Music Is Worthless, Isn't It?

How many of us have done "special favors" for a formerly good client that begin to become the expected norm? I'm talking about freebies, free demos, free presentation tracks, free everything. I'm talking here about the commercial music business, but I suppose that similar criticism can be made regarding many other aspects of the business these days.

Come on. Let's all shoot ourselves while we're at it. Free may or may not be an opportunity to show your stuff, but it's certainly an opportunity to reduce its perceived and real value.

An agency person offering me a nearly free (they offered to pay the singers but not me) demo said, "We know you guys have to do this, and there's no way we're not going to take advantage of it, because we know we can. You know it, too. And we know it's not fair, but that's the way it is."

The value of your work is clearly going down the toilet. It's free until proven otherwise.

So I've begun to do is call agency creatives and producers on it. I try to do it diplomatically, but I feel a need to say it's wrong.

This may not be a good idea. It may make them never call me again. But heck, if I'm working for free, I haven't lost much if they don't.

In the interest of fairness and preserving one's sanity, it's time that we ask ourselves why we got into the business.

If the answer is, "I got into the commercial music business to kiss a lot of behind so I can have a glimmer of a chance to make a lot of money," keep doing what you're doing. If you have a different answer, such as, "I got into the business to make music for picture, and it would be great to be fairly compensated for my work," then it's time to speak out calmly and forthrightly and tell producers and creatives what you think, and more importantly, why.

I'm not saying don't do what you think you have to do; that's a personal choice and requires you to evaluate the opportunity vs the likelihood that you'll waste your time. I am asking you to think about the consequences of keeping your mouths shut and going along to get along.

I'm over "free." If I'm going to work for free, I'm not going to be directed by people who do not have my interests at heart; I'm going to do my own music. Maybe it'll have licensing value, maybe not. And that's fine. I'll wait for the paying gigs. I may have a long wait, but there it is.

A Gaggle of Great New VIs

After the first flood of fast and capable computers came a deluge of pretty darn good VIs (virtual instruments). These were (and still can be) very nice, and many have been updated to sound even better then when first introduced. And recent DAWs now include a nice set of VIs. But with the newer generation of multiprocessor computers have come a powerful new group of VIs that are worth trying out. Some may not be on your radar, hence this article.

Over the past year or so, I've discovered some new VI titles that are really impressive. These often require the latest and most powerful computer technology, but heck, if you’re in the biz, you have that anyway.

This latest generation has had me removing older titles from my drives in droves (decent alliteration there, eh?). I’m not going to do a formal review of these titles, the purpose of this rant is to stimulate exploration. And I'm only mentioning titles I've stumbled on during the past year; there are plenty of titles from before then that I think are great and still love.

First up are synths:

Alchemy

An English product by the geniuses at Camel Audio, I absolutely love this for its ability to create stunning soundscapes and textures. What comes with it is great, and you can also import audio files to create new sounds. It’s got a matrix a lot like NI’s Kore products, so you can morph the presets in real-time and automate the morphing. There isn’t much it can’t do, and I think it’s every bit the equal of Omnisphere in capability, a synth one hears more about that is also sample-based.

Circle

I was hipped to this one by my friend Marco Lehmann, an amazing composer, sound designer and producer from Frankfurt, Germany. Like the others, it eats up CPU like crazy, but it sounds huge. It also has a really interesting and unique interface, and an amazing set of modulation and filter routings. It’s a very cool take on the wave-table synthesis idea. It’s made by FAW out of Scotland.

D-CAM Synth Squad

Yeah circle takes a lot of CPU, but this one takes even more, and it’s worth it. If you want that old-skool analog thing, it’s happening on this one in spades. The package is three synths plus a host synth that allows you to layer the other three with lots of effects that in and of themselves sound really great. The result is a very cool product that can do the classic analog synth tricks, yet can be made to sound as modern as tomorrow. I’ll bet you can tell I like this one.

