# Advice needed (quite specific though)



## Carles (Oct 1, 2015)

Hi, some of you know that my current plan is to produce music for libraries by the night with the hope that some day it will become my full-time job and leave the VFX industry.
That’s fine of course, but it can take really, really long in my case, first because I do only write orchestral music which has a reduced usage within Production Music business (and even more reduced out of it I think), and also because it takes me really long to finish every single track (I need to produce a quite elaborated mockup, actually the best I can taking what it has to take, otherwise I’m not happy with releasing anything).

I guess many of you will get some projects for hire and keep the library work for when there are not projects.

The point is that I don’t know yet much about how the music business works but I’d like to try to work full time ASAP.
I read about some advices here at VIC, but we are always assuming that one can write all sort of music so these are quite general guidelines. I clearly cannot write many styles so that’s an issue for me.

CG artists have dedicated sites where you can find job offers, but no idea if there are any similar sites for composers. I have no contacts other than you guys, the people at VIControl.

Where should I point to check for work offers? or in other words, what would you do in my case if wanting to work full time in shorter term than writing only for Libraries?
Given the long production time per track I don’t think royalty-free libraries would be even an option to consider no matter if these can give shorter time (small) profit. I’d need time beyond anything reasonable to make any significant money that way.

Please consider that my writing can be very restrictive
https://soundcloud.com/carles-piles

I cannot produce anything much different to that, if not pure orchestral perhaps I could go for some hybrid Orchestral-Synth work but nothing like pop-rock, or song-like, but more towards a non-trailer orchestral approach.

Do you see any usage for my writing style? any ideas, any sites I could check? some advices? (feel free to PM me if more comfortable for you).
Please any orientation would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Carles


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## Carles (Oct 1, 2015)

Thanks man!
When I've included "quite specific though" I felt it was very necessary 
I cannot move to a big city and do real networking because it's too late for me.
I'm 45, married with two children.
When I did start working in the animation/VFX industry I had to be 1,5 years without my family and that was too tough for me.
Fortunately within my field I had good positions after that so my salary always allowed me to feed all 4 in the country where I got the job. But, in my field I've got a nice background so I could apply for good positions.

I have no background at all within the music business and obviously I cannot grab my familiy and move to a big city to try fortune now with empty pockets and crossing my fingers, but on the other hand I'm not talking about that I want to start another flourishing career, but just to get income enough to live in a cheap/humble place doing some remote work would be more than enough for me. My joy would be having the chance to writing music full time, no need for a growing career, just a humble job.

I'm currently living in New Zealand because of my day job is in a famous studios (Weta Digital) but I'm Spanish, I always could back to my city in Spain where a 4 member family can leave with 2.000Eur/month which increases my probability to achieve the goal.
No important film industry in my city though (Valencia) and bigger cities are exponentially more expensive.

Writing for libraries has always the advantage that you can work from any place in the planet, the only inconvenient I find is that it can take extremely long in my case, if ever. So, it's nice to keep working for libraries thinking in the future, but other type of projects that might pay bills in the meanwhile would be a more realistic option.

Mostly wondering for no necessarily big budget projects but something that could be handled remotely, similar to library work but for hire in order to pay current bills.
What type of businesses might demand non expensive orchestral music?


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## chillbot (Oct 1, 2015)

Hi Carles, I love your work. I was very impressed with your nutcracker mockups. I admit that I don't generally come across a huge demand for purely orchestral works. However I don't see why you couldn't... if you put together a package of 50-100 tracks or so and found the right library company.... it would certainly fill out an area of their library that they might not already have. I guess that goes back to your original question about finding a music library company. I'm sorry I can't help you with that as I don't do library work but hopefully others on this site might be able to.

I wonder with your skill set if you might not be able to supplement your income doing orchestral work for other composers. For example, I am terrible with orchestra stuff... I could write a track and send you the MIDI to turn into a beautiful orchestral rendition, you send me back the audio. Even if it's a hybrid track I could do all the drums, synths, guitars, etc, and pay you to just mock up the orchestra and send it back to me. Of course you'd be missing out on any royalties doing that. But if you could find the right market and maybe even have a website advertising this kind of work to composers. I dunno guess I'm just thinking out loud...


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## Carles (Oct 1, 2015)

Orcel said:


> The only musical business witch still exist is around TV production and Fictions films. Those company are more often in big city but not only. I Europe and maybe in Spain, you have lot's of small production company witch are interested by cheep music. Because our competitor IS "library music". When you are used to synchronise music on movie, it's easier from producer to give the job to a composer.
> If I was in your position, I would travel a little to meet some people and juge the situation. This forum will not gives you any contact. There are so many directors who look for opportunities, friends, artists to help them for a free project before another, bigger and well paid.
> Move, give calls, do something to know how is the production business in Spain before to imagine moving. Don't give up. I am 51, 2 kids (14 & 18) I just arrive in Paris few month ago, and I will do my best to make my place. I already meet some people in post production and they told me that they will introduced me to the producers they work with.
> There is always a return when you work hard...


