Composing

As an artist, you’re called to show up in the world. Whether it’s on stage, making a pitch, submitting your screenplay, putting on an art show, you make yourself vulnerable to others over and over again. Making art is a unique process. The initial stages of creating are deeply personal, but, eventually, you need the attention of your audience to bring your creative work to life. Though it began as something private, your art only achieves its purpose and full potential when it impacts someone...

Following up on my previous blogs, “Finding Your Creative Tribe” and “Building Safe Spaces”, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the very individual process a professional creative must go through in order to be present for their “tribe” or be strong enough to lead a team. Especially since doing the work for yourself, BY yourself is essential. It is the foundation of everything else we create. Consider for a moment when you visit a doctor. It is certainly their job to help analyze what ail...

My journey as a composer of music to picture has been a non-straightforward one. Whilst studying Applied Arts in France (graphic design, architecture, fine art, etc) I started off in my teens singing and playing guitar, writing songs, and fronting a live band. I then started producing other artists on the UK Soul scene in my twenties and thirties, and eventually began editing music and composing for TV shows, short films, and documentaries. I've worked on projects big and small, some very crea...

I’m always amazed at who you can come across on Stage 32. Our global community is so vast that there’s no chance of knowing who’s who, unless you take the plunge and start connecting with people you meet whilst sharing comments in the various Lounges or the Blog. Phil Hardy and I had just published our latest article “How Can You Sell Your Screenplay To A Studio" and I noticed a comment from Michael A. Levine. Michael, by the way, is an award-winning composer. He has not only composed some gre...

Happy Sunday, Creative Army! Have you had a creative weekend so far? I have some content here for you that is sure to get the creative juices flowing, so grab your coffee, and let's dive in. It's Oscar weekend so there has been a pile of great content coming up online, and one of the best pieces came from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's interview with Steven Spielberg and John Williams. They've been collaborating for decades and it shows in their interactions. Williams has created numer...

Back in October, I sat in my chair and started a journey that really put a lot of things into perspective. It was an adventure I never really thought much about. I love music - it’s in my blood. So, when I stumbled on the 21 Days of VGM challenge a while ago, I thought “Oh, I got this.” Making music every day isn’t so bad. Easy. However, I got a rude awakening. It seems simple right? Sit down, get some notation paper, or open your DAW and make about 16 bars of music every day and, to be hone...

Happy Wednesday, Stage 32 Community!   Since 2011, the Stage 32 team has been working tirelessly to help you stay connected, creative, motivated, and informed. As always, we are committed to bringing you networking opportunities, education and mentoring from top-level industry executives and professionals, and access to decision-makers around the globe all from the comfort of your own home. Recently, our fearless leader and CEO Richard "RB" Botto hosted an "Ask Me Anything": State of the Indus...

  When you decide to write music for Film and Television as a full time job, you’ll soon realize that from that moment on it is not just about your music, but about the music business. There is so much to know and to learn about the process of negotiating a deal. I am going to share some of the experience I have made so far, hoping that it will help you with your negotiations a little bit.     When & Why: Signing an Agreement When you are offered a composer job, your first instinc...

Imagine the scene. A film composer sits in the cinema. The adverts are rolling, the popcorn is flowing, the trailers are, well, trailering- then suddenly a familiar sound hits the composer’s ears. “Did I write this track?... No…. Hmm. What sounds familiar?... Something in there rings a bell…. Oh! The piano/strings/synths/drums. The composer is using X library!” Whilst there is a seemingly infinite number of libraries available for composers to use, there’s actually a very small pool of commonl...

So you landed a job as a composer for a Film. Congratulations! But now where do you start? I think a good point is to build a positive relationship with your Director. That could definitely contribute to the success of your gig. Like any other kind of human relationship, there are no rules to make it work and there is always room for improvement, but here you’ll find some tips and thoughts, based on my experience, that I think might be helpful. Let’s suppose you have negotiated the deal, the...