Today, I’m starting a series of talks called Essential Skills of a Modern Day Film Composer. I believe there are some things that every composer who is working today possesses that are simply necessary to achieving huge success in this gig. Can you get there without them? Absolutely. But I think it will take you longer. Without some of these, the journey will be a little rougher and certainly a lot more challenging.

Let’s start with the assumption that you are writing on a deadline.

Writing on a Deadline

If you are a working media composer, you already love to write music. If you don’t, you are in the wrong business. Most of us who are in this gig find ourselves needing to write a certain amount of minutes a day when we are on a deadline. The formula is simple: Divide the number of total minutes of music in the project by the number of days you’ve been given to get it done. What’s left is the number of minutes per day that you need to write to finish on time.

Here’s the equation, broken down:

No. of total project minutes of music

÷      No. of days left to write

=      No. of minutes per day needed to finish on time

We have all these little things we tell ourselves. We need to be “in the zone.” We can only write at a “certain time of day.” We have to be in the “right location to be creative.” And yet, if we’re looking to be professional media composers, then we have to look past the “zones”, “time of day”, and “location” BS and just get the music done. At the moment, I’m a little overloaded with projects, but I’m completely into all of them and I can’t put any of them down, so the best way around them is through them. Those three minutes a day for me are crucial. If I don’t complete my three minutes, one (or all) of those projects will suffer and I’m a dead man.

Here’s how I get (at least) three minutes a day of finished music written.

My Writing Ecology

Preparation

Even when I’m not on a deadline, I write three minutes of music per day. Period. I don’t miss it. Why? Because if I don’t get used to doing it, my chops will be soft when I really need to do it. I don’t sit on my ass on days that I don’t have a deadline and let my composing muscles atrophy. I do it everyday, no matter what is going on. I never miss. I never compromise and say, “Well, I did a lot of other stuff today. I’ll write tomorrow.” That won’t work. I write three minutes a day, every day, no excuses. Even if what I write sounds like dog crap, I still do it. It has become a discipline, a practice. The more I practice, the better I get at doing it. Some days I write about “cold medicine” or “Asian pears” or my hot girlfriend or the car I’d like to buy… Obviously, I have no project deadline looming. Even so, I still write three minutes that I get used to doing it and stay used to doing it. It’s preparation…  for when I actually need to write 3 minutes a day.

Environment

The biggest thing that I have in my corner that allows me to write three minutes a day is how I view my environment. I don’t need a certain time of day to come along before I am able to write music. The whole “I can only write at night” or “I can only write in the mornings” thing is an excuse you just need to get over. Sorry. When you land a big project, the studio is not going to give a rat’s ass that you compose better at night than you do in the mornings. If the music isn’t done when it should be and if it isn’t amazing like it must be, you’re screwed.

I also don’t need my studio to write three minutes of music per day. I can do it anywhere. I have a mobile rig that consists of my Macbook Pro, a MOTU Traveller, a pair of Dr. Dre Beats Studio headphones, and a handful of my favorite workhorse microphones. More on this in a second…

My Writing Tools

Here are the tools that help me the most in writing three minutes of finished music per day:

Sibelius

I keep Sibelius turned on 24 hours a day. It’s on my Macbook Pro as well as my Mac Pro studio machines, and it is set-up under System Preferences/Accounts/Log-in Items as one of my automatic launches upon starting or restarting any one of those devices. I am constantly sketching ideas. Always. Several times a day I’ll open up my laptop and sketch out an idea in Sibelius. On the spot. In the car. On the side of the road. At a Starbucks. Wherever I can open my laptop. I wrote and orchestrated all 118 minutes of music for Jabang Tetuko with ONLY Sibelius and my laptop. I did it outside in the sunshine on my lanai in Los Angeles, on international flights between America and various countries around the world, and in about 20 different hotel rooms and hotel pool areas in between. You don’t need a studio. Your studio is between your ears. (More on that in a second, too!)

iPhone/iPad

Don’t have the means to sketch on the run? Use your iPhone or iPad to write. While there aren’t very many apps available (yet!) that will enable you to out-and-out write on your iPad/iPhone, the Voice Memo feature in iOS 4 is awesome for recording ideas while you are standing in the line at the bank. You can also use Evernote, and use the built-in audio post feature. No matter which method you prefer, you’d record in what you are thinking and then later in the day, once you are back at laptop, you can sketch it out in Sibelius or produce it outright on your DAW, either way.

You might also want to check out Scorch from Avid, which is a product that uses the Sibelius engine for reading and will help you review or rehearse your scores all on the iPad. Scorch won’t allow you to actually write music with it, but the app is perfect for a team situation where reviewing changes, making notes, and catching errors is key. It saves you a lot of time.

