There is a fundamental conundrum for any professional musician who wants to offer advice on the music industry: the true "secrets" of their success are too precious to give away and the advice that's leftover is mostly cliché and common sense.
In my twenty-some years as a composer, I honestly haven't acquired that many secrets. I won't tell you who my clients are or how I got them. I won't share my methodology for networking. I also won't share my musical influences... for legal reasons!
That just leaves the clichés. But somewhere in those clichés is meaningful advice that I would have liked to know before beginning my career. So let's examine the facts and the fictions of the most common pieces of advice.
Cliché #1: It's Who You Know, Not What You Know
I was recently on a career panel at a music college where the entire discussion devolved into a repeated iteration on the theme of making connections: how to make connections, where to make connections, and who to make connections with. This one is a cliché for a reason, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
If there's one mantra you need to internalize, it's this: talent is common. Very common. Let's play a thought experiment. Every year there are ten or more violinists graduating from Juilliard. There are also ten graduating from New England Conservatory. And Manhattan School of Music. And every university, community college, and conservatory in the United States. Imagine the numbers when we extrapolate this to the whole world! We could do this for every instrument or art. Yes, even composing. And these are all extremely highly talented, educated, technically proficient individuals just like you. This is your competition.
A misconception I often hear is that the cream rises to the top, but this is simply not true. If we created a graph of the whole spectrum of violinists with a person who doesn't know violin at the bottom and Joshua Bell at the top, you'd find that the gap between the best grad in the world and the worst isn't actually that wide. When you're hiring a violinist to play whole notes, does it matter if you hire the best of the best?
I know it sucks, but the likelihood that anyone is going to hire you purely on how good your stuff is...is unlikely. Itâs the old dream of the garage rock band waiting for a producer to hear their sound and sign them on the spot. It just doesn't work that way. You have to be proactive. You get hired because of your reel, because of your work ethic, because of your personality, and because people trust you to get the job done.
I wasn't the most talented composer in my undergrad or grad classes. Not even close, in fact. I'd put myself somewhere at the bottom! This is the truth of why cultivating your connections is important: people hire you for you, because you are the product, not just the music you write.
Cliché #2: Believe in Yourself
One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was from Pierre Boulez in the words, "Find yourself." If it had been anyone else it would have come off as cheesy and reeking of insincerity. But from him it felt like a rallying cry. Yet here we are as professionals, still trying to find our identities, not just as artists but as human beings. When a deer is born, the newborn fawn drops out of its motherâs womb and gets up, ready to take on the world. Often, we humans reach our mid-30's still searching for who we are and maybe, more importantly, who we are not. Finding your voice takes time but finding the confidence to believe in your voice can take even longer.
On paper, the advice believe in yourself seems painfully obvious and yet more often than not I find it completely misinterpreted by artists. It's time to come to terms with what your identity means in relation to your career.
The most important factor in your artistic identity is to understand your limits. You, like any talented individual, have strengths and weaknesses. This means being disciplined in taking the gigs where you can lend your strengths to the job while maximizing connections for the jobs that fit your strengths. This also means working on the weaknesses that are keeping you from getting the jobs you want. There's no shame in admitting that you simply don't enjoy writing a certain genre of music. I have never enjoyed writing electronic dance music (EDM) despite having playlists full of dance tracks. It might even be my favorite genre to listen to! Sometimes the music we excel at as musicians isnât at all the same music we enjoy listening to.
The most difficult part is trusting your voice. Deep down there is a true-you that comes out in your most passionate â and vulnerable â moments. This may be the scariest part of being an artist. Baring your soul to an audience can be no different than standing naked in front of your classmates. You are completely exposed and there is nothing to hide or mask the intimate details in your work that are so personal. I think back to when I was an adolescent and wrote music for fun; there was nothing to hide. I would write whatever came to mind! Somehow, as I grew into a professional, I'd often find myself over-orchestrating my music as a way of hiding my more personal ideas, as if uncovering them exposed me to potential ridicule or criticism that I couldn't take.
