Journal

Told you there’d be more updates soon! Now that YouTube...

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:50:58 -0400

Told you there’d be more updates soon!

Now that YouTube recently modified its policies to allow videos up to fifteen minutes in length as opposed to ten, I can finally put up what was easily one of my favourite little personal projects to work on this past year.

In 2009, I watched Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s magnificent documentary film, Home. I was moved by the strength of the narrative, by the staggeringly beautiful footage, and by the organic and appropriate musical score.

In 2010, as a composer seeking to respond to this creation, I decided to re-write the music as I might have done it. In the interest of brevity, I first re-edited the film into a briefer ten-minute version to keep it reasonably sized. Once that was done, I set out to write a new musical score for the cut — one that was wholly my own, yet influenced by Armand Amar’s original and by other stellar documentary composers like George Fenton.

I’ve left only the opening narration intact from the original to introduce the story — all other audio, including sound effects, is all produced by yours truly, and it is my pleasure to finally present you with the results!

BandCamp Update

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:24:00 -0400

So remember how I made a few of my tracks available for purchase via BandCamp not too long ago? Well it was a good test of the service and I’m quite happy with it, so I’ve decided to expand my catalogue a bit…

As of today, not only is my entire Demo Reel updated with some new tracks, but the whole thing is available for purchase on BandCamp — as an album or individually, whatever suits your fancy. Oh, and I lowered the prices. $0.70 per track or all twelve for $7.99.

Why the hell would you want to buy the music when you can listen to it for free on SoundCloud? Well, because you can take it with you wherever you go, you can support my work, and most importantly: you can get the tracks in whatever audio format you prefer — including fully lossless WAV if you want maximum fidelity.

Demo Reel: On BandCamp

Check it out if you like, and stay tuned for some more updates very soon!

Shadow Era

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:22:51 -0400

For the past week and a bit, I’ve been happily working on an absolutely beautiful new iPad/iPhone/Web title called Shadow Era. You can find more information about the game itself on the website, but I wanted to share the music that’s been written for the game so far since I’m very proud of it.

The player below will be updated to include all new tracks as I complete them. A Cry For War and Battle!, formerly orphaned tracks, have now found themselves a home on this score, which means more people get to enjoy them!

Shadow Era by Mathazzar

A Cry For War

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:51:58 -0400

It’s been a while since I’ve done a music post, and even though folks who keep tabs on my SoundCloud page will notice that I add things pretty consistently, I figured I’d share this one here too.

A Cry For War was written yesterday evening on a whim, and features some evocative vocal and percussion work. I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out and hope you all enjoy it too!

Cry for War by Mathazzar

Best of all, if you like it you’re welcome to download the Mp3 and enjoy it on the go!

Up and Running

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:20:30 -0400

Okay, sorry about that little outage back there. This is what I get for not having my domain registered and hosted in the same place. Must fix that.

Anyhow, with the site running again I thought I’d let everyone know that two short films I recently worked on are preparing to embark on the festival circuit, and I’m very proud to have been a part of both productions — they deserve all the attention and acclaim they can get. I hope to be able to share some more details of when and where you can see them soon.

Meanwhile, I’m happily writing demos, experimenting, and keeping an eye out for gigs down the road as well as working on some neat side-projects so I hope everyone’s summer is going as nicely as mine so far.

After Dante’s Inferno, my gaming life was briefly taken up by Final Fantasy XIII. I say briefly in lieu of the game’s enormous length because I did not survive the full ride. Expect details in my review. Thankfully, I’ve since moved on to something that’s much more fun: Lost Planet 2. Nothing quite like killing massive aliens to keep one’s mind fresh.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

Site Temporarily Down...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:07:32 -0400

Important note to everyone: my main domain is temporarily down while I resolve some registration issues. I apologize for the spontaneous downtime and just as frustrated by it, but it is what it is.

Everything should be up and running again within three or five days. My apologies!

From Hell

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:43:00 -0400

When last we spoke of gaming, it was Nier that had my attention and I was just picking up Dante’s Inferno, a relatively fresh title from EA developed by the aptly-named Visceral Games.

