Ableton Forum

telekom wrote:If you can't make your fortune with 8-bit death core, you'll never amount to anything.

Grappadura wrote:

Angstrom wrote:Of course, there's a wide range of jobs, but I doubt you are asking "How do I become Hans Zimmer" (whose life is probably both well paid and also rewarding).

yeah I was about to mention him, what a life he's living. If you know the answer please share.

McQ714 wrote:

Grappadura wrote:

Angstrom wrote:Of course, there's a wide range of jobs, but I doubt you are asking "How do I become Hans Zimmer" (whose life is probably both well paid and also rewarding).

yeah I was about to mention him, what a life he's living. If you know the answer please share.

ironically, Hans Zimmer is a pirate!
listen to his scores, a lot of what he composes and produces is just copies of something he's already put together for a previous soundtrack.

i guess the same could be said for most music though. how often do you hear the same chords and note sequences being played in songs?

djshiva wrote:Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Seriously dude. Become an investment banker or something. If you're not doing music because you can't live without doing music, then you shouldn't be doing music at all.

djadonis206 wrote:I'm disturbed by something because I'm responding to this stupid thread. I'm going to the gym. This is dumb

Angstrom wrote: If there's one sure fire way to kill your muse it's to get her involved in churning out Justin Beiber ringtones on a harsh deadline, or making MIDI files of classical stuff for the Asian elevator market. Those sort of jobs should be avoided at all costs. Any of my friends who found themselves in those jobs aged ten years in about a month.

scutheotaku wrote:If you want to get into making music for games, your best bet is to start at the indie level. Go to Indie Game Dev forums and such, offer your services to projects that look good (you don't want to bother being involved in some one-man-team's side project). A lot of these games are freeware, so don't expect to be paid. Instead, as you do soundtracks for more and more small games, you will build up some sort of a reputation in the Indie Game community.

Once you have some freeware games under your belt, put up a portfolio online and start contacting some indie teams working on commercial projects (again, don't expect to get paid a lot for this).

If you do really really well on a few commercial indie game projects, you should be able to put together a great portfolio and then start targeting the big studios. With this step, it helps if you live near a few studios. You also probably want to concretely decide at this point if you want to do freelance or if you want to join a specific studio full-time (there's pros and cons to each - for example, with the former you get a lot of variety, but with the latter you get more financial security [assuming that the studio stays open, like many studios don't]).

Of course, there are ways to fast track this process, like knowing the right people, going to a good music school (this gives you some credibility to the bigger studios, meaning that you may not have to spend as much time developing a great portfolio. More importantly though, having a strong music theory background will allow you to compose in several different styles at the drop of a coin - very very useful when making game music!), etc...

And two things to remember: 1. always treat every track like it's your biggest project ever, no matter if it's just a simple track for some freeware game (you want a game's soundtrack to be solid all the way through so that the player is constantly impressed by the music, drawing attention to your work) and 2. target projects that you think will actually be finished (it's almost pointless to include tracks in your portfolio for a game that's never been released), which means that early on it's useful to learn what type of game dev you are working with before you agree to work on the music (roughly 99% of freeware games never get finished - only spend your valuable time on serious projects!).

Oh, and don't forget to study lots and lots and lots of game music! And play games, making sure to pay attention to the music and how it works in and reacts to the game. Listen to how it sets a mood, to what types of instruments are used, what styles of music, how ambient or upfront it is, if it sounds electronic or organic, what all of this means in the context of the game's style, content and story, etc...

EDIT: and one more thing - if the game is to released commercially, make sure you have a proper contract!

EDIT AGAIN: One one more thing - always act kind and professional! The game dev community is small, and if you're a jerk or unprofessional to one indie dev or one big studio, you can count on word getting around to avoid you. Once you get a bad rep, it's nearly impossible to clear your name 100% (especially in the indie game communities where a lot of the commercial developers are semi-close-knit).

Stolenlogic wrote:hip hop seems to have a lot of money

snakedogman wrote:Was watching the presentation by HedFlux on Pyramind recently (check the Ableton blog) and he mentioned releasing sample libraries as a good (extra) source of income if you're a producer.

Btw I'm sure Hans Zimmer has an amazing and well paying career, but you can bet that once they are in production with studio deadlines looming, movie composers also have to work incredibly hard and be able to churn out high quality music very quickly.