Tag Archives: Music Production/Studio Recording

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Overcoming Writer’s Block – An Effectual Approach to Writing Music for Film, Television, and Related Media

Greetings all. This year, I’ve decided to focus my efforts in one of two areas of music production:

1 – Composing music for film/TV/media

2 – Sync Licensing

The first item I have some experience with, coming from scoring the ten-episode web YouTube webseries entitled “At Risk – The Series”, back in 2017. The second is uncharted territory that I’ve been planning to explore and traverse for two years now, and is the topic for an entirely different group of blog posts. The following actually applies to both. I’m sharing advice and considerations from the current mental state I’m in and the approaches I plan to undertake to push beyond said state.

“Writing for film has its own set of rules and skills thatmust be mastered. Just because you can write apop song doesn’t mean you can write a score forfilm (and vice versa). I often hear musicians sayingthat they would like to be film composers. They write a song and say something like ‘that sounds like something that would be good in a film score’.
Just kind of messing around and ending up with something that sounds ‘soundtracky’ and actually writing something that adds to a film and enhances a scene is something completely different; not to mention the overhanging loom of unrealistic deadlines.”

“The First Step

As you can see, we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning the craft of writing for film. Like any other endeavour, it starts with a single step. Take what you know so far and grow from there. If you’re an electronic musician, try writing to certain scenes with your current set up. With all of the videos online, there is no lack of sources to write to. Start with your instrument and grow from there. Try some of the ideas I’ve listed here (for example writing for certain instruments). If it’s all completely new to you, get some material and get started. Try writing something right away. As soon as you learn a new skill, use it in your writing and memorize it as quickly as possible.

(excerpt from “Writing Music for Film: First Steps by Robert Maddocks / January 18, 2010)

“More often that not when someone is stuck and can’t move forward it’s because the person don’t know what to move forward with. The potential of infinite choices leads them to make none. Think of the car salesman, who doesn’t ask “Do you want this car?” (infinite reasons yes and no), but instead asks “Do you want it in red or blue?” (a very simple choice and your brain will make one)

Don’t worry about doing things the right way, or the way you’ve seen someone else do it. Just focus on what works for you and allows you to actually output work instead of just thinking about outputting work.”

(excerpt from “How To Kill Writers Block and Start Composing Now” by Robin Leach/16 Aug 2013)

Finally….

8. WRITER’S BLOCK (HOW TO UNBLOCK YOUR CREATIVE COLON)

Composing and computers are an uneasy marriage. Step away from your mac or PC and go for a walk. Motion and creativity are better bedfellows, if you’re sitting at your workstation you’re in the wrong bed! Don’t think of work as work if you don’t do any composition there… If the park is where your ideas come to you, that’s your work! Analysts feel that true creativity is when you’re in the moment. This will be when the desk of your mind is clear. Usually when there isn’t anything you need to think about other than what you’re doing. No one is about to turn up, the bills haven’t just hit your doormat, and there’s not someone bugging you on Facebook. Many people say early mornings are the most creative time as you’ll be free of disturbance or distraction. However I would argue, this is the most productive time. For many, creativity happens just at the moment that they’ve decided to leave the door. This is the moment when you’ve decided you’re finished… This is when you’re in the moment. Try to sit at your piano at this point and if anything comes, note it down somehow. For me a very rough charcoal sketch of a tune or cue will enable you to wake up and ponder it in the bath in the morning. Then by applying those magic productive early hours to a preconceived concept you will reap the biggest turnover of material.

(excerpt from “10 Rules of Media Composition – The Spitfire Labs Team/Spitfire Audio)

This article, https://blog.native-instruments.com/composing-for-film-and-tv/, from the Native Instruments website depicts some of the very things I went through mentally, via different approaches, when composting for the web miniseries mentioned above.

Finally, some solid advice for moving forward….

What advice would you give composers?

Louisa Rainbird: Definitely play to your strengths – it’s better to be known as a great composer in a few key areas than to try and cover all bases, particularly when the genres and styles covered by production libraries are so vast. Also, look at what is being used currently across film, advertising and different TV genres to give you an idea of what the trends in each area are – there’s no easier research to do, just turn on the TV!

