Hello and welcome to this month’s blog!  I’m going to talk about showreels and portfolios this month and how important they are to demonstrate what you can do.
 
As film and visual media composers, it’s good to be able to show how well your music sits behind a visual. And if you are between gigs and looking to practise and keep your hand in, there are a number of ways you can do that.

Royalty-free visuals
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There is so much visual footage available that is royalty-free and free-to-use without attribution that you can compose to.  There are limitations in that they're mostly silent, many are only 10-15 seconds long and not a full narrative, but often there are different takes and scenes from the same shoot and with a little creativity of your own, you can create a cue around a minute or so long, which is long enough for people to get an idea of your composing skills and also short enough for today's 'goldfish' attention-spans.

Public domain
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There are so many old films and TV episodes that are in the public domain.  Whilst many of them had their copyright renewed and are still protected (despite it being 70+ years) there are many films in the 1930s and earlier that you could take a scene from and practise scoring to.  Many old films have very little music and there are multiple scenes where you could just drop in your own music behind the visual. 

However!
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Not all Creative Commons licenses are alike!  If the license for any visuals that you are interested in contain the following, you might want to forgo them:

Pitching to directors and producers

​Not all directors and producers want to see and hear visual and music together.  I met an awesome director by the name of Kylie a couple of weeks ago and I asked her what she looked (listened) for when thinking about music.
 
“I  like to listen to a composer's music alone (without image)”. She says. “So, for that reason I generally prefer pages with audio tracks that I can quickly and easily listen to (but of course am open to all things)”.
 
So Kylie doesn’t want to be influenced or distracted by a visual that has come before.  “I usually go into a project with a fairly specific idea of what I'd like the work to sound like”, she says, “so I think for me it really just comes down to whether I resonate with the music or not (and whether it feel that it's a right pairing for the tone/spirit of the project)”.
 
And then she says something very encouraging, as there are many composers who feel that, due to lack of experience, they may not appeal to directors.  “For this reason, I don't usually put a whole lot of focus on whether a composer has had much or any previous work scoring for film etc”. she explains.  “I generally feel that if I like an artist's music, I can trust the composer to transition those skills and adapt to working in film”.
 
So how can we cater to as many directors and producers as possible, who may have very different preferences when it comes to selecting music?  Well, there are many platforms where we can share our creative content and we can have both audio and visual content for people to listen to.  For example, you can create a visual showreel on YouTube, whether it’s a video cut together of your work, or a playlist that you can share, and you can also link to audio platforms, such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp.  When you are networking with directors and producers and ask if you can share your content with them, ask if they prefer listening to music with or without a visual.  Or if you are following up with an email, you can include links to both and label which is which.  They can then click on the link that suits them better.
 
And if you’d like to know more about composing for film and visual media, I am running a free webinar this month!  Here is the link to register:

Anyway, that's it for this month.  Happy creating and I'll talk to you next time.

Hi everyone and welcome to this month’s blog post.  Today I want to have a chat about the importance of community. 

Whilst that might sound like a no-brainer,  Western society tends to be more individualistic rather than collectivistic, and the idea of community is most likely not in the forefront of people’s minds, especially in large cities. 

​In the last 20 - 30 years, members of society seem to have ramped up an entitled “what’s in it for me?” mentality (in Australia, anyway), rather than thinking about how their actions might affect the people around them, or doing something because it’s the right thing to do.  People may live in a suburb, a parish, a city, which are all communities, but may not think of themselves as such in these terms unless it’s something specific to them, eg LGBTQIA+, film-makers, a school, a sports team etc.    But communities can also be online as well as in real life and I want to discuss how they are important, especially to creatives.

Like-minded people who ‘get it’ 
Not everyone is creative, and not everyone understands what it is like to be creative.  I think this is especially noticeable in governments who dismiss the arts at the first sign or budget cuts and don’t provide support, and schools who don’t have dedicated art and music programmes.  To be creative means to be sensitive, to want to express yourself in a certain way, to make it your life’s work, not just some hobby.  Other creatives get that and understand your passion.  They can give you encouragement, or a sympathetic ear when trouble comes your way.