I expressed my interest in the game quite a while ago, largely because I am a fan of the original literature that inspired it, but also because notable game audio wonderman Garry Schyman (of Bioshock fame) was composing the score for the project. So when the packaging suggested I go to hell, it was difficult to resist. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect upon the experience, I wanted to share my thoughts.

My descent into the Stygian depths of this imagined realm was a patient one. Having been raised on a diet of Zelda and Mario, I am well accustomed to keeping a sharp eye out for collectible items, side-missions, mini-games, and other distractions from the main quest. Were I to ever find myself in a real situation wherein the world (princess, etc) needed saving and I was The Only Hope (Chosen One, etc), I am fairly certain that I would be the most useless hero ever. Admiral ADD to the rescue.

Anyone need help with their groceries? Need a package delivered to a friend in a distant town? There’s probably time for some fishing before I get on with saving things…after all, it’s the journey that counts, not the destination, right?

Besides, it was Hell I was heading into. One typically isn’t in a great hurry to get there.

Dante’s Inferno opens with one of the most visually impressive cutscenes I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just because of the liberal display of breasts. Everything from the cloth animations to the faces to the environment is expertly rendered, and the weird blend of 3D and graphic-novel-style 2D is both unexpected and strangely effective. Whether it was the plan all along or came about as a result of time or budgetary constraints is worth wondering about.

The opening cutscene is also notable for being the first and last time the game adheres with any accuracy to the content of the original verses. The opening voiceover is a recitation of the poem’s opening lines, and it seems that once they had established that little connection, Visceral figured they were good to go off and do their own thing. And they did, which I actually have no problem with. It can’t be said that their plot represents any milestone in video game narrative, but in a game about badassing your way into Satan’s pantry, a more sophisticated story just isn’t necessary. I mean the first thing you do when you gain control is kill Death, so they’re obviously not exploring subtlety in the game design.

The whole redemption and atonement for past sins angle is fine, but make no mistake about it: Dante’s Inferno is little more than a beat-shit-up simulator. It’s a very one-sided Mortal Kombat rampage to rescue Beatrice’s boobs. I mean soul. Rescue her soul.

What was I saying?

Oh right: combat rocks. For someone like me who mostly missed out on the Playstation craze, the endless nattering of critics that “it’s just like God of War!” did little to dissuade me. Okay, I thought, my only extended exposure to God of War was on the PSP, and it was a lot of fun, so what’s the problem here? I mean really, how many ways are there to make a game in this genre? The mechanics are obviously going to be similar.

Fighting unfolds like a manly ballet of death and improbable scythe physics. After you murder the Grim Reaper for doing his job, you steal his weapon of choice and immediately learn how to make it bend, stretch, and do other acrobatic things one doesn’t typically associate with farming tools. As far as main weapons go, it’s just plain awesome.

I could go into detail about how each of the nine circles of hell is crafted and what I encountered there, but I honestly don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t played through the game yet. I have simply never seen such unashamedly gruesome, disgusting, and creative art design in a game before.

Way up in Limbo, before even descending into the depths, I was struck by a thought. I remember being scared to fight some of the enemies in Zelda: Ocarina of Time on my first playthrough because they were so freaky looking. As I walked into a room and watched an unbaptized baby crawl out of an oven to attack me with its bladed arms, I was thinking “my my, times have changed.”

Plunging deeper, more strange and horrible things emerged to munch on my face, and I dutifully collected all the items and souls necessary to power up Dante’s attacks to the point of unfairness. The game was rarely challenging on the normal difficulty level, with only some of the bosses posing a significant threat. In fact, if you were to examine the game coldly, it would be a very tedious and linear descent into hell. The only thing that keeps it from feeling that way too often is the strength of the art design, which is uniformly top-notch.

Sadly, It’s true that some of the creativity falters near the last few circles, with no new and interesting monsters being introduced, but by then you’ll have become quite adept at fighting anyway so the latter half of the game should go by pretty quickly.

Garry Schyman and his colleague Paul Gorman outdid themselves with the musical score, providing an exquisite and downright evil depiction of the circles, with creative instrumentation, dark choral chants, and loud orchestral terror of the finest calibre. It won’t lull you to sleep at night, but it’s a damn fine score. Voice acting was minimal but effective, with Lucifer’s deep voice managing to bridge the gap between dark and deceptively kind.

