All posts by Beatscribe

Beatscribe is an full-time indie musician with a long-standing obsession with tall things 8-bit. He has composed soundtracks for tons of mobile and homebrew games and tries to infuse them with the nostalgic flavor of the early days of gaming. Check out his latest adventures on www.beatscribe.com.
PRODUCTION & TUTORIALS

Life As A Freelance Musician Part 10: My Biggest Mistakes as a New Freelancer

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Like anything in life, when you look back, you wish you had your current level of knowledge back at the start of a new endeavor. Here’s a few common mistakes that either I’ve made or seen others make when starting a career as a feelancer musician.

Buying Too Much Gear

Sure, we'd all love to have this in our basement, but is it the best use of money when you're just starting out? Do you really need all this to make music?
Sure, we’d all love to have this in our basement, but is it the best use of money when you’re just starting out? Do you really need all this to make music?

Probably the biggest thing I see all over the net is people who become total gear nuts. I hate to write this because I LOVE analog gear, I love battling to get some old synth to work with my system and having wires and knobs all around, but the problem is for many, this becomes too important.

I see folks who have every piece of equipment you could ever imagine and are surrounded by wires and modules. However, you listen to their songs and what’s missing is dedication to their craft or songwriting skills. The things they’re creating with their massive amounts of hardware only sound marginally better than tunes that could be created with more modern software-based methods.

Sure, a hardware oscilloscope looks cool with its little waves appearing as you play your song, but is that really money better spent than good headphones, good monitors or software solutions that do the same thing and then some? If you are just starting out, you might not even have the expertise or knowledge to fully utilize a lot of pro gear. It’d be better to spend your money on lessons or some other appropriate means of learning.

The companies that make gear are always telling you you need more. Remember that you really don’t need a more than a few pieces of hardware and a few programs to make decent music. There’s a level where buying gear and fiddling with it becomes a distraction from actually completing songs and producing something. Here’s a great article to start with from earlier in this series if you’re not sure what the most important things to buy are.

Not Backing Up Data

Now, a lesson from my own bank of failures. This is the most catastrophic thing that has happened to me thus far in my career as a freelancer. I had four large projects going at once, I had been working on them in tandem for about three months, so many things were close to done but not quite there. One day after a very long session, I delivered final drafts and a few completed things to most of these clients. To this day, I don’t know what happened, but the next day, ALL my music was gone. All my project files. I only had a backup from about 5 months earlier on a USB hard drive.

If this had happened ONE DAY earlier, I would have been unable to recover from the loss. I had just completed about 18 hours of work finishing 3 of the 4 projects. I still had to pull an all-nighter and remake the final projects songs for mastering. It could have been so much worse so it made me realize I better backup every day.

I don’t recommend Carbonite, since they exclude WAV files and a lot of others with their free plan. Also, have fun completely removing it from your system. Idrive.com is a much better solution that is simple and automatic just in case catastrophe strikes. Your money is better spent on a backup system than most other things you could buy when starting out.

Taking Criticism Personally

Early on, I lost some jobs and contests I entered. I felt my entry to the contest was the strongest of the many that I heard. The one they picked as a winner confused and disappointed me. I spent a lot of time and I thought their song was boring. Now, almost a year and a half later, when I listen back to mine, I hear glaring mastering and mixing problems. Although I still don’t think the winner’s track was more interesting, it was definitely professionally mixed and mastered whereas mine was a bit more amateur.

You can’t win them all. I still lose jobs. As mentioned before, you can’t always beat someone else’s prices or turn around time. And there is always someone more talented out there. I would imagine that even big-name Hollywood score composers don’t get every job they’d want. Take it with a grain of salt and glean any positive constructive criticism you can.

Worrying Too Much

When I first started, I worried constantly while away from my computer. I thought I might miss an important email or someone else would quote back a client before I could and get the job. I obsessively checked after sending auditions in. You don’t want your emotional state to be all about work in any kind of job. I’ve learned not to sweat it so much. What happens happens.

My articles have been a little inconsistent lately since I’m in the middle of a huge project right now. I’m saving up that melody one for when I have time to make it really good. Stay tuned, I am not disappearing.

