Speaker 1: 0:00

I want to talk about being real with the fact that we have to work out how we are able to, or get to the point where we can, output a large quantity that is of high quality. But in doing that, we often find that we can get stuck, and this isn't necessarily writer's block. But I want you to think about where you are finding the bottlenecks, what is happening, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the 52Q's podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music. Whether you're brand new and just curious about the sync industry, or maybe you are a production music veteran, I promise you you're in the right place. My name is Dave Croft and it is so good to be with you today, and if you're watching this video on YouTube and find it helpful, then why don't you go ahead and give it a thumbs up? Or if you're listening to the audio on the go, please consider leaving us a five star review. Either way, hit that subscribe button, because I talk about production and library music every single week. Today's episode wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our amazing member subscribers of 52Q's, who not only keep our community alive and thriving, but as subscribing members, they get access to extra perks like live streams, workshops, zoom feedback sessions, hundreds of hours of video archives and opportunities to submit to real music libraries. So if you're ready to get started in a sync career or maybe push further into your production music journey, then why don't you head over to 52Q'scom and sign up? Thanks for watching, and if you're interested in more of our videos, please feel free to join, and subscriptions start at around four bucks a month. So we're here in week 11. It's good to be back with you here in this format.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Last week we had the live symbol slice 2024 and a huge congrats to those winners and especially to Ralph Schilt, who's Q1 first place Composer Quest competition, which went really well. But we also released the symbol pack, our symbol effects library that we are hosting over at productionmusictoolscom, and it's both symbol samples that I had recorded quite a while back and we were wanting to release it and it feels really good. It feels really good to finally have it out the door, and it got me thinking about scope creep and kind of what took so long to send this and to get this out the door, because I recorded these samples over two years ago and what happened is I recorded them and I had a buddy of mine who let me borrow his vintage Neumann 184 microphones, which are absolutely amazing. He is from Germany and brought them from Germany. Of course, neumann is a German company and the mics were absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:14

And when I went to go work with somebody to release this, I started getting really excited about all the possibilities, everything we could possibly do and put onto this library. And, admittedly, I started kind of adding well, we could do this and we could do this, and let's add a little bit of this, and what if we did this? And so it went from just a sample pack consisting of waveforms or whatever to a full blown contact instrument and we got really far into that process, but it wasn't quite ready. I was feeling a little bit blocked about it because the developer I was working with and the engineer, cordero Rodriguez a huge shout out to him, he is amazingly talented, super bright and much smarter than I am, especially when it comes to, like, contact scripting and all of that. But then he kind of put the ball back in my core. It's like OK, ok, dave, I've done what I can do. Now it's up to you to kind of start working on artwork and all this other stuff and I got really, really, really stuck about it. But we probably could have released this pack a year and a half ago if I didn't let my excitement in wanting to see it released and everything it could possibly be I let that excitement stop what it already is from happening. Does this sound familiar? Something in your life come up that you're so excited about what it could be that it got in the way of what it already was, and so that was the life lesson that took two and a half years for me to learn, and that's what I took away here in this week, and I'm super proud of that sample pack and a huge again a huge thanks, not only to Cordero for helping me edit and engineer. That contact instrument is still coming. It's still coming. We've put a lot of work into it, but now that the sample pack is released, now we can really focus on the playable Bode symbol instrument. But also a huge word of thanks to Steven Bedall over at Production Music Tools and Production Music Academy for hosting the sample sample library. We have a lot of great plans and we're going to be putting more things over there, and so if you want to check that out, then head over to productionmusictoolscom, and, and by it's only 19 bucks and it's 68 individual custom symbol samples that I bode myself right here in this studio and, and so a huge word of thanks to Steve and to all of those who have already bought in. So this week for our Expedition 52 and the cue that I want to play I didn't play a cue last week because it was live, and so I'm going to be playing a cue that I wrote last week, but I'm super proud of it.

