Music Composition DUMmIES

song for a TV show and the incidental music are composed by different

people. There is a lot more prestige and consequently more money involved

in theme songs, but often these are commissioned works written by high-

profile artists.

This field is also very difficult to break into, and you will need to pound the

pavement with a good, well-edited, short demo that contains as much variety

as you can pack into it. One good idea is to find local television productions

that require custom music. A couple of those under your belt can help your

quest. There may be a public access station in your area, and you may find

some enthusiastic novice television producers who would love some musical

contributions. And look for people making documentaries. You will probably

work for free for awhile.

Writing music for advertising can be a very lucrative career if you can break

into the big-time national market. Local merchants often use selections from

the many libraries of stock music tracks for their ads, but if a merchant wants

their name in the jingle, someone will have to compose the piece for them,

and it could be you. If you find this kind of job, you will be working mostly

with 30-second spots with a few 60-second radio and 15-second spots every

now and then. The 30-second jingles actually have to be 29 seconds long.

There is no room for running short or long in this arena, so you have to

develop a feel for composing a complete piece of music with a beginning,

middle, and end that runs exactly 29 seconds.

An advantage to the young composer writing music for advertising is that

you almost always get to work with the top musicians in your area. You will

meet people who are comfortable working with a click track (metronome),

can read charts, and are familiar with the working environment of the record-

ing studio.

Don’t go into this field believing that you are going to be able to make much

of a creative statement in your music. You will receive direction from produc-

ers, agency representatives, musicians, and even corporate executives or

their representatives. Sometimes their direction will make sense to you, but

often you will find yourself losing control of your work. Be ready to let it go.

Consider yourself somewhat successful if you are being paid for your work.

In the jingle scene, the simpler the music is, the better. The idea is to com-

pose something that will stick in the listeners’ heads without going over

those same heads. A challenging or provocative piece of music will slow

everything down, invite criticism and skepticism, and probably someone

higher up the food chain will have his or her way with the piece until you

yourself are sorry for the infraction you committed against the less is more

rule governing the jingle music business.

In this field you are expected to work very quickly. If you need time to come

up with ideas or make changes to your writing, jingles might not be the right

direction for you to go in. You might get a little scrap of lyrics and a sense of

214 Part IV: Orchestration and Arrangement