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Music for Film and Game Soundtracks with FL Studio
Joshua Au-Yeung
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- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
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eBook - ePub
Music for Film and Game Soundtracks with FL Studio
Joshua Au-Yeung
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About This Book
Create and compose production-quality music with the power of FL Studio 20 along with MuseScore and WwiseKey Features⢠Develop widely applicable music composition techniques and create full orchestral scores⢠Leverage the power of FL Studio to create your own production-level soundtracks⢠Use cutting-edge tools to fuel your creative ideas and launch your composer careerBook DescriptionFL Studio is a cutting-edge software music production environment and a powerful and easy-to-use tool for composing music. In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover how to use FL Studio's tools and techniques to design exciting soundtracks for your films, TV shows, video games, and much more. You'll start by understanding the business of composing, learning how to communicate, score, market your services, land gigs, and deliver music projects for clients like a professional. Next, you'll set up your studio environment, navigate key tools, such as the channel rack, piano roll, playlist, mixer, and browser, and export songs. The book then advances to show you how to compose orchestral music using MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) programming, with a dedicated section to string instruments. You'll create sheet music using MuseScore for live musicians to play your compositions. Later, you'll learn about the art of Foley for recording realistic sound effects, create adaptive music that changes throughout video games, and design music to trigger specific emotions, for example, scary music to terrify your listener. Finally, you'll work on a sample project that will help you prepare for your composing career. By the end of this book, you'll be able to create professional soundtrack scores for your films and video games.What you will learn⢠Compose production-ready music for films and video games⢠Plan and deliver a soundtrack music score for clients like a professional⢠Apply practical music theory using themes, leitmotifs, scales, and modes⢠Compose orchestral music with MIDI programming⢠Design music for specific emotions⢠Create sheet music with MuseScore, score music for films with Fruity Video Player, and make diegetic music⢠Design interactive music by leveraging horizontal resequencing and vertical remixingWho this book is forThis book is for musicians and programmers who want to take their music composing skills to a professional level. Film directors and game designers who want to get involved in scoring music for their own productions will also find this book useful. All you need is a computer and FL Studio to get started.
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Part 1:The Business of Composing for Clients
This section will introduce you to the business side of composing for clients, including how to deal with clients and organize and plan soundtrack projects.
We will cover the following chapter in this section:
- Chapter 1, The Business of Composing for Clients
Chapter 1: The Business of Composing for Clients
In this chapter, you will learn about the business of composing music for clients. We will discuss how to land a job composing music so you can get started, how to prepare for meetings with clients, and how to obtain actionable project requirements. This way, you'll be able to strategically satisfy your clients every time.
We will discuss planning a film score and useful methods for collaborating with other musicians so that you can work efficiently. Finally, we will discuss how to collect music royalty revenue so you can earn passive income from your compositions.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Landing your first composing gig
- Preparing for meeting clients
- Planning a music score
- Collaborating with others
- Advice for avoiding rookie mistakes
- The day-to-day tasks of composing
Landing your first composing gig
Landing a job creating music for clients is not like getting a regular office job. Music jobs are rarely posted on job boards and the interview is different from traditional interviews. This is for a good reason. The task of composing music requires a very specific set of traits that are not easily evaluated by reading a resume or asking traditional interview questions.
Let's take a moment to put ourselves in the client's shoes. Imagine you're a director who has just finished creating a movie. You've spent time carefully revising a script, running casting calls to find actors who look the part and have the right chemistry, scouting filming locations, and planning shoots, and are finally in the process of editing the footage in postproduction. You now need scenes in your film to hit certain emotions, and you need music that's tailored just right to do this.
After expending all that effort trying to make sure every detail fits the film precisely, do you think you would hire someone you've never met to make the music? Perhaps if they're famous with a solid track record you might. But if you haven't heard of them before, then you're going to need some evidence to prove they can deliver. You need to trust that whatever music is composed will be aligned with the overall style of the film. That information can't be obtained by reading a resume or asking traditional interview questions.
When a client needs someone to compose music for their project, the first thing they do is think about their current connections. Is there someone they already know who can do the job? With the exception of music videos, the music doesn't come firstâthe project comes firstâŚwhich means the music is often an afterthought. An important afterthought, but if there is no project, then no one is asking for music.
