To sum up

I'm in no doubt that the great majority of members here have already chosen the path of commitment and devotion to their music, and hence tend not to think twice about taking consequential time, effort, pains, discomforts or inconveniences in their stride. Of course there are always differences and exceptions but I'm speaking here only in the broadest terms.

So, by and large I suppose this thread is aimed at fence-sitters, probably young, who have yet to make up their minds one or way the other about how serious or not they're going to be about their music.

I'll leave the last word to JP Sears, in the hope that he may help many if not most fence-sitters in making up their minds. Of course he couldn't possibly cover all kinds of endeavour in a 5 minute video, but music-making can fit in here easily. Some of JP Sears productions do indeed have pronounced political content (and since I don't live in the US I don't pay much heed to those) but this particular video is, in my book, about cultural and psychological matters rather than political.

Take it away, JP:

If body positivity logic was used everywhere

@Macker said:

My response to those who say they conjure up their own deadlines: - pfft. Real deadline pressure can only come from outside. It's an essentially natural part of being the social, cultural creatures that we are. We either endure the pain and discomfort while taking pride in doing the best we can to serve others, or we cop out and bumble along in a happy and contented world of one. I'm pretty damn sure I know where the best results come from, and it ain't the latter. No, I'm certainly not recommending the full-on Polaris/Emperor of China environment; the optimum - except for dire emergency situations - lies somewhere between the first and second stories here.

Hey Macker!

Since you seem to know so much about music, composition, artistic creativity and composers, I'd like to ask you a few questions:  

How many music compositions have you written and completed in the last 10 years?  How many albums have you produced?  How many soundtrack cues have you written for money?  How many interviews for music magazines have you done?  How many reviews and professional endorsements have your recordings received?  How many composition and theory students have you taught?  Have you done any music workshops in professional settings? 

Dictionary definition of a dilettante:  a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.

Yours truly,

A real composer

Wow, that is one of the most arrogant posts I've ever read on this Forum.  Congratulations, jsg.   The ideas presented by Macker were perfectly valid and rather well thought out, and whether you agree you don't have to show off how big a "pro" you are. Who cares?  I couldn't care less. I hate almost all film music by the biggest "pros" now working.  They are nothing to me. So showing your  "pro" credentials is laughable.

@William said:

Wow, that is one of the most arrogant posts I've ever read on this Forum.  Congratulations, jsg.   The ideas presented by Macker were perfectly valid and rather well thought out, and whether you agree you don't have to show off how big a "pro" you are. Who cares?  I couldn't care less. I hate almost all film music by the biggest "pros" now working.  They are nothing to me. So showing your  "pro" credentials is laughable.

Yes, I can be arrogant.  But not quite as arrogant as you.  When we were discussing symphonies a while back you interpreted what I wrote and twisted it around with your own misunderstanding of what I said so you could justify attacking me.  It was so obviously one-upsmanship that I had to call you on it.  And you almost wanted to knock my head off for scoring Gumby with MIDI instruments,  but later admitted you would have taken the job yourself if it were offered to you.  Remember? You even apologized to me because you knew you were being such a jerk.

Macker was beating to death his theory of amateurism and professionalism in the arts and no matter that both you and I tried to explain why he wasn't right about it, he kept pushing.  Read the entire thread again and you'll see how it devolved.  I didn't start the devolution, he did. When I told him that I set my own deadlines when not writing for money, he went "pfft", dismissing my experience in not only setting my own deadlines, but utterly ignoring that I actually meet them (most of the time).  You even wrote above:

"That's a great post by jsg, and so true - the line between amateur and professional is often someone just figuring out a trick of how to sell what was already being done."  

But Macker kept on and on no matter the evidence to the contrary.  I got bored with someone who refuses to adjust his position even when the evidence isn't there.  When you pointed out my mistake in confusing ET with Well-Tempered tuning, what did I do?  I looked it up and admitted I was in error.  I didn't push and push and start denigrating other's experience and defending my mistake.

I became arrogant because he's telling me my own experience is false, that deadlines have to be "externally" imposed or they're not real.  He said that the composer has to feel "external pressure" to write, or it's not a real deadline.  He's totally wrong, it's not that I disagree, it's that he's in error.  I feel pressure to write not because I need the money, but because composition serves a primary function in my psychological, artistic and intellectual life.  I don't feel true to myself if I slack off.  In some ways, that kind of pressure is even more anxiety-provoking than having to meet professional deadlines because it's not merely about money, it's about one's being, central to one's purpose for existing.  But Macker would have none of it.  So I questioned his musical experience because he denies my own.  He doesn't understand the artistic soul.  I do.  I am sure Macker understands many things that I don't. 

And by the way, there are some outstanding film composers, particularly some European ones who are writing today.  I am not always good at remembering names of people that I've heard only once, but there are some highly original talents and very skilled composers working in film.  I don't hate film music like you do. 