Next up:
-The Secret Arts of Coming Up With Melodies
-Beginner’s Guide to Compression

 

Screen Shot 2013-05-03 at 2.36.44 PMBeatscribe is a full time indie composer, musician and writer. By day he creates soundtracks and sfx for various mobile gaming companies, by night creates megaman-inspired chiptunes, in the afternoons he drinks tea. Check out his latest releases, tutorials and retro ruminations at www.beatscribe.com.
PRODUCTION & TUTORIALS

Life As A Freelance Musician Part 9: Making Music for Other People

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Making music that someone else has the final say on can be really frustrating. After all, this is basically art. It is a way to express yourself. When you start doing it for money, one of the hardest things to let go of is that full control.

I have made some original video game songs that I thought were amazing, only to have a client say, “that’s not what we’re looking for at all”. I literally had a client for a while who pretty much just wants one long droning bass note with little else for his game’s background.

So here’s a few tips on how to find a happy medium between what your client wants and making something you still actually care about at the end of the day.

What Not To Do

Early on, I’d get a contract signed, and spend a few days making an entire song and then sending it to the client, as a pretty much completed product. This didn’t always work out so well. Usually they had their own ideas of how it would sound, or would tear it to pieces with criticism. I found a much better approach was to make a small, looping sample just to give them an idea and they can tell me what they like/don’t like about it. This also gives them an actual loop they can try in their game to get a feel for it. This is also good to do because down the line, they can’t really tell you they decided it doesn’t fit in the game when they had a chance early on to try it.

Interpreting What a Client Wants

One of the hardest things about working on someone else’s vision is getting on the same page for a specific sound. Here are a few little examples from some games I worked on. The links after quotes show the finished product.

For act I, the player’s going to be presented with a straight-faced arcade shooter. “Are you a bad enough dude to save the president”, sort of plot. I’m going to try to subvert a lot of the normal tropes in the shoot-em-up genre; while they’re presented with clear-cut mission goals and instructions (“defend against the alien menace”), ingame they’ll be shown to be helping civilians and the like. So, as far as music, I want it to be upbeat & heroic, but not altogether honest. -Wick, Rubicon Mission 1

I love the way Wick writes, but sometimes I had no idea how to get what he was going for. How do you make ‘not altogether honest’ music? I’m still not sure. What I took from this was the parts that made sense to me and tried to use some classic melodies that give that heroric shooter type sound.

Wouldn’t want to go overboard with that–I don’t want it to sound like the player is on vacation in Jamaica or something. But maybe the western guitar with some bongo type drums or some light steel drums. Maybe just the guitar with more of a island–or maybe Mexican–kind of feel. –Andy, IQ Soup, TBA Game

This is for a post-apocalyptic western styled game coming up. When you’re asked to make post-apocalyptic cowboy Mexican party music, you have to ask yourself how to combine all those influences together in a way that sounds natural. I took a few little things from each genre – nylon stringed picked guitar for the ‘mexican influence’, a slide guitar for western, blade runnerish synths for post-apocalyptic – but put them with some orchestral elements that you’d find in all these styles to blend it together. You sometimes just can’t put in everything they want, so you have to try to strike a balance between the feeling they’re going for and what they think it’ll take to get there.

A great tip I have is to ask the client up front, send me your favorite track or a youtube video game songs that you imagine playing during your game. You of course aren’t going to directly copy it, but it should put you in the ball park of what they mean and want. If they just say “space music” that could mean anything from Star Trek theme song to an ambient song or a vgm remix type thing. Having some sort of base point to start from is a great idea.

When They Don’t Like What You’ve Made

I think I only have three clients who pretty much accept whatever I give them on the first run. And that’s because they have a lot in common with me as far as influences go and they also give super clear instructions like “the Narshe song from FF6 but with some bongos”. It’s not hard to quickly create an original video game song when you have directions like that.

But if they don’t like the work, don’t take it personally. Most clients and I have a lot of back and forth. You should build this into your pricing since it will happen more often than not. Just keep working their feedback into your song until you find a happy medium.

Some people will just never be satisfied. Strangely, it seems to be the ones with the tightest budget. You’d think it’d be the other way around. I have pretty much just said “we’re done” to a few clients who after a myriad of revisions still was not happy. Don’t drive yourself crazy over a client who wants to pay pennies and get 40 hour a week service. It’s simply not worth it.

