In the TV series Classic Albums (now available on DVD), Roger Waters talks about the Pink Floyd song “Us and Them.” He says, “I find myself very very often, in my capacity as a producer, having to say to people, ‘No, leave a hole. Just play for half a bar and leave a bar-and-a-half empty.’” I love this quote, and think of it often while I’m writing. It reminds me that I don’t need to fill up every moment with notes. Sometimes music needs space to breathe, silence to give form and beauty to the sound.

As Daniel Levitin wrote in his book This Is Your Brain on Music, Miles Davis “described the most important part of his solos as the empty space between notes, the ‘air’ that he placed between one note and the next. Knowing precisely when to hit the next note, and allowing the listener the time to anticipate it, is a hallmark of Davis’s genius.”

This idea of space also reminds me to play only what’s absolutely necessary to get the point across. Do as little as you have to to convey the energy, the mood or the feeling you’re trying to capture. Not out of laziness, but out of economy. Doing more with less is one of the signs of great writing. Pink Floyd were always masters of this, and the song “Us and Them” is a brilliant example.

I studied studio art in college, and in drawing classes we were always encouraged to look at the negative space just as much as the positive space, to see the shapes around objects as often as the objects themselves. The reason for this is that compositionally, shapes are just shapes, whether you’re drawing a vase or the air around a vase. It’s all equally important in context. If you ignore the negative space and just draw the things themselves your drawing may feel awkward, imbalanced or poorly-composed.

The same is true for music: you need to pay attention to the “air” around the notes. Focus as much attention on the space you leave around the notes as on the notes you play (or write). Give notes time to develop, to flower, and then to be appreciated. Who knows, perhaps you’ll write the next Dark Side of the Moon or Kind of Blue.

(If you want to watch the entire Dark Side of the Moon Classic Albums episode, it’s also available streaming on Netflix. I highly recommend it—it’s easily one of the best of the series. Most of the other episodes are streaming there as well.)

I was having dinner with some composer friends a few weeks ago and the subject of writer’s block came up. Mostly, we talked about the fact that we rarely get it. Perhaps because we’re all media composers and seldom have the time for such creative obstacles, we’ve all developed strategies to deal with the occasional lack of inspiration. It seemed to me a great idea for a post.

To make it even more useful, I decided to enlist the aid of a few compatriots. Tim Huling was one of my composition teachers and was there at the table for the original conversation, so he was a natural. He sent me the basic list, which I elaborated upon and added to (and he added that some of the ideas originally came from Michael Rendish, Assistant Chair of Berklee College of Music’s Film Scoring Department.) SCOREcast founder and creativity blogger Deane Ogden sent me some excellent thoughts, despite being in Asia for a movie premiere and impending marriage(!). And Jeffrey P. Fisher, author of Fish(er) Tales and the Moneymaking Music Tip of the Week, generously donated some wisdom as well. Thanks to all of you!

As Deane wrote, “I know we aren’t supposed to admit that we get creative blocks from time to time, but the truth is that we do. Perhaps a better and more truthful way to frame the conversation is to say that ‘we don’t have time to let those blocks effect us negatively.’” Since those blocks occasionally do strike, here are some thoughts on keeping the music flowing:

