As a film & TV songwriter we constantly have to keep in mind exactly what our client wants and try not to veer away from it during the songwriting and production process. I use to have the problem where I would start working on a project for a client and I’ll get just the right rhythm section going, (i.e.; drums, bass, percussion). Then I’ll start playing a riff, melody or even a particular sound that I really liked a lot but it didn’t fit the idea the client was looking for. I use to waste about a good 30 minutes or more playing around with this until I finally came back to consciousness and realize I was getting off the mark of what I was really supposed to be doing.
The thing is that as creative people, we sometime allow the muse to dictate which direction to take musically on a song. Sometimes our ego will get excited at the fact that we just played some intricate riff on a guitar or piano found a really cool sound that works great with a particular beat, but we don’t realize (or pay attention to) how the frequency of the sound conflicts against a dialog or the melody doesn’t even come close to what the client wanted. When writing music for film or TV we sometimes have to put our ego aside and stay focused on the project in hand.
This of course does not mean that you need to stifle your creativity. You can always return to the new idea for another project or create a new song with it to add to your catalog. But if you’re writing for a particular project or scene, you need to stay focused on what the client wants; otherwise they’ll pass on your newly discovered masterpiece…
Now as I mentioned before. I was guilty of sometimes going off course when writing music for a project, but recently I’ve discovered that most of my way-warding happened when I would go from one instrument section to another. For example; the majority of my songs start with a rhythm track as a base, usually by the time I’d start looking for melody lines or lead instrumentation was when things began to go awry. So what I’ve started doing is once I’ve finished recording (or sequencing) one instrument section I stop and listen carefully to what I’ve got. Then before going any further I think about what type of instrumentation or sound I “want” next, rather than playing around with sounds and/or parts and choosing what sounds cool to me.
In other words, the trick is not to impress your ego, but rather what will sound good to your client. Of course a lot of times you may not have the luxury to sit with your client and pick his/her brain. All you might have to work with may be a reference tape. That why it’s very important to understand that what your client thinks sounds good may have nothing to do with your performance or a particular sound, but rather the “feel” of the song.
I’ve heard of directors that have picked a song today for a particular scene only to discard it the next day because it just didn’t “feel” right or as ideal as the day before. Writing for a client and staying focused on the project requires practice and patience, but once you look at the process “almost” like a job, you’ll tend to stray a lot less.