@William said:

I apologize for overreacting like that - started focusing on the wrong things and went off...

Thank you, apology accepted.  The thing that really irks me about online conversation is that there are so many missing cues--eye contact, body language, facial expression, tone of voice.   In-person conversations are very different for me.  There's a cafe around the corner from where I live and I often go there in the late afternoon to get outside for a walk and then stop at the cafe for some conversation.  Because I am talking with neighbors, acquaintances and friends in real time, we have really interesting conversations about AI, politics, philosophy, religion, science, what's happening around our neighborhood, etc.  We laugh together, get serious together, and there's a respect and kindness that permeates the conversations.  This has been going on for years. 

Forums online are missing this crucial information about each other.  If the same thread as this one took place in person, I would guess it may have gone differently.  People can strongly disagree with one another and still be kind and friendly.  I see it happen all the time.  But without all the vital information we get about each other when interacting in person, it becomes a bit more tricky.  Some people use that "virtual social distance" to get away with posturing, bullshit, trolling and other anti-social behavior but most people do not.  Sometimes it's hard to tell and of course we all make mistakes. 

I'm signing off now, working on a new composition.  I hope you have a good day, or night, depending upon where you are.

Best,

Jerry

JSG, precisely what "evidence to the contrary" are you referring to? If you mean your attempts to smear, belittle and invalidate a contributor behind what you seem to find to be unacceptable propositions or opinions, and by asserting that you are a "real composer", implying that what you say carries some sort of ultimate and exclusive authority, then nah, sorry, champ, that simply ain't "evidence to the contrary" - not where I come from. I don't require permission from you to think, nor to state my views.

The interesting and revealing part about your contribution to this thread is that you'd not been named or cited in connection with any views stated here (until William rightly took you to task), yet you jumped in like a scalded cat! That's odd. Why not come clean and tell us precisely what it really is about this thread that's upset you, personally, instead of just trying to smear and invalidate people?

You did at least take issue explcitly with my comment about self-imposed deadlines. But I can tell you, your claim about that is nowhere near strong enough to reshape my experience-derived opinion on that matter.

William has demolished most of your other absurd nonsense, so I don't need to go there.

I would like to add - since it was mentioned - that everybody has his own modus operandi regarding deadlines.

In my experience however, that of colleagues with whom I have discussed the matter, and through my academic enquiries into the greats of the art, the majority of composers benefit from an externally imposed deadline. Apparently, and somehow, a deadline precipitates inspiration and generates ideas. I can personally attest to that as has pertained to numerous occasions. Otherwise, a lot of us would keep trying to improve any given work indefinitely. Of course, this highly depends on what it takes to satisfy each and every one of us, the difference in everyone's standards for what constitutes a completed work. 

In addition, deadlines are also one of the parameters that separate the men from the boys (as I have mentioned before). And I am not referring to the capability of completing a commissioned work within a specific time frame. That's a given! I am referring to the capability of completing a commissioned work within a specific time frame that is actually any good, and with which the commissioning party is satisfied enough so that you can expect repeat business from them, as well as great references to other, similarly interested parties. That is what a professional cares about. Especially the journeymen!

If you are just writing for yourself, the self-imposed kind of deadline is almost meaningless to me, unless it has to do with extraneous factors (ex.: Mahler having to write as much as possible during the summer before his conducting duties prevented him from serious composition sessions throughout the rest of the year). 

@Macker said:

The interesting and revealing part about your contribution to this thread is that you'd not been named or cited in connection with any views stated here (until William rightly took you to task), yet you jumped in like a scalded cat! That's odd. Why not come clean and tell us precisely what it really is about this thread that's upset you, personally, instead of just trying to smear and invalidate people?

William has demolished most of your other absurd nonsense, so I don't need to go there.

I am starting to feel sorry for you Macker.  Are you that bored?

As far as William "demolishing" my "nonsense", the following are William's own words.  From this thread:

"That's a great post by jsg, and so true - the line between amateur and professional is often someone just figuring out a trick of how to sell what was already being done..". 

"I apologize for overreacting like that - started focusing on the wrong things and went off..."   (addressed to me also from this thread).

Errikos, yet more enriching views from you; I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling fortunate and grateful that you've chosen to contribute extensively here on this topic.

I agree wholeheartedly with your point about those composers who find themselves with only a matter of weeks at the tail end of a film's production and well into post production, their work probably being in critical path for the project as a whole, while investors are breathing down everyone's necks to get the movie out there making money; and yet they do a good, competent job and later win further contracts to do it again. In my book, that's hardly short of heroic.

My hat is off to those composers. I can only guess at what they go through to get through those high-pressure contracts. Furthermore, I'm usually prepared to forgive a film composer whenever I recognise bits and pieces adapted from the classics. Sometimes, when push comes to shove, you gotta do what you gotta do!

