Advice for avoiding rookie mistakes

What follows are a few items you might overlook if you're new to composing music.

Get the project in writing

You should have some sort of documentation stating the services you plan on providing for the client before you begin work. This sounds obvious, but when you're starting out, the client may not have a contract drafted up ready for you. If you don't have any documentation to say you have the job, you should assume you don't officially have the job.

The client could easily swap you out with another composer at any moment's notice, and there wouldn't be much you could do about it. If the client doesn't have a contract for you, it's not a problem. Just draft up an invoice and send it to them confirming the fees for your project to seal the deal. Agreeing to something in writing psychologically makes people feel like they're serious about the agreement. It also allows all parties to know what the expectations are of each other to help avoid confusion.

If you're drafting up an invoice, include the following details:

• Contact information of you/your company
• Contact information of the client
• Services you're providing for the client
• Dates for services and/or deadlines
• Itemized pricing for the services or hourly rate, depending on how you want to bill the client

By the time you're drafting up the invoice, you've probably discussed the budget for the project already. The invoice is usually just confirming whatever you already agreed to earlier on. However, if you haven't officially agreed on a price yet, an invoice is a way to make the first offer while at the same time providing reasons to back up why you are charging your prices. You could, for example, list out songs that need creating and assign an expected number of budgeted hours for each.

The nice thing about drafting up your own invoice is you can put on it whatever you want. It's then up to the other party to disagree and request adjustments, but oddly enough, clients rarely do. Usually, whatever you put into an invoice ends up staying.

I've even used invoices to intentionally get myself out of composing gigs I didn't want. One time, a client came to me with an uninteresting assignment that would have been a huge commitment that I didn't have time to do at that moment. Saying no to someone offering a music job is something I always want to avoid. It might burn a bridge with them, and who knows who they are connected with. Instead of saying no, I simply listed out the services as usual on my invoice and itemized each with a very high price that was still justifiable, but unlikely that the client would be willing to pay. It was a way for me to back out of the deal while saving face.

Ask for feedback

One of the biggest mistakes you can run into when composing is not getting enough feedback. Now, this may sound like common sense, but it's not. The way you obtain feedback and adapt is a delicate balancing act. This is a fragile part of the job. If you do it wrong, you'll annoy the people you ask and look like you don't know what you're doing, and no matter how good your music is, you'll create a bad impression. Do it right, and you'll establish trust with the client and be brought back again and again to do more jobs.

Most of the time when playing music, your audience isn't scrutinizing every detail of your song and telling you what they think. Even if you get feedback when playing for a live audience, they probably don't have a specific critique that is easily actionable.

This is not the case when composing for clients. Working with a client is a completely different environment where feedback is everything. If your client says nothing when you hand them music, that doesn't mean they love the music. It means that the client isn't thinking about the music. That's a big distinction.

I made this mistake on my first composing gig. On my very first movie, I composed a soundtrack for the whole film. It took a few months of work. The client said nothing when I sent him the music throughout, and I thought that meant he must like the music. Why would someone hire you for a job and say nothing when you send them the work? It turned out it was because his attention was focused on other things. When I told the client I was done, he said he hadn't listened to any of the music yet. When he put the music in the film, he said he didn't like what he heard. He wanted me to redo the whole thing.

He thought that it was my fault. With some time and distance from the event, when I look back on it, he's right. It's the composer's job to put in the effort to make sure their music is received. Don't let my mistake happen to you. As often as you can, check in with the client and ask for feedback constantly. If they haven't said anything about your music for a while, always assume that they haven't reviewed the music yet and that you need to follow up.

It was because of this experience that I was forced to look into a better approach for planning out my soundtrack scores. After experimenting, I settled upon the Soundtrack Planner method discussed earlier in this chapter. If you keep updating the Soundtrack Planner and notifying the client about your changes, you should be able to collect feedback effectively and guarantee effective communication.

We've discussed advice for rookies. Next, let's discuss what an average day might look like on the job.