General Tips

• Understand the nature of creativity. According to Jeffrey, “Recognize that the real creative process comprises four basic steps:
  1. Doodling. Here you play around with ideas, collect material, and generally putter around without any real focus. When ‘doodling,’ many people feel guilty that nothing ‘real’ is getting done. They confuse this crucial step with wasting time. It’s not. Give yourself permission to play because out of the play can come some real inspiration.
  2. Do nothing and let everything percolate. This is where ‘writer’s block’ lives. It’s often frustrating because you can’t seem to find direction. Once again, the paradox needs time for ideas, and time is what you have so little of. Recognizing the importance of this stage can help you deal with the anguish of hoping for something good to happen.
  3. Ah, the muse. Suddenly, a spark of inspiration hits and the creativity flows from a higher place. Often, the work is effortless and productive. When inspiration strikes, we all welcome it with open hearts and minds. It is here where we’d all like to spend our days, in the throes of passionate creativity.
  4. The real work. Now you call upon all your skills to create something special from your inspiration. Once again, it’s another place where we like to visit often.”
• Just keep writing. Perfectionism, especially at the early stages, will kill your creativity faster than a bucket of ice water over your head. Even if you think what you’re writing is terrible, just keep going. Momentum is a good thing, and you never know if there’s some tiny nugget of greatness buried in the garbage that will form the basis for an entire set of cues.
  Along those same lines, Tim wrote, “Don’t be afraid to write something that feels wrong and set it aside for later revision if time allows. Depending on your relationship with the director, you might ask him or her ‘what’s wrong with this?’ A peer or mentor could be asked the same thing.”
• Take a walk, a shower or a nap. In other words, get out of your head and stop forcing your creativity. Focusing too hard on a problem only makes it more difficult to solve. Inspiration comes when you stop trying to write and simply let it come. Going for a walk, taking a shower, reading a book, exercising, meditating, sleeping: all of these activities help your brain to relax and let go, allowing ideas to come naturally. As Tim wrote, “Fresh air, the physical rhythm of walking and the stimulus of the surroundings can prompt ideas. The feeling, sound and reverberance of the shower can help let the subconscious take over.”
  Or as Jeffrey put it, “Creativity, I feel, needs just as much downtime as uptime to be effective. It’s about doing things and not doing anything. Nurture the creative process by reading, watching, and experiencing all you can.”
• Listen to other music. It may not be hip to say, but I personally get a lot of inspiration from other composers, bands and songwriters. I always make a playlist of music similar to what I’m trying to write and listen to it frequently. This gets my brain in the proper space, be it cinematic action, ambient techno or Lutheran church hymns. Once I’m primed in this way, it’s much easier to write in a similar style. The point isn’t to steal from other artists or even to imitate them, but to draw from what’s come before you, build upon the standards of the genre and add your own voice to the conversation.
  As Deane said, “For me, the best way to defend myself from blocking is to listen to a lot of music. Stimulation. I believe each of us has a creative well to draw from that operates much like a bank account does. If the account is empty, nothing can be spent. But if the account is well funded, spending can happen at the speed of thought. Same with creativity. If our creative well is dry, which is to say that if it hasn’t had anything filling it in awhile, pouring out from it will be very difficult. All of us would love to say that we simply have ‘music bubbling up from within us,’ but that is simply physiologically not the case. The inspiration has to come from somewhere.”
• Refill your creative well. I know people who go hiking or camping to get inspired. Some go swimming, practice photography or cook an amazing meal. Getting out of your stuffy studio, even for an hour, can do wonders for your creativity. Figure out what feeds your muse and make a note of it. Make sure to do whatever it is from time to time to keep yourself charged up.
  As Deane wrote, “Maybe your creative well is funded from watching your children play on the living room floor or seeing a sunset every day from your backyard barbecue. The point is that you need to get out of the four walls of your musical prison and live. To refrain from that is to withdraw yourself from inspiring events, and eventually to starve your muse.”
  Or as Jeffrey remarked, “The more you know, the more you can draw upon for inspiration. Haven’t new experiences always sparked your muse? Haven’t you created music after you heard a new synth patch, after a relationship went sour, or any other event greatly impacted your life? Does it make sense to you that adding more experiences to your life should result in more inspiration? Worth a shot, don’t you think?”
• Take a different approach. Try something other than what you’re doing. If you’re sitting at the piano trying in vain to come up an idea, try instead to hum a melody, or write on another instrument. If you’re stuck in right-brain creative mode, use music theory instead—what chord or interval makes theoretical sense.
• Play. Goof around. Let go of the need to write something and just do something musically fun. (Of course, you’ll want to record the whole thing in case your experiment produces something interesting.) As Jeffrey suggested, “Harness your youthful exuberance. Children learn through play. They try things out to see what happens. They rarely take the ‘that’ll never work attitude’ that so often plagues adults. Though it is fundamental to learn from the experience of others, it is equally vital to sometimes let go of old ideas and reinvent the wheel. Along that path, you may also reinvent yourself.”
• Get help. There’s nothing wrong with using your peers for some occasional brainstorming. Show the footage to a colleague and get his or her ideas. Call in a musician friend or two and just jam (Thomas Newman supposedly does this frequently).
• Build your creative muscles. This won’t help you on your project due tomorrow, but it is a vitally important activity. Never stop learning, growing and improving as a composer. As Jeffrey said, “You need to cultivate and enhance your creativity every day. You can’t make music on demand unless you’ve honed your craft first. You can’t do novel sound tricks unless you already possess expert knowledge about how your gear works and how to use it to get the sounds you need. Of course, serendipity plays a role in all creative endeavors, but without a firm foundation you may not recognize those serendipitous moments when they arrive.”