I can sympathise with Harry Gregson-Williams' decision to take a sabbatical in order to feel his feet once more. I dread to think what it had been like for him on that meat-grinder production line of contract after contract after contract.

It appears there are, sometimes, other options open to exec producers in the matter of when to bring a composer on board for a film. For example, unless I'm mistaken, wasn't John Williams engaged by George Lucas quite early on in each of the Star Wars projects? A more recent example is Hildur Gudnadóttir being engaged very early in the production phase (maybe even in pre-production?) of "Joker" to start work on her score - for which she won the Oscar for Best Original Score, along with a slew of other prestigious awards. It's quite illuminating what Hildur says here about her work on that project:-

Joker composer wrote music before seeing picture.

[The title of this video and Hildur's brief descriptions of her work on "Joker" might perhaps be a tad misleading. We do know from an interview with Hildur about her work on "Chernobyl" (another early-start contract) that she very much enjoyed and benefitted from the early phase of conceiving musical ideas for the eventual score while having only the pre-production screenplay text to read. And despite what she said modestly about not being a "word person", in the interview linked here, I'd say she is clearly highly literate as well as being musically-minded, and able to draw much from words for purposes of developing a complementing score.]

While some here continue to fantasize, glorify deadlines and in general show a lack of understanding about scoring to picture, I'll give you some first-hand experience. 

Scoring to picture is a very different type of collaboration than writing music for dance, ballet, opera, songs, or Broadway.  In each of those genres, music is a 50-50% collaborator.  Music has an important role in determining the pacing, length, style, form and mood of the total work.  But in scoring to picture, there's a reason it's called background music.  The composer almost always comes on to the project after the screenplay is written, the scenes are shot and the film editing is done.  Not 100% of the time, but almost.  Of course the composer might be hired before all that work begins, and may even start sketching some ideas out based on the script, but the final produced score, whether done with live players or with virtual instruments, isn't usually mixed into the film until late, more likely last, in the process.  The composer must fit the music to the scene, usually to the 1/10th of a second. This requires talent no doubt; to make the music fit and still make sense as music, to capture the mood the director wants, to avoid clashing with dialogue, this requires a certain sensitivity and skill-set.   But putting 20 or 30 or 60 short cues together for a film also lacks certain challenges that music, particularly long-form music like symphonies, sonatas, concertos, must fulfill.  One of those challenges is transitions--creating an entire piece that works from beginning to end in which the music is not just part of the drama--the music is the drama.  Though film and TV cues must sometimes make 90 degree turns and change quickly the tempo, or style, or some other property, there doesn't need to be a holistic connection between cues that are separated during the time there is no scoring happening.  I find the problem of abstract long-form writing to be more challenging and more artistically satisfying to solve than scoring to picture, but someone else may find the opposite. 

My guess is that at least half the composers working in Hollywood would stop seeking "contracts" if they suddenly found themselves with enough money to last the rest of their lives.  Some would continue to score to picture, but get very picky about what projects they'd choose to work on.  If it were a film they'd never have any interest in buying a ticket to watch, they probably would choose not to score it.  Some would turn away from scoring altogether and seek out musical projects like writing for chamber groups, or orchestras, or they'd play in a band or maybe work as a solo performer/composer or conduct.  I chose to invest nearly all my musical time in working with the virtual orchestra, it's been my passion and obsession now for over 35 years.  

There are very few films where music is the primary vehicle for the form of the work. Fantasia, Chronos and  Koyaanisqatsi come to mind, these films are driven by music and are the few exceptions to the rule.  When I scored The Adventures of Gumby, out of 99 short animated films, about 4 or 5 had no dialogue and I could write a continuous score that was like a little symphonic work in the sense that the music had to work as one long piece all the way through.  But the vast majority of scoring situations do not offer the composer that challenge.

There are people around this thread who have not spent a life in the arts; that's fine, not everyone wants to devote themselves to working in an artistic medium.  But if I joined a forum of engineers and physicists and began talking to them like I was in their league, me, a guy who has never studied engineering and who knows next to nothing about physics, I'd be laughed at or pitied if I insisted on asserting that I know as much about their field as they do. And if I started belittling them because I didn't like them disagreeing with me they'd probably think I was just an immature jerk.  I respect people who show humility, who ask questions, who show curiosity and willingness to learn new things.  People who can say, "You know, I'm wrong about that, thanks for pointing out my mistake".  Nobody particularly enjoys being wrong, but those honest souls with integrity admit when they are.  Defending pet theories about the amateur vs the professional in the arts that are clearly wrong is just bullshit. 100% unadulterated bullshit.