In the end, as I pulled myself back out of the inferno, I guess you could say I considered it time well spent. Dante’s Inferno is by no means a brilliant game; it is simply a formulaic shell over which Visceral has draped the most amazing visual design cloak imaginable. But it’s still just a veil, and if you peel it back you’ll realize the shallowness and blandness of the underlying structure.

Still, worth a rental for sure if only just to explore the twisted creations hiding in the nine circles of Dante’s Inferno.

Parting thoughts:

On the soundtrack, listen to “Storms of Lust”, “Crossing the Styx”, and “Whores of Babylon” for a good introduction to the music
I don’t think Dante understands how tattoos work
Good setup for a sequel, but what are we going to kill in Paradise/Purgatory?

RSS Feed Update

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:24:23 -0400

Just a quick note to my RSS subscribers: I’ve had to re-make the feed because it wasn’t working properly after the transfer from the old version of the Journal. Now it’s been refreshed, has a new address, and will contain all content from the very beginning as well as properly update all the new content that comes in.

I apologize for the delayed shuffle, but at least it works properly now. In any case, please find the RSS link at the bottom of this page and make sure that’s the feed you’re following as the old one is no longer valid.

And if you don’t already follow me, then by all means subscribe (or Follow, if you’re a Tumblr)!

By the way, what exactly does one call a user of Tumblr? A Tumblr-er? Seems to me like it’s almost built in. “Tumblr”. Hmm.

March of the Death Mage...And Better News!

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:09:54 -0400

Back again!

This time with more music and some website news. But first the interesting stuff: this piece is called March of the Death Mage and I think you’ll see why when you hear it. Enjoy the presence of pure orchestral stuff while it lasts because over the next little while I’ll be working primarily with much more modern sounds and synths. But until then:

March of the Death Mage by Mathazzar

Meanwhile, on the website news side of things, I’ve decided that I’d like a place on the internet where I can put my photography and random writing work. Those who know me fairly well will be aware of my other hobbies and I figured that it’s about time I shared more than just my music work lest people start to think I’m a one-dimensional fellow. Besides, learning to prepare and customize your own site is fun!

Assuming I don’t break something, I’ll hopefully have it ready to show you in the near future!

New Music, New Experiments

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:26:11 -0400

After what seems like a long time with no rain, we finally had a good storm here last night, which worked out well since it gave me an excuse to stay huddled up inside and put together a new piece of music to lead the Demo Reel with.

It’s got my usual blend of orchestra and percussion, with the addition of a more prominent choir part and a cool groove. Very much enjoyed having the extra time to sit and polish this so I hope it pays off!

Discovering the Plateau by Mathazzar

In other news, I’ve been playing around with some other fun sound design experiments which I hope to translate into coherent pieces that I can show you in the nearish future.

Stay classy!

I recently had the pleasure of working with a very talented...

Fri, 21 May 2010 14:11:26 -0400

I recently had the pleasure of working with a very talented director named Olaf Blomerus on his short film debut, a little dialogue sequence called Q & A. The film recently went live on the internet, and I’m proud to show it to you now! I may post the music alone later on, but for now here is the video itself where you can hear it in context! It’s in HD, so feel free to full-screen it for maximum effect.

NIER, Far, Wherever You Are...

Sun, 09 May 2010 14:24:00 -0400

I finished playing NIER the other day.

What, you ask? The game. The one no one has really heard about because it’s been marketed by— or actually, it hasn’t really been marketed very much at all. That’s probably because it was the product of some small-time new developer, right?

Wrong. It’s made by Square Enix.

I don’t get it either, but I did get the game and I played it and I finished it, so here are my impressions:

It’s fun. Everything else aside, the vast majority of the game is very entertaining to play. Combat is engaging, not too difficult, and you battle some big enemies. If you’ve played any of the console Zelda games, you’ll feel right at home. NIER basically plays like a kind of Ocarina of Time, only drenched in blood. Now I’m a huge fan of the Zelda series, so for me it was almost nostalgic, but for those who didn’t enjoy the Zelda games, you may find that NIER borrows just a bit too much from them.

