How Long Does It Take To Become A Successful Composer???

[Music] [Music] [Music] i don't know if you could see this beautiful purple kind of haze on crow hill and that's actually called fireweed it's not indigenous to these aisles comes from canada apparently and it's the stuff that grows after you get forest fires anyway a little bit of botanical trivia there sorry it's been a while i've been tarting myself around the internet paul and i did a origins kind of podcast for uh score more was it more score and jake and i have recently done a mixing master class which a lot of people have found very useful and finally i did a master class or rather a kind of a an introduction to cinematic programming if it's something you do there may be some new tricks there or some new things to think about but if it's something you fear hopefully that masterclass will overcome that that's on the spitfire channel everything is linked in the video description down below right i've been thinking about this question long and hard and the question is how long does it take before you can expect to be a successful composer i guess we have to discuss what i define as success and that would be an ability to support yourself and a family solely from your work as a composer one of the reasons i set up this vlog was because i wasn't fighting tooth nail for a career as a composer i felt i could be brutally honest about our profession and talk about things that people don't usually talk about things like how much i get paid how to deal with narcissists ghostwriting that kind of stuff but what i never wanted to do was to be one of those old salty sea dogs oh it's not like the old days yeah royalties so i've had to really think long and hard about this question the answer is ten years by the way i've had two moments where i've had to tread softly uh one a gentleman the same age as me and i'm 49 suggested that he had now kind of felt that he'd nailed his composing chops and now wanted to go out there start working as a composer and also recently we advertised for a running position up here in edinburgh and i alluded to the fact that it would suit a young enthusiastic person and i got accused of ageism the reason why starting out in this industry suits younger people as a generalization is because you have to sacrifice a lot and it is very difficult to sacrifice further down the line at a point in life where you tend to have more responsibilities and i would question someone who was at my age 49 totally free of responsibilities there are exceptions i know someone who did very well in the city and just decided to give it up and use the fortune that he had amassed there to really work very very hard at building up what is now a very successful career as a composer i also know someone in their 30s who decided to give up his job in banking and his wife kindly supported him through that process the problem with this misconception is largely because of the title film tv games or indeed just general media composer it implies like with tomato ketchup that the biggest single ingredient in that condiment well you'd hope it would be tomatoes not so with the ingredients of being a media composer it's not just one job it's three but in the component that is composition there are some specific nuances that are best learned through experience not through academic study or indeed just practicing in your room namely okay so you are going to do a bit of composition but you will also have to write to picture i've never found this particularly difficult but it is a skill subset that you require the ability to work to brief is for many one of the hardest things to crack the willingness to abandon your own artistic sensibilities in order to tell someone else's story an ability to work very quickly and a willingness to revise and recut your work depending on the whims of focus groups producers executives and the ever-changing cut of the show that you're working on and i would say with this aspect of job number one you have to do as a media composer the 10 000 hour rule probably applies which you could say for most people not working crazy hours takes about six years i reckon probably if you work crazy hours make those sacrifices i mentioned you'll probably nail the craft of being a media composer in about four years but that's just one of the three jobs there's this kind of misconception that once you've nailed your composing chops there's this open marketplace that our industry is democratized of course it isn't there is a slightly more equal opportunity based on the cheapness of technology and the fact that internet allows us to connect with people in ways that was much more difficult in the past but a hierarchy will always form what basically this so-called democratization means for producer is they have a broader and more diverse pick of the crop the second job is hod as i've mentioned before which stands for head of department and within that job you have to be a responsible member of the crew you're no longer the lead singer in your band you're kind of the conga player at the back of the stage there's just the simple technical aspects of putting together a film score when you're starting out you'll have to attend to all of these demands getting the correct piece of paper on the correct stand in front of the correct musician playing in time with picture is not an easy process to master but also being able to create a score on budget on time and within the legal construct of your contract is a key aspect of being an hod right the third job so the composer is the job that the director wants you to do the hod is the job the producer pays you to do and the third job is that of being ceo of the company that is you i haven't really mentioned this aspect of our job but it is absolutely fundamental to your survival and i would say this last job is something that takes longer than 10 years and indeed is probably something you never quite master every day's a school day but you do have to take certain considerations into account from the get-go namely marketing and branding in this day and age if you are not marketing yourself if you're not exploiting the possibilities of social media you will simply be competing with people who do just familiarity in making people understand where you come from and who you are is absolutely crucial and you will fare worse against people who are starting out who do have a presence who do project some kind of ethos some brand identity the one thing i ask students who are about to graduate from their courses for scoring music to picture or modern uh production techniques style courses is have you been taught to do a business plan and i very rarely get a a an answer in the affirmative planning your future is crucial the ceo part of you is not what you're paid for by producers and is not what your director is interested in but it is fundamental to building a career and i guess one of the most important things alongside marketing alongside business planning just not going bust is strategy and this is something that i've really only learned over the last few years really doing this vlog and thinking this stuff through and that is you know one of the biggest mistakes i've made is not starting to say no you know the first rule of hollywood is to say yes to everything and to everyone but it gets to a point where you need to raise your stock and by accepting every single job you are putting your brand your stock at risk and that's something i did i repeatedly took massive dumps all over my imdb page be doing these amazing french films these great cultish horror films and then i do a children's science show with exploding balloons with blue paint on people i think something that's really important about your responsibility as a ceo is that of diversification i think that you will find and i have found that for most composers there's a couple of strings to their bow so for me i started out as a drum programmer whilst i was cutting my teeth as a as a composer that got me into uh the kind of the the inner sanctum of film and tv music and then when i stopped being a drum programmer and earning money from that i subsidized my career with library music and in fact that has subsidized i would say at least 15 years of my career there's not a lot of money in independent movies and you can now see that whilst my main income is still as a composer i have a secondary income working for spitfire audio and this is something that again needs planning you need to make time for these important sources of revenue whether that be drum programming orchestrating copying conducting you're not being paid to compose you're being paid to deliver a score on time on budget you're not being paid to compose you're being paid to help a director tell a story and when you do pay yourself you need to work out how to organize your affairs so you can carry on being an effective composer an effective hod and effective ceo and that takes 10 years which is why it tends to suit people who are younger who have less to sacrifice as always i look at the comments down below so if you have any further questions for me please link them down there and i appreciate the the comments that you make there were two comments that inspired me to make this video which i've been thinking about for three months now because i really wanted to get the tone right it's not about putting you off but it is about making you understand that it does require a huge amount of sacrifice hard work conscientiousness and just building a body of experience many of you who have been new to this vlog over the last six months will go why is a bloke standing on a hill talking about guitar pedals the reason i do this is to remind you to get out and about all of these considerations whether it be compositional technical aspects of writing something to picture hod conundrums of what band to use how to keep yourself within the budget or indeed how you're going to create that next marketing push for that job that you've been shortlisted for these ideas don't come sitting in front of a mother keyboard and logic or pro tools or cubase or ableton they come by losing yourself in thought but also as i said 10 years is a long time it's a decade we're in this for the long haul so you have to look after yourself thanks as always for watching to the end do subscribe if you haven't done already and ding that bell to be notified the next time i put a video up one of those always much appreciated and again do put something in the comments down below lovely to see you take care bye

Channel: Christian Henson Music

Views: 14,546

Rating: 4.9540668 out of 5

Keywords: spitfire audio, christian henson, behind the scenes, orchestral programming, media composition, media composing, media composer, orchestral samples, orchestral sampling, behind the scenes in recording studios, recording studios, music programming, music programming techniques

Id: -GgJiEQej58

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021