When You Don’t Like What You’ve Made

Some clients’ vision of their songs may be so far off from your own, that you might not even like the end product. What do you do then? Well, you are not obligated to put every song you make on your soundcloud or share it with the world. One thing I do sometimes is do my own little “remix” of one of the songs to share on my soundcloud. It’s good practice and good for your video game composer portfolio. I will say this though: when you aren’t inspired about a game or a project, it’s really hard to stay happy and passionate about working on it. It feels more like work. Keep this in mind when looking for jobs.

-The Secret Arts of Coming Up With Melodies
-My Biggest Mistakes as a Freelancer
-Beginner’s Guide to Compression

 

Screen Shot 2013-05-03 at 2.36.44 PMBeatscribe is a full time indie composer, musician and writer. By day he creates soundtracks and sfx for various mobile gaming companies, by night creates megaman-inspired chiptunes, in the afternoons he drinks tea. Check out his latest releases, tutorials and retro ruminations at www.beatscribe.com.
MUSIC, PRODUCTION & TUTORIALS

Life As a Freelance Musician: Part 8: When Is A Song Done?

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I’ve heard more than one musician say, “a song is never really done, it’s just good enough to stop working on.” I can relate to this. When I first started trying to get a professional sound, I could never quite know when a song was “done” and ready for the client. On my first few jobs, the deadline ususally dictated when it was done. I just kept thinking, “I could make this better somehow!”

Today, we’ll talk about some of basic things to make sure are in place before delivering a song.

Mixing and Mastering

Drop a professionally mastered song from an album you like into your DAWs and look at the wave form. You'll see that it probably stays at 0db or around -0.2 at all times.
Drop a professionally mastered song from an album you like into your DAWs and look at the wave form. You’ll see that it probably stays at 0db or around -0.2 at all times.

I could (and probably will) do entire articles on how to master and mix songs, but here’s the bare essentials.

Mixing is usually taking things away from a song to make it more cohesive. Helping each instrument to shine through the mix using various tools. Sometimes people refer to doing things like adding echo’s, effects and reverb as mixing, and I guess it sort of is, but to me that’s more of the actual composition phase, and mixing is just getting it to sound nice. Some quick pointers:

-Make sure it sounds like all the instruments are in the same “space”. If you have a bunch of dry chiptunes and then one reverb soaked echoing track, it’s going to sound like its sort of in another place. If you have a bunch of orchestra samples recorded in a large space, putting a vocal you recorder in a tiny closet is going to sound wierd.

-Be careful not to over-mix until everything sounds separated and wimpy. There should be some bleed over between instruments, just not too much.

Mastering is sort of the opposite of mixing, it’s adding things back into the finished song to make it louder, clearer as well as some technical flavorings that will make it sound professional and great even when converted to MP3.

Mastering is things like bringing up the overall volume in a mix without it clipping (getting so loud it distorts), adding harmonics and mastering reverb to sort of “glue” all the sounds together, adding dithering to preserve as much sound as possible when compressing to MP3 or other format.

– My single biggest tip: Take the time to really understand compression. I might do a “compression/multipressor for dummies” article in the future. It was one of the hardest things for me to grasp since those who know what they’re talking about will say things like “decrease dynamic range” and “add loudness” that will leave you scratching your head.

-Most music today is mixed “loud” meaning it’s staying near -.03db at all time. If you want it to sound like something on the radio, it will need to be like this. Of course, you can’t just crank up the volume without horrible distortion, so we’ll talk about this in a future lesson. To get an idea of what this is about, take and song you’ve heard on the radio (even in mp3 form) and drop it in your DAWs and look at how loud it is. There’s not a lot of times when the sound drops low. The picture shown here is actually a very soft and mild song by The Daysleepers, yet even a soft quiet song is pumping the a full palette of sound at you. We’ll learn more about it later.

The “Annoying” Test

I got this from the guys over at IQ Soup, as they told me they do this with every track I send them. Put the song on repeat and just let it play while you work or clean or something. Does the song become unbearable after two or three loops? Is the start-over point for a looping track super obvious? If so, you probably need to add some more variety to the track or fix some mixing problem that is making it annoying.Remember that changes go a long way in making a song interesting…don’t be afraid to pull everything out and let the drums play for a bit, or drop the drums and add some atmospherics. Listen to your favorite songs, most likely the same 4 bars do not play the entire song and if they do, the singer is switching things up to keep it interesting.

