Howdy all. I''m a young musician looking to get into the field of composing. Ideally I want to write slow melodic orchestral pieces, perhaps for use on games like Final Fantasy. I have a few ideas down on Sibelius, but where do I go from there? Should I stick them on tape and send them to game companies? I think my work is good, especially for my age, but it''s not copywrited so I''m not putting it up on the net just incase! If someone could give me some pointers of how to get in the buisiness or how to get my material heard but not stolen, it would be greatly appreciated. Cheers a bundle.

pedders - heh - regardless of what church you go to, or which ridiculous nation entity claims you, don''t let anyone fool you into thinking the world is a ROM with the only possible courses dictated by predecessors.. that is to say, many people have made it in the business, but there''s no prescribed way to do it.

why not volunteer your services here, for free even? you might make some connections, gain experience, gawd, maybe have some fun or make music for a cool game perhaps my personal philosophy is jaded, but the beauty of music is too great a thing to worry about whether some asshole is going to rip you off. every time i hear someone start talking about money and music it just makes me want to **&#@)@! their head and (*@&#(*@ it in their *^@#$(@@ and (*@&#)*(@&# all over *(@&#^@# with some ordinary household bleach. it just sucks the life right out of it. damn.

Game companies do not hire people that can only compose music; they expect this one person to do everything from composition, every aspect of recording and production, to the finished sound file. So, if you want a job creating music for games, you are going to have to learn a whole lot of other skills first...

Go on - get started!

As soon as you create a musical work, as long as you have a record of it in some form, then you alone own the copyright. You do not need to do anything. Cool, huh?!

What Kenbar said was true: as soon as you write a work, you own the copyright. However, I would still strongly suggest paying the fees to make it official. If someone did decide to take your work and copyright it themselves, then you have no proof that you were the original composer beyond your word. Unfortunately, I know this from experience. I do not know about other places, but in the U.S. it just requires sending your work and a small fee to a government building; you can probably find the specifics online.

As far as getting into the business, doing a few games for cheap and/or free is a good idea. This way you can later show you have the experience needed.

edit: Also, I am not for sure about today’s laws, but simply mailing yourself a copy of the work did not hold up very well in court. The argument can be made that you simply mailed yourself an opened / partially closed letter, then took out the contents, put in the new tape/cd/etc., and sealed it. The best bet is official documents.

[edited by - death adder on March 18, 2003 1:10:06 PM]

quote: Original post by xoxos
why not volunteer your services here, for free even? perhaps my personal philosophy is jaded, but the beauty of music is too great a thing to worry about whether some asshole is going to rip you off.

It is a good philosophy, however maybe not one if you want to earn a living out of composing. I completely agree, music shouldnt be about the money, but supporting meself and others should
But I take all your words into total consideration, I would be more than happy to start off writing for free or cheap for some games, but where do I look? I have emailed a few crappy online RPG games asking if they want music done for free, lol they pretty much just said no. :S

Hi Pedders,
I''m currently working alongside a very talented guy who makes the music for my 3D worlds, I would like to hear your work if thats ok. Don''t worry, there are alot of people like myself who credit the work from other people. The chap I''m working with has his name on a good 90% of my work. Is there a way I can hear a small sample of your work? is it games your enterested in scoring music for, and do you have the equipment for sound fx too? Look forward to hearing from ya.
Gav.

I'm not an expert on the subject but I'll tell you what I know. There are two kinds of copywrites you can use. One is a single musical composition copywrite and the other is a multipul song compilation copywrite. The single costs less, but only covers one song. The other one is more beneficial if you plan to make lots of tunes. You purchase the copywrite once, then ammend the list of songs every time you make a new one (free of charge) and call the change an 'edit'. Youre allowed to edit and update the list all you want. A friend of mine has actually done this and explained this all to me, but didnt go into any more detail than that. Tell me f that helps.

[edit]

As far as I know, the best way to be found out is to put it on the net as well as hand out physical copies ( a cd or tape ) to as many people as possible. I know dave matthews band handed out free cd's for years and eventually someone important got one and broke them into the big time. So there.

[edited by - Mulligan on March 18, 2003 5:24:17 PM]

Games companies DO hire people just to composed music. Take EA''s Harry Potter games. Jeremy Soule composed the music, while the internal sound team did all the sound design.

However, you''re music would have to be sh*t hot for a company to want to do this. For orchestral music nower days, you have to be running a gigastudio/Kontakt setup with one of the full blown libraries. Synth just will not cut it.

Ah terrific news, what is a gigastudio/Kontakt setup? And where would i find one?
I currently have Sibelius and Cubase, and yeh, the sounds do sound pretty pathetic.

gigastudio is a "rompler," kontakt is a sampler.. i understand the included sounds are mediocre, so you''ll probably be looking for sample cds after you buy that.

you can produce quality sounds w/o a budget if you''re prepared to spend a lot of time downloading and configuring instruments.. ie. you can snag a 250meg (or thereabouts) piano sample set (or two?) at the japanese akai ftp site (which is ??how many hundreds of samples to keymap and tune..) no point in filling you in if you''ve got the money.

why don''t you ask that guy in the other thread who needs music then? sounds right up your alley, emotional and all.