Getting started in any career is not easy. You need to get hired to get experience but most people are looking to hire those who already have it. Fortunately, it’s a little bit easier getting started as a freelance musician. A little upfront work for free will get you up and running with an impressive portfolio. Some of the quotes in the next few articles are based on actual posts I’ve seen or actual conversations I’ve had. The average post for a serious, commercial music job usually looks like this.

Need 5 songs created for an iOS game and also SFX. Please post at least 3 examples of published commercial work that you have worked on along with attached demo reel of similar sounds and music to this style of game.

Clearly, you won’t get the job if you haven’t done any commercial projects. Someone else will. But by doing a game for free, you can probably land a job you wouldn’t otherwise and then you can start applying to jobs like this.

Your First Game

Your first game project is going to be stressful and full of surprises. One thing I was not used to is dealing with a group of outsider’s opinions on my music and my vision of how their game should sound. I was used to being the driver, now I was sort of a copilot with specific skills. You can lessen your stress and make things easier when you start looking for paying clients by making a game for free when starting out. Obviously, you’ll want to do this before you’re relying on freelancing for income.

Your first game doesn’t need to be a huge hit or even be on some major platform, it could be a little flash game or a game for a friend. My first game was Robo Hero, a game that I’m still immensely proud of. The founder of Bravado Waffle was a friend of mine and asked if I could help him out. Although I didn’t make much off the game, it was the foundation of my resume and gave me a great starting point for a decent portfolio. My skills have come a long way since then, but I am still proud of that little game.

If you don’t have a friend to hook you up, here’s a few great places to find your first pseudo-client:

GameJolt.com – Lots of indie gamers collaborate here. Find a game you like that needs music and email the team. Most are on tight budgets or no budget, so they’ll welcome the free assistance.

NewGrounds.com – Keep an eye on these forums for anything from short indie film scores to new video games.

Machinima channels on YouTube – Machinima folks are usually not making any money of what they do but very passionate about it, they’re always looking for some composers to spice things up.

RPG Maker Forums – This is another group that creates some epic stuff and usually have little budget for anything paid for. They’re doing it for fun and looking for musicians who will too.

Who Not To Work For

Not everyone who is willing to give you work is worthy of it, even if it is free. You will see a lot of posts like this in the places I’ve recommended above:

Hi! I’ve got this great idea for a game, it’s like Zelda where you have this sword and go out to look for these diamonds. My friend Kyle from school got Photoshop on his laptop and we’re trying to come up with some art. We need 12 songs created right away for each of the game’s cities. We don’t have a whole list yet but you can start making one to get an idea. We’re still looking for a developer who will work for free to build this MMORPG.

This type of post is a red flag. A serious developer would not even be looking for a sound guy that this point. If the game doesn’t even exist and those involved has little experience, no clear vision of what the game is and most likely have zero budget to make it happen, you don’t want to attach yourself to the project. Most likely, it’ll never get finished. Your goal on your first project is to get your name on something that gets out there, be it in the app store, Youtube or even just a flash game. It needs to be something people can go and look at and see your work, even if it’s not super popular.

You might be surprised at how your first free game leads you to more work. Robo Hero has put me in contact with tons of other developers and artists who worked for Bravado Waffle. These artists get contracted into other projects and refer me to do the music and sound. These other developers move around to different companies and bring my name with them. Next time, we’ll look at how to build a great portfolio and how to avoid getting scammed.

This article takes a look at the first year of life as a freelance composer.

This all started almost two years ago. I wanted to do more volunteer work with my church and also was growing more dissatisfied with my life in corporate America. I live in Chicago and had done programming/DBA work for the last 10 years. I spent 2 hours a day commuting, sitting in an office with a pointless dress code, doing a job I could easily be doing from home. The final straw was when they changed our traditional insurance to a Medical FSA, which means you might as well save your own money for your basic medial expenses. That and replacing our already-small cubicles with coffin-like rectangles you could only pull your chair in and out of were all wonderful reasons to try something new.

