The Song Fight Bulletin Board

anti-m wrote:That said, if you're willing to do some soul-crunching commercial work, it seems that there is always a need for jingles and background tunes.

Is that true? I reckon that job would suit me right down to the ground! (Correct me if I'm wrong) but I've always considered that while I may not be the best writer/singer/player/producer...etc. here - I can at least churn out catchy hooks. Sitting around writing jingles would be my dream job.

Has anyone ever done that stuff? How does one find that sort of work?

Fluffy- I'm thinking breaking your samples out by personality doesn't help much, but arranging them by genre or target device or such would give people a better feel of your capabilities. Enphasizing identity ambiguity prolly isn't what clients will want to see. Anyone being hired for this kind of work isn't being hired for what they've done, but for what they can do...such as shift gears and work in multiple genre.

Also, a link or suggestion that your professional resume is available on request. Even when shifting gears, this is typically of great interest to future employers. You can revise it to stress your ringtone/game experience and add some musical projects, especially the production of other bands.

I like things like "theme song for a custom error page on my personal website (also makes a great ringtone)" which gives a hint to your humor and off-beat personality. That's also important.

That was how I was originally going to arrange it but my brain works with hierarchical categorizations and it seemed like grouping it by project was the most convenient way. I'll try going back to the by-genre method.

Also should I link to the error page itself? http://beesbuzz.biz/error/403.html The problem is that it only really works in Safari and Firefox.

My advice: get a sugardaddy.

The one person I know who has really launched his own career in music (although that language sounds far too ardently professional to really describe what he's doing) still lives with his mom :-[

The way he went about it was using Cubase a lot straight out of highschool and making a ton of friends. He's constantly playing in some band or another and he is one of the pointmen for a leading indie venue in Tampa that brings a lot of punk DIY people to the city. He made an EP that sounds pretty awesome even though it's a little poppier than most of the bands he ends up talking to.

Step 2 seems like it was finding kids our age who didn't really see an advantage to going through a big organization or mastering company after hearing what my friend could do at home. The first guy he recorded with was really nice to him. This guy had a pretty "eh" project but agreed to buy my friend some mics in exchange for a produced finished product. Deals continued like this where he'd get equipment for CDs and the musicians he was recording and producing probably had their own connections to get the equipment for pretty cheap and so he started up with no education.

This happened in Tampa where the music community died off a bit ages ago and is only starting to reemerge (at least from my perspective) as a Do It Yourself capital. My friend has really sort of ridden that wave as a sort of notable personality in the "Tampa scene" or something. I imagine working for cheap and being really friendly worked here, but it wouldn't work everywhere. I bet there are a lot of big cities that would chew up and spit out anybody who worked for free, so you gotta watch out for yourself!

It seems like it just took him a lot of living in the music world (which is really fun work) and a lot of luck.

There are some frustrating points that haven't been brought up yet. I think a lot of people on songfight who really care about production or even the way a thing sounds... I mean the ones who really really care about the art of it... even if you get going and have an awesome job where you're paying the bills and making some savings while working your own hours, playing and producing for people you like... there's a chance that you'll meet a small number of people who care as much as you do. Eventually, I think everybody who cares about their job wishes that all their commissions were coming from people who appreciated the work as much as they appreciate doing it. You know? But even if a lot of good work is coming your way eventually, you might feel like people are just asking you to do what a normal mastering company would do for cheaper or the same thing but with more face to face. And if you want to do cool stuff that might be a disappointment. Even small businesses have to deal with "eh" jobs.

Anyway, Mogosagatai has been talking about doing some audio stuff too, and I don't have any answers. Somehow, I felt like I had something to contribute to this thread anyway.

PS - The Conversation Network looks neat on a preliminary scan of the page. I'll be listening in on some of this.

Fluffy,

Can you pick up and move?

If you can, move to Los Angeles. Network network network! This is by far where the largest concentration of such jobs are. Between commercials, TV, Movies, Record Industry Headquaters, etc.. Everyone I know in the music business lives in the greater Los Angeles area.

It's certainly possible to get music jobs everywhere else, but a lot more difficult. I'm in a similar boat, where my expirience and career is in Semi-Conductor. There's work all over the country but nothing compares to the workl available in Silicon Valley.

There's a lot of LA haters, I personally love LA, if I were to try for making a career in music, I wouldn't even attempt it anywhere else. (Though I suspect New York, Nashville or Austin might be OK to a lesser extent)

just my opinion

Good Luck!

I'd rather not move without having a job to move to. Especially not to LA.

http://www.breadboxstudios.net <-- my website. I do not get much work at all..but along with my part time job @ traffic.com...I barely get the bills paid. I also have a very periodical third job... for a hosting company where I do video encoding and junk like that.. basically utilize the same studio machine to do some of the same things.

I have been meaning to update my site with 'audio restoration' which I have also done a few times for people. (records, old tapes...yadda yadda)

but right now, I don't want to work... but I am still looking for a *cough* day job...because I HAVE TO. (now where did i misplace my computer science degree...oh thats right...I don't have one of those!)

<b>Egg?</b> are you IN Tampa? You mention Tampa quite a bit.

Whilst we're loosely on the subject of commercial jingles:

Mr. Bucket made me cry. Cry with laughter.

anti-m wrote:Whilst we're loosely on the subject of commercial jingles:

Mr. Bucket made me cry. Cry with laughter.

You have a naughty mind Anti M.

I had a drafting teacher named Mr. Puckett in the early 90s. It was always really hard not to hum that tune during his class.

fluffy

I so hope you went to school in Nantucket

hahahaha


(and yes, I'm from Tampa and occasionally find myself there. Like right now! I just landed at 1 in the morning EST.)