Gladiator

This is German company Tone2’s new kind of synthesis using what they call harmonic content modeling. And it does sound different; really new, exciting, and absolutely gigantic. I was staggered by the sound quality and versatility of this synth. Despite the many options the interface provides, it comes with an excellent tutorial and once you get your head around its concepts, it’s easy to use. It’s also easier on your CPU than the ones listed above. This is a brilliant product, and while it can sound as analog as the others, it’s also capable of incredible new soundscapes. And if you’re into techno or dance music, you’ll love this thing.

Zebra 2.5

Urs Heckmann has improved this one; it was already a great title, but now it smokes. It sounds bigger, richer and bolder than before. Kind of like a great coffee vs instant coffee. Again, it’s got a wonderful routing architecture, and it’s very easy to program.

Samplers and Romplers:

Independence Pro

From Germany comes the best sampler I’ve used so far, software or hardware, Independence Pro. Not only does its engine sound great, not only does it load other VIs from its interface, but the quality of the included samples is far better than most competing products. Listen to the basses alone and you will be convinced. It’s also got a brilliant interface, the best on-board effects of any sampler I’ve tried, and it’s logically laid out and easy to use. It doesn’t try to look like something from outer space; instead it looks like something designed for the studio. It’s also a wonderful sampler. This replaced some very well known VI samplers on my system. That it comes with a nice set of orchestral samples from Kirk Hunter is a big plus.

East-West Player Products

I finally decided it was time to replace my venerable set of Miroslav Vitous orchestral samples that had migrated over the years from my Kurzweil hardware, to be converted for MOTU’s Mach Five, and later used in IK’s Philarmonik. The Miroslav samples did their duty, but a newer generation of VIs with key-switching options, release sounds, and zillions more articulations, arguably better recorded sound, etc., finally did them in.

After I listened to the demos at the East-West site, I downloaded a free demo version with a few orchestral sounds. After hearing the demo, I bought Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra because I wanted its ability to mock up gorgeous “Hollywood” sounding orchestral sounds, complete with RELEASE reverb as part of the samples. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this product. Try the free demo on their website and see for yourself.

After I bought this one, I sprung for Pianos. Nothing else I’ve played or heard so faithfully captures the feeling of playing a real piano, and the ones here are great ones.

Try the demos of these products and you might find that you agree with my assessment.

Noise Upon Noise

If I knew what motivates people to do what they do, I'd be a very rich person. Can I explain why an ad agency will have creatives haphazardly search the web for music to license, wind up with something no one's ever heard of, and pay a lot more for it than they would for original music that precisely serves their branding, campaign, and editorial? Then turn around and pay a music house to re-record it so that it sounds more like what they really want?

The answer is I haven't a clue.

I'm not opposed to licensing. In addition to original music, I work on licensing projects both in connection with my work with RSC Music and for selected law clients. I just negotiated one that worked out especially well for an artist who you've probably never heard of, and that's a lovely thing. My client is thrilled.

But I am a creator of original scored music, and I'm seeing way too many licenses that not only don't work, they detract from a campaign.

I'm also hearing a lot of nasty original tracks that do nothing for the visuals or creative idea; I'm hearing lots of "beds" instead of real scored tracks. I wonder if the fact that producers have so gotten into cutting to music, instead of creating visuals and having music scored to picture, has contributed to this lack of quality scoring?

Selecting licensed music for a campaign often does the artist or band a bigger favor than it does the client's brand recognition. Often we hear voice-overs grinding above a mishmash of singer, music bed, and SFX. This means that often the effect of this is not to hear the music that the client is paying more for at all, because the VO has to be hotter, or simply a confusing spot where people can't even remember the product that the ad was promoting.

One thing that's led to this phenomenon over the years is that video editors will cut to a temp track, which then means that the client hates anything BUT the temp track. Also there is the fact that clients can pick the exact track they want in advance without taking a chance that the original music they commission won't be to their liking. This, even though ad demo competitions increasingly involve free demos with dozens of pieces of music to pick over.

Sure, it's good that that artists who put stuff on YouTube can make some real money if someone stumbles on their work and it works for a campaign. And it's also good that artists can launch their careers by getting noticed in ads.

But there really needs to be some balance. Creatives need to think about the real needs of the project.