Encouragement 
You can’t create in a vacuum.  Well, you probably can but you’re going to feel pretty isolated and it won’t be sustainable.  I think living through the pandemic during the last couple of years has showed us all exactly how isolation feels.  Creating art and then receiving encouragement and feedback from your community boosts your desire to continue creating, which means you will improve and get better at your craft.  

Support
This is a big one for me.  I had a horrible experience over a decade ago, which killed my love of composing stone-dead.  I tried to get back on that horse, but my desire to compose didn’t come back for over a decade.  Even though I was at uni and surrounded by music students, they didn’t understand what I went through, being (mostly) young and not having a similar frame of reference, or had been through relatable experiences themselves.  I am in the process of creating a community that is there to support composers who have been through a really shitty experience, to help them get back on their feet and continue doing what they love.  I just wish that I had been part of such a community back then; maybe I would have got that passion back sooner.
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Friendships and networks
When like-minded people come together on a regular basis, friendships can occur.  I belong to an online micro-community in a completely different sphere and there is a core group of people that I would consider my friends, even though we have never met in real life.  You can also develop networks within your community and paid work may arise from this networking.  So you see, community is so important, whether it’s online, or in real life.

Thanks for reading.  I hope that you found this article useful and I’ll see you next month.  Bye for now.  
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Hello and welcome to this month's blog post!  We artists are an anxious bunch and often allow anxiety to hinder our creativity, which exacerbates our uncertainties.  So this month's blog article is about anxiety and what we can do to move past it.

Anxiety can stop people from doing the thing that they want to do and love
Anxiety has been described as a state where there are physiological changes such as increased blood pressure, worried thoughts and tense feelings (American Psychological Association, n.d.). The term ‘writer’s anxiety’ has been coined by researchers Huerta et al (2017, p 4) when referring to university graduate students experiencing writers’ block and tension when faced with academic writing tasks.  I think this perfectly describes the anxiety that composers feel, whether or not they are scoring to picture. Feelings of inadequacy, the misnomer that you’ve already written your best music, and of course writers’ block can dry up the creative process and stop you from doing the thing that you love.

It’s such a common thing amongst composers.  This is normal but there are some tools you can use to overcome this

1. Sit yourself down in front of your computer or instrument and write something anyway. It may not be as good as the last thing your wrote, but it will be a lot better than nothing.  Just start playing around with riffs, loops, sounds etc and see what you come up with.  John Cage already has the silence thing all sewn up, so we have to look for other ideas.
2. Go with your first impressions. First impressions are important, so listen to the ideas that pop into your head.  The more you do this, the more you will hone this skill.  It may turn out that your first impression wasn’t as good as the next idea that comes along, but more often than not there will be a nugget of inspiration in that initial reaction.
3.  If you’re feeling uninspired, go and do something else and come back later. Creativity doesn’t flow if you’re trying too hard, so give yourself a break and relax, or concentrate on something else for a while.  When you come back, you might find that what you’ve written doesn’t suck as much as you initially thought it did.
4. Would the music benefit from rhythm? Look at the energy levels in the visual; is there any pace to what is happening in the scene?  Create some rhythms and see how they sit. You don’t have to use percussion, you can use repetitive instrumental ostinatos to create rhythm.
5. ​Sometimes the best stuff happens by accident.  I’ve thrown individual stems to one side to make room in my project, and when the playhead happened to scroll across them, I realised that they sounded amazing together, stacked as they were.  So if you’re at least having a go, you’re giving yourself a chance to create something awesome.

You can find some simple tools to overcome anxiety in everyday life, here are some things that I do
Yoga - I love my yoga classes; I really like the moments of total relaxation in between the stretching and strength work.  I find I feel so good after a class, relaxed and ready to face new challenges.

Walking meditation - this one surprised me; I once signed up for meditation classes at the local Buddhist temple.  The session consisted of walking meditation, Tai Chi and then an hour or so of sitting meditation.  For my first session, I walked for 40 minutes around in a rectangle with other people whilst the sun set.  After 20 minutes, I felt this relaxation descend upon me, I had never felt so good walking!  I have used this technique outside of the meditation course when I was feeling anxious, unsettled and having trouble sleeping.  Don't listen to music or podcasts whilst you're doing this; you won't achieve the relaxed state.  Just walk and wait for it to happen.

