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FL Studio is a cutting-edge software music production environment and a powerful and easy-to-use tool for composing music. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll discover how to use FL Studio's tools and techniques to design exciting soundtracks for your films, TV shows, video games, and much more.
You'll start by understanding the business of composing, learning how to communicate, score, market your services, land gigs, and deliver music projects for clients like a professional. Next, you'll set up your studio environment, navigate key tools, such as the channel rack, piano roll, playlist, mixer, and browser, and export songs. The book then advances to show you how to compose orchestral music using MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) programming, with a dedicated section to string instruments. You’ll create sheet music using MuseScore for live musicians to play your compositions. Later, you’ll learn about the art of Foley for recording realistic sound effects, create adaptive music that changes throughout video games, and design music to trigger specific emotions, for example, scary music to terrify your listener. Finally, you'll work on a sample project that will help you prepare for your composing career.
By the end of this book, you’ll be able to create professional soundtrack scores for your films and video games.
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Seitenzahl: 272
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Learn music production, compose orchestral music, and launch your music career
Joshua Au-Yeung
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
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To my parents—my mother, for her devotion, love, and care, and my father, for his boundless curiosity, support, and determination.
To my friends—Sasha, for her encouragement, support, and always making me feel listened to and appreciated, and Jagdeep, Pavel, and Ryan, for making me laugh.
– Joshua Au-Yeung
Joshua Au-Yeung (professionally known as Chester Sky) is a music producer, composer, director, and software developer. He's published 10+ music albums, directed and composed for films, created board games and dozens of art pieces, and hosts a podcast. He's an instructor of online courses, including best-selling courses on music production and composing for films and video games. His previous book, The Music Producer's Ultimate Guide to FL Studio 20, reached #1 on Amazon in the Digital Audio Production category.
To learn more, visit https://www.chestersky.com/.
Shreevathsa PK started his music journey at the age of 5. He started attending Carnatic classical music singing classes at a very young age. Shreevathsa completed juniors with 95% in the Carnatic classical music examination and started learning piano on his own at the age of 13, referring to many sources on the internet. He was fascinated by the variety of western music and how much impact it has on one's personal life.
At the age of 15, he started composing music with the help of DAWs, such as FL Studio Logic Pro. Shreevathsa composes music of various genres. In his free time, he loves to listen to a wide variety of music varying from classical music to electronic dance music to music from various countries, such as Japan, China, Korea, and the Middle East.
Shreevathsa has composed music for short films and collaborated with a few YouTubers, helping with background music for their YouTube channels. He also has his own channels where he posts compositions. Shreevathsa is also an electronics engineer working at an MNC. He dedicates a few hours to music every day, despite working in a busy industry.
Think about your favorite movie or video game. Each of these had a soundtrack created for them, a score carefully designed to set the tone and emotional experience. Whenever you sense the intensity of a film or game changing, this is largely due to how the music makes you feel.
Now imagine you were the person that created that music? How exciting it must have felt when composing? The fun, adrenaline rush, and sense of achievement. Masterfully crafting music to take listeners on an adventure. Music that tugs at their heartstrings, bringing them to the edge of their seats in anticipation, filling their thoughts with joy or sorrow. You can be that musician. You can dream up music and bring it to life to entertain listeners around the world.
If you're reading this book, it means that you want to create music that makes your audience feel something. You want to curate an experience for your listener. Perhaps you have a film or a video game you want to cultivate music for. Perhaps you need music for a live event and are wondering how to design the music to fit the setting. Or perhaps you're an aspiring musician and want to make more impactful songs. If any of these apply to you, you're in the right place. This book will take you on a journey from the ground up to build emotional soundtracks.
There's a huge array of topics that can be included in the composition of music. It's very easy to veer off in an interesting direction yet have very little to show for it. This book is designed to help cut through all the time-wasting mumbo jumbo and get right to the practical stuff you can use.
This book is for musicians, aspiring composers, music producers, and music students. Although we do explore a little theory, this book is more focused on the practical application of software tools and techniques. It's geared toward the aspiring professional who wants to know about the tools and techniques in the craft. This book assumes no pre-existing skills or experience prior to reading.