More Specific Strategies

• Look to the film. Tim wrote, “What’s the rhythm of the film? What are the size and pacing of the shot(s)? What colors are present? Is it vibrant or muted? Make a list of as many adjectives to describe the scene as you can—don’t stop until you can’t think of any more—and then make a parallel list where you come up with musical ‘analog’ of each aspect (e.g. fast cuts = fast tempo).” More elaborately, composer Ron Jones has a series of 20 or so questions he asks about each moment of a potential cue: What does the director want here? What does the producer want? What does the character want? Really drilling down to the core of the scene in this way can not only free your creativity but it also helps you to really nail the cue.
• Write a song for the character(s). Take some small or large part of the dialog of one actor as set it to music. This will probably need some heavy revision, but it may yield fruitful results. Game composer Aaron Walz suggests writing a brief description of a character or a scene and setting that to music. Words give rhythmic clues, and may also unlock melodic ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of.
• Start with a rhythm. As Tim suggested, “Sometime the rhythmic dimension is the easiest to tap into. Take a percussion instrument and compose for that alone. Then decide what scale or mode would probably work for the scene (a darker color like Aeolian or a lighter color like Lydian?) and what shapes make sense (choose an energy and direction that’s analogous to the drama and emotion of the scene). Use the rhythm, scale, and shapes to construct the cue.”
• What Would Williams/Goldsmith/Newman Do? Tim proposed, “Imagine the music your favorite composer, or the composer you think would be scoring your film if you weren’t. Write what they would write (it’s not plagiarism—you wrote it!) You may want to revise it to ‘dial down’ elements that are touchstones of that composer, e.g. suspended chords on a marimba if your chosen composer is Thomas Newman). Consider doing this more than once, for multiple pretend composers, and using elements from each idea.”
• Write the wrong cue. As Tim advised, “Come up with everything that would be wrong to do and then reverse all those things!” This works because it tricks your brain into sidestepping the problem and invites it to be creative in a different way.
• Use your library. Tim wrote, “Take a bunch of music you’ve written for other projects, or this project, and put it in place in the scene and see what works and what doesn’t.” Sometimes just hearing music in the scene will help you discover what will work and what won’t. You can even use music by other composers—in other words, create your own temp track. Obviously, this requires you to be extremely careful about not accidentally plagiarizing their work, but this can be a useful way of discovering possible scales, harmonies, rhythms or tempos you might not have thought of yourself.
• Does it even need music? Perhaps the reason you’re having so much trouble is that the scene doesn’t actually need music. Of course, you’ll need to OK this with the director, but sometimes the best solution is to acknowledge that there isn’t actually a problem.

Hopefully these ideas will help you get through the occasionally fallow period. Many of them are useful even when you’re not having trouble writing, since we should all be trying to improve our craft and maximize our creativity and originality.

If after all that you’re still feeling stuck, here’s a final thought from Jeffrey, ”Heed this advice from Cole Porter: ‘All the inspiration I ever needed was a phone call from a producer.’”

I was reading a back issue of Sound on Sound last night and I came across this nugget in an article profiling songwriter and producer Alex Da Kid:

“Every month or every two months I’ll take another soft synth, and I’ll read the manuals and I’ll watch the YouTube videos on it, and I’ll go really deep into it. I may create a whole track just using that one synth.”