Floatation therapy - I’m not claustrophobic so I love my sessions in a sensory deprivation tank.  I feel the more time you can be relaxed, it helps to balance out the acute stress anxiety can make you feel. 

Movement - a dietician that I had a connection with said that she didn't like the term 'exercise' as it she feels it has a restrictive, negative connotation and is often thought of as a chore.  She much preferred the term 'movement', in that it gets people away from the visualisation of slogging it out on a treadmill and other tedious exercise.  Find something fun where you are moving, such as creating a playlist of your favourite upbeat music and having a private dance-party.  Fit in with your routine to make the movement a regular occurrence.

If you find that you experience anxiety that gets in the way of your creativity, hopefully there are some tips here that will help you overcome this.  I'd love to hear of you tried any of these and they worked, or if you've got your own coping strategies!  Thanks for reading, I'll have a new topic next month.

References
American Psychological Association (n.d.). Anxiety. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/

Margarita Huerta, Patricia Goodson, Mina Beigi & Dominique Chlup (2017) Graduate students as academic writers: writing anxiety, self-efficacy and emotional intelligence, Higher Education Research & Development, 36:4, 716-729, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2016.1238881

Hi everyone and welcome to this month's blog post!  Today we are going to go right back to the beginning of film history to see how film-music got started.

'The Horse In Motion'

​The birth of film began around 1873 with Eadweard Muybridge developing a photographic technique called 'chronophotgraphy', the scientific study of locomotion.  After experimenting for about four years, Muybridge set up a series of still cameras next to a race-track and photographed a horse galloping past (Sallie Gardner).

In 1887, Muybridge photographed a different horse (Annie G), which comes from plate 626 called 'Animal Locomotion'.  This has since been created into an animated gif from the frames.

The oldest surviving films

Some of the oldest surviving films, which are only very short as film-making had not yet been developed as an art or form of entertainment, include The Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) and Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895).  

​The first films in the 1900s were short as well as silent but directors started creating works of fiction, such as The Cook in Trouble in 1904, A Funny Shave in 1906 and The Dancing Pig in 1907.  

Hi everyone and welcome this month's blog post!  Have you ever dreamed about being a composer for film and visual media but don't know where to start?  For those of you who haven’t attended my free webinar on this topic, today I’m going to give you a quick overview of the three steps you can take to get started.  However, there is another free webinar coming up, so click on the link below to register!
 
Step 1

So if you’ve decided you’d like to give scoring to picture a go but need some guidance as to what to do next, the first thing is to make sure that you can compose in different styles.  If you tend to compose in only one or two styles, you will need to branch out, and the best way to do that is have a listen to what has come before.  Jump onto YouTube and watch what the visuals are doing with the music supporting it.  Then compose something similar using the elements of the existing music, for example, orchestration, tonality, tempo etc.
 
Step 2

So once you’ve composed music in different styles, you’ll want to showcase what you can do.  But in a world where intellectual property is greatly valued, how do you go about scoring to picture without infringing copyright?  Well, there are websites that host royalty-free, free-to-use videos that you can use for your compositions.  If you’d like some links to these websites, email me at the address below and I’ll send you my composer resource pack.  Once you’ve started creating little videos for your showreel, upload them to a YouTube or Vimeo channel, so that they are all in one place for people to find them.

Step 3
 
The third step is to increase your knowledge.  There are so many free tutorials online that can get you started, and also courses to help you increase your skill-set.  Begin with some tutorials first to start filling gaps in your knowledge.

And if you'd like me to expand on these steps further, register for my free webinar "From no idea to having a clue, start composing for visual media", Saturday 11th September 2021 at 10am Australian Eastern Standard Time.  Click the link to register:

​https://www.eventbrite.com.au/x/from-no-idea-to-having-a-clue-start-composing-music-for-visual-media-tickets-166480157633
 
Anyway, that’s it for now.  If you want to know more, hit me up at the details below.  Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next month.  Bye for now!

Hi everyone and welcome to this month's blog post!  Today I want to have a quick chat about being a creative and trying something new.  We never really stop learning, but we can get complacent and maybe feel that we don’t want to learn new skills or try something different.  I mentioned in a previous video and blog post that fear of the unknown is very real and can stop us from living our best life.  But what are the benefits of trying something new?

