine since I was young and fresh out of the gate. So huge thanks to David Arnold, Gary Barlow, Kris Bowers, Charlie Clouser, Chris Cozens, Anne Dudley, Simon Franglen, Harry Gregson-Williams, Christian Henson, Trevor Morris, John Powell, Simon Rhodes, Hilary Skewes and Ty Unwin. Also, my deep thanks and gratitude to the one and only Hans Zimmer – for his inspiration over the years, his kind encouragement to me, for bringing Christian and me into his unique and crazy sound mangling universe, and for being a living example of hard work and dedication leading to artistic success. The thing that always makes me do that extra final polish and tweak pass on one of my Spitfire Audio demos is the vague fear that Hans might listen to it! Finally, I’d like to thank the Spitfire Audio community. I’ve met some truly lovely people over the years at various events, NAMM, concerts and talks. I think we are building a community of composers that support each other and share knowledge and insight, and that is a wonderful thing. Long may it continue. Paul Thomson February 2022
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Paul Thomson is an award-winning composer who has written for film, television and games. He started his musical training at an early age, touring the world as a cathedral chorister. Paul has produced albums for a number of artists, and his interest in sound led to him designing bespoke orchestral sounds for films including Avatar and Dunkirk. He co-founded the British technology company Spitfire Audio. Spitfire Audio originally provided exclusive composing tools for A list film composers and has now grown to being the market leader in soundware with a global community. His mission with Spitfire Audio is to inspire a generation of composers.
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INTRODUCTION I am a professional composer. Since 1994, I’ve been working as a composer for hire, writing music for all types of audio-visual projects, in addition to creating music designed to stand alone. I’ve scored everything from feature films to reality TV, from video games to luxury car launches. I’ve produced full length album projects and written music for boy bands to come on stage to. I started my musical life as a child chorister in a cathedral choir under the tutelage of the legendary choral director Dr Donald Hunt, singing everything from Monteverdi to Messiaen. When I was studying music back in the early 1990s there was no public internet – unless you count JANET (the Joint Academic NETwork) which was, if my recall doesn’t fail me, a way to borrow a book from another university library – and very few books about film or television scoring. Just a handful of slightly dry and very academic textbooks. I used to find the odd article about a film composer in magazines like Audio Media, and I would duly tear it out, file it in my ring binder, and pore over the pictures trying to work out what gear they had and how they were working. I would have loved a no-nonsense book that explained in a concise and clear style how to go about the business of being a professional composer. So, in 2006 I sat down to write it. I got as far as a general plan and outline of the contents – and then life and composing intervened. Over the last year I returned to this project and started to write. I imagined writing this for my younger self of 30 years ago. Included in the book are references and links Introduction | 5
to YouTube videos on my channel in which I expand on some of the material in more detail. I have also included some photos to illustrate some of the different pieces of equipment discussed in the text. Interleaved through the book are thoughts and tips from some composer friends and also some advice from the recording engineer and orchestral contractor perspective. Everyone has their own slightly different take on many things and so I feel these takes from those at the frontline are incredibly valuable additions to the main text. At various points in the book, I talk about costs. I have deliberately used both pounds sterling and US dollars to help readers on both sides of the Atlantic. These costs are provided as a rough guide from my own experience working on jobs in the UK and USA, but they should get you in the right ballpark. This book is for anyone who is interested in becoming a professional composer, or anyone who is interested in refining or increasing their technical and creative prowess when writing their own music. It is split into two sections, the first half deals with elements of the business side, from equipment and budgeting to demos and marketing. The second deals with creativity and strategies to develop your craft, by which I mean the physical process of the music realisation, with many ideas on how you can improve your creative skills in all the areas we need when composing and producing our own music. Music brings such joy to life – and the act of creativity has many benefits. We know that participating in music making increases children’s sense of empathy, academic skills and ability to work successfully in a team, among many other positive outcomes. Composing can enrich your life in many ways. At Spitfire Audio Holdings Limited (‘Spitfire Audio’) our mission is to inspire a generation of composers, and I hope that this book is helpful towards that goal. 6 | THE PROFESSIONAL COMPOSER’S GUIDE
Spitfire Audio was founded in 2007 by myself and my dear friend and fellow composer Christian Henson. It grew from our shared dissatisfaction with the musical tools we had at hand to do our jobs as media composers, alongside our fascination with making sounds and experimenting with audio. We first created a ‘bespoke’ library of Chamber Strings samples, what we would now call a ‘virtual instrument’, that allowed you to reproduce the sound of a smaller string band in the hallowed acoustic of the Hall at Air Lyndhurst Studios in London, which has hosted the recording of many blockbuster film scores, by Hans Zimmer among many A list film composers. Having gathered a small but intrepid band of film composers together to license the library, giving us the funds to complete the project, we were quickly encouraged by them to do a symphonic Introduction | 7
CHAPTER 9:
CREATIVITY IN COMPOSITION INTERPRETATION OF THE BRIEF
This is the crucial nutshell of the whole enterprise. How you interpret the client brief may result in the difference between success and failure. You should be trying to guide your client to brief in as abstract terms as possible – and as far from music as possible (although this may of course be difficult, especially if your client is in love with a piece of temp score – the music that they are using to edit to).
As a composer, bringing the director into the score as a collaborator is the single most important skill to learn. There will be something that musically turns your director on. It might be bass, it might be ethnic colours, it might be a big string line. Look for that key element, it can unlock the score. – SIMON FRANGLEN
You need to develop the skillset of being able to see inside the brief and getting to the essence of what you need to communicate as the composer. You have the ability to mainline emotion into the brains of the viewers, which can be an exceptionally powerful position to be in. So, you need to ensure you are communicating the correct message, or you can send things off in a very different direction to the one the director intends!
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‘Paul has written a book SO complete, that were I starting out in this business, I would immediately choose another profession for fear I could never possibly learn all this stuff!’ John Powell, Composer, How to Train Your Dragon, Bourne, Solo: A Star Wars Story and A Prussian Requiem
MUSIC BRINGS SUCH JOY TO LIFE. The Professional Composer’s Guide looks at both the business and creativity of making music. This engaging and informative book is split into two sections, the first half explores elements of the business whilst the second covers creativity including strategies to develop the craft of composing and producing music. Written by renowned composer Paul Thomson, this comprehensive book is for anyone who is interested in becoming a professional composer, or anyone who would like to refine or develop their technical and creative skills when writing music.
Paul Thomson is an award-winning composer who has written for film, television and games. He cofounded the British technology company Spitfire Audio. Spitfire Audio originally provided exclusive composing tools for A list film composers and has now grown to being the market leader in soundware with a global community. His mission with Spitfire Audio is to inspire a generation of composers.
www.spitfireaudio.com