My hero in this regard has always been Erik Satie. In a time just before the French were obsessed with pushing the limits of tonality and orchestration, his music crashed through the gates with as few notes as possible. Not a single unnecessary doubling. Not a single note out of place. I can't imagine having the confidence to do what he did, but I aspire to. This is from the 1880's.
Now, let's make something clear: to "believe in yourself" doesn't mean you don't have a backup plan; it doesn't mean you don't take criticism seriously; it doesn't mean you lack humility. You don't need to become a diva to believe in yourself and as we discussed in the previous section, attitude problems can be a career killer. I'm reminded of mediocre auditions on American Idol where the judges offer criticism only to be met with screams of, "You don't know what you're talking about! I'm a great singer!" Their parents probably told them to believe in themselves and now they do so to the point where they are no longer able to take critiques and improve their crafts.
Many artists interpret "believe in yourself" to mean expressing their emotions at any costs, imposing their will on the projects on which they work. This is the most dangerous game you can play in the music industry, where following instructions and being a team player are held at such a premium. In the next section we'll discuss why you need to shake these ideas from your head for good.
Cliché #3: If You Do What You Love, You'll Never Work a Day in Your Life
Even if you're a trust fund kid with nothing to occupy your time but chasing Pulitzers, this cliché is still, most likely, not true. And if you're reading this, I'm guessing you're not in such a fortunate position anyhow! The fact is that if you are trying to make money with your work, then this is a job and you need to treat it as such.
The first thing you need to get out of your head is that what you're doing is "high art." It's not high art. It's barely art at all! It's more of a craft and the quicker you internalize this, the more money you're going to make during your career. Your job as a composer is not to express yourself; it's to deliver what your client wants. Sometimes your client gives you some artistic freedom, but at the end of the day your job is to realize the creative vision of your director and/or producer. To use a baseball analogy, I am the pitcher and the producer is the catcher. The catcherâs job is to create a game plan and call the signs. My job, especially as a ârookie,â isn't to decide what pitch to throw; it's to execute the game plan. And maybe in time, as I become a veteran, I'll have more input into the game plan and the pitch selection. But the final say, at the beginning of a career, goes to the catcher. To shake him off would be a sign of bad faith.
Even Alexandre Desplat, one of the great film scorers of our time, couldn't shake this reality when he was fired from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for not realizing the director's vision. Peter Jackson fired Howard Shore, the musical genius behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy, when the director was helming his King Kong remake despite their previous collaborations, which earned two Academy Awards for Best Original Score.
The most infamous story of all is the tragic tale of Alex North whose score for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey was never even used. Not a single note, in fact. He couldn't impress the great Kubrick despite an incredible work of composition and was instead replaced by a collection of classical pieces such as Richard Straussâ iconic Also Sprach Zarathustra. Tough break.
Furthermore, there are many aspects to the job that don't involve your creative process in the slightest! If you're going to make money, you're going to be doing a lot of networking, sending emails, making reels, building websites, working on your social media presence, bookkeeping, reading and discussing briefings, fielding conference calls, organizing your library, and researching.
Despite all of this, I still love what I do. Getting paid to write music is a blessing and I try my best to appreciate it. But I'll be damned if there aren't days I wish I had just gotten an MBA and took the first job on Wall Street I could find.
Cliché #4: There Is No "Big Break"
Professionals will often tell you that there wasn't a single catalyst that propelled their career. Many of my closest colleagues attest that their careers were a gradual climb with tens or hundreds of individual milestones. What they say is true: there will not be a single moment where you go from unknown, undiscovered, and an unpaid amateur to a respected professional. You're not going to suddenly land a Hollywood gig because some producer liked your reel. You're probably not even going to be hired as a staff composer at a music house straight out of college.
However, there will be a singular moment or singular moments in your life that will make or break your career, and if you're not prepared for them, you will not succeed.