Speaker 1: 6:20

This is called Bring them to the Brink, which is a vocal hip-hop track, which is crazy, because I've written a ton of hip-hop, either contemporary hip-hop or hip-hop dramedy or or high-energy kind of EDM hip-hop. I've written a ton of epic orchestral hip-hop, but what I have not done a ton of is vocal hip-hop, which at first was was kind of intimidating because I was like I don't know what I'm doing. I'm an instrumental composer, I'm not a vocalist, but I didn't let it stop me. And this features the amazingly talented Matt About Nothing aka Chris Smith, or Chris Smith aka Matt About Nothing aka MAD or MAN, and so, who is an amazing rapper, lyricist, also is a producer in his own right and so heard some of his tracks in some of our feedback sessions and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, time out, you're really, really good at this.

Speaker 1: 7:25

And so we collaborated on a handful of tracks in this queue, again called Bring Him to the Brink was sent up to the NCAA Tournament folks at CBS Sports. Maybe it'll get some love. I guess we'll find out in the next couple of weeks, but this features Chris just absolutely, yep, absolutely crushing this. So we'll take a listen to Bring Him to the Brink.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Bring Him to the Brink of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. Let the confetti just rain all over the stands. Return to T-shirts, cause we, the ones leaving with braised hands, bring Him to the Brink of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. This is the moment we make you understand Hope. That wasn't your plan. Don't even know. Ring on your hand, cause that was never happening. For hearted ice in the veins. This is our domain. I know you thought you was leaving here with a championship, but things change. It's time on the clock and enough time to stop what's happening. When the stars to rain uh, that ain't thunder clapping. That is a team on a mission dismissing competition rapidly. You will be privileged to witness. This is maddling as it's happening. The whole world's watching as the clock just ticks and you do nothing. This is your moment to shine, but your moment has passed and now it is mine. It ain't really your fault. The moment was bigger than you thought. I didn't think you'd fight as hard as you thought, but I see you losing your spark. I know it's dark. I'd have been there before, I'd have been on that road and if I'm place to go, but you gotta go. I don't know why. It's just logical. Check them boxes where the scores go Triple-doubles. We on a different level. Another plane? No, not one of them. Things with wings that ain't what I'm saying. What I'm saying is the same thing. We just playing a different game. You think chess, we think gold. That's how I know. You ain't on the show. Ring on to the freak of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. Let the confetti just rain all over the stands. Return to T-shirts, cause we, the ones leaving with braised hands, ring on to the freak of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. This is the moment we make you understand Hope.

Speaker 2: 9:22

That wasn't your plan. To leave a no ring on your hand, cause that was never happening. Ain't no more time to be wasting. We ain't playing. We been saying, but you ain't listening. So you about to get it. Then we gon' give it to all of them.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Nobody safe in the spots that we be ballin' in. Sorry you, sorry man, but it's all about the end. Bring them in the deep water, no, not there. A little farther. It's only bout to get harder and harder. Your heart is a goner. No lies were detected in your eyes. It's reflected the fear we feel ain't respected. It's time for you to accept. Ring on to the freak of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. Let the confetti just rain all over the stands. Return to T-shirts, cause we the ones leaving with braised hands. Bring them to the freak of Defeatless Dance. You ain't leaving with a date. You brought no chance. This is the moment we make you understand. Hope that wasn't your plan. To leave a no ring on your hand, cause that was never happening. Bring them to the freak of Defeatless Dance.

Speaker 1: 10:18

So that was Bring them to the Brink. My week 10 Q and next week I will play the Q that I am writing this week. I had so much fun doing that. I had a lot of fun, like he mentions thunder claps and I went in and found a thunder clap sound effect. These are things that we can't really get away with much in the production music space and, yeah, a lot of lessons learned in doing that. And if you want to check out a full Q breakdown of that Q, then that was sent up last week for our friends and family subscribers. I did a complete breakdown of that, including the techniques that I used to create the sounds and the vocal mixing especially, and the vocal editing and some of the choices that I made there. And once again, chris chef's kiss. It is so good, he is so good, and we've already started on some more Qs. We've got some stuff for football happening, and so I think this is the beginning of a beautiful, beautiful friendship.