Jerry Gerber, your definition  of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice.  You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place.  But it is not the ideal of film music.  The ideal usually can't be obtained, but it is not to be buried, abandoned or assumed to be non-existent the way you do.  The aesthetic reality of an art medium is NOT simply the most usual degradation of that medium.   And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score.  To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music.   It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.   

What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong. 

One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals.  I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring.  I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels. 

This conversation is becoming kind of pointless.  There are plenty of film score composers or wanna be film score composers that don't make any money at it whatsoever and are positively enamored with THAT art form, which is to apply applicable music to picture in a way that supports and/or enhances the film.  I personally know numerous people that never made a dime at it and never will.  Yet they are supremely interested in this art form for what it is...and it IS an art form in and of itself....and I would argue....distinct from that which Jerry brings up about music on its own.    Both art forms have their rightful place in the world...and in the end...people do whatever makes them happy...particularly when no money is involved in the transaction.  Film Scoring is about the story telling process...one part of it.  It is not without structure.  Yes...  if you are doing endless animated series trying to make a living cranking out mindless Ker-plunk music.. I can see how that would be pretty ungratifying after a while.  For myself...that is why I chose not to pursue a professional career in film music.  But there is still a higher form of film scoring that most film score composers aspire to, study about and engulf themselves in aspiration.  To denigrate this as a lessor form of music is unfair and flat out wrong.

That being said, there is also something to be said for writing music just for music's sake...with no picture..and I do agree with Jerry that this is an art form that is dying...we live in a video oriented culture now...and perhaps this is becoming a detriment to full musical envelopment...  no argument there.  There is something to be said for closing your eyes and just appreciating music entirely on its own...and allowing music composition to prosper and grow without being constrained to a supportive position underlying visual elements of a film.

Both forms of art are completely relevant in their own way.

The topic of whether to work at music production for a living is a completely separate question.  We all have to make a living somehow.  Sometimes a hobby we are passionate about can become just another job if and when that is pursued.  That is true with ALL hobbies of any kind whatsoever.  In a job, you do what you gotta do to bring in the money and that's it..  Perhaps you will have a few moments where you can do something truly artful with it...but I suspect that vast majority of people working in various forms of art industry have to, out of financial survival, do what the customer needs first, and consider their art second.  This is just reality.  On the other hand, if you try to make music a hobby while making a living some other way...then music will take a backseat in your life and its difficult at best to develop whatever talent you have into anything bigger and special....while the people scoring animated series every day...as laborious as that may be...do continue to develop their skills and perhaps out of that at some point in their life they will be able to apply those skills to a higher form of art that will make sense to them.  Maybe that can work, but I personally know a lot of starving musicians...so...  You can hear stories both ways...people glad they did that and people that wish they never tried.  or people that didn't try and wonder if they should have, etc.. its just not that clear cut....  we have to work to eat in some way or another....  

its ridiculous to ponder this question philosophically as if there is some great truth to what is the philosophically better approach to life.  There is no right or wrong.  People have tried both ways and some have succeeded both ways and some have not.  I would argue that the ones pursuing an art career have failed more then succeeded, FINANCIALLY...while those who did it as a hobby were more likely to succeed financially and perhaps didn't succeed as much in their art.  Which way is preferable?  Well that depends on the individual and how important their financial stability is to them.  Financial stability is not any less honorable than artistic integrity.  These are all valid values.

Its very few people that have the luxury to pursue their art form without concern for their financial stability.  they are the lucky ones.   For Jerry that means doing music without visuals...raw music.  Musical structures that stand on their own by the music itself and nothing more.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that!  But there is also nothing wrong with the person that is more interested in storytelling through music.  And as I said, I know lots of people that are obsessed about that art form and have never earned a single penny doing it.

@William said:

Jerry Gerber, your definition  of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice.  You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place.  But it is not the ideal of film music.  The ideal usually can't be obtained, but it is not to be buried, abandoned or assumed to be non-existent the way you do.  The aesthetic reality of an art medium is NOT simply the most usual degradation of that medium.   And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score.  To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music.   It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.   

What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong. 

One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals.  I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring.  I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels. 

William wrote:

Jerry Gerber, your definition  of film music is of course correct for most composers, but is completely formed and circumscribed by the commercial practice.  You have experienced that kind of scoring because it is what usually takes place.  But it is not the ideal of film music.

I agree with the above. There are no inherent technical or aesthetic reasons why the art of film cannot use music differently.  Or why films with excellent scripts and intelligent dialogue are rare.  Of course it's not the ideal, it's the norm.  

William wrote:

And the simplistic concept that you brought up - that film music has no overall structure unlike symphonies, operas, etc. - is DEAD WRONG in the case of a great film score.  To me the greatest film score of all is Herrmann's Vertigo and it is music that is superior to most music in any field written at the time. Including concert hall music.   It creates - as Herrmann himself stated as his goal - an overall structure to the film bound together by musical motifs and orchestrations.  

