I'm trying to impress a composer??

[Destaāna]

Hello, this weekend i've been getting tracks together for a composer here in Melbourne, Australia, that i'm catching up with next week.

I'm wondering what they focus on most, the mix, or the production?? I'm guessing the production here, but i'm being so damn fussy with the mix because i'm trying too hard. Does the mix play a big part?? I think the mix is slowing me down a little because i'm very fussy with levels. I mean it's right, but it's never right to me because it has to be perfect, but that's a tough one.

Any advice out there from people who have been in the same position?? It would be appreciated, just to get my mind right.

[paulwr]

Jonathan Wolf, the big tv composer here in the US (Seinfeld, Will & Grace the most well known shows) has a large sort of 'tv composing farm' and they do about a dozen big tv shows, at least as of a few years ago.

He said, given the choice between an incredible composer lacking production skill, and a lessor composer with sharp production skills, that he will hire the guy with top notch production skills every time. If it doesn't sound great........ its not great. At least in tv and movies. There are production quality targets that must be there........ or you won't be there.

When I got my start, I had a good friend who is an excellent mixer/mastering engineer to do my mastering from stems, so he was doing some mixing, too. I don't think I could have gotten started without his help. That is aside from the other help I had with strong introductions.

Welcome to the very tough music biz.

Just check your stuff against other comparable pro material. In fact, when mixing, you should always have references in the session to check your quality targets against. If your are falling short, get your tracks to someone who can maximize the quality, particularly if you are trying to impress someone like this other composer, or a production company.

-Paul

[composeralex]

Curiously, why are you trying to impress a composer? Are you trying to get a job or gig as a producer, engineer, assistant, etc.?

[Destaāna]

Curiously, why are you trying to impress a composer? Are you trying to get a job or gig as a producer, engineer, assistant, etc.?

As a composer for T.V, that's why i'm trying to impress. Why??

[White Noise 2]

He said, given the choice between an incredible composer lacking production skill, and a lessor composer with sharp production skills, that he will hire the guy with top notch production skills every time. If it doesn't sound great........ its not great. At least in tv and movies. There are production quality targets that must be there........ or you won't be there.
-Paul

Ditto. I think a lot of people come out of University or whatever, and when they're writing, they're intent on writing music very much in terms of the notes, the ornamentations etc and how they hear the piece in their head rather than asking whether the mock up stands on its own two feet as a representation of reality. And samples, well, even with the best samples (and by this I of course mean East West) they simply don't have the fluidity that a real player has, so if you don't write to the samples, it will sound synthetic. This is fine if your intention is to replace with real players. I'm working on something at the moment and we'll record it with orchestra in LA later on this year, and I keep coming up against this limiting factor of the samples in that I can't get the level of performance detail in there that this piece of music requires. Sometimes the articulations simply don't exist. Sometimes it's because the process of artifically joining two articulations in sequence together to perform a line of music produces something that is very synthy. So, if replacing with real players you can get away with being more colourful in the music (runs, glisses and such), but if not, they can actually get in the way of the piece. With all that said, I think it's sad though that the emphasis is on production quality as this has led to a dumming down in music for TV and film precisely because with shrinking budgets the tendency is to go for samples over real players. I'll be really interested to see how Hollywood Strings move things along.

RE: Impressing other more established composers: I would always recommend this so long as you are clear about what you are hoping they will do for you or what you are proposing to do for them. Be detached. Most of these guys will hear past production quality but expect them to be brutal about it too. I saw a guy not so long ago who wanted advice or to assist me or something, and he had writing chops, I good hear that in his demo. And the programming was alright, but the sounds were awful. I told him he had to find some serious cash somewhere and spend it on a powerful enough computer to run serious samples (like East West :p). It's sad, but your ability to write is only as good as your ability to convey that writing as reality.