Some doubts about the way

I hope someone else can give you more optimistic advice, but my impression based on talking to numerous folks in the industry are that if your goals are to "work in music" rather than "work and make music", especially "as soon as possible", learning the craft of traditional composition isn't the necessary route. I also think getting into this industry to make money as fast as possible is going to lead to disappointment. I know the dream is always to make "the hobby" into "the career", but this isn't always as great as it may seem.

Composition is a lifelong journey, and it used to be the case that the greats got the work. Not so anymore. Mike writes at a caliber far higher than the majority of Hollywood composers I can come up with off the top of my head, but he's not doing blockbusters, nor working primarily in composition (as far as I understand). There are ways to get into the industry (I can't really help you there), but they are not necessarily linked to what Mike teaches (namely craft). It seems more important to have good production skills than composition chops in a lot of cases. The skilled people still get the work, but it's not always the people who are skilled at composing.

There also seems to be a common idea in composition these days that being a musician at all is somehow equal to or secondary to getting work, which I don't really understand. If the study, work and ultimately the process isn't something that appeals to you primarily, you may be in the wrong craft. Would you continue to do music even if you knew you could never make money doing it? I've never thought of listening to music as something I "have" to do, as if it's a necessary and undesirable means to an end. Please correct me if I misunderstand.

Industry aside, from the perspective of organizing to get better, the best advice I've gotten is to think top-down vs bottom-up. Large, complex tasks, rather than separating everything. I.e. Transcribe a few bars of music, write a variation on the melody and write a new harmony and change the rhythm. Practice it on piano until it's playable. Then take that short section, post a piano reduction on this forum, then orchestrate it and play it into your DAW with virtual instruments, then post that. Do all this for a few days and you've just covered orchestration, transcription, instrument practice, theory (intuitively), composition broadly, and mixing (and probably got some fantastic feedback) all in one long, connected/focused task.

 

Sadly that's super true in my experience (not with music, but in general).

By the way Mike, I recommended your business masterclass to a 3D artist who is looking to break into the games industry and he said he liked it and already recommended it to other artists he knows. The things you teach are just so universal!

 

My current path is teaching guitar (I get paid to transcribe and I happen to like teaching) and doing composition on the side. I think you have to be willing to have multiple sources of income or have combined interests like teaching and music in order to really make it practical.

 

Glad to hear it, that's what this forum is for. The story of fame and material reward over personal and artistic integrity is not an unfamiliar one, and it's always heartening to see people choose the latter.

Don't take my advice list as a template set in stone, by the way -- it's simply an example of incorporating skills into a cohesive task. Just think broadly of applying transcription to a new piece of music, and making it more your own. Williams stole from the greats, Mozart and Bartok stole from folk melodies, etc. Doug showed me an example once of combining a melodic idea from Harry Potter with Stravinsky's Firebird as an exercise -- it's a great way to intuitively see how things fit together and apply transcription creatively. If I'm dry on creative ideas, it means I need to listen to and transcribe a lot more.

 

Glad to hear that! I was very much in the same boat. Curse the educational curriculum that taught me in a segmented manner for 13 years. And yes, in doing nothing lies the danger. Every day counts when you're on a lifelong journey.

Basically what I mentioned, really. Transcribe an idea and gradually turn it into your own through melodic variation, new harmony, changes in rhythm, etc, and if you're out of ideas, combine it with another piece you transcribed. Keep adding and changing elements until it becomes your own, but start at the foundation of the idea (i.e. two handed piano and chords).
A fantastic exercise is taking an existing melody and trying out all the chord progression variations you can underneath. It's amazing how much variation can introduce, but it simultaneously also shows you that there is a distinct harmonic hierarchy in terms of "conclusiveness", "satisfaction", etc. Some progressions will sound really interesting and tense, and reliable old progressions will sound satisfying in a way no other progression will.