Speaker 1: 11:24

So today's topic when are you getting stuck, where are the bottlenecks in your production music process? Because you know, for production music composers, quantity is a consideration. Now it's not the only consideration, and we've talked about quantity versus quality and all of that, but you cannot just write like 15 Qs a year in hope to make a sustainable income. You can't make a full time living just writing just a handful of Qs. It's not like an artist who can make an album and it goes viral. Or you sell a million copies or 200 million streams and all of that, and even that would be tough because streaming royalties. But that's not what this is about. I want to talk about being real with the fact that we have to work out how we are able to, or get to the point where we can, output a large quantity that is of high quality. But in doing that, we often find that we can get stuck, and this isn't necessarily writer's block. But I want you to think about where you are finding the bottlenecks, the production music bottlenecks and I've got a handful that I want to talk about here and I'd love to hear your bottlenecks there in the comments below. I do read all of those and I'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 12:56

And the first bottleneck that I have found and this kind of starts at the top, which is just motivation, like the motivation to get started, maintaining your drive throughout the entire production process you might get a boost of energy to write. You might have a deadline looming and that gets your butt moving. But let's say you don't have a deadline. Let's say you don't have a brief that you're writing to. There's nobody waiting on the music.

Speaker 1: 13:29

It can be really, really tough to stay motivated, whether it's fighting procrastination, resistance, the Steven Pressfield resistance they talked about in War of Art. Getting the motivation to get going can be tough. Sprinkle in a few taxi returns. Sprinkle in some pitches that didn't land with libraries. Sprinkle in the fact that it takes months and months and months to get your royalties. The motivation can really start waning. So do you have a motivational bottleneck? If so, how do you push through that? Well, a couple of tips for you.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I would recommend establishing a routine, setting up a calendar and being faithful to that calendar. Have a system set up where you can say for the next four hours I am writing, no matter what I'm going to write, and stick to it. You'll be surprised at how that will feed the motivational process. And while you're doing that, set times aside for specific tasks. It might be this is a time set aside for just sketching out ideas. This might be time set aside for doing mixing and mastering. This might be time set aside for just playing around on the piano or on the guitar, just exploring some of the sounds that you have, letting creativity not necessarily be put in a little box, but when it comes time for a deadline that you have, you've tilled the soil. And the folks over at the Music Interval Theory Academy they talk about the gathering phase and then into the sketch phase and then into the development phase. So having a routine, sticking to it, setting smaller goals for the time that the smaller goals are more achievable, and when you, when you reach those goals like today's goal is just to write out four melodic ideas when you do that in the hour or two hours and you can celebrate that and that builds momentum, creative momentum, production momentum.

Speaker 1: 16:02

And so bottleneck number one might be your own internal motivation. I've struggled with this at times, especially if I'm not writing to briefs or if I don't have deadlines. But early in my career I struggled with motivation because I wasn't seeing the returns. But even when I started seeing the returns, even when I started getting some arguably pretty impressive royalty statements, that motivation, it was a huge shot in the arm. It helped, but it did not sustain, because a couple of royalty statements later and then you're back to it, because this is so cyclical and high highs and low lows. Five figures to 41 cents and everything in between that is the gamut of my royalty checks. So, knowing how to stay internally motivated and not rely on external motivation, that can be. That can be tough.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Another bottleneck you might have is what should I write? Do you know what to write, having uncertainty about the direction or what style you should be writing in where your creativity exists, like where should I be putting my energy right now? And just this morning had a mastermind meeting with some of our folks at 52Qs and there was a student there who is feeling kind of creatively pulled into many different directions and not really sure what to write. Well, how do we get through that? Well, first, if you have a brief, or if you can find a brief, write to that, because it can be really intimidating to open up a blank door and say write. Or a blank door and think, ok, what I'm about to write is super important and it has to come from the deepest recesses of my creative self, which puts a lot of pressure on you. So just go easy on yourself, but having somewhere to point your creative energies, I think, is really important.