What does this mean? It means that the best odds of you landing a music job is being already known by the people creating projects. Ideally, they should know about you long before they start looking for someone to compose music. If you want to compose music for films, you should be hanging around with people who are actively making films. If you want to compose music for video games, you need to be hanging out with people who are making video games.
Figure out which films or video games are getting created locally and find ways to enter those communities. Learn everything you can about the projects getting created. Ask questions, explore their past projects, and volunteer to help with their projects in any way that you can. The more you can do to establish your presence, the more natural it will be for you to compose music for them. Of course, you also need to establish yourself as a capable and professional music composer.
How to establish yourself as a professional
What should you do before you start applying for composing jobs? You should do everything you can to establish a brand portraying you as a capable music-composing professional. There are lots of musicians out thereâonly a subset of them can make original music for other people in a professional setting. You want potential clients to know that you are part of that special group.
Many good live musicians don't have the skills to be good composers, while many composers aren't great live musicians. There's overlap for sure, but there is also a separate composer skillset that is required to do composing that is much more than being good at playing music. Not to worry, thoughâthis book will teach you everything you need to know to get your skills up to par.
Here are a few quick steps to make you appear instantly more professional to potential clients:
- Have a professional-looking music website that displays your music and music-creating services. The website should at a minimum have samples of your music, a short biography about you, and your contact information.
- Have your past music easily accessible so you can provide it at a moment's notice. I personally use SoundCloud as my site of choice when I need to provide links to my portfolio. SoundCloud is a website where you can upload your music, and listeners can listen to it without having to log in.
To learn more about SoundCloud, visit https://soundcloud.com.
- Get business cards. Even though people don't need business cards anymore when contact information can be plugged into your phone, a business card makes people think you're serious about what you do. Business cards are also convenient to hand out at events. If you don't have business cards already, go make some.
- Create an email account dedicated to music business-related activities. Make sure your email address sounds professional.
- Create a Facebook page dedicated to your music-related business. When you share a post saying that you made music for a project, it acts as free advertisement for you.
- Even better than a Facebook page, create a local community group or Facebook group related to your music business. When I was in university, I wanted to create films, but there weren't any film-making groups on campus. So, I created my own. This helped to foster a community of filmmakers and gave me opportunities to get started creating my music portfolio. I was also lucky enough to enroll in classes about creating video games, which gave me my first shot at composing for games. If you're a student, you have a golden opportunity to organize student groups around music/films/video games. There are always lots of like-minded people eager to join as members. Make the most of these student opportunities while you can.
Next, let's talk about networking.
How to network
If you want to compose, you should be going to meetup events where films and games are being planned. Find out where the producers, filmmakers, actors, and writers are gathering.
If you're interested in finding existing groups or creating a local community group, consider checking out the following website: https://meetup.com/. Meetup is a website that helps you find or host local events. Sometimes, you can find film- or video game-related events near you. If they aren't any nearby, consider starting a Meetup group yourself.
Another good place to start networking is at amateur film festivals, where there are always parties for meeting and greeting. Meet and greets at festivals may not be specifically listed on the event brochure. If so, ask around at the event, and you'll invariably discover that some members are going for refreshments afterward. At meet and greets, give your business card to everyone before you leave, and get their contact information. Do everything you can to make friends with the people who are the project creators.
After the event, send a text or email reminding people of who you are, something relevant to the conversation you had with them, and that you'd like to follow up. Perhaps send them a link to a song you made. Then, routinely follow up with them on a regular basis by calling or sending them a message to keep up to date with their activities. I have always found the atmosphere at amateur film festivals to be inclusive and welcoming to newcomers, so if you're new, this is a good place to start.
It's unlikely that meeting someone at a meet-and-greet event will land you a job outright. I've never seen that happen at a first meeting. It's always a series of bumping into the same people at several events until people eventually begin to recognize your face. Each time they see you, it becomes easier to make yourself relevant to their project. Then, when you feel it's time, mention you have some music you'd like to send to them for consideration.
Don't...