# Seeking advice on obtaining a intern/assistant opportunity.



## JCU (Oct 6, 2011)

I will be moving back to California next month and I am trying to get some leads on possible opportunities to be an intern or assistant.

I have gone as far as to place ads but to no avail. 

So any good advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I have started putting together a small amount of material as a possible assistant demo pack. 

If anyone's interested in checking that out let me know and I'll shoot you a link. 

Thank you for your time.


----------



## synergy543 (Oct 6, 2011)

Just a little suggestion...If you make your work hard to access, I guarantee you that nobody of consequence will ask you for a link. 

Although if they have a minute or two, you never know who might click on your link and give it a listen.


----------



## robteehan (Oct 6, 2011)

I second that - furthermore it's a good idea to have a website. Simple, clean, professional, with a nice photo of you demonstrating that you're a cool, likeable person, with a resume or bio, or even a paragraph describing your musical interests in goals if you don't have anything to put in a bio. And an easy to access selection of your music.

This makes it easy for someone to find out about you.


----------



## _taylor (Oct 6, 2011)

You can join the SCL and start meeting and greeting and maybe you'll meet some composer in need.

Everyone I know who assists for another composer has got in through school. Well one guy just started showing up at the studio everyday and made himself useful - but that's a unique situation. He had access through another program. But - he was persistent and it worked for him. 



Best


----------



## AndrewS (Dec 8, 2011)

My advice is to email everyone you can find contact info for, offer to take them out to lunch/coffee, etc. Let them know what you're interested in doing, but don't be overbearing. Definitely don't shove a demo reel down their throats. If they ask you for a demo, cool, otherwise keep quiet about it. In my experience, (after having worked for multiple composers), CDs will be thrown in the trash without a listen. If they do get listened to it'll be by the assistant(s), who'll most likely rip your programming to shreds.

A lot of the time, resumes and demos aren't necessary. My initial intern gig I got by just going out to coffee with the composer and chatting about music for 45 minutes. Since it sounds like you're just starting out, it's pretty unlikely that someone will hire you as a tech, and as a result will mostly be looking for the vibe they get off of you when you guys meet up.

If you do get hired, make sure you're ok with doing basic intern duties for a while. If you're put off by doing something simple like getting coffee, think about it this way: If a composer can't trust you to do the small things like mail something out, or file something away properly, how could they possibly trust you to touch their sequences?


----------