It occurred to me that we all probably need to do this. I know I do. I read magazines like Sound on Sound and lust after all the pretty new software and gear when I don’t really know how to use half of what I already own. I mean really know it. Sure, I can fire up presets on my virtual Moog Modular or OSCar and tweak them a bit, but I can’t quickly program a patch from the ground up on either one.

Just the other day I was trying to find the perfect drum beat for a project and realized to my dismay how poorly I knew all the beats I had on hand (and I have a lot). What I need is a library of MP3s with all my beats in various categories: Shuffle, Swing, Half-Time, Straight, Funky, etc. Not only will that enable me to audition beats quickly but the process of creating the library will make me much more familiar with what I own. Sure, it will take time, but it will save more when I really need it—when I’m on a deadline.

Consider adopting Alex Da Kid’s policy and dive into one of your underused pieces of gear every month or two. Read the manual. Watch some tutorials. Use it in a few pieces—without touching the presets. Having more than one or two go-to synths, delays or beat generators will be a great help when you’ve got three hours to compose a masterpiece. Remember, if you can really impress your client with your speed and talent you’re pretty much guaranteed to get the next gig.

I’m finishing up a job which was temped with an Explosions in the Sky song. My instructions were simple: create a score with the same vibe—mellow electric guitar escalating gradually to a euphoric climax. Explosions in the Sky are not terribly hard to mimic since their songs often follow a fairly specific formula, but the process got me thinking about the most efficient ways to make use of reference tracks. Basically it comes down to this: the more methodical you are with studying your reference tracks the easier it is to create a final cue that’s original and yet captures exactly what the client wants.

When I first started composing for media, my approach was a bit random. I’d create a playlist of appropriate reference tracks, listen to it for a while, and then try to duplicate what I’d heard without violating any copyright rules. Sometimes this worked well, but other times I felt like I was fumbling around in a dark room looking for the light switch. By taking a more measured approach, you can work more quickly and nail the cue more easily.

Step 1: Assemble Your Materials

The first step is to gather your reference tracks in whatever way is easiest for you to listen to them. I make an iTunes or Spotify playlist on my phone so I can listen in the car, while walking or at the gym. Do whatever works best for you—make a Pandora or Rhapsody playlist, burn a CD, buy songs on iTunes, or assemble a playlist of YouTube videos.

In this particular case the client just used one Explosions in the Sky song, but I knew much of their work is in the same vein so I created a playlist with all of their albums. In a case like this, where the client uses one specific piece, I always like to have more options to listen to. Broadening your choices gives you more options to choose from and you’ll be less likely to inadvertently “borrow” a bit of melody or a riff from the temp track. You’ll also be able to get a more general feel for the artist’s sound and it will be easier to distill it down to its essence as we’ll be doing in a moment.

In some cases you may need to do some research, like if the client says, “I want the soundtrack to be all early-’80s guitar rock, like Journey or Def Leppard.” In that case you could use the Similar Artists feature on Spotify or AllMusic.com to find other material that might also be suitable. Or if they want “classic John Williams” you might listen to Jaws, Star Wars, ET and the Indiana Jones scores.

Step 2: Listen

Once you’ve assembled all your tracks, it’s time to listen. This can take anywhere from an hour to several weeks, depending on your timeline. More time is always better, but obviously in some cases you don’t have that luxury. In the case of this project I literally had a couple of hours to listen before I needed to start writing.

Don’t get too technical yet, but do think about what all the tracks have in common, what their overall sound is, the instrumentation, the mood, and so on. You want to absorb the music and set your brain to that frequency. I find that when I immerse myself in a style of music like this it seeps into my consciousness and makes it much easier to write in that style. Oftentimes similar ideas just occur to me and the cue just sort of writes itself.