It's not simplistic at all, it's the usual, normal, everyday way that film music is made.  I gave three examples that deviate from the norm, and you added one.  No need to shout at me by saying I am "DEAD WRONG",   And if you actually take the time to think just a little about what I wrote, you would know that I didn't say film music has no overall structure.  I said that transitions between cues are usually not an issue for film music.  It's always an issue in music as an independent language and always an issue for music in ballet, dance, Broadway, songwriting and opera.. 

William wrote:

What you are doing in your comment is reducing an art form to its worst practices and most degraded examples, and then using that to judge the art from. That is lamentably wrong.

William, please try and get some awareness of your own contradictory statements.  You have said yourself how much you hate film music, and even when you like a score you have stated that you often hate the movie itself.  You use the word "hate" a lot William.   Not sure I trust such vehemence. What I am doing is looking at the vast majority of films and making statements about film music based on the norm.  If the "norm" is meaningless trash with badly written stories, inane dialogue and highly unoriginal music, well, then that's the norm.   I am not "reducing an art form to its worst practices"--filmmakers, movie studios and talentless writers are doing that.

I am aware of deeply artistic films that have been made, most were not blockbusters or highly profitable.  I have never said that film cannot be a fine art form; in the hands of gifted directors and screenwriters film is as much a fine art as any other fine art.   But remember, the conversation was veering toward the idea that the composers who meet deadlines are "heroes".  Does that mean that Debussy, who took 10 years to write his opera, or Brahms, who took 25 years to compose his first symphony are anti-heroes because they didn't have to cope with deadlines that almost guarantee a composer won't write his best music or that he simply hires other composers and/or orchestrators to write under his name?  Deadlines are a capitalist invention.  Deadlines are usually about financial pressure.  Deadlines can even kill--when NASA felt under pressure to launch the Challenger in weather that was too cold, this caused the O-Rings to become so brittle that they failed and produced the fuel leakage that blew up the spacecraft. The O-Ring engineers were warning NASA up until the last minute not to launch the Challenger but NASA ignored the experts who had studied this problem.  If we were not such a crazy species always worried about the passing of time we'd be happier, more productive and the quality of our work would improve.  So all this talk about how deadlines are so manly and heroic is a bunch of nonsense.  Why are we always in such a rush?   Anxiety and fear sabotage the intellect.  Pressure, in just the right amount, can stimulate progress and growth.  No problem there.  But too much pressure (like too much of anything that in the right amounts is good) is unhealthy and leads to mistakes and failures.  This is why there are so many product recalls--too much pressure to makes stuff too quickly, too much impatience, too much greed, too much emphasis on competition and not enough on cooperation. 

William wrote:

One other thing - you mention that an "amateur" or someone outside of a field is being arrogant in actually conversing and discussing things with professionals.  I totally disagree - some of the best comments on this Forum have not been from a clique of composers who look down on non-professionals, but from scientists and engineers who have fascinatingly objective concepts that are often startling and - by virtue of being outside the usual "professional" discourse - inspiring.  I love the mix of scientific with musical ideas as there are often fascinating parallels.

I did not write or imply that an amateur, or someone outside of a field is arrogant because they are conversing and discussing things with professionals. That's so crazy it's hard to believe you'd even say it.  My first reply to this thread was disagreeing with Macker not because he's an amateur nor about Macker not having any valuable comments to make about music, it was in response to a specific thing he said.   I have conversations often with people who come from a science background.  Many of my classical music theory/composition students have come from computer science and medical backgrounds.  I deeply value cross-disciplinary sharing of information and knowledge.  I value people who ask questions and know that there is always more to learn in every field.  I've been supporting people for decades as their music instructor who are amateurs and want to learn more about music composition as well as young gifted students who want to try and make music their profession.

In this thread I sometimes feel like I am dealing with primate-like behavior as I witness grown men unconsciously practicing their online bonding games to gang up on someone who doesn't agree with everything they say.  The silliness of it all...

@Dewdman42 said:

This conversation is kind of pointless.  There are plenty of film score composers or wanna be film score composers that don't make any money at it whatsoever and are positively enamored with THAT art form, which is to apply applicable music to picture in a way that supports and/or enhances the film.  I personally know numerous people that never made a dime at it and never will.  Yet they are supremely interested in this art form for what it is...and it IS an art form in and of itself....and I would argue....distinct from that which Jerry brings up about music on its own.    Both art forms have their rightful place in the world...and in the end...people do whatever makes them happy...particularly when no money is involved in the transaction.  Film Scoring is about the story telling process...one part of it.  It is not without structure.  Yes...  if you are doing endless animated series trying to make a living cranking out mindless Ker-plunk music.. I can see how that would be pretty ungratifying after a while.  For myself...that is why I chose not to pursue a professional career in film music.  But there is still a higher form of film scoring that most film score composers aspire to, study about and engulf themselves in aspiration.  To denigrate this as a lessor form of music is unfair and flat out wrong.