Brian Bennett: Be original. Be brave. Take risks. Believe in yourself and your music. Don’t get complicated. It’s all about the picture. Make great demos. Don’t let a client guess what you mean. Keep the music in the same or relative key to make the music editor’s life easy. Be prepared to make changes. If a client doesn’t like your music, it doesn’t mean its crap, it means they’re looking for something else. Don’t get too precious about your notes.

Sophie Urquhart: I would advise composers to do their research on the libraries that will most suit their style of music. And listen to their advice, they are specialists in what broadcasters and sync people are looking for and can help mould their style accordingly to give it the best shot of being used, hopefully numerous times!

Also, I’d encourage them to focus on where their strengths lie, better to be an expert in their field rather than a jack of all trades. There’s more competition than ever before so it’s crucial that they have an identity which sets them apart from the rest.

(excerpt from “How to Get Into Composing Library Music – Anita Awbi/ 3 Jan 2019)

That said, permit me to reintroduce a re-scrore of a Mercedes Benz CLS promo I completed a little over a year ago. It’s the first of many reels I have planned to showcase my work, and progression of such, in the future.

Thanks for the read, be well.

Doug

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Quick Portrait (2022 Update) – Studio A

Studio A

Greetings all and Happy 2022. I hope this new year is starting out well for you and will continue in that fashion.

Back in November 2021, I posted an quick portrait about the main studio space I work out of, Studio A. Since then, I was saving up for a computer upgrade and found a nice sale price on an M1 Mac mini to replace the current (and still capable) mid-2011 Mac mini. Since that computer is already 11 years old, I decided to replace it with a newer Mac for (at least) future proofing in the years to come (the older one is now in Studio C, the subject of a future Quick Portrait post).

With the new Mac comes not only the expected advanced OS, but a new (as of 2020) Apple M1 Silicon chip architecture. The result of that is determining what software, most (if not all) of which is now 64-bit vs 32-bit architecture, along with current hardware that has to now run on the M1 architecture as well. The research (which is ongoing) involves continually watching a particular music production software developer website, Native Instruments, for updates on how they are coming along announcing how many of their products are compatible with the current Mac OS (Monterey), and the M1 architecture. The official compatibility comes via the completion of successful regression testing and the announcement of them now being able to support trouble tickets for user submitted issues. Of course, there are many Native Instruments products that do work with Monterey BUT are not officially supported.

Thus far, I seem to be fine on the software side for my needs, however, my current digital audio interface is an entirely different story. While my Mac came shipped with the prior OS, Big Sur, my MOTU 828Mk3 Firewire audio interface is no longer officially supported. Be that as it may, fervent web searches resulted in finding out that there are users that have gotten it to work not only with Big Sur, but Monterey. I’m halfway there in that I’ve successfully installed the unit’s audio driver, however the interface driver is showing as outdated, and cannot be installed (despite it working for others as of Sept 2021, though my initial thinking is there as been a dot upgrade to Big Sur since Sept 2021, which is what I have, and suspect this is the issue). I’ve replied to those who do have it working in hopes of realizing a similar solution on my end – now to play the waiting game. I’m saying all this to say it is my way of trying to avoid spending at least $400 on their lowest of the line audio interface that will be compatible with my OS. I broke down and purchased a newer, yet older, MOTU 828x digital audio interface that should be here by the weekend.

In the meantime, I’ve upgraded to a 34″ ultra wide monitor and incorporated a USB-C hub with M.2 NVME SSD and 2.5 SATA SSD support for additional memory and ports, (see the connection diagram below)

I also got a good deal on a new 8TB desktop SATA drive that will be used for Time Machine backups. So far, I’m happy with the upgrades, but just need to get started on and continue with projects on deck. I should be receiving the final upgrade piece, the 1TB NVME SSD drive mentioned above, in a few days from now, that’ll be installed in the hub for storing all audio libraries. Stay tuned for more.

Have a great week,

Fresh

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Quick Portrait: The Lab – Studio A.

Studio A on The Lab. This is where the heavy lifting happens. The central recording and music production tool is Logic 10.4.8, with Native Instruments Maschine and other NI products integrated into the music production workflow. The computer – a mid-2011 Mac mini running High Sierra is the center piece. Despite it’s age, it gets the job done but I’m currently saving up for the M1 Mac mini, 16GB and a newer MOTU digital audio interface (the 828 Mk3 Hybrid) for use with the M1. To the right and out of the picture is a 16-space rack of vintage synth modules. An Akai MPC 2500 sampling drum machine sits on top.