Fluffy, are you at all comically-oriented? Ever thought of doing an open-mic at a comedy club? I did that in the late eighties and early nineties. I wound up booking several venues and made a full-time living at it until the crash (precipitated by mediocre bookers putting lame dick-jokers on stage repeatedly, burning out the audiences - the same pigs who killed vaudeville, if anyone cares). After the crash I went back to the wage train (no degree), wound up managing a delivery joint called Pizza Shak in Myrtle Beach. Because we ran 'til 5am (tourist town), and radio time is cheap after midnight in minor markets (esp. negotiable in bulk), I started writing and voicing radio ads for the Shak. They were a huge hit, and business boomed. Other people in the community liked my sound and wanted a taste, and I ended up with a side venture. My biggest problem became finding living, breathing people to produce my spots. (All jocks are dead - murdered by the overload put on them by their stations.) I found technophiles piecing together a living with home production equipment, but they all petered out with drug problems, emotional problems, etc. So now I find myself in Los Angeles (Myrtle just sux; had to get back out West), buying a mic and preamp to hook into my pc (awaiting delivery now), looking to develop my client base; and I'm scared shitless that I'm gonna be a huge incompetent techno-hack. But a hack with a sac - I'll keep trying 'til I get it right. I never regretted doing the comedy scene: It forced me to powerfully examine my stances on issues (the mic has killed more people than the A-bomb, after all) and it gave me - for all time - a sense of comedic timing and a comedic sensibility which has served well in all weathers. You can also hook into a talent pool at these open mic nights. With the possible exception of Carlin, EVERYONE benefits from collaboration. Your scene is a context. If everyone is getting high and talking about someday, then that's your context. If people are hooking up, creating (something, anything), producing, pushing, then THAT'S your context. I'm rambling. If you find a band that needs producing but hasn't hit yet, then you produce them, then you push them, you might just find yourself a gig. You'll definitely signal to the universe that you are in the game and ready to rock. And the universe likes players. If that's the way you go, I have one word of caution: the world of art is a world of shit that will suck at you to sell yourself. It's an immediate consequence of entry. Shakespeare had it right: To thine own self be true, and to none other canst thou be false. I thank whatever gods may be that I was true to myself during my booking years, and that I never let hacks on my stage, whatever the pressure from other, more powerful agencies. I found good work for good comics and pushed the careers of people who are today succesful out here in Hollywood. (I haven't tried to hook up and I doubt they are looking to be reminded of their humble roots, but who knows... maybe I'll pop up on their radar...) So to sum it up, I guess: JUMP. SWIM! And shake your fucking fist.

what

ludditeretard wrote:block of text greyer than freakin' an issue of Cold War-era Pravda

Dude, welcome to the boards and all that, but a little double return (aka paragraph break) every now and then might make your posts more likely to be read and responded to.
/2c

Rabid Garfunkel wrote:

ludditeretard wrote:block of text greyer than freakin' an issue of Cold War-era Pravda

Dude, welcome to the boards and all that, but a little double return (aka paragraph break) every now and then might make your posts more likely to be read and responded to.
/2c

He's a radio announcer. They don't like dead air.

ludditeretard wrote:block of text greyer than freakin' an issue of Cold War-era Pravda

Technically, I asked for it! (In th'other thread.)

On a totally unrelated side note, the English major in me feels compelled to point out that although Shakespeare DID say "and this above all, to thine own self be true...etc" he said it through the mouth of Polonius, who is generally understood to be at best something of a senile buffoon, and at worst a two-faced creep. I s'pose I'd just like to caution folks against taking and using this quotation at face value.

Anyhoo, thanks for sharing midnight pizza origins of your side business, LR. I was entertained, at least! ( ;

It is interesting to see that side of the road that LR has walked (and by the by I think anyone that calls themself a name like that is usually anything but). The point about recognizing the community and its needs and tendencies is such a great observation, and it holds true about everything with any sort of social component, not just work in 'the business'.

As a side tack to anti's hamlet ref, I always thought that polonius's instructions to his son (including the 'to thine own self be ture) were intended to show Polonius as a wise (or at least prudent) man (and to display his tendency to be a little bit of a busibody). He did have the ear of kings, after all. This wisdom only looks buffoonish when matched against Hamlet, against whom all conventional wisdom is useless.

'To thine own self be true' is a wise way to go about things.
Certainly better than 'deceive thyself and everything shall be peachy'.

in what play did shakes use the word "peachy"

jb wrote:in what play did shakes use the word "peachy"

Sounds like one of the sonnets to me!

I think the most useful bit of advice that comes through in LRs story is the "just do it" aspect of getting something like this underway. Don't wait around collecting the perfect gear / compiling the perfect demo / trying to line up the perfect client. Just dive in, and start work. If your work is good, it will lead to more. That certainly squares with what little I've seen of this world of bizness.

I liked Mr. Retard's story. Content came first: you need to make commercials for your business, do it. You like doing it: do it more.

I remember the mid 90's when everyone wanted a web site but no one knew what to put on it. "Content provider" was an actual job. Seems silly now. I imagine the trouble of how to get into the commercial sound production market is more about finding someone who needs commercial sound production. Find one of those guys, and you're in.

Polonius' advice is good, but Polonius was a fool. He was deceitful and conniving and died from trying to hide behind a curtain.

Incidentally, I'm pretty happy with my job again (we were just going through some temporary but vicious stress, which finally ended yesterday) and so I'm not desperate to escape from software devleopment. Still, this thread is useful for others who might be trying to get into it.