For example, remember all those cool incidental things you could do in the Zelda games? Like fishing? Well you can fish in NIER too. You can also farm.

I have to go back to the fishing for a minute though just to express how utterly awful it is. Note to developers: if you’re going to implement a feature that will only add value to the game for perhaps 5-10% of your audience, you damn well better make sure it works so well and is so seamlessly integrated that the rest of your audience doesn’t get bothered by it.

NIER’s fishing mechanic operates on one of two levels: WTF and JFCIAPITODSGMBACITTCF (Jesus-Fucking-Christ-I-Am-Pulling-In-The-Opposite-Direction-Stop-Giving-Me-Buckets-And-Cans-I’m-Trying-To-Catch-Fish). Oh and by the way, Square Enix, I don’t know about where you live, but around here cans and buckets don’t swim away when you snag them in a fishing line.

It is the worst virtual fishing experience I have ever been subjected to in my life.

Moving past that (after an hour trying to catch a goddamn shaman fish. What the shit is a shaman fish anyhow?), I have to mention that the game has this thing about twisting perspectives on you. While the majority of the gameplay occurs in the standard third-person action RPG fashion, when you go indoors, or when you climb certain structures, you will find your world suddenly flattened into a Castlevania-esque platform hopping paradigm for no particular reason except because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then, just as you’re getting comfortable with those two views, certain dungeon rooms will suddenly punt the camera to the ceiling where it will capture the action below as if it was some sort of strange Diablo world. This didn’t bother me though because, although they’re weird and arguably unnecessary, the perspective switches actually helped keep the game interesting and helped shake up the visuals a bit.

Which brings me to the past, which is where NIER’s graphics are from. Square Enix, what happened here? Clearly they spent all their Eye Candy budget on FFXIII because NIER looks like it would be right at home on last-gen systems. On the Xbox360 it looks underwhelming. Pity.

Story is an aspect of NIER that is truly excellent. Not only is the story interesting and a fascinating fusion of sci-fi and fantasy, but it actually pulls it off really well, albeit with some pretty confusing moments along the way. The premise is that you’re playing as a father searching for a cure for his daughter’s disease, The Black Scrawl, which turns people into nasty creatures called Shades. All of this is happening on earth, but thousands of years after humanity as we know it has succumbed to an (initially) unspecified cataclysm. Along the way, you meet a host of unique NPCs, and the conclusion is both powerful and satisfying. The last hour of the game is legitimately moving and interesting.

While the father is gruff and one of the ugliest characters in recent memory, he’s interesting because he’s not some young, brass badass…he’s an aging father. Still a badass by the end of the game, but it’s a nice emotional starting point. You have three traveling companions over the course of NIER’s quest, though some are not consistently with you: Grimoire Weiss, Kainé, and Emil.

Grimoire Weiss is what you would presumably get if you turned Alan Rickman into a sentient book. Seriously, he sounds just like him in his Snape mode. Weiss lets you cast spells and organize your inventory and do other neat things, and he’s with you for almost the entire game, so get used to him.

Emil is the necessary whiny kid. Square Enix, let’s talk. I understand that you have an inexplicable attachment to young children characters in your games, so by all means continue to include them. But is it really necessary to make them all so consistently aggravating, whiny, and kick-worthy? I mean you even made his head look like a soccer ball, how can you expect me not to want to punt him whenever he opens his mouth?

Kainé is the strange one for sure. She’s a young-ish woman who struts about in undergarments swearing like a sailor. Hmm. So I’ll file away the near-nakedness thing in my list of things I will never understand about Japanese games in the Clothing/Appearances section. But the swearing is interesting: is it an attempt to make the game “mature”? Is it comic relief? Does it work? In order…probably, unintentionally, and no.

Tip for Square Enix: you know the opening screen of the game, before the menu, where that quote from Kainé gets played with no visuals and completely out of context? Please remove it. Your game will instantly become 10% better. The thing about this character is that, although sometimes the swearing is refreshing and legitimately fun and appropriate, there are many times where the vulgarity falls flat. The character’s backstory is emotional but pretty basic; still, it’s enough to allow her a more dynamic behavioural range than this. You had a great character idea, and you mistook a gimmick for a fundamental aspect of her personality and thereby destroyed her potential to be a compelling person in the story.