Been spending a lot time in hear during the last two weeks working on tracks for a collaboration project dropping in January 2022, as well as a sophomore project my recording partner and I have been working on for quite some time. We’ve got three singles that will drop prior to the entire project next spring.

Right now, this man is tired and the alarm will go off mighty earlier.

Transmitting from my iPhone 22 mini via the WordPress for iOS app. Goodnight, sleep well.

Oceans of rhythm….

Doug

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Music Monday – 30 Nov 20 – The Journey Continues

Greetings all. I’m back with another edition of Music Monday. This series was supposed to be weekly, however, habits only stick after consistent application of them over time – something which didn’t happen from the get on, BUT, I caught it today, so here I am. That’s said, I’m going to let the words fly as they may.

Yeah, we all have the same amount of time each day – 24 hours – so GTD always boils down to time management AND discipline (to me, motivation doesn’t count). Since the last post, I’ve been working on multiple music projects of varying kinds. One recurring one is creating instrumental backing tracks from live instrument recordings to accompany various church choirs, within the church I attend, for an overall streaming product, during service, on any given Sunday. What this also involves is creating a video product of my wife, a choir vocalist, singing against either the original music or the backing track I’ve created as stated above. This recurring project came about because our church, while streaming services over the internet, has not reassembled in public due to the pandemic. It is also an idea that came to fruition to get those vocalists and musicians to continue to participate, albeit remotely, during the pandemic. Needless to say, this is a first time activity for ALL involved, which is not without associated challenges of not only rehearsing alone and delivering vocal and musician audio/video to me for editing and assembly, but trying to solidify a process that all can follow that will result in the best product in the end. I won’t get into all the examples of said challenges here, but suffice to say, they are present.

Outside of that, I’ve been reassessing the amount if projects in various stages (including non-start) that I blogged about in the first edition of Music Monday. Some dissipated but were replaced by new, smaller ones. Nevertheless, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to assess where and how I’m trying to go with completing projects and, moreover, needing to assess whether I’m being to ambitious in some way or another. Why? The primary reason is I want to release more of my own projects more frequently, but balance that between getting on the road to music placement, and getting back into writing for film/TV/media, the latter two creating better opportunities for residual income over time. All three will require a systematic plan of development (SPD) and that SPD will require doing less of a bunch of other things. That “less doing” has been a constant planning exercise for the last two months, in preparing to hit the ground running in 2021. The failure of New Year resolutions (I just read a stat that about 67% of people fall off the wagon in the third week of January), is that a habit or habits are not developed ahead of time. I’m not trying to go out like that, but there are 31 days left to in 2020 before a new decade is started, so I need to focus big time to get those habits in gear. Nuff said.

As always, thanks for the read.

Oceans of rhythm….

Fresh!

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Music Monday – 12 Oct 20 – Back To The Roots

Back in 2007, I registered this domain, vibesnscribes.com, to start a blog about two topics: (1) reviews about music I listen to and (2) general daily topics I felt compelled to blog about.

Back then blogging was all the rage. Twitter just got off the ground, as well as Facebook, but to me, one’s blog was always more personal and self-controlled. As my long time friend in tech and podcasting, DarrenKeith (http://myloveformusic.blogspot.com) says, it’s your OWN digital garden. Well, this is an attempt to begin a weekly series on my music production journey and all the paths that encompass it. Other days of the week will be left to the two topics above (where I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time over the last 13 years blogging about). I often miss blogging, with the draw of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter seemingly always taking over my online time with algorithms always attempting to show me and tell me what I should be looking at (which most times is inaccurate). While Medium is huge as a blogging platform, my own site is, well, my own. Blogging like this will, again, have to be a created habit so, we’ll see how that goes. Consider Music Mondays just a brain dump on what I’m involved with and what I hope to achieve.