Macbook Pro (laptop)

On the Macbook Pro, I keep Logic, ProTools, and Sibelius always up-to-date and ready to go. I also carry four Western Digital Passport Studio Drives that have all of my sample libraries on them. WD Passport Studios have a small footprint, lots of storage, are hearty little drives that you can throw around, and they don’t fail on you when you need them most. I use Beats by Dre Studio headphones for my portable rig, too. I know, I know. Headphones aren’t great for mixing… but I hire a professional mixer to mix all of my final stems, so I don’t care about using headphones to mix with at this stage in the process. All of that to say, the Beats by Dre Studio headphones are the best ones I’ve ever used. I’ve tried everything from Bose to AKG to you-name-it. These are the best, bar none. All of this fits into a beautifully functional STM Messenger Bag that houses everything like it was tailor-made for it. I can take this rig anywhere, plug it into a single outlet, and produce what I’ve sketched in Sibelius with zero headaches.

My Writing Schedule

It might take you twice or three times as long to write music this way. Your mileage will vary, and so will your method. That’s great. Do whatever you need to do to develop this habit. It’s actually less about how much music you write in a day and more about how that music sounds, and moreover, whether you can do it when asked.

Regardless of the variables, you’ll need to cut out some things in your life to allow yourself a bigger chunk of time to compose. I do a lot of stuff in a day. That’s just how I’ve always been. My friends tell me I’m wired differently. I dunno. All I know is that I don’t screw around. In my mind, I’m clear about what I want out of my life and I have a very crystal clear plan about how I will get to the end of that life having done everything I wanted to do. Right now, I want to write great music… and lots of it!

Here’s how I carve out time to do just that:

Avoid Television

It’s too much of a time-suck. If I do watch anything, it’s always DVR’d so that I can watch it on my terms, not the network’s. Even still, I might watch 30 minutes of TV per week, tops. Maybe. The only exception to this is when I’m scoring a TV show. I always DVR each episode to make sure my product is up to my standards.

Use Automation When Sensible

You may not like learning this about me, but I automate 80% of my interactive social networking activity using Hootsuite. I have to. Online Social in my life is such a runaway monster that if I do not automate certain tasks, I would never write a note. With 40k regular readers at SCOREcast, 3,200 combined Facebook followers, close to 400 Twitter followers, and over 350 people in The Conversation community, I HAVE to manage my social media stuff very carefully, or it would be a full-time job just by itself. Does automating mean that I’m a robot that just mechanically outputs my social interactions? Of course not. But it does mean that you’ll get me when I want you to get me. Without automation, I’d be forced to close my Facebook and Twitter accounts in favor of becoming a digital hermit. It would be impossible to support any level of involvement with everything I have going on that is career-centric and crucial to my livelihood.

Always Be Multitasking

When I’m in the line at the DMV, I’m writing. When I’m at the grocery store in the check-out, I’m writing. I’m never just standing in a place without working on music simultaneously. Of course, I’m not writing music 24/7, but I would say that out of an 18-hour day I’m writing at least during a good 14 hours of it. The only way to get that done and not go insane is to become a multitasking wizard.

Don’t “Over-Think”

I have a friend who lives in his thoughts. He’s a thinker. Which would be fine if he ever allowed his analysis to conclude, but he rarely does. I’ve heard that called “analysis paralysis”, and that’s the perfect phrase for it, because that exactly what it is. I don’t take too much time to process information once I receive it. I take it in, think on it for 10 seconds to make sure I understand everything I need to about it, and then I make my decision. I rarely have those moments where I catch myself standing still, looking silently off into the distance. I used to do that all the time, like my brain was catching up with the speed of my day or something. It might take some conscious effort to become aware of when you are daydreaming, staring out the window, or allowing your mind to wander down some tangential road. Once you do become aware of it, though, you’ll shock yourself when you discover how much time you waste with non-action every day. Quit that. Don’t think about it. Either do it or don’t, but make a decision.