Speaker 1: 18:22

That could be a brief from a library. That could be a taxi brief. Even if you're not a taxi member, head over to Taxi. Maybe subscribe to their email list. They will send tons of briefs with references to give you an idea of what music libraries are looking for and what the current landscape is kind of calling for. Yeah, let them do the research for you. I think that's very, very helpful. I still subscribe to the Taxi newsletter and I see briefs come in and I'm like, oh man, I do really well to write to that. I know I'd absolutely crush it, I don't have time to do that, but even if you're not a member, heading over to Taxicom and checking out what they're looking for, yeah, that's a great idea to get started.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Or ask yourself a couple of questions. Question number one what are you really good at doing? I call this your superpower. What is your superpower? And I think everybody has some kind of creative superpower. It could be playing guitar. It could be like Chris, writing lyrics and rapping. It could be like for me as a drummer and a percussionist one of my superpowers is using rhythms and grooves and figuring out how to incorporate polyrhythm so it doesn't sound too busy but it also sounds really kind of exciting and interesting. It's one of my superpowers. Maybe you're a vocalist and maybe you don't write lyrics, but you have an amazing voice. Is that a superpower you can leverage? So that's the first thing understand what you're really good at and then work out what you really love writing and can write. You know what I mean. So you have your superpower, the thing that you do really well, and then you have the other thing, which is what you really love to write, and sometimes that's not necessarily going to be the same thing.

Speaker 1: 20:38

One of my superpowers is drum set playing, specifically jazz drumming. Drum set came really naturally to me. I think I've talked about this on the podcast before sixth grade band, all of that stuff. I really didn't have to work that hard at it. Am I Dave Weckel, thomas Lang, marco, minimum level? No, not at all. But I've had a pretty consistent career out of being a performing drummer. But I actually don't use live drum set on mini cues at all. I don't write hardly any actual jazz cues, even though my graduate degree is in jazz. So that's a superpower that I'm not necessarily using.

Speaker 1: 21:20

But where is your superpower? Overlap what you really enjoy writing which could be tied to what you enjoy listening to. I enjoy listening to Thomas Newman and Rachel Portman Mac Quayle. I enjoy those types of cues, not so much the John Williamses, and I love Alan Silvestri, but I'm not writing a ton of orchestral stuff. Thomas Newman, mac Quayle, ludwig Gorenzen yeah, all day long. And, by the way, huge congrats to Ludwig. You know we're on a first name basis. No, we're not. We're the one for Oppenheimer. Yeah, that was an amazing one, the Oscar, I should say, in case you're watching this, not the week after the Oscars. So what's your superpower? What do you enjoy writing? And try to get those to overlap as much as possible.

Speaker 1: 22:20

The third component is what libraries need, and there's another podcast episode in that I have Venn diagrams and stuff that that will come later, thank you. So figuring out what to write, start with some briefs. Check out Taxi or find a reference. I love going to Atomica Music and finding references. It's an amazing library, they do amazing work over there and the library catalog itself. It's just pleasant to use and I have Atomica pulled up here that I want to show you.

Speaker 1: 23:03

This is just a good looking website. It's just a really good looking website. It's just AtomicaMusiccom. I'm not sponsored by them. I have a few tracks from a sub publisher in Atomica, but it's just really good. You can search by tracks, search by types of cues, you can search by moods, genres it's just absolutely stellar and go listen to something, go see what else is being used and then write. You could use modeling, you know where you take one cue and use it as a blueprint or a skeleton for your own cue. I do that all the time and I'm gonna circle back to Atomica. They're gonna make another appearance here on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 23:54

So number one is motivational bottleneck. Number two is knowing what to write. What should I write? That production music bottleneck? Let's dig a little deeper into the actual production itself. Where are you getting stuck? Where is your creative process grinding to a halt? And for you, that might be choosing your sounds. What sounds should you use in the cue?

