First time "promoting" my own music

[anne]

I have a few questions: I've been working on several projects to build up my experience and get some credits on projects. My first question is how long should I do this before not working for credit only? Secondly, this rally will be the first one I attend to concentrate on advancing my own music career. If I have only 2 or 3 songs that I wrote and like, should I bother bringing those on cd (for drive by mentor, to distribute if the opportunity arises, etc) or is it best to wait until I have a full cd worth for another rally later on?Thanks!

[matto]

Quote:I have a few questions: I've been working on several projects to build up my experience and get some credits on projects. My first question is how long should I do this before not working for credit only?Unless we are talking student films or other similar situations where everybody is working for free, you should always try to get something, even if it's just a symbolic compensation. Doesn't mean you always will.I think you should always project the idea that you are doing this for free now to help them out, with the understanding that it should lead to paying work at some point later. Quote:Secondly, this rally will be the first one I attend to concentrate on advancing my own music career. If I have only 2 or 3 songs that I wrote and like, should I bother bringing those on cd (for drive by mentor, to distribute if the opportunity arises, etc) or is it best to wait until I have a full cd worth for another rally later on?Definitely bring what you have. No shame in only having a few songs. One great song is all it takes to impress most people...

[anne]

Thanks Matto - I did one freebie for a scholarship program that I was formerly involved with, and several production jobs for bands for a cut later (you can guess how that went since its in my free category). I will keep building up my credits but ask for something in return as applicable. And, I will be bringing three songs with me. I wasn't sure if this was too few - thanks for the advice, or I probably would have not brought them.

[hummingbird]

Quote:I have a few questions: I've been working on several projects to build up my experience and get some credits on projects. My first question is how long should I do this before not working for credit only? Secondly, this rally will be the first one I attend to concentrate on advancing my own music career. If I have only 2 or 3 songs that I wrote and like, should I bother bringing those on cd (for drive by mentor, to distribute if the opportunity arises, etc) or is it best to wait until I have a full cd worth for another rally later on?Thanks!Anne - absolutely bring what you have and get some feedback either on the songwriting and/or on the direction you should go. Have a few to hand out to folks you chat with too if you like.H

[davewalton]

Quote:I have a few questions: I've been working on several projects to build up my experience and get some credits on projects. My first question is how long should I do this before not working for credit only? Secondly, this rally will be the first one I attend to concentrate on advancing my own music career. If I have only 2 or 3 songs that I wrote and like, should I bother bringing those on cd (for drive by mentor, to distribute if the opportunity arises, etc) or is it best to wait until I have a full cd worth for another rally later on?Thanks!Hi Anne,My experience has been that although I applied for paying projects early on, I didn't start to get those until I had some other credits under my belt and was able to actually demonstrate that this was something I've already done, not something I was sure I could do. Those "other credits" usually came in the form of "copy/credit only", deferred pay and very low pay projects, either from startup production companies or student films.What you get paid will strictly depend on their budget... they can't pay you $1000 for scoring a short film if the entire budget for the short film is $1000. As you get more experience and more credits, you'll start getting more interest from projects with bigger budgets. That's generally when YOUR pay starts going up. If I don't have anything better going at the time, turning down legitimate projects that can give me more experience and additional credits never made sense. I'm going to be writing music anyway, might as well be for a real project.Student films, by the way, can actually be very good. In good film schools, they have access to high-end equipment and production facilities and are many times guided by experienced film makers that happen to teach at these schools. Two student films I did sometime back (both from the same film maker) have won some nice awards at various film festivals and both of them were recently picked up to air on a Canadian cable station called something like "The Fight Channel", a channel that I'm guessing is focused on boxing, karate, etc. These films have really good fight choreography in them and they've been airing quite a bit from what I understand. If the cable channel isn't too small, I'll get performance royalties (eventually).Even without all that, the music that comes out of these I've used either directly for other things or indirectly to get new projects. Unless it's a "scam", having a project is always better than not having a projet.Also, it's better if you can have a wide variety of genres (drama, comedy, action, documentary) rather than only one type of thing. If there's anything to focus on in the beginning, it's to get that variety of credits under your belt... bigger budget projects will be within your grasp when you have that kind of experience.HTH,DavePS - Regarding the songs, one guy I know brought a CD to last year's Rally with just one song. I guarantee that if you show up without a CD you'll kick yourself, no matter what. PSS - The composer thing does take patience. There's a LOT of competition out there, and only one "slot" available for composer for each film. I know I did at least a half-dozen films for deferred pay, very low or no pay before the credits I had started "paying off".