Replace Meetings with Calls

If I can help it, I don’t do a lot of meetings. I’ve always felt like meetings are the Kryptonite to productivity. If I have to do a meeting, I try to keep it VERY brief. When someone wants a meeting, by definition, it means that they want to monopolize my time and that doesn’t work for me. I am more than capable of handling someone’s problem while focusing on other things at the same time (see above), so for someone to require a one-on-one face-to-face meeting is unnecessary and often a waste of good writing time. Usually, meeting requests come from people who you would think really need them to happen… Like your agent or a client. The truth is those people really do not need a meeting to happen as badly as they just need to talk to you about pertinent issues. Fact is, the majority of what they would need a meeting for can be solved in ten minutes (at the most!) over the phone. Since most creative work needs to be one in solitude anyway, what we are really talking about is “communication.” Communication can always be handled without a face-to-face. I think of meetings like I think of my insurance agent: We don’t really need to see each other unless there is some kind of “life-changing” event taking place—a marriage, a death, a kid who’s flying the coup, or a kid who’s entering the world. In my music endeavors, that translates to me hiring, firing, or celebrating a big victory. Otherwise, I keep it electronic or voice-to-voice.

Record Everything

If you and I have ever hung out, chances are I pulled out a video camera and drove you apeshit with it. Most people hate it when I do that, but I document everything because I’ve learned that inspiration strikes at the weirdest times. When I’m at my piano, my DAW is always in record mode. I don’t throw any ideas away. I record everything. I go back through oodles and oodles of recorded material later to develop all the good bits into actual pieces of music at a later date. In fact, that’s how I’m writing my symphony project that I’m working on this year. It started with the seed of an idea that I had in 1997, believe it or not. Good thing I recorded myself being stupid at the piano back then, or that melodic sprout would have been long choked out by now.

As an alternative to this method (and as I mentioned before), I use the iPhone Voice Memo function probably twenty times a day to record ideas. I also use the audio memo function on Evernote quite often to store ideas. Sometimes, I’ll video myself talking through a cool melody line or a chord progression that I think of on my Macbook Pro if I feel like it’s going to be too complicated to explain to myself later by just using audio. Are you sensing a theme here? I record audio or video when I can, as often as I can, because it helps me remind myself later what I as thinking at the time of inception. Writing things down on a piece of paper is great, if you can remember what the hell you were trying to say!. How many times has that happened? Too many to count! I used to lose good ideas every day until I started “recording it down” instead of “jotting it down”. I also take a lot of pictures. That doesn’t relate heavily to writing music, except to say that I simply document as much input from the world as I can so that I don’t have to rely on my memory to refresh me of important details later on.

Know What You’re Doing

This is probably the most important thing I can tell you about all this. It’s also the most controversial thing I’ll tell you about all this. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I would consider myself an “accomplished musician”. I’m a studied composer. I’m a trained melodist. I have worked all my life—since the age of five—in order to arrive at the musical places I do now, decades later. I have internal relative pitch and a near perfect internal clock. I was not simply blessed with those skills—they came from hard work, study, and years of repetition. If I had to go back to the starting gate, it would take decades to reach this evolved development of my skill set. That is why you need to know how to write, as much as you need to know what to write. If you don’t know why what you are doing works, you are going to be in for a long career of what I call “Defensive Artistry.” Defensive Artistry happens when you are creating art that sounds or looks great, but you don’t know why what you are doing is working. The mechanics of it are a mystery to you, because you have never learned the fundamentals of your craft. Is it okay to be a musician who doesn’t know how to read music? Absolutely! In fact, there are many A-list composers or Grammy-winning singer-songwriters who couldn’t read a note. Plenty. But the ones who do know how to read are better writers than the ones who don’t. I know that is a controversial statement, and one that I’d be happy to take up with you in conversation, but it is true. All you have to do is A/B their music side by side. Game over.

One of my mentors once told me, “Knowledge is only academic until it is combined with experience—then it becomes shorthand.” My god, that is so true! Knowledge of why what you are doing works is crucial in the speed and timeliness of pulling off a phenomenal film score. If you are composing defensively, then you are struggling against forces that a schooled composer simply doesn’t have to worry about and hasn’t for years. That puts you significantly behind the eight-ball in many ways. Be educated about the fundamentals of music before you undertake this gig. Or, at the very least, study while you are working. Take theory classes if you are an untrained musician. Our society has downplayed the importance of education to some degree over the last ten years. Don’t fall into that trap. Education is the Great Time Saver.

In Conclusion

Writing three minutes a day, or any minutes a day for that matter, is tough. This is not something that I just started doing one day. It took me years to get to this point. I worked my ass off to develop some of these tools in my career.

Here’s something else: I’ve written a lot of shitty music! Complete crap that was totally unusable. That’s okay. I still wrote the three minutes. That part can never change. I have to hit that goal everyday for myself. It’s an internal challenge. The only days I have not been able to do it have been the two or three days over the last decade that I have been can’t-get-out-of-bed sick. Otherwise, I got there.

So go for it. Write three minutes of completely unusable rubbish! I give you permission. There just went all your excuses.

What can I do to help you do this?

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