Speaker 1: 24:24

It can be super overwhelming to sit down with a blank doll and you open up Omnisphere or Zebra and oh my gosh, so many sounds. Omnisphere I'm looking at you, man, that's like chief of centers right there. It's super overwhelming, to the point where it's demotivating. You're like I don't know. This is one of the reasons I've gotten so much mileage out of Matt Bowdler's the Unfinished Matt Bowdler's presets, because I feel like it's kind of curated the best at what Omnisphere can do, by the way, through rather custom presets that he makes, but it uses all stock Omnisphere sounds. He doesn't bring any outside samples or anything, but choosing sounds can be super overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 25:20

So how do you work through this? Well, first of all, set aside some time to learn your library and make it separate from your creative output time, because if you're thinking, okay, I have two hours and I really need to work on this cue, then you start going into your Omnisphere library or your Serum patch list or pigments or whatever, and suddenly your creativity starts waning, your flow state starts suffering and before you know it, the two hours is gone and you feel like a failure which affects your motivation, because you feel like you didn't use that time wisely. Man, this is completely autobiographical. But if you set aside two hours and what I'm going to do in this two hours is do nothing but learn my library then when you get done with that two hours, you can come away feeling like you have successfully spent that time, setting a goal that's obtainable and manageable and smaller milestone type goals. Then, through that learning the sounds, create a curated library of the sounds that you like. Now how do you do that? Well, depending on your DAW.

Speaker 1: 26:48

But I'll start with Logic. Logic, you can create your own patches. I've talked about my template process before and how I don't have a Logic template of dramedy music and a Logic template of hip hop and a Logic template of light tension, because the sounds change so much, especially if you're using any type of style that incorporates a synth, pigments or Omnisphere or Zebra, and so it doesn't make sense for me to set up a Logic template that has a bunch of sounds loaded in. But what I can do is find a sound I like and then create a patch. That's how I have set up, especially my orchestral sounds, because I'll open up a DAW session and I don't need pizzicato strings here, but I need legato strings. But the next section is I don't need legato strings, so I'll I need pizzicato, and so I've used the patch library in Logic to create all of these presets, essentially in my user patch library. But even then, when you talk about something like Omnisphere or Zebra that have so many patches, and then you buy a bunch of third party patches from Matt over at the unfinished, and now suddenly you literally have thousands and thousands of patches, and that even gets unmanageable if you're creating presets in your Logic library for each one. And so that's where I think you should go in and use whatever internal favoriting or star system, a different, like Alchemy has stars, zebra has favorites, and so you can just favorite certain things and say, okay, this favorite if it has one star, this is a pad that I like, if it has two stars, this is a bass sound that I like, and so forth. And whatever the system is, that's up for you to decide.

Speaker 1: 28:42

But knowing what your library can do, knowing where you can get to those sounds and having an idea in your head of what sounds you want to use no, sometimes when you sit down to write you're not really sure because maybe you didn't, you don't really know what to write and you're just kind of guessing. I mean that can be beneficial. But if the idea here is to push through a bottleneck, then having an idea in your mind's ear, maybe using the reference material, to help dictate what types of sounds you are using. So, if you're modeling a cue and you bring it in and you're doing a measure by measure breakdown of in this measure one, these I'm hearing these sounds. And then a measure five, these sounds come in. Then you go into your library and look for similar sounds.

Speaker 1: 29:41

Now, modeling isn't about copying, it's not about plagiarizing. It's about using one specific reference as a blueprint, an instrumental blueprint, a structural blueprint, to create your own cue. It's not about ripping things off. You're not cloning anything or creating sound likes. So knowing what your library can do, knowing how to get to it and having in your mind's ear what you want it to be, all right. So that's number three choosing your sounds. Number four the bottleneck of what comes next, or form and structure. This can be a real bottleneck and I see this especially students who are just getting into production music, because form and structure of production music does change compared to, or it is different compared to, like commercially released music, especially pop and hip hop music, or rock or underscore that you might see in a film. Production music plays by specific roles. That makes editors life as easy as possible, and so learning that structure and that form, that can be a real challenge and a real bottleneck.

