AMA Episode #23 - 6 Minutes A Day, The Path To Becoming A Pro TV Composer – Transcript

00:04One of the online forums, I think it was perspective, a colleague of mine, a friend who I hold in very high regard, made a comment that writing more than two minutes a day is bullshit. I imagine I'm going to be hearing from him after this video.

00:19And I think what he's referring to is the adage of John Williams' famous words of, you know, he tries to do two great minutes of music a day. One of the post-hands embers says he does one minute of music a day. John Powell said sometimes he does negative two because he undid four, you know, minutes that he didn't like.

00:39I totally get that. And while I do think that the craft of writing for film, generally speaking, has a bit more time to swim around that way. To be a pro TV composer, there is no chance. When you save you the suspense, there's no chance.

00:56I would say never say never. But there's very little chance you'll be able to be successful in being able to only write two minutes of music a day. And I explain why. The idea of the hardest craft, for me, at least when I've done all of it, games, movies, television shows, blah, blah, blah.

01:17For me, the hardest craft is the week to week of a network television show. Why network, ABC, NBC, CBS? Because they air every week and you finish one before it airs. On a streaming model, on a show like, say, Vikings, we do them all in advance and then they drop on Netflix all at once so that you can binge watch them.

01:41So even in the streaming model, I can be on episode six and figure out an idea that would really work better in episode one and go back and break into it or at the client request that network television, you write it and it's on the air next week. That's it.

01:56And it comes week after week after week after week or relentlessly with no break. You have air dates. It airs every Tuesday at 10 PM, no matter what. So the craft of writing for network television is what I'm going to explain to you guys today because this is the hardest. If you can do this, you can do anything, for sure.

02:14So just on a practical level, let's say, for argument's sake, your show had 25 minutes of music in an hour long dramatic show, which is about average. Average to low, I'd say, but for the sake of math, if you wanted to work Monday to Friday, you have to do five minutes of music a day.

02:31You need to live a day for fixed notes and usually sometimes a day for spotting. Spotting for me, you may get a half day out of it after the spotting session, but I find myself just getting more organized on spotting days. Spotting is what you sit down with your producers and your directors and you just look at the show together and decide where the music is going to go.

02:51So you would write five minutes a day Monday through Friday. You'd probably get fixed notes on Saturday for the mix on Monday and then have a day off or have to spot something like this. What if you have half an hour of music? What if you have 38 minutes of music?

03:10You have 40 minutes of music and there are shows that have it. I've done a couple. So now just the simple math is starting to make sense. So this is all great, Trevor. Thanks for the update on how many minutes of music in television, but how the fuck do we get this done?

03:28I'm going to show you the way that I did it when I started doing this sort of stuff because it was the only way I could wrap my head around it, which is to make a calendar for your day. So maybe you're probably going to say, dude, I did not get any music to be an accountant and be forensic about my time.

03:44I want to walk in the studio, be creative. Gotcha. But you're not going to be doing network television anytime soon. Just tell me that, which is where all the money is, by the way. So how do you do it? I'm going to make a calendar for you right now in iCal and show you how I would approach it, OK?

04:03So here's a given day, Tuesday. So we're going to get up at 7 AM, rise my child, 7 AM. And we're going to get into the studio by 8.

04:19So this is emails, whatever your morning routine is before you get to the studio, OK? So now what we're going to do is choose a different color.

04:34We're going to make two hour block increments. So this is writing block one. And it's going to go from 8 to 10. And what you're going to do is you are going to start at 8.

04:54And at the end of those two hours, you're going to print your cue. I'll come back to that. OK, so then we're going to have a little half hour break, more emails, more, you know, zeroing out your inbox.

05:11And we're going to have writing block number two. Then we are going to have some kind of a lunch in here and more is zeroing out your email blocks, which is basically a job into itself, isn't it?

05:27Lunge emails. Now we're going to write your block three, emails and bullshit. Write block four.

05:49So if you wrote one minute of music in those two hours, this is how you would do four minutes a day. I remember the first time I worked with a composer. I won't say his name. Well, his name is Ben, but I won't say his last name.

06:04And we had to do a need to help on something. And I said to him, we need to do four minutes of music a day. And he was like, I can't do that. I'd never done that. I'm like, well, let me show you how this model. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. The last part is we'll call this review time, review.

06:22I'll explain that in a second. If you went in and did one minute in two hours, had a break, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat your four minutes of music a day. What I want you to try, if you want to give this a go, is to do one minute from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

06:41and you set an alarm or a Siri set a timer for 10 a.m. And at 10 a.m., you must print it. I don't care if you didn't finish it. This is the discipline of how I got to be able to do this much music at once.

06:56So you print it and you're annoyed by it. You said, I wasn't finished or I don't think I got it right. Don't care. You owe me 100 bucks. That's not the rules. Take a break. Next cue. Now, of course, if you're doing a two minute cue, you'd split it over two hours, but whatever. You get the idea.

07:12Right another minute. When the alarm goes off, you print it, no matter what. After a while, your internal clock will get a sense of what it feels like to write for two hours straight. It's a good stretch for cognitive engagement without getting too distracted.

07:27And it's a good way to break up your day. It feels very linearly. Now, if you could do a minute and a half in two hours, it's not bad, right?

07:43Then that's six minutes of music a day. If you can do a minute an hour, two minutes of music in two hours, that's eight minutes a day. My record is 17 minutes in one day. It was forced upon me. I had no choice.

07:58But you can't not deliver, right? I know lots of composers, lots, who are doing 12 minutes a day, 11 minutes a day, especially when you're into either the middle of a season of a show or a second season where you have themes to build on and not everything is completely blank space.

08:1410 minutes a day is really not that unachievable. One of the keys to this is, and this is something that I really need you guys to do if you want to learn how to be a pro television composer, is what I call artificial distractions, which is notifications from Instagram, which is having your phone facing up.

08:32I have a special ringtone for my wife. If my wife calls, I'll pick it up because maybe about my kids or something. I ignore my clients. Sorry, guys, it's true. And I'll get back to you in two hours. And then I see if anything's got a nuclear or anything is lethal on my email box or my phone. And if I call them back and say, hey, we've been trying to reach you, I would say, I say, sorry, I was writing.