VOLUME XXXI NUMBER TWO SUMMER 2016
C O M M U N A L W I S D O M
Scoring The Next Gig By Jeremy Borum
T
he ultimate question, “How do I find work?” is one that can baffle even the most successful artists. Any industry relating to the arts is whimsical. Styles change, tastes change, the personalities of the creators and consumers change, and the arts themselves change. It can be very difficult to pinpoint a need and position yourself to fill that need. Even if you’re able to do that, it can still be difficult to monetize what you have done. The methods of finding work are constantly changing, and the type of music that sells is changing even faster. At least half of our job as composers is simply finding work, and finding the work can be harder than doing it. No matter how long your music career lasts, the difficulty of finding work will persist throughout for all but a lucky few. Yoav Goren sums it up nicely when he says “It’s an art-based career. There are no guarantees in any culture in the world that art is going to be sustainable and provide you a good living.” Resumés, job applications, certifications, degrees, job interviews, and depth of experience don’t guarantee work for musicians the way they do in other industries. Instead of a corporate ladder, musicians have a huge rock face to climb. It’s difficult. You can move in any direction at any time, but you can also fall from great heights very quickly. Very few have the fortune to find a niche in the rock face that lets them climb to the top quickly and with ease. The uncertainties are very real. Craig Stuart Garfinkle says, “I don’t think anybody who is just starting realizes just how hard it is to be a professional musician, how much you need to put yourself out there.” A huge part of the task is just a numbers game, and you have to knock on new doors constantly. More to the point, Jack Wall points out that, “You
never know where your next job is coming from. You just never know.” Individual stories about how one person found one job rarely can be applied to other people’s careers, but the solution isn’t relentless, undirected hustling. After collecting enough stories some communal wisdom begins to develop, and these are some of the insights which came to light after the 25 hours of interviews I did for my book Guerrilla Film Scoring. There are few musicians who specialize in one specific thing for their whole careers. If you want to stay gainfully employed, you probably need to be a Swiss army knife of musical skills. That way, when one doesn’t keep you busy the other can. As your career develops you may be able to specialize more, but in the beginning you need to exploit your skills in every way possible. Being multitalented is the musician’s equivalent of padding a resumé. Even if a project does not require your whole package of services, your expertise will usually be appreciated and you should be able to charge more as a result. Ryan Shore is a big believer in the need for diversity. “In years past, composers were often thought of predominantly as a television composer, or a film composer, or a game composer, or a composer for advertising, and those composers were often not thought of for the other mediums. Fortunately, some very talented composers have been working to break down those barriers by working actively in different mediums. Being diverse can open doors for opportunities,” he says. There is a very well-known Catch-22 in the music industry: You will never be hired to do something until you have already done it successfully. If you want to score a network TV show, you need to be able to point to other network experience or else that door will not be open to you. If you want to write an Continued on Page 16
At least half of our job as composers is simply finding work, and finding the work can be harder than doing it.
C O N T E N T S
Putting More Money In Writers’ Pockets 5 Tech Talk: Pro Tools Update 7 Lyle Workman: Finding Your Path 12 Musical Shares 23