Speaker 1: 31:00

What do I do next? Well, first of all, we can use reference material. Go listen to something, use that modeling concept to make those decisions for you, because what comes next? In bar five I introduced a synth pulse. Is it nearly as important as? What am I going to do with this synth pulse? What sound am I going to use? And even what sound? Isn't that ultimately important? If you're in the ballpark, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 31:40

I'll say that another way, because this kind of goes back to sounds like the difference between a synth that goes or pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and the grand scheme of things is pretty negligible. Now there's a big difference between a synth that goes pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop and beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Those are very different types of sounds, but pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop or beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, sed Böyle. So we put on the sound. It's not that important. So I think sometimes we get bogged down and create our own bottlenecks because the sound we're choosing isn't perfect, perfect, perfect, and you won't change that sound Because you'll work with it, yep. So anyways, back to form and structure.

Speaker 1: 32:45

Do the reference work, do the analysis and, even if you're not modeling, do analysis of several tracks. And taking us back to Atomica, once you understand how form and structure looks, then you could almost look at a reference and figure out what the form would be Like. If I'm looking here, we kind of have an intro Looks like there are some impacts and then we add some transient energy and then about what is this? About a third of the way we pull energy back. It looks like we have some impacts. Now I haven't listened to this, I have no idea. I'm not gonna play it because we'll get like a copyright strike and all of that stuff or at least a demonetization.

Speaker 1: 33:35

But then it builds, builds, builds, and then a button. Here is another one slow build with an edit point right in here, and then another build into a breakdown. We've got ourselves another whoops. We got ourselves another edit point. It builds, pulls energy back, and then a button, we have a build into an edit point, into a breakdown, a little bit of a build, and then a nice big edit point and then really big at the end. So once you clue into these forms, then it's like just pick one.

Speaker 1: 34:18

You know, if you are challenged to write a three minute queue, then find a three minute example and use it as a form. Figure out the BPM and just do the math Five bars, four bars of this, four bars, then this and then four bars. So use that. Let's look at a different example. And for you, audio only. Folks just go with me. So here is a sewing doubt. Hope. That was dark tension here.

Speaker 1: 34:52

Let me go back one more time. We're gonna go back to our albums. Click on sewing doubt and the form just leaps off the page. You can see the building of the energy, the pulling back of energy. You can see where edit points occur. Let's look at another one. Let's look at a non. This is indie, sunburst, yep. Form and structure. Now this is probably pop, so they're not nearly as dynamic, but I mean you can look right in here. Let me. Actually we have a build into an edit point, into a breakdown, into a build into another edit point, another breakdown, slow build, pull back energy and then a big hit point there at the end for this one. Let's look at one more and we'll just go down. This is a Middle Eastern journey, to name of this album.

Speaker 1: 35:52

Yep, form and structure. The ebb and flow of the energy really stands out and the typical production music form really starts to pop. We can see kind of a build into a breakdown, into a build. We have kind of a build, a little pullback of energy here, build into another breakdown. We have kind of a build into a. Yeah, the ABA form really, really stands out. It goes into a breakdown, into a build sprinkling. You know, edit point there Got an edit point built in right there. Pullback of energy here. So do the research. Go listen to examples. Look at the waveforms One reason I really love Atomica they have, I think, some of the best waveforms in the business.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Yep, that's going to help you understand the form and structure, the form measures, and then use that, overlay that as a form for your own cue and then eventually the buildup of everything will become second nature. You will feel when you're in the composing process you will feel, okay, now it's time for this Four bars. I'm building up energy and then I'm pulling energy back and then building energy. That that starts to become. You can just feel it. You can feel it All right. So that's form and structure. So again, number one, the bottleneck of motivation. Number two, the bottleneck of of knowing what to write. Number three, choosing the sounds. What sounds should you actually be using? And then number four. Number four, form and structure, the bottleneck of now what in your track. Number five, the bottleneck of mixing and mastering. The mixing and mastering process, the technical side of things, you know. I think I think this is another podcast episode as well.