That being said, there is also something to be said for writing music just for music's sake...with no picture..and I do agree with Jerry that this is an art form that is dying...we live in a video oriented culture now...and perhaps this is becoming a detriment to full musical envelopment...  no argument there.  There is something to be said for closing your eyes and just appreciating music entirely on its own...and allowing music composition to prosper and grow without being constrained to a supportive position underlying visual elements of a film.

Both forms of art are completely relevant in their own way.

The topic of whether to work at music production for a living is a completely separate question.  We all have to make a living somehow.  Sometimes a hobby we are passionate about can become just another job if and when that is pursued.  That is true with ALL hobbies of any kind whatsoever.  In a job, you do what you gotta do to bring in the money and that's it..  Perhaps you will have a few moments where you can do something truly artful with it...but I suspect that vast majority of people working in various forms of art industry have to, out of financial survival, do what the customer needs first, and consider their art second.  This is just reality.  On the other hand, if you try to make music a hobby while making a living some other way...then music will take a backseat in your life and its difficult at best to develop whatever talent you have into anything bigger and special....while the people scoring animated series every day...as laborious as that may be...do continue to develop their skills and perhaps out of that at some point in their life they will be able to apply those skills to a higher form of art that will make sense to them.  Maybe that can work, but I personally know a lot of starving musicians...so...  You can hear stories both ways...people glad they did that and people that wish they never tried.  or people that didn't try and wonder if they should have, etc.. its just not that clear cut....  we have to work to eat in some way or another....  

its ridiculous to ponder this question philosophically as if there is some great truth to what is the philosophically better approach to life.  There is no right or wrong.  People have tried both ways and some have succeeded both ways and some have not.  I would argue that the ones pursuing an art career have failed more then succeeded, FINANCIALLY...while those who did it as a hobby were more likely to succeed financially and perhaps didn't succeed as much in their art.  Which way is preferable?  Well that depends on the individual and how important their financial stability is to them.  Financial stability is not any less honorable than artistic integrity.  These are all valid values.

Its very few people that have the luxury to pursue their art form without concern for their financial stability.  they are the lucky ones.   For Jerry that means doing music without visuals...raw music.  Musical structures that stand on their own by the music itself and nothing more.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that!  But there is also nothing wrong with the person that is more interested in storytelling through music.  And as I said, I know lots of people that are obsessed about that art form and have never earned a single penny doing it.

Good points Dewdman, all of them.  But I repeat:  I didn't say film music has no structure (it does); I wrote that in general film cues do not have transitions to other cues that are separated by places in the film where there is no music.  Sometimes, yes, but more often not.  Nor did I say that film music is a lesser form of music.  Also, just for the record, I had a great time scoring animation, there were many episodes that were very enjoyable and challenging to score.  I did however, get a bit tired of it after writing over 750 cues over a period of two and a half years or so and longed to return to writing music for its own sake.  After some 35 years of doing that I haven't gotten tired of it yet!

We are certainly an "eye" culture far more than we are an "ear" culture. This has been true for many decades, and is getting even more extreme.  It's not what we do that's important--it's how we do it.  Well, there are exceptions.  If you design nuclear warheads well, then maybe you should think about the nature of the defective product you're designing because if used as directed it will murder a hundred thousand people.   Just one warhead.  But I digress..

I saw this recently, which might be applicable:

Macker: Thanks for the very kind words, it makes me very happy when something I say is of some value to somebody. By the way, those 'classics' you sometimes recognise in film composers' cues are mostly due to the temp tracks chosen by the music editor and ratified by the director in order to edit the film and give the composer an indication of the scoring required in those scenes. Sometimes, the director will be so enamoured with those temp tracks (often due to repeated hearing), that he requires of the composer to mimic them very closely. Excerpts from The Planets, The Rite of Spring and Carmina Burana are some of the 'classics' that are very popular with directors and which you may often recognise. R. Addinsell composed the Warsaw Concerto bespoke in the style of Rachmaninov, after the great composer declined the offer to score the movie Dangerous Moonlight himself.

Dewdman - "This conversation is kind of pointless." I am not particularly happy to have participated in a conversation that was kind of pointless. What a waste of time! Although you may be right, here I am again, wasting even more time... And, yes, 'art' music is a much higher art form than film music, and Williams and Herrmann would be the first to admit so. Now their music is superior to a great number of so-called serious composers (there are just so many journeymen serious composers, but so few 'artists'...), and Herrmann's Vertigo could very well have been a tone poem, his North by Northwest a great scherzo, etc. However, there are always the Stravinskys, the Prokofievs, the Debussys, the Rachmaninovs, the Strausss, the Sibeliuss, the Ravels, the Scriabins, not to mention second rate names, or older composers such as the Mozarts, Beethovens and co. In addition, all those people that love film music and dabble in it in their spare time, that's great for them. Who said they should ever stop? A professional on the other hand, his daily bread, his rent, his electricity, they all depend on him finding and satisfying clients. A totally different cup of tea.