[tedsingingfox]

PS - Regarding the songs, one guy I know brought a CD to last year's Rally with just one song. I guarantee that if you show up without a CD you'll kick yourself, no matter what. And I have to agree with Dave here, Anne. NOT bringing your songs on CD will bother you 100 times more than bringing too many and not handing them all out. (I learned this the hard way at my first NCSA -now, the WCS- Conference...)Ted

[anne]

Thanks everyone - I actually put down a little free work I was doing today on another Taxi members shelved tune and worked on a song that I wrote (but never submitted) for the pseudo "Low Rider" listing that was on about a month ago. I always feel the lyrics suck, so I didn't submit it. Now I wish I had, in listening to it again. Ah, well. I'm guessing that is how I will feel if I don't bring any cds with me, so I will bring a few to hand out, along with all of my extra dots...Dave, thanks for summing that up so precisely. I'm just a little overwhelmed by the amount of ads locally for "credit only" gigs as so many of them seem, well, questionable at best. I see what you are saying about student films and I think its worth a call to the colleges here to find out about hooking up with student projects (rather than looking on Craigs list, etc). I don't know if this would count as part of my reel, but since I do video I tend to think in visual terms when I'm writing music - is there anything wrong with making shorts using my own footage AND music (aside from the time involved?) and using some of those in a demo reel? Just curious if that is completely tacky and megalomaniacal (did I spell that one correctly?)

[davewalton]

Quote:Dave, thanks for summing that up so precisely. I'm just a little overwhelmed by the amount of ads locally for "credit only" gigs as so many of them seem, well, questionable at best. I see what you are saying about student films and I think its worth a call to the colleges here to find out about hooking up with student projects (rather than looking on Craigs list, etc). I don't know that there's enough room for "rather than", especially when getting a foothold. Personally, I applied for just about everything from all kinds of sources and if something came my way, I always had the opportunity to turn it down if it was a waste of time. I will say that I only turned down one or two at the most. Even if the movie as a whole wasn't very good, there was always one or two scenes, that when taken by themselves, were very useful additions to my "showreel". If I got one good scene for my showreel, the project was usually worth it, especially if it was a genre that I hadn't done before. Case in point was my first comedy... I had done at least a half-dozen films at the time and when a comedy came my way I took it. As a film it didn't win any Academy Awards but it gave me one decent clip in particular to use in the "comedy" category for my showreel (not to mention the additional experience)...www.DaveWaltonMusic.com/PrivateArea/Rud ... ow.movThat may not be the greatest comedy clip with music but when I had nothing, it worked pretty well. Actually, I still use it sometimes. If nothing else, it showcases halfway decent orchestral realism. Quote:I don't know if this would count as part of my reel, but since I do video I tend to think in visual terms when I'm writing music - is there anything wrong with making shorts using my own footage AND music (aside from the time involved?) and using some of those in a demo reel? Just curious if that is completely tacky and megalomaniacal (did I spell that one correctly?)If you can make video clips containing your music, you're well ahead of a lot of composers who can only make and send MP3's. Before I had any real projects to show, I found clips online that didn't have music and asked permission from the owners of the clips for me to add music to the clip and use it for my marketing purposes. No one ever said "No"... they either were flattered that I wanted to use their clip and said "Yes" or they didn't reply at all (which is actually "no" without saying so). I even bought several clips from "stock videography" websites to use.So when I applied for these composer things, I had these clips available in a private area on my website and sent links to these video clips. I think that for a director, seeing music in the context of a video clip is much more informative than just listening to an MP3 and having no idea what kind of scene the music was written for. Mostly directors want to see how you interpret scenes with your music, maybe not so much about the music itself.I still do it that way... send links to video clips with my music (except now they're video clips from REAL projects). Honestly, mostly people don't know and don't ask if they're from "real" projects (they just assume they are). It's just that I have a much wider variety of clips to show than I did when I was using "pretend" clips. The "pretend" clips got the the gigs for the "real" clips so definitely make your own clips with your own music if you can. Of course, not violating copyright stuff goes without saying and I only put this comment in, not for you, but so that any newcomer knows that this is standard operating procedure and is the way we oprerate as professionals.

[anne]

Hey Dave - thank you. I definitely hear what you are saying. I was re-reading your first post, about showing that I have done the work and can do more, versus that I have done some work and think I can do bigger projects. This is a fine point, and I'm sure this is where the need for patience and persisitance kicks in. I do need to remember that when I was doing promotions and tech work that I just took pretty much any gig to learn the ropes and sharpen my skills, and then it just turned into "bigger" and better paying gigs on its own as I built up my reputation. I'm sure this is the same but just takes a little longer on the payment end of things. I'm glad the idea of using my own video clips isn't tacky and using some stock video would cut down on time and increase the variety of clips I can use as well. I have a nice piece that I wrote for practice using a listing for "turtles gliding in the ocean" a while back, and its a little tough to film water scenes when you live in a desert at 7200 feet!Thank you, everyone, for all of the great advice.