Speaker 1: 38:01

There are basically two sides to this to being a working production music composer. Half is making music and the other half is like selling music. And of those halves, the making music is divided into two halves itself, which is the creative creation of music, and then there's the production of music, music composition and music production. Music composition is the creative, the artistic right. It is the, the melodic composition, the music theory, the chord choices, those types of things. The production is the EQing, the using compressors and dynamic side chaining and and mixing and mastering and faders and and loves and loudness and and all of those things. That's the other half.

Speaker 1: 38:53

Now if we look at the other entire other half, which is the business, which is divided up into two halves in itself, one half is the, the business side, the accounting, the bookkeeping right, the numbers, the metadata entering in spreadsheets, right, tracking royalties, and then the other half of the business side of things is the relationships, the networking, the going to LA and going to a conference, you know, sending out pitches and and the LinkedIn profiles and all of that. So those are kind of the, the, the four quadrants of being a working production music composer. And again, I think there's an entire podcast episode there. In fact, I'm going to, I'm going to write that down, I think this is a, this is a podcast episode the four quadrants of being a working production music composer. So the composing side, right, there's the, there's making the music and they're selling the music, the, the music production, and then the business side of things, so the making music, the creative side, and then the mixing and mastering, the deliverables. It's really technical, it's really analytical.

Speaker 1: 40:06

I've talked in the podcast before about how I consider these two parts of the brain, two halves of the brain right brain, left brain and I understand the science is a little squirrely, that doesn't necessarily support it, but I think, conceptually, I think there's some truth to it. So how do we, how do we work through that bottleneck? Well, this is one of the bottlenecks that I think you just have to push through. You have to do the reps, the repetitions. The only way this gets easier is if you repeatedly do it.

Speaker 1: 40:47

I've used this analogy on the podcast before that If your goal is to bench press 300 pounds, don't try to push against a 300 pound bar every day. You have to do it a little bit at a time so you can build up, build up the muscle mass to eventually lift 300 pounds, and that only comes through repetition. So just do it, don't be afraid of it. Maybe check out some tutorials. We have plenty of materials here on the podcast channel. We have plenty of resources over for subscribers at 52 cues.

Speaker 1: 41:30

I've done workshops on it. Yeah, so go educate yourself, and it doesn't even have to be through me. You can go take a class. I learned my mastering chops by watching a Mac Pro video, specifically a tutorial on Ozone 6, I think it was, and the tutorial was much less how to use Ozone as much as it was how here are mastering techniques using Ozone. So it felt like a course on mastering with Ozone as a tool. I got so much out of that. Now here we are in Ozone 11.

Speaker 1: 42:08

And if that doesn't really work for you, then maybe do some collaborations, maybe some trade out, find somebody who is good at it and, barter, do they need beats? Do they need some editing done? Or let's say that they're vocalists and you're not, but they're really good at mixing and mastering, so you do the whole track, send them that they lay the vocals and do the mix and master. Split the royalties, split the upfront sync fees or whatever, or pay them. Seeing them feels like a tall order, because there's so little money on the front end of a career that that's tough to get off the ground. But trading out services, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 43:07

But at the end of the day, on some level, we have to make our peace with the fact that we will be doing the production side of things Until, I guess, you get to a certain level and then you're shipping things off to a catalog and a library and they're like we'll take it from here, but we're not getting signed to a record label, they're not going to fly us to New York and record in their studios and all we do is show up, play our instruments and sing into the mics and go away and they take care of the rest. That is not what this gig is, and so mixing and mastering can be a real bottleneck, a real bottleneck. And then, finally, the final bottleneck that I want to talk about is all of that bookkeeping, accounting, especially when it comes to metadata, all the little details, the writing of the emails, all of that. That's been a real bottleneck for me and it's gotten me in trouble a few times because I would wait to do my final deliverables and cut downs and metadata until the end of an album. And then I am just miserable as I try to crank it all out at once and it's just a gnarly nasty session and I don't enjoy it. But doing those things can be a real bottleneck. Anything that is a source of procrastination. This is being really real. So I'm going to give you a suggestion that I admittedly don't take as often as I should, but do it as you go, man, do it as you go. Set up a Google form or a spreadsheet or something that you can enter these things in. Heck, just even in logic. You can create a notepad In your logic template, add the metadata into, or the metadata fields into, the notepad so that while you're in the session, you can update the metadata at least rudimentally, so that when you go to actually fill it out. You're not starting from scratch, you're not reopening a logic session and no, no, a little bit goes a long way of doing this. Take the time, I guarantee you you will be much less miserable. I'm guaranteeing you, dave, I'm talking to you. You will be much less miserable if you do it a little bit at a time instead of waiting until the last minute.