Learning something new is good for the brain
There have been many studies that show keeping the mind active is healthy for the brain, and learning something new is part of that active mind.  Something like learning a musical instrument (Bugos et al 2007) or another language creates synaptic pathways in the brain, which is where neurons transmit electrical or chemical signals to each other.  It has been found that where neurons are more active, this may help stave off neurodegenerative conditions such as Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and also boosts antioxidant defences (Bell 2011).  Now, who doesn’t want that?

Learning something new is good for well-being
But it doesn’t have to be something like learning a completely new skill, you could be adding to your already considerable skill-set.  This could be learning how to use a Digital Audio Workstation, or perhaps a new virtual instrument plugin within that DAW.  Or perhaps, you could learn about a  different style of music and then compose a piece in that style.  That’s all healthy brain activity, plus it gives you a bout of confidence.  For instance, in the last couple of days I tried two new things; I wrote a song (which is a new experience for me as I’m a composer and don’t write lyrics) and I installed a new plugin and watched tutorials on how to use it properly.  Doing these two things also gave me the motivation and the confidence to do more.
Anyway, that’s it for now.  Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next month.  Bye for now!

References
Bugos, J A, Perlstein, W M, McCrae, C S, Brophy, T S & Bedenbaugh, P H 2007 'Individualized Piano Instruction enhances executive functioning and working memory in older adults', Aging & Mental Health, July 2007, 11(4) pp 464-471.

Bell, K F S & Hardingham, G E 2011 'The influence of synaptic activity on neuronal health', Curr Open Neurobiol, April 2011, 21(2) pp 299-305.

Hi everyone, and welcome to this month's blog post!  Today I want to have a chat about the importance of self-care.  In these uncertain times where we’ve been living through a pandemic, where income can be uncertain and unstable for some, especially when earning a living from your creativity, it’s really important to take time for yourself and look after your mental health.  

If we are living in a constant state of stress, our bodies are flooded with hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.  This triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response, which is fine if it’s occasional and helps us to deal with  singular stressful situations.  But when it’s constant, this is unhealthy and starts to cause all sorts of issues, such as increased blood pressure, muscle tension, increased risk of diabetes and mood disorders.

So what can we do if we feel like we’re spiraling out of control?  If you are in a position to do so, getting some counseling is very helpful (and finding the right counselor to gel with is very important).  In addition, there are also things we can do for ourselves.  Do something that you enjoy to help you get back some feeling of control, such as having a cup of tea and reading a book.  Do some yoga or mindfulness meditation. Don’t berate yourself for “not feeling like your supposed to”, cut yourself some slack and be kind to yourself.  

Someone recently gave me a wonderful analogy of the turmoil I was experiencing. I was on a mountain path and it was raining hard. The path was slippery, but I didn’t slide back down the mountain; I stepped to the side of the path and took shelter, waiting for the storm to pass.  That was incredibly helpful to me in coping with what I was feeling; that the turmoil would pass and it was ok for me to seek shelter, I didn’t have to be out in the storm.  I was then obsessed for several days about creating a graphic to represent this analogy; I wanted something visual to remind me that it’s ok to step to one side and wait out the storm.  I eventually found some free-to-use vector graphics of the different elements and created my own picture, which I have attached to the top of this post.   If you’re a visual person like me, a graphic of some sort may be helpful to remind you to relax.  

If you are finding that everything feels overwhelming; it is helpful to set yourself small daily goals. Just set a maximum of three, that don’t have too many steps to them; this also helps you to regain some control and feel as though you have achieved something.  

Another discussion I have had recently was with a health professional who advised me to stop being so hard on myself for not “exercising” (which appears to be intrinsically linked with “diet”) and focus more on movement.  Rather than battling myself to get on the treadmill and walk for half an hour, my son and I have been playing tennis on our Nintendo Wii.  Whilst we’re not getting as hot and sweaty as we would playing real tennis, we are moving, which is important for general (and also mental) health.  It’s a lot more fun and doesn’t feel like a chore, which is half the battle.
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Anyway, that’s it for now, I hope you found some of these tips useful.  If this resonated with you at all, let me know.   Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next month.  Bye for now!