Again thanks Orcel, specially by telling me your age and circumstance (my kids are also 14 and 18 precisely :D).
Is true that I have no direct contact with producers but I have some contact with animation studios who obviously are connected to producers, so my current field still could help me as far as these studios will be willing to introduce me to their producers (not in Spain though but some European countries around, provided they would be happy with remote work).
I'll check that.


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## Carles (Oct 1, 2015)

chillbot said:


> Hi Carles, I love your work. I was very impressed with your nutcracker mockups. I admit that I don't generally come across a huge demand for purely orchestral works. However I don't see why you couldn't... if you put together a package of 50-100 tracks or so and found the right library company.... it would certainly fill out an area of their library that they might not already have. I guess that goes back to your original question about finding a music library company. I'm sorry I can't help you with that as I don't do library work but hopefully others on this site might be able to.
> 
> I wonder with your skill set if you might not be able to supplement your income doing orchestral work for other composers. For example, I am terrible with orchestra stuff... I could write a track and send you the MIDI to turn into a beautiful orchestral rendition, you send me back the audio. Even if it's a hybrid track I could do all the drums, synths, guitars, etc, and pay you to just mock up the orchestra and send it back to me. Of course you'd be missing out on any royalties doing that. But if you could find the right market and maybe even have a website advertising this kind of work to composers. I dunno guess I'm just thinking out loud...


Thanks Chillbot!
I guess the quality of the library can make a big difference as you said. 100 tracks is not a large amount of tracks so I could have them in about two years. I just that I'm quite discouraged currently. My first album was taken as a whole by a small label, but apart of small they took 7 months to release my tracks. After that someone has to know that it exists, listen, consider it, use it, the station/s have to air it, and my PRO (PRS) has to collect the royalties. Since aired PRS still takes two distributions (6 months) to make any payment effective. So thinking the reduced market for my music and how this business works in slow motion I feel quite hopeless that I could have a solid income sooner than let's say 10 years! (but of course I might be wrong, I have no any experiences yet other than 25 tracks in a small label, half of them still not released).

Doing mockups for other too busy composers sounds also great to me. No matter that I won't grab royalties as far as it can help me to pay bills time to time. But I'm afraid that if it won't happen within this community it will be hard that anybody will know who I am and what I can do, while here we are all in the same boat I think, trying to find some job rather than offering job (however of course I'm open to that option if it ever arises).

Cheers,
Carles


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## Peter Cavallo (Oct 1, 2015)

Hi Carles,

I feel your pain. I'm currently looking for the same solution, although I'll say up front that I'm not in your league (just a bit lower  ). I love doing orchestral stuff, more along the lines of big romantic numbers with sweeping melodies etc. I am currently still studying music (part-time), working full-time in IT, but managed to release an album through a similar setup to you, using a small publisher to release it to the world. No guarantee of retiring on sales that's for sure.

A part from that and an appalling sales record in the library music market. Basically $50 a month since I started in May this year with about 30 tracks of my try hard media tracks. I decided to take some advice from my teacher which told me to contact media schools around the country (Australia) and offer my services to student projects. I was not that interested in taking this on board as I had my pride and all that! 

So I sent an email off to two schools and that afternoon got an email back from a lecturer saying that he passed on my details to his students. To cut the story down I'm now finishing a remarkable documentary that was commissioned from the community to the students. I'm working with a very talented and creative young director (mid 20's) who loves my music (orchestral flavour) and who is now setting up a production shop. Through this I have made contacts with another large Studio owner who wants to talk about some projects coming up. 

I have made no money out of any of this but the potential is there. This is the part I hate, not knowing what will come of this but at least something is happening and it all started with an email. I see it as a very small start, but a start nonetheless. Please don't get discouraged as you have a wonderful gift and you will find it's place just keep looking.

Best of luck.
Peter


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## Carles (Oct 2, 2015)

Peter Cavallo said:


> just keep looking



Thanks Peter.
Yup that's the point, to know first where to look at


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## kclements (Oct 2, 2015)

Hey Carles -

I am right there with you. I am 48, I don't have any kids, but am working at library music full time. I make very little money right now and we are supported by my wife's job. But we are quickly going through our savings and I either need to make more money quickly, or get a part time job to help fill in the gaps.

