{"id":6274,"date":"2013-10-08T08:56:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T12:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.videogamedj.com\/?p=6274"},"modified":"2013-10-08T09:01:04","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T13:01:04","slug":"life-as-a-freelance-musician-part-9-making-music-for-other-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/life-as-a-freelance-musician-part-9-making-music-for-other-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Life As A Freelance Musician Part 9: Making Music for Other People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making music that someone else has the final say on can be really frustrating. After all, this is basically art. It is a way to express yourself. When you start doing it for money, one of the hardest things to let go of is that full control.<\/p>\n

I have made some original video game songs that I thought were amazing, only to have a client say, \u201cthat\u2019s not what we\u2019re looking for at all\u201d. I literally had a client for a while who pretty much just wants one long droning bass note with little else for his game\u2019s background.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a few tips on how to find a happy medium between what your client wants and making something you still actually care about at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

What Not To Do<\/h3>\n

Early on, I\u2019d get a contract signed, and spend a few days making an entire song and then sending it to the client, as a pretty much completed product. This didn\u2019t always work out so well. Usually they had their own ideas of how it would sound, or would tear it to pieces with criticism. I found a much better approach was to make a small, looping sample just to give them an idea and they can tell me what they like\/don\u2019t like about it. This also gives them an actual loop they can try in their game to get a feel for it. This is also good to do because down the line, they can\u2019t really tell you they decided it doesn\u2019t fit in the game when they had a chance early on to try it.<\/p>\n

Interpreting What a Client Wants<\/h3>\n

One of the hardest things about working on someone else\u2019s vision is getting on the same page for a specific sound. Here are a few little examples from some games I worked on. The links after quotes show the finished product.<\/p>\n

For act I, the player’s going to be presented with a straight-faced arcade shooter. “Are you a bad enough dude to save the president”, sort of plot. I’m going to try to subvert a lot of the normal tropes in the shoot-em-up genre; while they’re presented with clear-cut mission goals and instructions (“defend against the alien menace”), ingame they’ll be shown to be helping civilians and the like. So, as far as music, I want it to be upbeat & heroic, but not altogether honest. -Wick, Rubicon Mission 1<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love the way Wick writes, but sometimes I had no idea how to get what he was going for. How do you make \u2018not altogether honest\u2019 music? I\u2019m still not sure. What I took from this was the parts that made sense to me and tried to use some classic melodies that give that heroric shooter type sound.<\/p>\n

Wouldn’t want to go overboard with that–I don’t want it to sound like the player is on vacation in Jamaica or something. But maybe the western guitar with some bongo type drums or some light steel drums. Maybe just the guitar with more of a island–or maybe Mexican–kind of feel. \u2013Andy, IQ Soup, TBA Game<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is for a post-apocalyptic western styled game coming up. When you\u2019re asked to make post-apocalyptic cowboy Mexican party music, you have to ask yourself how to combine all those influences together in a way that sounds natural. I took a few little things from each genre – nylon stringed picked guitar for the ‘mexican influence’, a slide guitar for western, blade runnerish synths for post-apocalyptic – but put them with some orchestral elements that you’d find in all these styles to blend it together. You sometimes just can\u2019t put in everything they want, so you have to try to strike a balance between the feeling they\u2019re going for and what they think it\u2019ll take to get there.<\/p>\n

A great tip I have is to ask the client up front, send me your favorite track or a youtube video game songs that you imagine playing during your game. You of course aren\u2019t going to directly copy it, but it should put you in the ball park of what they mean and want. If they just say \u201cspace music\u201d that could mean anything from Star Trek theme song to an ambient song or a vgm remix type thing. Having some sort of base point to start from is a great idea.<\/p>\n

When They Don\u2019t Like What You\u2019ve Made<\/h3>\n

I think I only have three clients who pretty much accept whatever I give them on the first run. And that\u2019s because they have a lot in common with me as far as influences go and they also give super clear instructions like \u201cthe Narshe song from FF6 but with some bongos\u201d. It\u2019s not hard to quickly create an original video game song when you have directions like that.<\/p>\n

But if they don\u2019t like the work, don\u2019t take it personally. Most clients and I have a lot of back and forth. You should build this into your pricing since it will happen more often than not. Just keep working their feedback into your song until you find a happy medium.<\/p>\n

Some people will just never be satisfied. Strangely, it seems to be the ones with the tightest budget. You\u2019d think it\u2019d be the other way around. I have pretty much just said \u201cwe\u2019re done\u201d to a few clients who after a myriad of revisions still was not happy. Don\u2019t drive yourself crazy over a client who wants to pay pennies and get 40 hour a week service. It\u2019s simply not worth it.<\/p>\n

When You Don\u2019t Like What You\u2019ve Made<\/h3>\n

Some clients\u2019 vision of their songs may be so far off from your own, that you might not even like the end product. What do you do then? Well, you are not obligated to put every song you make on your soundcloud or share it with the world. One thing I do sometimes is do my own little \u201cremix\u201d of one of the songs to share on my soundcloud. It\u2019s good practice and good for your video game composer portfolio. I will say this though: when you aren\u2019t inspired about a game or a project, it\u2019s really hard to stay happy and passionate about working on it. It feels more like work. Keep this in mind when looking for jobs.<\/p>\n

-The Secret Arts of Coming Up With Melodies
\n-My Biggest Mistakes as a Freelancer
\n-Beginner\u2019s Guide to Compression<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\"Screen<\/a>Beatscribe is a full time indie composer, musician and writer. By day he creates soundtracks and sfx for various mobile gaming companies, by night creates megaman-inspired chiptunes, in the afternoons he drinks tea. Check out his latest releases, tutorials and retro ruminations at www.beatscribe.com<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making music that someone else has the final say on can be really frustrating. After all, this is basically art. It is a way to express yourself. When you start doing it for money, one of the hardest things to let go of is that full control.
\nI have made some songs that I thought were amazing, only to have a client say, \u201cthat\u2019s not what we\u2019re looking for at all\u201d. So here\u2019s a few tips on how to find a happy medium between what your client wants and making something you still actually care about at the end of the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1266],"tags":[3398,3399,3392,3396,3394,3397,3393,3232,30,3395],"class_list":["post-6274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-production-tutorials","tag-chiptune-artists","tag-freelance-composer","tag-freelancing","tag-game-composers","tag-vgm-composer","tag-video-game-business","tag-video-game-composer","tag-video-game-market","tag-video-game-music","tag-video-game-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6274"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6277,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6274\/revisions\/6277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}