-3 Months To Freelance Life

I was formerly a roommate of the founder of Bravado Waffle, and he asked me to make some tunes for Robo Hero. It was a fun experience and the first time I tried to make music that I really wanted to sound good. I also helped with art and level design. I did everything in my power to make the game look and sound like Megaman! When one reviewer called Robo “the new blue bomber” I could not have been happier. The game was not a financial success but had a good little following, and reviewers always said great things about the music. One of my dreams was to make a living doing music, but, more importantly not to be chained down to a corporate job. I called my plan, “living off the internet”. I got inspiration from blogs like Wage Slave Rebel and reading other stories of people who just said No to a full time office job.

Month 1 of Freelance Life

I am not an irresponsible person. I didn’t decide to quit my job and just hope music would work out. I’d love to believe in ‘do what you love and the money will follow’ but I have bills to pay too. Music was actually Plan C for how I’d make a living off the Internet, my 3^rd option out of about 7 (#8 is grilling burgers on the street!)

I set a plan to reach a certain $ of income each day. Plan A is my fill in the gaps between other plans, and at the start, that’s all I did. I write articles for Textbroker and a few other clients that I’ve built up over the years. It’s grueling work to reach my daily $ goal. I start at 4am and finish around 3pm and then spend 2 or 3 hours working on music for my portfolio, marketing myself as a composer and trying to make connections with clients. I spend one day during the week and the weekend doing volunteer work and occasionally I try that thing called sleep.

As far as music, I do some basic marketing, which doesn’t appear to pay off much at first and get a few small gigs for Podcast intros and things like that. Around the end of the first month, I land my first real client and do music for their iOS game. I take a gamble and buy some equipment on my credit card before being paid to make the music as good as possible. It’s worth it! The client loves me and becomes one of my most regular sources of income.

Month 3 of Freelance Life

The first three months were pretty hard, I realize I can’t write quality articles 8-10 hours a day and keep my sanity. Plan A is getting harder but, fortunately, my Plan B, doing programming and QA as a freelancer starts to take off. This gives me more breathing room for reaching my daily $ goal in just a few hours a day and now I’m spending serious time marketing my music stuff, trolling forums for work and trolling kickstarter for new projects. Plan C (The Music) is starting to pay some of the bills!

My Kickstarter trolling works out and gets me a job on the Rubicon soundtrack when it skyrockets past its goal. I get some good comments on the chiptune-inspired soundtrack in many reviews of the game and am starting to build a solid portfolio with different kinds of music.

Month 6 of Freelance Life

I’ve now completely quit all my Plan A writing in favor of…drumroll…MUSIC!..and some programming still. I have landed a few clients who give me regular work, including a massive orchestral soundtrack for a game that never ends up coming out (but later I do Cognitile for them). I’m able to purchase some more equipment, upgrade my system for a first time, and actually take my wife out to dinner sometimes.  Some clients who could barely pay me for one song when they started their businesses are now ordering entire sets of sounds for games they have coming out each month.

I’m still doing my Plan B programming and continuing to market myself for music stuff. I take serious time out of doing actual work to learn about proper mastering, mixing and things that I’ve sort of been hacking my way through until now.  I wish I could have done this sooner. I strip most of my soundcloud in embarrassment at my previous efforts, even some I got paid for.

Month 10 of Freelance Life

I’m insanely overwhelmed. I have 8 different LARGE game projects with tight deadlines on my work board. I realize for the first time that it’s almost impossible (for me anyways) to do music work the way I do programming work and other right-brained activities. You can’t force inspiration. I get headaches if I work more than 5 hours straight on music and especially sound effects. I also realize I need to raise my prices to make it worth my while. I take a small break in looking for new clients and do a little more programming just to clear my head. I decide I have to set limits on how much work I take on in the future.

Year 1

I’ve found a good balance between my volunteer activities and doing music and some programming. The only writing I do is for this blog just for fun. I’m now collaborating with other musicians and even farming out some jobs or parts of jobs (guitar, vocals, violin solos) to keep from getting overwhelmed. I’ve been able to upgrade my systems some more and even take a vacation. I still feel like I have tons to learn so for the time being, I’ve eased off on marketing and looking for new clients and have been focusing on improving my overall skills and listening to what other artists are doing out there.

In the next part of the series, we’ll go into details on some of the things discussed here, like how to make those essential first connections, what to do when the client is not happy, how to enjoy life and focus on the advantages of this lifestyle, how to avoid getting scammed (did I mention I got scammed!?) and more stuff.