 

The Comparison Test

I have heard more than one musician say they like to compare their finished product with a similar track to see if it sort of “feels” the same. I don’t always want my tracks to sound EXACTLY like another song, but it can help you to listen to a professional orchestral song and then listen to your own and ask yourself, “does mine have too much bass? Does something in mine leap out too much?” I find this is really good with orchestral stuff, sometimes not even for entire songs, just instruments. Sometimes when I’m not sure I like the high violin/violas in a mix, I listen to something from a recent movie to hear how they sound there. It gives me mixing ideas to make mine sound more “pro”, as long as I can figure out how they did it. Another trick is to skip around in your track and a track you feel is of similar style and good quality. Does it seem like you switched from a real soundtrack to a cartoon one? Does something sound off when jumping from their track to yours? It can sort of help your ears get a fresh perspective on your mix.

The Bad Speaker Test

This cracked iPod 3G and little wimpy speaker I bought while on vacation from a Walgreens have super powers of exposing mixing problems.
This cracked iPod 3G and little wimpy speaker I bought while on vacation from a Walgreen’s have super powers of exposing mixing problems.

I was recently reading an article and saw that Vampire Weekend listened to their latest album on all kinds of devices with speakers from the best to the cheapest to make sure it sounded good. I was kind of surprised because this seems like something a band of their caliber would have already been doing two albums ago! I have a collection of cheap little devices that I play my songs through. These things expose clipping, distortion and mixing problems way better than my expensive monitors. This is a practice as old as recording from what I hear. It is common for producers to take a tentative final mix out to the car to hear how it sounded through a half-broken old car stereo or from a old boom box.

My favorite tool for really exposing the faults in my mix is my third generation iPod touch (the one with only one speaker on it). That tiny speaker tells me more than all the monitoring tools in my DAWS. If something is too loud in the mix, it’s all you hear. If something is too soft, it vanishes. Of course, you can’t judge bass by these kind of speakers, good monitors and subwoofers are best, but for judging what is too loud or too quiet in the mix, these little guys are my best friends.

Delivering to the Client

Every client will have different formats they want to get their files in. If not specified, I usually give them a few different mp3 compressed at multiple levels, as well as a raw WAV or AIF. It’s a good idea to keep backups since things vanish. Using dropbox is a great way to share huge sets of files when you deliver finished products.

Now, what happens when the client listens to the files? We’ll get into this next. What to do if your client doesn’t like what you delivered, how to proceed in dealing with the client from first sample until finished product.

Next up:
-Clients! Making Music for Someone Else
-The Secret Arts of Coming Up With Melodies
-My Biggest Mistakes as a Freelancer

 

Screen Shot 2013-05-03 at 2.36.44 PMBeatscribe is a full time indie composer, musician and writer. By day he creates soundtracks and sfx for various mobile gaming companies, by night creates megaman-inspired chiptunes, in the afternoons he drinks tea. Check out his latest releases, tutorials and retro ruminations at www.beatscribe.com.
GAME MUSIC, MUSIC, PRODUCTION & TUTORIALS

Life As a Freelance Musician: Part 7: The Pros of the Freelance Lifestyle

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Freelancing definitely has its ups and downs. In some ways, it feels a lot less stable than a regular 9 to 5 job. However, there are some huge benefits to this lifestyle that I thought are worth mentioning. Here’s a few of the very real pros that can benefit you whether you make music, program, make art or whatever else as a freelancer.

No Commute

Sitting in my cozy house looking at a huge storm and 9-to-5'ers stuck in traffic makes me really happy with my choice to become a freelancer.
Sitting in my cozy house looking at a huge storm and 9-to-5’ers stuck in traffic makes me really happy with my choice to become a freelancer.

I think the single biggest advantage of working for myself is no commute. I used to spend 2 hours a day commuting to downtown Chicago on the CTA train. I was forced to spend an hour with obnoxious, rude, loud and even very sick people. Nothing like hearing a 15 second clip of a Jay-Z song on a distorted cell phone speaker over and over at 5:30am in the morning. It was not a fun way to start my day. By the time I got home after 2 hours commuting and 8-10 hours working, I was exhausted.