I have said all I had to say about deadlines. All my studies in 'art' music, the film music course I took at the Australian Film Television Radio School, masterclasses with Bruce Broughton and Christopher Gordon, all the interviews I have seen, countless colleagues' testaments, all the books (not Internet pamphlets) I have on film scoring, and my own humble experience more or less corroborate what I have written previously. A professional, by definition, has to have deadlines if only for the reason that he has got a string of contracts lined up. So, enough on that, from me at least.

(Un)Happily, the discussion has veered again on topic, i.e. professionals/non professionals, money, et al. I do not understand how this issue has not been flogged beyond death yet... I am also to blame, having once again contributed turgid diatribes, when I should have put forward the following:

To be a professional instrumental/orchestral composer in the western tradition (film or otherwise) you have to satisfy at least one of the following two requirements:

A) Your work has to be of professional standards, as those are recognised internationally,

and/or

B) You get paid regularly for your compositions.

A superlative sounding mock-up, one where nobody can tell whether those are real strings/brass/woodwinds playing, is NOT - I repeat, is NOT an orchestral work of 'professional standards'. It is a work consisting of treated synthesised sounds. I want to see a score! Everybody will judge a score! That is where people will determine whether you are a professional instrumental/orchestral composer or not. That is where they will determine your orthography, they will read your trombone lines and trills(!) (which a sampler will perform perfectly at any speed), and whether those are possible. That is where they will read your harp scoring and how possible that is in real life. That is where they will see how sensitive you are to the Eb Clarinet intonation issues, whether you know the trumpets' useful notes (which don't begin at the bottom of their range), horn scoring, approaches to different ranges, dynamics considerations, true balance among the sections (your mock-up probably consists of about 200 strings, 16 horns, etc.), the list is virtually endless...

If you create a mock-up and then you need an orchestrator to "iron out" the crap in order for it to be sensibly recorded, then you are NOT a professional instrumental/orchestral composer, unless you satisfy the second aforementioned requirement (Hans, for example). That is because you have to collaborate with someone that knows what you don't; meaning, you are unable to do it on your own. If you get paid to give directors mock-ups as the final soundtrack that will support the film, then you are a professional synthesiser/samplers composer. Very-very different.

Now, jsg has said a couple of times how he cannot go to a scientists or engineers forum and blend in. I agree. I said something similar in the beginning. I added something very important though. This here is not a composers forum. It is a vendor's forum, where anyone interested can register and say whatever pops into their head. The engineers forum on the other hand is populated exclusively with professionals, certified with some official stamp that everybody acknowledges. They didn't just buy a computer, threw a pirated copy of AutoCAD in there, took a 6-week intensive Internet course in engineering and, voici, engineer... Same with the scientists in the other forum. 

This here forum does not expect you to know the history of instrumental/orchestral music from the Middle Ages onwards and its evolution (how about the theory of affectations during the Baroque period, opera reforms of Monteverdi, Lully, and Gluck), neither does it expect you to even know notation(!), let alone theory, harmony, counterpoint (including the differences between 16th and 18th century counterpoints) and types thereof (all the kinds of fugues, inventions, canons, etc.), instrumentation, orchestration, forms and characteristics thereof, schools and techniques of composition (from the organum, to the evolution of sonata form, to spectralism and neo-complexity, and all in between and around those), etc., etc., etc.

As an example, I was a freshman when one of my professors told us we all should know how to play the last three Mozart symphonies on the piano by heart (he proceeded to play part of the 1st movement of the middle one). I can't do this now any more than I could do it then. I do know the symphonies of course. But how deeply do I know them? This is a microscopic, subatomic example (one of many) of what is required, and of the intergalactic distances in mastery that exist even among people who are actually qualified!

It sounds a little more complex to composing a trailer or a couple of cues of background music, doesn't it?

And how about film music history, theory (including semasiology - musicology these days is very much dependent on linguistics), and (d)evolution? Not just Hollywood. Europe and Asia as well. Spiccato alone just doesn't cut the mustard!..

That is however the modicum of knowledge that would be required in a Composers forum (capital C, as you see, rhyme not intended), similar to the engineers' one, if any discussion were to have professional meaning. The VSL forum on the other hand is a free-for-all domain, as it should be. As a result, discussions here that are outside the scope of the company's products, can be anything, about anything, without any requirements of expertise; justifiably!

I, for one, am very happy that there are so many non-professionals around who love music so much that they part with their hard-earned money to buy expensive apparati in order to delve into the magical world of music, as hobbyists. If you care so very much that others consider you a professional, you have two choices: a) Play the professional to those who don't know any different, b) Become a professional who real professionals will regard as such.