I’ve always had a music production studio of some sort, one that has grown over the last 25 years to a space that has allowed me to release my own projects, work on projects of remote and global collaboration, land an opportunity to score a ten-episode webseries on YouTube and helped me sharpen my skills (although not as sharp as I believe they could be). I love composing/writing, producing, and releasing the music, though it’s the latter that seems to be most difficult for me on a regular, not because it IS difficult, but because the system(s) I desire to put into place sometimes just don’t really get off the paper (from a habitual standpoint). Last I checked, I have (in various states) twelve projects going on. The latest (personal) one is releasing a 10 track project on Bandcamp next year. The project will mostly be comprised of tracks I started back in 2012 or so (that have since been removed from my Soundcloud page) and involve me getting back to some older methods of how I was recording and producing tracks (hence the image of the Akai MPC 2500 above). It was fun getting back to re-learning that tech this weekend. It showed me that ,even though some of the processes are not as convenient as what I use today, it’s still as enjoyable using it to bring those older tracks into the present. Many times (as I heard mentioned on a YouTube video last night), often times, limitations can spark creativity and more simply put, everything involved in the “longer harder” way can also be enjoyable for many reasons I’ll save for another Music Monday. That will continue for sometime as I bridge the use of the MPC, Logic Pro X, and Native Instruments to get this project moving and done. I’m looking forward to releasing it, not only because it’s been two years since the last release, but listening back to these older tracks showed me that I was creating more music (even though WIPs) to share on Soundcloud. Some got some great comments, but they were essentially just sitting there. With the advent of distribution and music streaming platforms, there’s really no better time to get music into the ears of whatever audience one hopes to. I released a project under another alias that hit the streaming platforms. The purpose of it was tri-fold: (1) See how well my chosen distribution works, (2) see how well this new genre I am exploring does, for me as an artist, on major streaming platforms and how it is received by listeners where ever I expose it, and (3) allowed me to begin to learn the ins/outs of a new synthesizer I purchased. Surprisingly, with no marketing push, a few listeners in a Facebook group I belong to really liked it.

My new journey, one I hope to fully leverage (after getting the bug from composing that webseries) is two-fold: sync licensing and film scoring. I look around my home studio and grow tired of saying “you’re fully equipped”, so the old saying is ringing loud in my brain: “Don’t talk about it, be about it” (and that means passed brain dump blogging).

Have a great week…

#oceansofrhythm

Fresh!

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Organize, organize: A music production project micro post.

It’s been a few months since I posted a weblog, since late May to be exact. Yesterday I counted the number of music projects I have started and in the works. These involve personal projects (actual and concept only), plus collaborations with other artist or backing tracks for livestream feeds. The total number came to sixteen. Twelve of them I hope will be completed by 15 Dec 2020, the other four have TBDs before they are only in concept, with track names in the least.

My day job, actually my entire professional career work has been driven by schedule – milestones, due dates, Gantt and Microsoft Project charts, so it’s natural that I tend to go about treating all music production projects (at least my own personal ones) the same way. That said, the process is no different than that of the day job. The same issues come along with it – missed deadlines, unknown forces that disrupt the schedule, etc. The key, even with such disruptions, is to get in the habit of doing something daily to reach the goal. This applies, obviously, to any goal desired (coding is a good related personal example). I think, again, the biggest thing is get into good regular habits, for habits (good or bad) always move you closer to a specific point.

Musicians/artists/producers, who strive to put out regular content, how do you organize yourself to reach your goals?

Thanks for the read,

::: oceans of rhythm :::

Doug

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Summer, summer, summer time…music on my mind.

IMG_9069

Greetings readers….
Thursday at 8:04 am. Siting in the studio (I should be on my way to work), I’m thinking about where the summer has gone to so fast. I wish it could start over. Seems it was MUCH longer when I was much younger. There’s so much I want to do before it’s over and I’m constantly looking towards the weekend or some better after work time management to do some of these things. Oh well. c’est la vie…it’s not over yet.

Lately, I’ve been blogging on this film music scoring journey I’ve been on. It’s been a good one thus far, learning a lot, connecting with folk who regularly do it on different levels, and looking forward to continuing this ride, making it better along the way. Currently, I’m waiting for the next draft episode to be sent. In the mean time, the excitement of working on my next personal EP is again here. This one is definitely personal because the songs are birthed out of, and influenced by, two trips (same place) to the other side of the world, that occurred almost ten years ago (yes, I’ve been sitting on these songs that long). I’m glad I was afforded the opportunity to spend the amount of time I did there, the memories are still fresh.