The story itself is a solid 20 hours if you spend a reasonable amount of time on questing. Which I didn’t. Do you know why? Because there are only so many fetch quests I can take before contemplating suicide. I did a bunch, don’t get me wrong, and the funny relationship forged with the Lighthouse Lady was neat, but the actual quests were always just shopping lists. I swear to god the only quest idea that the developers seem to have been able to think up was something involving a grocery list. Every single time.

I stopped with all the “side-quest” nonsense when some old geezer asked me to catch him ten sardines. HAH. Fuck you, old man; you spend an hour wrestling with your game’s incapacitated excuse for a fishing mechanic. Let me know when you manage. He never got back to me so I’m assuming he’s still out there snagging cans and crying.

To wrap up, I’ll talk about my home turf: the audio. Voice acting is pretty solid across the board, with the exception of Emil’s whiny voice, but where things really shine is the musical score. I don’t typically like JRPG scores, but NIER is magnificent. Not only is the sound fresh and energetic, but there are strong melodies and some exquisite vocal work by Emi Evans. I honestly cannot stress enough how much you need to listen to this score, it’s one of my favourites of the year so far.

If someone were to ask me whether or not I’d recommend the game, I would almost definitely say yes. Despite my criticism above, I stand firmly by my first statement which was that NIER is fun. It has its quirks, it’s certainly not a conventional kind of game, it could have used some more polish on the production end of things (and a new goddamn fishing system!), but overall I thoroughly enjoyed it and the good does outweigh the bad. Depending on your tolerance for the genre, your mileage may vary, but you owe yourself a rental at least to check it out.

Parting thoughts:

The seals that roll around on the beach in the seaside town are adorable
Kainé is to NIER what Kenny is to South Park: the one that gets killed all the time and yet mysteriously never dies
The Forest of Myth sequences don’t even come close to the text-based storytelling bar set by Lost Odyssey, but good effort
Why the hell is the game called NIER? What does that mean? Where in the game is it mentioned? What does it have to do with anything?

My next gaming venture is Dante’s Inferno, which promises to take me to even more interesting places. The box says “Go To Hell”, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

Xylophonics

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:00:05 -0400

What happens when you’re restricted to just one octave of a single instrument? Well…this!

These tracks are created with nothing more than a single octave from a xylophone patch (specifically, the freebie patch from the upcoming Spitfire percussion collection), and there are no external effects or processing plugins applied to the sound. Even the reverb is just what’s built-in to the samples.

It’s an exercise in creative writing under stiff restrictions. Lots of fun!

Xylophonics Experiment by Mathazzar

In other news, I was in a car accident recently so that was kind of an unpleasant way to end my semester, but no injuries so that was a relief. On the bright side, it’s spring time and I’m looking forward to some opportunities to actually enjoy the weather. Maybe I’ll do a photo album of pictures to show you all what spring looks like in my neck of the woods.

Some big and small projects, mostly personal ventures, lined up for the next few months to keep me busy while I wait for that next major project to drift my way. Been doing a lot of film work recently and worked with some truly gifted directors, so I’m hoping that I can showcase some of that work in the near future as distribution starts.

"Sun and moon divide the sky, Fragrance blooms on pear wood bones: Earth awakens with a..."

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:48:59 -0400

“Sun and moon divide the sky,
Fragrance blooms on pear wood bones:
Earth awakens with a sigh.
Wanderer revels on the path alone.”

- “Spring”, Deng Ming-Dao, From 356 Tao

Music For Sale!

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:11:00 -0400

This has been a very busy Easter weekend for me (happy Zombie Jesus Day, by the way!) and after a whole lot of music writing, it occurred to me that I haven’t been very nice about sharing new music with you guys. In the past, when people have asked me where they can go to buy a track of mine for their listening enjoyment on the go, I’ve thus far been able to do little more than shrug and apologize — but those days are finally behind me!