But know this: Even though I know where the head, belly, and limbs are on a human, and even know where some of the internal organs are and what they do, broadly speaking (ex.: brain, heart, liver, appendix), I can't turn up in an operating room full of doctors and say, "Hi guys, I know these things and have watched a few surgery videos on YouTube. Can I participate?" 

Concordantly, many of you have no idea, seriously you cannot even imagine how few seconds, how few measures it takes one that knows music to discern from an actual orchestrally recorded cue (not a mock-up) whether the composer of the cue knows music or not, even if the composer has made more money from that cue than most will ever see.

Bottom line of argument? If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.

I always remember something Mike Verta said: In order to be a Hollywood composer these days, one needs a laptop and a pulse...

Well, some of us can always tell who's who.

But why should you mind?..

@Dewdman42 said:

I saw this recently, which might be applicable:

It's applicable.  A composer I know once remarked "Music sells everything but music".   

Listening to music without visuals, without games, without jogging, dancing, doing homework or talking with friends--I have no idea what percentage of the population regularly engages in this activity.  Maybe some people, whether professional musicians or not, are just more interested and more sensitive to music, and can feel a sense of satisfaction listening without distraction of any kind.   Those are the people I write for.  

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@Errikos said:

To be a professional instrumental/orchestral composer in the western tradition (film or otherwise) you have to satisfy at least one of the following two requirements:

A) Your work has to be of professional standards, as those are recognized internationally,

and/or

B) You get paid regularly for your compositions.

A superlative sounding mock-up, one where nobody can tell whether those are real strings/brass/woodwind playing, is NOT - I repeat, is NOT an orchestral work of 'professional standards'. It is a work consisting of treated synthesized sounds. I want to see a score! Everybody will judge a score! That is where people will determine whether you are professional instrumental/orchestral composer or not. That is where they will determine your orthography, they will read your trombone lines (which a sampler will perform perfectly at any speed), and whether those are possible. That is where they will read your harp scoring and how possible that is in real life. That is where they will see how sensitive you are to the Eb Clarinet intonation issues, whether you know the trumpets' useful notes (which don't begin at the bottom of their range), horn scoring, approaches to different ranges, dynamics considerations, true balance among the sections (your mock-up probably consists of about 200 strings, 16 horns, etc.), the list is virtually endless...

,ow few measures it takes one that knows music to discern from an actual orchestrally recorded cue (not a mock-up) whether the composer of the cue knows music or not, even if the composer has made more money from that cue than most will ever see.

Bottom line of argument? If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.

Dear Errikos,

When I was creating scores for my acoustic music I took every pain to create scores that were up to current professional standards.  I don't have particularly good handwriting or graphic skills so it was difficult for me. But as I became more and more committed to the virtual orchestra, I began to question why I was even creating scores at all.   I realized there are other reasons to create a score that is not intended for live performance.  Here's a a brief article I wrote on the subject if you are interested:  https://www.jerrygerber.com/markings.htm

Your definition of serious orchestration is that you've defined (and perhaps limited) working in the virtual medium to being a "mock-up".  Have you considered it possible that for some musicians it may be a legitimate and serious artistic medium in its own right, deserving of exploration, commitment and developing techniques that are indigenous to that medium? 

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you've written, but it seems you've created an either/or situation:  Either you're a trained orchestrator and write for live players, or you don't know the first thing about orchestration and work with sample libraries, sequencers, MIDI, etc. I see it as normal and possible to be both.  For every technique a traditional orchestrator has to master, the musician working in the virtual medium also has an equivalent number of new techniques that need to be mastered. Synth programming itself is an art-form that one could do and spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities.  Sequencing a melody that has expression, gesture, nuance, dynamics, the right attack and releases, the right kind of note connections--this is a time consuming and very detailed process that someone attempting to "mock-up" a piece probably won't engage in.  Then there is mixing, mastering, maintaining a studio, troubleshooting--these are all related skills that go into producing recordings using relatively new tools.  And this is in addition to one's knowledge of harmony, counterpoint, form and structure and composition.  No wonder one lifetime is barely enough.  No wonder I sometimes still feel like a complete beginner when I sit down to work.

Technology has given us new ways to make music, new ways to record music, new ways to edit music.   There are some that are going to approach these new tools seriously, some will ignore them like the plague, and some will dabble in them from time to time.  These differing approaches to new music technologies have nothing to do with one's knowledge of music, one's musicianship, or one's seriousness as a musician.   Some excellent composers are simply not facile with technology; other than using Sibelius or Finale they are not interested in what computer-based instruments can do.  That's fine, there's room in this world for every and any approach.  Seriousness of intent is not determined by the tools we choose to make music with, that's how it appears to me. 

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