I am currently with 8 libraries. I have about 200 unique cues in those 8 libraries. I've been working at building my catalog for 5 years now. It takes a long time to start to see income - at least that has been my experience

Let me say off the bat that I love your mock-up skills and writing. It's very good. But when you say you _can't_ do anything but orchestral, I don't believe you  You may not think you can do anything else, but I'm pretty sure you can. You may not even like doing anything else, but that is another topic.

I have a number of friends doing library music. I know guys doing it full time making over $100,000 a year, and guys trying to make it full time making $10,000 and less a year - everyone in between. My experience with library music, and the people who are successful at it comes down to this: Being fast, being varied, and networking.

1) being fast. The guys I know who are making a living at this are very fast. They can turn a cue around in 4-5 hours. Start to finish. Now this may not be your full blown orchestral mockup, those always take longer. But if you want to do library work, it's my experience that you need to be quick.

It's a numbers game. The more tracks you have out there working for you, the more income you have. Now, I know there are folks around here who disagree with this. If you get into a really great library with great connections, you can write maybe 12-20 high quality, orchestral cues a year and make a living. I'm not in any of those libraries (yet). So for me, it's about getting a lot of great cues out there in a number of good to great libraries and let them work. I always do the very best cue I can write - I don't send out crap just to build my numbers. But I find the more I write, the faster I get, and the more I can write.....

2) Be varied. I also love doing the orchestral stuff. So do a lot of people. The libraries are full of orchestral stuff, and tension, and dramedy, and suspense.... And you have serious named film composers also doing library music with a lot of resources. Point is you have to find a way to offer something the library doesn't already have tons of. Maybe some kind of hybrid orchestral stuff, something you can still enjoy writing, but is some how unique or a bit different.

And here is where you start to broaden your genres. Look at other stuff that might work for you too. Maybe add some Southeast Asia elements to your orchestral stuff and give it a different flavor. Maybe add some hip-hop drums, or Indian instruments. Maybe study a bit of (insert any genre here) and see how you do. I get briefs from the libraries asking for this or that kind of track. I always take a listen and see if I can dissect what they are looking for and if I can provide it. I have greatly expanded my writing abilities by just trying and finding out that I can do a kind of "Suspense, reveal moment with electronica elements...."

3) networking. This is a must in my opinion. You have to meet people and build a trust relationship with them. Not just library owners but other composers as well. Most of my paying library deals have come from referrals via friends. There are a lot of ways to do this online, but I think you also need face to face time. I am in a small town in Michigan. No one around me is in library music and there are no meetings to go to. I have to go to LA. I have gone every year to a mixer in LA to meet people and make contacts.

I know LA is a lot farther from New Zealand than Michigan, but in my experience, you have to make it. Maybe not every year, but try and find a time to go. There are all kinds of mixers and events with music supervisors and library owners - find one and try to attend.

I joined Taxi.com 5 years ago and it has payed off big time. All of the deals I've made are directly related to Taxi - either from their service, or through the people I've met. I can highly recommend it.

One other thing about libraries. Some work harder than others. I would advise researching libraries, find some that seem to fit your personality and do great work, and then work hard at getting to know someone in that library (or maybe the owner). I am of the mind that working for 8 great libraries is much, much better than working for 18, shall we say, less great ones.

Hope this is helpful -
Cheers
kc


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## Kaufmanmoon (Oct 2, 2015)

Been on this forum since the beginning of the year and my feeling is if anyone deserves a break, It's Carles.
Fingers crossed you'll get there.


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## Vin (Oct 2, 2015)

Carles, I'd recommend you 2 things for starters: going through *this thread* which is packed with excellent insight and purchasing Emmett Cooke's great *eBook* about music licensing business. I really like your mockups, great skills you have and with a little research you shouldn't have much problems with find good publishers for your music. All the best with your quest.



kclements said:


> I make very little money right now and we are supported by my wife's job. But we are quickly going through our savings and I either need to make more money quickly, or get a part time job to help fill in the gaps.
> 
> I am currently with 8 libraries. I have about 200 unique cues in those 8 libraries. I've been working at building my catalog for 5 years now. It takes a long time to start to see income - at least that has been my experience




Kayle, if you don't mind me asking, what are your music library income figures?

You should be earning respectable money with ~200 cues. From what I've seen, people with 50-100 cues in good royalty free libraries are earning around $500-$1500/month without much problem. Which libraries are you with?


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## kclements (Oct 2, 2015)

Vin said:


> Kayle, if you don't mind me asking, what are your music library income figures?
> 
> You should be earning respectable money with ~200 cues. From what I've seen, people with 50-100 cues in good royalty free libraries are earning around $500-$1500/month without much problem. Which libraries are you with?