I looked into several online distribution services including CDBaby, Reverbnation, Tunecore, etc. but most of them are geared toward broad-scale spreading of material across all the major marketplaces, which doesn’t really appeal to me. I want to be able to have more flexibility with what I’m charging, and especially for what I’m charging for.

Enter Bandcamp.

To shorten a long story, Bandcamp is one of those wondrous services that you come across and instantly fall in love with. It provides an excellent set of tools, gives you incredible flexibility, and stays the hell out of your way while you make use of it. So thank you, Bandcamp, for allowing me to share some of my music commercially.

So here’s the deal: I’ve put together an EP of the tunes I get asked for most often. Many of them are ones that are available for listening on the Demo Reel, but there are a couple of tracks that have never been publicly released before, and even a bonus track for those who grab the whole album. And the best part? You’re not just getting a cheap Mp3, you can choose between FLAC, OGG, MP3 (@320kbps) and a few others so you can listen to your favourites in pristine lossless glory. Neat, eh?

In terms of pricing, I’ve tried to strike a balance between fairness and accessibility. Because the point of this is to give you folks a way to get my music to go while providing an opportunity to support my continuing work in the process, I’m letting you pay whatever you can for it, with a minimum of just $0.89USD. Which is less than what iTunes would have made me charge…for a lower quality audio file — and it would have taken some of the proceeds. With Bandcamp, you can feel confident that every penny is going straight toward supporting the artist (hello) and making sure that I can keep making great music.

And that’s my story. So have yourselves a great Easter, and those of you interested in taking a look at this new album, I am more than happy to direct you:

http://mathazzar.bandcamp.com/

Your support, as always, is greatly appreciated. Spread the word and enjoy!

"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one..."

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:19:25 -0400

“Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”

- Brian Eno, from the liner notes to Ambient 1: Music for Airports

I Believe In Mary Black (Original Soundtrack)

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:23:00 -0400

Not too long ago I finished work on a great little short film called I Believe In Mary Black, and since the film is completed and ready to get some screenings around my area, I wanted to put together a selection of the best cues I wrote for it and assemble them into a short EP album. So I did.

The music is dark and rich, with shades of Christopher Young’s similar work for horror scores. I really enjoyed working on the project, so I’m quite proud to show you the results. You can find the album in the Portfolio, or you can listen here:

I Believe In Mary Black (Original Soundtrack) by Mathazzar

If you like what you hear, I’ve added a small Donation button at the bottom of the Contact page, so you’re welcome to drop by any time you have some spare change you’d like to contribute to keeping me up and running. It’s greatly appreciated.

Demo Reel Update & Milestone

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:47:00 -0400

Hi all!

First of all, thanks again for being such diligent listeners. It feels like just the other day I was mentioning how amazing it was that I had already gotten 1,000 plays on SoundCloud, and just now I’ve looked and the number is well over 1,500 now. I’m humbled and overjoyed. And I promise I’ll stop counting now, it just made me excited.

You’ll also notice, by the way, that I’ve brought the live chat box from the main site over here to the Journal as well, so if you’re talking to me and you decide to pop over here, you won’t lose the conversation. Because I care.

Anyway, to celebrate all this good stuff, I’ve put up a brand new track and pushed it to the forefront of my Demo Reel for your listening enjoyment. It’s from a game project I’m helping with and it was a lot of fun to put together, so I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, and if you’re feeling lazy, you can just listen to the new track here:

Pirates Theme by Mathazzar

Open Letter to Clients

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:20:22 -0500

Dear Distinguished Client,

How are you? Or, wait, first of all who are you?

You’re a budding director working on your first project. You’re an established one. You make short films. Documentaries. Blockbusters. You wear shades and walk tall.

You’re a game designer trying to put together that crucial breakout team. You have a vision. You’re starting with a mod before you embark on your first “real” game project. You need good and passionate people.

You’re pretty awesome, in short. I want to be just like you when I grow up. Or…almost. See, there’s something that’s been bothering me and I’m an honest kind of guy, so I wanted to bring it up. Just between you and me, just as a sort of FYI. I mean it’s all been said before, but some things are worth re-stating, you know?