Speaker 1: 45:48

That goes with your taxes as well. You know reconciling. You know balancing your checkbook or reconciling any outstanding receipts that you need to submit. I just got a message from Shannon, who takes care of the books here at the 52Qs business. She saw a credit card charge for I bought pigments a couple of weeks ago because it was on massive sale and they gave me a loyalty discount, so it was like 69 bucks and so I bought it. And she sent me a message need to send a receipt and I'm going to take care of that now, not wait until we're frantically trying to get things ready profit and loss statements and bank statements and everything ready for tax season. Ugh, why don't I take care of that now? Five minutes now, if even that will be so much less stress than trying to do it there at the end. So putting those things which are the least fun part of your job often till later.

Speaker 1: 46:55

For me that's a huge, huge, huge bottleneck that I am saying right now I need to get much better at it and I want to Right. My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak and so I'm not nearly as good as I want to be about it. So those are some of my bottlenecks the bottleneck of motivation, the bottleneck of knowing what to write. The bottleneck of finding sounds, choosing sounds. The bottleneck of form and structure, kind of what comes next. The bottleneck of mixing and mastering and deliverables, which feeds into the bottleneck of all of the little details, metadata, accounting, the busy work. This gets into some of the business side of things. That can be a real bottleneck for me. But what about you? What are some of your bottlenecks? I would love to hear from you. Please let me know. In the comments below I do read all of those and it would be great to hear from you, but that is going to do it for me this week.

Speaker 1: 48:09

Once again, a huge word of thanks to the family, friends and neighbor subscribers of 52Qs who pay their actual real life money to keep all of this going Notice you didn't get any sponsored embedded ads for mattresses or meal plans or anything like that and even even the production music tools dot com bode symbol. I mean, that's, that's mine, that's not an outside sponsor thing. Steve didn't approach me to do that. That is my symbol library and and yeah, I'm going to talk about it on my podcast. But the reason we can keep this sponsor outside sponsor free is because of the support of our family, friends and neighbors. So if you want to help us and help support the channel while also getting all of those extra perks again live streams, monthly workshops, q breakdowns, feedback, live zoom feedback sessions, hundreds and hundreds of hours of archives I mean we're starting our third year here at 52Qs and we've been churning out weekly content for two years and all of that is archive up at 52Qs and again opportunities to submit to real music libraries in our 52Qs briefing room Then why don't you head over to 52Qs dot com?

Speaker 1: 49:23

It is free to join, but memberships start at just four bucks a month. You definitely want to tune in next week where I am joined once again by Jeff Hargrove, who's an amazing composer, an amazing guy, fantastic husband. He is a music director and an amazing keyboardist and I welcome him back and he is a longtime supporter of 52Qs and we're going to be talking about life as a working like music director, breaking into production music. He has found a lot of success writing writing things that he only recently started writing. So you want to definitely join us next week and hit that subscribe here at 52Qs or here at YouTube or subscribe on the podcast, and we would love to have you, but that's going to do it for me.

Speaker 1: 50:19

I hope you've had a great week 11 and I know that you are going to have an awesome week 12. Why do I know that and how do I know that? Because I trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans just for you. Until next time, peace. The 52Qs podcast is copyrighted 2024 at 18 Studios. All Rights Reserve. The music played on the podcast is copyright of their respective owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only. For more information, including joining the community or becoming a member subscriber of 52Qs, head over to 52Qscom.