I don't mind you asking at all. This year I made about $700 in royalties from my placements on television. Hmmm. I wonder what I am doing wrong if others are making that a month!

kc


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## chillbot (Oct 2, 2015)

Carles said:


> 100 tracks is not a large amount of tracks so I could have them in about two years.



This is exactly why I've never gotten deep into the orchestral stuff. I have no patience the detail it takes. However, this is only one track per week which is a formula you will never be able to live off of. Can you try something different in your template or setup? For example, instead of writing one track at a time write 5 very similar tracks all at the same time. Sort of a copy-and-paste approach but in different keys and tempos with different melodies? Might be worth trying. Your artistic integrity may suffer a bit but guess what, the music libraries don't care.


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## Exitmusicthis2 (Oct 3, 2015)

Hi Carles,

I'm in a similar boat to you, in fact l'm fairly certain l have tracks with the library (label) you mentioned earlier and l've been waiting nearly 9 months for them to release 14 of my new tracks.


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

kclements said:


> But when you say you _can't_ do anything but orchestral, I don't believe you  You may not think you can do anything else, but I'm pretty sure you can.


Thanks Kayle for so elaborated answer.

I guess I can do other things if I'll learn how to, but that's my point. Is not something I believe I can do so effortless and many people is already good on other styles because they feel them their own. I should spend lots of time to get closer to these guys. possibly not enjoying much the process and meanwhile do not progressing with orchestral learning...
As our time is always limited, this raises the question mark "should I learn a bit of everything and go to a more generalist position or should I focus on something I love and try to make it shine (even if it's market is more reduced)?

I really love the symphonic orchestra and its enormous potential as demonstrated by the classical masters. I need to learn more about how to use it because I find this learning process highly motivating so I'm very biased about choosing the orchestral-only path


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

Kaufmanmoon said:


> Been on this forum since the beginning of the year and my feeling is if anyone deserves a break, It's Carles.
> Fingers crossed you'll get there.


Thanks for your optimism!


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

Vin said:


> Carles, I'd recommend you 2 things for starters: going through


Both done time ago.
Perhaps if I'll read the book again I could find it more interesting (too many new concepts for me at that moment) and the thread is precisely what made me take the decision to give a go.

Found in that thread the same that is happening in this thread too, it seems that the lottery factor and its million variables plays an important role, the same business can work very differently to everyone so after reading all it's hard to get any firm conclusion.


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

chillbot said:


> However, this is only one track per week which is a formula you will never be able to live off of.


That's the most concerning part. Some people seems able to do it, some not even for pizza and beer.


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

Exitmusicthis2 said:


> Hi Carles,
> 
> I'm in a similar boat to you, in fact l'm fairly certain l have tracks with the library (label) you mentioned earlier and l've been waiting nearly 9 months for them to release 14 of my new tracks.


While it could be not a big deal once you are getting a solid income from the tracks you did years ago etc, that's a completely game breaker for someone trying to start on this :-(


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## Steve Martin (Oct 6, 2015)

Hi Carles, 

I sincerely apologise as this is not an answer to your questions, but I just want to say that your mockups - just a few I have listened to, are very impressive. You are very talented, and I can hear the musicianship and the phrasing, very very careful attention to detail with your mockups - amazing! I can hear how you have very carefully built up to orchestral climaxes, and done this with samples in a really sensitive and dramatic way. Just so well done! The pizzicato in the strings in the Tchaikovsky March of the Toy Soldiers in the bass - just one example, how you build towards the end of their phrase, I could say a lot more about other places [and there are just many great places where the sensitivity to tension build ups in the phrases - in fact, every phrase is shaped in a careful and very sensitive musical way], but just an amazing job you have done. I wish I could have done mockups that sound as good as that!!

Whatever you are aiming to do - all the very best with it - Steve 

p.s. now just listening to your music "Hesperides" that's really great music Carles! The orchestration is also very imaginative. Wonderful writing definitely!!


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## Steve Martin (Oct 6, 2015)

Hey, sorry - yes another post!! - but just listening to more of your original music - I'm really amazed - they are really great tracks! Really inspirational to hear your music realized in such a brilliant way with the libraries you are using. Wow!

Steve


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## Carles (Oct 6, 2015)

Steve Martin said:


> now just listening to your music "Hesperides" that's really great music Carles! The orchestration is also very imaginative.


Thanks Steve!

Regarding the quote above, please give credit to a couple of French impressionist composers instead, they are teaching me every day new ways to use all sections, specially woodwinds.


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## Steve Martin (Oct 6, 2015)

No Problem Carles - thanks again for your music. Wonderful, creative and full of imagination!

Steve


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