Writing in the Style You’re Best At

I get folks now and then who ask me why my blog is primarily geared towards music for film and TV, and why almost all my music is instrumental. Some people think it’s because I can’t write regular vocal oriented pop songs, but the fact is that for over 20 years that was the only type of music I use to write.

I’ve always been more comfortable writing melodies than lyrics. However, some of the best pop and country songs I’ve written have been with co-writers who excel in writing lyrics. So that’s why I tend to focus more on instrumental pieces when I write alone. As for writing for TV and films, I love the freedom that side of the industry provides. I have always enjoyed listening and playing all different styles of music. Rock, Latin, Pop, Country, even some classical or orchestral tunes. Writing for film & TV allows me to experiment with all those different genres.

Reading Between the Lines

I use a couple of different tip sheets to help me get leads on music libraries and/or publishers that are looking for music for various projects. The right tip sheet can be very helpful, but only if you know how to read them carefully and pay attention to the details.

I’ve been using Taxi as one of my tip sheets for over 10 years now, and I remember when I first started using their service I would simply browse through the listing and submit songs based on just a few lines I would read. For example; a listing might have said “Publisher who places music on TV shows is looking for instrumental rock music ala Metallica and Joe Satriani”. Well all I would see were the words “Rock Instrumental”, and go ahead and submit one of my rock guitar based instrumental piece. However, what I really needed to pay attention to was the details of the listing. For example; a listing like the one above gives you a hint that they’re not just looking for guitar based instrumental songs, but heavy metal oriented pieces with screeching guitar parts which are dominate. I instead would send something that sounded probably more like Bon Jovi or Aerosmith (nothing like the listing suggested).

After a few years of spending money on tip sheets and not seeing any success, I stopped using them for a while and simply tried to contact publishers and libraries on my own. That was until a friend of mines who was having pretty good success with tip sheets showed me how to actually read them. He told me to look at the listings the same way you look at a set of lyrics. Take apart every line and really see what it’s saying. Be more detailed oriented when reading a tip-sheet.

Today when I read a listing from a tip sheet and I have a particular song/s in my head that might fit it, I will go back and read the listing again and sort of grade the song against the listing. The song then needs to have a match of 90% or more before I send it in. The result of submitting this way have offered me more forwards and placements than ever before.

Some tip sheets are not very specific in their listings. For example I also use Film Music .Net’s tip sheet, sometimes you might see a listing that looks something like; “Feature Film looking for energetic score”. This type of listing doesn’t give you a genre to reference by, nor even an example of similar Artists or songs. So if you decide to pitch to a listing like this, you want to make sure that you have 1) a piece which is energetic. 2) notice that they used the word “score”, you can assume that they are looking for something more orchestral in nature rather than pop oriented.