If you're the reading type, pick up Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In it, Gladwell examines the idiosyncratic experiences that make high-achievers different. What strikes me as especially relevant is his analysis of iconoclasts such as Bill Gates and The Beatles. It's not just that they were smart or talented or in the right place at the right time - when the chance of a lifetime came to them, they were ready. They already had 10,000 hours of experience.
However, you won't know which moment was the important one until years and years later so it's best to treat every opportunity as if it's âthe big one.â I may not be able to pinpoint an individual moment that made my career (perhaps because I hope that the greatest career-defining moment of my career is yet to come) but the individual successes came because I was ready and I knew what to do with them. For example, as a music house intern (I was paid $50 a week to get coffee, clean, and digitize the company's cd collection) I was given a chance to write on a pharmaceutical spot. We all hope we're ready for these moments as you only get one shot at it. I was able to impress my boss as well as the agency producers who wanted to hear more of my music. I wasn't exactly handed a job on the spot, but it was a major hurdle that I successfully leapt over.
Regrettably, this advice comes with a depressing caveat: you will often do everything right as an artist and you will still fail. As the wise Captain Picard once said, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." This is doubly true in the arts. You can write and submit the greatest dubstep track of all time to a producer who says, "Thanks, but we're going with a jazz track instead."
Some of your greatest works will go unrecognized, and some of your lousiest phoned-in lazy compositions will pay your rent. If just 10% of the music I write and/or submit was licensed, I'd be rich beyond my dreams. And even then, a 90% failure rate can be devastating.
This is an industry where you must be able to treat every opportunity as an important one while simultaneously shrugging off the failure and rejection that is often the result. As we discussed earlier, even Desplat, Shore, North, and many others at the top of their field have faced failure and rejection. You will too.
Conclusion
If there's one piece of parting wisdom I'd like to leave you with it's this: always be careful where you get your advice. Your teachers can bestow you with critique and analytical knowledge, but would you take career advice from a teacher who has never performed professionally? I certainly wouldn't. Worse yet, there is an entire industry preying upon the desperate: offering workshops, books, and PDF's on how to break into the industry. One shyster I know wrote a book claiming to teach you how to make 30 grand in 30 minutes as a commercial composer. He offers a subscription service. If these people know so much about this subject, why are they selling books and not making money as an artist? I sure don't have time to be selling books or organizing YouTube workshops! I'm busy writing!
And just like the teachers and the hucksters, I deserve the same scrutiny, as you can only trust me with advice on subjects I have experience with. I can offer advice on the commercial, TV, and video game industries. But I can't offer you any advice for film. John Williams may be the greatest film scorer of all time, but I doubt he can offer you advice about commercials! Take that, Johnny.
Each industry is wildly different. You might be tempted to say that composing is composing, but that would be like saying throwing a ball is throwing a ball. Despite the similarities, you wouldn't exactly trust Tom Brady to pitch for the Red Sox. In fact, my closest film scoring friend stresses that he doesn't work in the music industry; he works in the film industry.
At the end of the day, if you work hard you always have something to be proud of (even in failure). You can take solace in your work ethic, as you know you did the best job you could. If your work is rejected, the fault lies in them and not in you. I always told myself I would keep trying and trying as a composer until I finally failed so miserably that I would be forced to move back in with my parents and start over and get a new job. It hasn't happened yet, despite all the failure. I'd call that a success.
Aaron Paul Low
Award-winning composer, producer, orchestrator and conductor from New York City.
Aaron Paul Low is an award-winning composer, producer, orchestrator and conductor from New York City. A Juilliard-educated composer, APL gained prominence writing for advertising through his years at Sacred Noise, a music house in Manhattan. In his career as a freelance composer, his work has spanned from television shows to film festivals such as Cannes and TriBeCa; from arrangements and compositions for major pop artists to commercials that have aired on the Super Bowl, Olympics, World Cup, and World Series.
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