Step 3: Break It Down

Now that you’ve spent some time with the music, break it down. You may not need to get as technical as this, but I’ve assembled examples of questions to ask about the music so you can really get a handle on what its attributes are. (Lest the size of this list scare you away, in most cases all you have to do is identify the most notable elements of the artist or genre and focus on those):

• Style: Starting simply, how would you classify the pieces? Are they Classical? Impressionistic? Minimalist? Folk? Rock? Post-Rock? One of the hundreds of genres and sub-genres of electronica?
• Tempo and meter: What’s the range of tempos in the pieces (in beats per minute)? Are there typical meters the composer or band often use? Are there meters or tempos they don’t use?
• Instrumentation: What instruments are used? If it’s a rock band, are they just guitar, bass and drums or are there other sounds—keyboards, synths, horns, etc.? If it’s orchestral is it a large orchestra or small? Are there unusual instruments or an atypical percussion section? What are the dominant instruments?
• Composition: Is there anything compositionally that distinguishes the bulk of the tracks? What’s their overall shape? Do they begin quietly and build, or do they start with a bang? What’s the formal structure? Through-composed? Strophic? Binary? Rondo? Sonata?
• Melody: How are the melodies constructed? Are they simple or complex? Long or short? Scalar or full of leaps? How do they interact with the harmony? Do they stick primarily to chord tones or do they frequently (or ever) land on extensions? Are they slow or fast? Are the melodic kernels short and simple or long and complex? Are there typical rhythms to the melodies? Are the melodies played by solo instruments? Are they doubled or harmonized?
• Harmony and chords: What chords are used? Are they diatonic or does the harmony utilize modal interchange, secondary dominants or other non-diatonic chords? Are the chords simple triads or are they extended? Is there chromaticism, polytonality or even atonality? What are the representative harmonic rhythms?
• Rhythm: Are there common rhythmic motifs? What’s the predominant pulse—sixteenth notes, quarter notes, whole notes? Is there syncopation? Are the rhythms straight or funky? Where is the rhythmic pulse concentrated? In the rhythm section or percussion? In the guitars? In the strings?
• Effects: What does the ambience or reverb sound like? Are the recordings dry or do they use natural or artificial reverb? Are there any audio effects in use? If so, what are they? Are the vintage or modern-sounding? Is there compression? If so, what kind and how much? Are there delays, distortion or other audio effects?
• Performance: Is the ensemble tight or loose? Does the song sound quantized and auto-corrected or is it more natural and “human-sounding?” Are the instrumentalists virtuosi or are they an unschooled punk band?
• Other elements: Is there anything else that typifies the recordings that isn’t listed above? If you’re analyzing Led Zeppelin, you might cite the incredible power of John Bonham’s drumming. Or in the case of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra you might list the odd but refreshing combination of folk and minimalist Classical elements.

In the case of my Explosions in the Sky example, I discovered that much of their work is in 6/8 or 4/4 with a triplet feel, which made simple work of choosing a time signature for my piece. Their compositions often start quietly and build to a climax, sometimes settling back down to quiet once again. The instrumentation is drums and three guitars, with only occasional bass (this fact isn’t immediately obvious and reveals why a quick Wikipedia search can be a fruitful use of time). The songs employ relatively simple melodies and harmonies, and frequently use short repeated motifs that intertwine to form minimalist, trance-like curtains of sound. Rhythmically, the songs often rely heavily on eighth-note pulses which, combined with the 6/8 meter, heavily emphasize the triplet rhythms. The recordings sound natural, as though the band were captured playing live in the studio without much overdubbing. The drums have a very ambient, roomy sound and the guitars almost always use delay. They’re occasionally distorted, but the distortion is very natural-sounding, like amp gain rather than distortion pedals.

Armed with this information, I was able to quickly compose a cue that fit the brief. I only had a day and a half to assemble the rough, but the client liked it so much that they had no changes. Yes, it took a bit of time to do the research, but making that effort ensures that you nail the cue and please the client.

By way of a lesson, in my early days I actually got fired from a gig because I didn’t research the temp tracks thoroughly enough. I don’t even remember what the references were, but they were bands I’d never heard of and honestly didn’t particularly like. So instead of digging in deeper and figuring out what made them unique I listened to the supplied YouTube links a couple of times and wrote a rough track thought captured the sound closely enough. That was a mistake. After a couple of days I heard back from the client that they were going to “try a different approach” with the music.

With pretty much everything ever recorded available online somewhere, doing your research is easy. Even bands like AC/DC and Def Leppard, who notoriously refuse to be on iTunes and Spotify, are easy to find on YouTube (for better or worse). Take an hour or two and really analyze your reference tracks. Not only will it make you much more likely to please your client, but you’ll expand your repertoire and may learn a new trick or two in the process.