Now, I get up and walk over to my living room. I can work a 10-hour day by 3pm and still have the rest of the day to do other stuff. The time and money I spent commuting more than make up for the slightly lower income I have when business isn’t booming. I’m not forced to be out in the rain or freezing cold just to go sit at a different computer.

Health

As already mentioned, commuting in public transportation exposes you to a lot of germs. Between that and working with co-workers who refused to take a sick day even when they were near death, I usually got sick about 3 to 5 times a year when I worked downtown. So far, I’ve been sick twice in my almost two years as a freelancer and I recovered in a day or two instead of a week.

When I had an office job, I had to eat out almost every day. There were few healthy choices and I was steadily gaining weight. Add this to drinking way too much coffee to get through the rough days, and it was a downward spiral for my health.

Since leaving I’ve started working out each day. I do Insanity workout and go jogging in my neighborhood. It helps me clear my head, manage stress and sleep well. It gives me a chance to listen to my mixes on different speakers in different environments too. I also use the time to check out what my colleagues are doing by listening to other game soundtracks. I’ve lost weight and feel great.

Flexible Schedule

As I mentioned before, my main reason for getting into this was more to do my volunteer work. The fact that it’s my ‘dream job’ also helps of course! Having essentially no set schedule opens a whole new world to what you can do. I’ve sometimes put in 40-50 hours by Wednesday and then had the rest of the week for volunteer work or whatever else. A 13-hour day doesn’t seem so bad when it’s just sitting in your living room. It also helps not to have to wear ties, dress clothes and all that other pointless office stuff.

Family Time

I’ve noticed by reading blogs and tumblr of other (more successful) freelance composers, programmers and artists that they talk about their family, post pics with their kids way more than folks I used to work in offices with. Since my wife works from the house too, it’s been a totally awesome experience to spend more time together, cook together and not spend 80% of our time apart. I imagine if you have kids it’s even more useful to have a completely open schedule for doctor’s appointments, school and other stuff that doesn’t fit into a 9 to 5 schedule.

Is It Really Less Stable?

A while ago I was giving some serious thought to if it really is less stable to be working for yourself than to be working for a big company. Look at a comparison of two events that happen for an already-established company compared to the same event with an already-established freelancer.

A big company has 3 big clients and various little ones. The 3 big clients account for about $400,000 a year of income. During an economic downturn, they lose two of these clients. Because of this, they can’t pay the salary for half their employees and have to let them go. Despite the sales team working hard to land a new client, 9 people lose their jobs because of this.

A freelancer has 5 major clients. Each one brings in about $12,000 per year. One client goes out of business suddenly and the freelancer loses that income. Despite working hard to find another client, for a time he’s forced to deal with a 20% drop in income.

Which is more traumatic to the worker? Thinking you have a secure job and then one day you and all your coworkers are sent packing, probably with little warning? Or being in business for yourself and having a 20% drop in income? And this doesn’t even take into account things like office politics, being the scapegoat for failure or being the overworked slave that others use to get ahead. Also, you know you didn’t lose your job because the sales team was lazy, or your manager lacks vision, you know you are working for your own money and responsible for its success or failure. In a way, I think it’s validating to accept that and be less dependent on others to keep a business afloat.

Both scenarios are frustrating and sad, but they’re essentially the same. In a big company, you are one cog in the wheel, but essentially the company is just one big freelancing entity looking for clients, landing contracts, and doing work to get paid.

Unless you have some government job that never changes, working for most companies only “seems” more secure than working for yourself. Especially now that many companies are switching away from “traditional” insurance and retirement plans. I’m not saying there aren’t advantages. There clearly are some who have different health situations or larger families that this does not apply to, and there are some companies who will take better care of you than you could on your own as far as medical plans and insurance go, but the fact remains, you still can lose it pretty easily.

So, it freelancing for everyone? Probably not. It took me some time to adjust my thinking and not feel like I had zero security. But seeing what happens with many companies has made me think a lot about what is important in life and what the trade-offs are for having that supposedly secure job.

 

Next few weeks:
-When Is A Song Done?
-The Secret Arts of Coming Up With Melodies
-My Biggest Mistakes as a Freelancer