I come from a film and media schooling background, so I know what it means to have to put together a film or game project on a shoestring budget. I know it’s hard and frustrating, and I also know that it’s exciting and engrossing. So exciting that you’re willing to do it without getting any compensation for it, because you’re just that selfless and passionate. That right there is truly admirable dedication. The problem is that just because you are willing and able to do your part for free, doesn’t mean you can expect that the rest of your team is in the same position.

Part of that shoestring budget needs to be set aside for making sure that each and every member of your team — not just me, the composer — gets compensation for their work. Their time is valuable to them and invaluable to your project. Their work is what brings your vision to life, so even if you can only pay each person $10, you really should. It’s the gesture that counts. We’re all trying to forge long-lasting work relationships here with talented and driven people, and that doesn’t work if your team doesn’t feel appreciated.

Now I often talk to other young composers and they ask me questions about their first gigs and whether or not they’re getting ripped off. There’s a really funny little clause that pops up in most work offers these days and it’s an extremely perplexing one. It goes something like this:

“This is a small project, so we can’t pay you, but we’re offering full credit and a free copy of the final product as compensation.”

I’m sorry, what?

Credit and a free copy is excellent, but it’s not compensation. It’s common courtesy. If you use someone’s art in your production, stating where you got it from in the credits isn’t some special negotiable honour you’re doing them, it’s the most fundamental tenet of working with creative content. It’s basic attribution of effort. It’s the law, in point of fact, and so trying to spin it as some sort of favour is disingenuous.

The point isn’t that you always need to pay your people though. You should whenever humanly possible, even if it’s just with pizza and beer, but I know that sometimes there isn’t even a shoestring budget. It’s a guerilla-style effort. That is also totally fine. I’ve done plenty of work for free over the years, and I continue to do work for free, but only for people who — despite having no budget — truly appreciate the efforts of their team, who inspire them to great artistic achievement, and who are putting together a product that allows everyone’s work to shine, or delivers an important message, or is moving, or is simply beautiful.

If you show me something that’s truly spectacular and visionary, or unassuming but powerful, I will want to do my best to help you. I want to participate in your opus. In return, you’re not going to offer me credit and a free copy — that part is understood. Instead, you’re going to shrug and say “M, we don’t have any money. It’s just my friends and me. We may make some money down the road if people like it, but I’m making no promises. The point is to bring this film/game/etc into the world. We love your stuff, we think you could really nail the vibe we’re looking for, so if you have some spare time, we’d love for you to join us.”

…Where do I sign? No problem, done deal, my pleasure. Simple as that. It’s about presentation. And just like you’re not going to “offer” me copy & credit, I’m not going to give you a bunch of pre-made library tracks I’ve got lying around on my harddrive. I’m going to go all out and give you the best custom score I can. Always. If you have an ambitious and cool project on your hands, then I will do my best to make you sound good. Why? Because not only will it then make me look good, but we’ll forge a working relationship. And down the road, maybe I’ll need your help for something. Maybe you’ll be hugely successful and have another, bigger project — with a budget, perhaps — that you need my help for. I’ve got your back.

Ultimately, I do what I do because I love making music. I love making music for your projects, in fact. Helping bring a story to life, helping highlight and augment the work of other artists. Unfortunately, keeping up with the bleeding edge of the tools that facilitate my work is not free. And my time isn’t either. Neither is yours, and neither is anyone else’s on your team. Sometimes we all need to do charity work, but let’s make sure we don’t get confused: it is not the norm.

Anyway, you’ve got a meeting to get to, so I won’t keep you. Just wanted to put that out there, see how you were doing, wish you well. Good luck at that place with those people, you’ll blow them away. And give me a call if you’re free this weekend, maybe we can grab a coffee or something, I want to hear all about your new project…

Yours sincerely,

"Well, my good sir, to put it crudely, You see matters just as they lie; We must look at them more..."

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:25:00 -0500

“Well, my good sir, to put it crudely,
You see matters just as they lie;
We must look at them more shrewdly,
Or all life’s pleasures pass us by.”

- Mephistopheles

from Goethe’s Faust (Trans. Walter Kaufmann)