I’ll be sharing more about it as the months go by, as I plan to drop this release before Christmas, so stay tuned.

Have a good Thursday,

Peace,
Fresh!

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film scoring – the journey – day 9 – Good vibes, next moves…

Screen Shot 2016-07-24 at 10.14.40 PM

Greetings readers…

Yet another Sunday night is upon us. I had a good weekend, despite this mad heat (which will remain in the upper 90’s throughout the week.). That said, it was productive on the scoring front. Episode 2 is done and submitted to the movie producer for review. So far, looks like she likes, so it looks like the title sequence, Episode 1, and Episode 2 are a wrap!

Talked to the film’s director this evening as well. Seeing as though his company is juggling multip;e projects at once, it was good to have a few minutes to chat with him on the process of music submission (at least from a clarification standpoint). The result of the conversation pretty much aligns with the result fo my research, so we’re definitely good to go.

I also got a chance (finally) to interact with two of the actors/actresses in the series, via social media (Instagram) this weekend. It was good exchanging comments with them after watching them so much via video…both had mad talent through and through. Looking forward to interacting with the rest of the cast.

Well, while awaiting the next episode to begin work on, it;ll be time to d a few things:

  • Start work on my next EP
  • Register my publishing entity, Sky Songs Music Publishing, with BMI
  • Continue work on me and partner’s next CD
  • Work on the guitar tracks for a cover of “Fever” by female vocalist in the UK
  • Work on guitar tracks from Todd Kelley’s next EP, Seasoned Veteran
  • Etc, etc…….

    • We’ll see how of THAT goes. 🙂

    ‘Til next time….

    peace,
    Fresh!

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    film scoring – the journey – day 8 – First submission & feedback

    arws_ep2work

    11:00pm – Greetings readers…

    Another weekend gone… 🙁 In any event, it was short, but productive. I finally submitted the rough cue music embedded in the video for the director’s review. Had a short telecon and pleasingly got the thumbs up on the title sequence music AND the scene music in Episode 1. With a slight suggested change for the title sequence track and one for the episode, I’m happy with the results, being a newcomer to all of this.

    This evening was spent working on music for episode 2. As mentioned in the first post of this series, the closing scene is comprised of something I, well….never had to compose music for – let’s just leave it at 🙂 Good news is, I think I have something that fits it. I think I have one more scene I need music for and I should be ready to submit this episode as well…we’ll see.

    Anyway, this is a short update. I’m anticipating a long work week ahead, and to get into bed before midnight is probably best.

    Catch up soon…

    peace!
    Fresh

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    film scoring – the journey – day 7 – At the scene/in the cloud of sound.

    piano-500x333

    Greetings readers (I should say early good morning),

    After what has seemed to be some creative block, so to speak, I finally got back to working on music for the first episode of this webseries. At least I have two ideas (with a third pretty much thought of) for the title sequence music . All my conceptual notes for the scenes have been down on paper for awhile but to get from my head, what I’m conceiving, to what one can actually hear has been another issue altogether. I actually started backwards, so to speak, and composed the music for the final scene of Episode 2 already. Early this morning seemed to be the time where I was able to do it (although what I’m going with is a little different than the initial concept).

    So, I’ve been working with brand new ideas for the first bit of music you will hear in the first scene of the first episode. This piece of music is actually called a “cue”, as, from what I ynderstand, they are generally short pieces of music that cue a following scene. Though what I’m going to try is not conceptually the same as what I originally thought of, I think it will work nicely with some extra embellishments here and there…we;ll see.

    For now it is crazy way past my bedtime. Yes, I will be suffering tomorrow at work, but this is what sometimes happens when my muse decides to show up anytime she wants, with irregard to what I need…LOL (“women”….haha). JK!!

    Incidentally, my soundcloud account is set up. On the site, you’ll eventually hear demo tracks of music I’ve composed for film. When there are a few tracks up, I’ll post the link in a future blog post, Facebook, Twitter, etc….so stay tuned.

    Have a great day, or afternoon, or…well, u get what I mean….

    peace!
    Fresh!