Edit: Here’s the final track. A bit cleaner and less raucous than an actual Explosions in the Sky tune, but then that was the request. The final video is below as well:

As Sadie says, “SoundCloud is a versatile and effective platform for composers and sound content creators of all kinds. It is arguably the next big thing in online audio….”

As a bonus, if you own Ableton Live 8 you’re entitled to a free Soundcloud Pro account for five months!

Film music tends to be sectional. A cue will be happy for a bit, then turn sad, then anxious. It’s the nature of the beast. Sometimes we want the changes to be abrupt, but sometimes the movie calls for a more invisible transition. I like to call this dovetailing. Just like in woodworking, dovetailing requires a carefully constructed overlap of two sections. Following is a quick tip for smoothly moving from one segment of a piece to the next.

Rather than allowing one section to end before beginning the next, start introducing elements of the later part into the first or vice versa. If your first bit has an eighth-note feel and your second is mostly whole notes, begin softly bringing in whole notes under the end of the first section. You can also fade the eighth notes at the end of the first part or carry them softly into the second to create more of a bridge and smooth the transition.

In my experience, dovetailing mostly involves the accompaniment. If one section uses arpeggiated figures in the background, carry those over into the other segment. If both parts use arpeggiation but of different types, change the arpeggiation before or after the section change. It’s really just a matter of gradually altering the accompaniment rather than changing it suddenly. It’s also easiest at first to focus on the rhythm. A triplet feel can slowly give way to a quarter-note pulse by gradually replacing triplets with quarter notes until you arrive at your destination.

Here’s an example from a piece I recently completed. The first section is slow and drawn out. The second, at :41, is upbeat and staccato. This is an early draft of the two passages with no dovetailing:

Notice the abruptness of the change. There’s no flow between the sections. To remedy this, I began introducing arpeggiated eighth-note elements into the first section. By the time the transition arrives, they’ve become staccato and lead cleanly into the new material. The upbeat part is clearly a new section, but the listener’s ear has been prepared and it’s no longer a shock when it comes:

Here’s the dovetailed version in its final orchestrated form. Notice how in the orchestration the eighth-notes gradually become more prominent, smoothing the transition even further:

Listen to the Classical masters for brilliant examples of dovetailing. Beethoven in particular was an expert at smoothly moving through his pieces. Here’s an example from his First Symphony. Notice how the long chords in the opening gradually introduce a more energetic 8th- and 16th-note texture interspersed with longer quarter notes. After the cadence at 1:46 the strings are in a full 8th-note gallop, which feels like 16ths because of the 2/2 time signature and Allegro con Brio tempo. This section is completely different from the opening, and yet because of Beethoven’s masterful transitioning, the change feels completely natural:

I’m amazed I hadn’t heard of this radio show yet, but I discovered it this past weekend on our local Seattle Classical station. The Score is produced by All Classical Media in Portland, Oregon, and hosted by Edmund Stone. The weekly shows take on various topics, such as treasure hunters, the founding of America and Shakespeare at the movies. It also occasionally focuses on a particular composer or features interviews with current composers like Alexandre Desplat and Ramin Djawadi.

The program is unique in my experience as it centers its attention on the music. It often showcases unavailable, out-of-print or difficult-to-find scores. For example, in the most recent show featuring music from the various Titanic movies and television series, Stone broadcast music from Howard Blake’s 1979 score to S.O.S. Titanic, which until now has never been heard on its own.

The show’s website, thescore.org, has archives of the show going back to March, 2011. Check it out and make use of this wonderful resource.

As a bonus, by downloading a copy, you’ll also be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a Plugged For Life bundle—free downloads of all SoundToys plugins for eternity. Runners-up will win SoundToys plugin bundles and free upgrades to the upcoming Radiator plugin, the Little Radiator’s big brother.

One caveat: users must have an iLok USB key and iLok.com account. If you do, get your copy here: https://www.soundtoys.com/sxsw2012/&rc=401-2047-977. And the more you pass around your link, the more chances you’ll have to win!