If your goal is to compose music just for fun, this book will provide you with a practical music foundation to help improve your music compositions. You'll be supplied with music theory to understand the fundamentals of composing songs. You'll learn how to compose for orchestral instruments and make orchestral arrangements. You'll learn how to do this with software without needing to know how to play any actual instruments prior to reading (although some familiarity with the piano will prove helpful). You'll learn how to improve your songs and tailor them to fit specific emotions and moods. You'll also find tips for coming up with music ideas to avoid writer's block.
If you want to get paid for making music, this book will set you up with the tools and techniques to embark on a career as a music consultant. If you want to compose music at a more serious level, rather than just as a hobby, you need to think about how to compose efficiently to a deadline. Once you get an assignment, you need to focus on the important tasks so you can deliver a high-quality score that meets the client's requirements. This book will show you how to manage a music project efficiently.
If you want to take on jobs composing music for clients, there is a list of challenges that you'll need to deal with. From day one, you're expected to:
Know how to find composing jobs. Such jobs aren't usually listed like traditional jobs.Once you identify a potential gig, you need to know how to market and sell yourself to clients to gain work. You need to know how to use a wide array of music production software. Music software has undergone a revolution in the last few decades as music production has become significantly less hardware-focused and much more software-driven. The software landscape is constantly changing as new features and plugins appear monthly.You need to understand enough music theory to evaluate songs so that you can go and create similar scores to existing music as needed. You need to understand how to craft music to fit desired styles and moods.You need the ability to consistently generate production-ready music. You need to have an understanding of composing, recording, mixing, mastering, and how all of this relates to your client's project.If composing for game development, you may need to understand the intricacies of adapting music to video game environments.Whew! That sounds like a lot of stuff to learn. You may feel a little overwhelmed in the beginning, and that's only natural. This book will help you navigate all these challenges. By the time you're done, you'll have a solid introduction to the tools and techniques to do all the above and much more.
There are many challenges you can expect to face when composing. You can break down all of these challenges into a series of steps. You don't have to do all the steps at the same time. Each step on its own could be a specialist aspect and many people have careers focusing on just a single part.
Although this book goes into minute detail about each stage and technical tools and skills, the goal of a composer isn't to become a master technician. The goal of a composer is to create music that fits the project, whatever that may be. On large-scale projects, most technical tasks might even be delegated to specialized personnel to take care of.
You can hire other people to play instruments and mix and master your music. All of that is important, but the composer's job is a bigger picture than mere technical details. A film director's job is to shape the vision of the film and take steps to bring it to life. Like a director, the composer's job is to shape the vision of the music and take steps to bring it to life.
Depending on the project, you may have different teams, instruments, software, and hardware available to you. All this changes due to the nature of the project, or due to technological advances. The playing field is constantly changing, so you should be prepared to adapt to it. In other words, although you do need to know how to use tools to get the job done, you don't need to be an expert before you start and shouldn't get overly attached to any single tool.
It's easy to get hung up on technical details, but they are just one piece of several in the big picture of composing. What is important is that you understand the key stages and can put the pieces together even if you aren't an expert in a particular aspect.
Your job is to deliver music that satisfies the project's requirements. Communicate with the client throughout to understand what they need. Understand how all the pieces fit together so you can jump in wherever necessary. This book is designed to show you how all the pieces fit together.
This book is organized so you can jump around from chapter to chapter to grab the tools required for your project. It is arranged in a logical sequential order, but most of the topics can be learned independently:
Chapter 1, The Business of Composing for Clients, gives you the street smarts you need to get hired for composing jobs. You'll learn how to land composing gigs, learn about networking and get advice on marketing. You'll learn how to deliver a film or game score in a professional way when working with clients.
Chapter 2, Navigating Through the Key Features of FL Studio, introduces you to the digital audio workstation, FL Studio. Here, you'll learn the key tools of FL Studio, including the Channel rack, Piano roll, the Playlist, the Mixer, and the Browser. You'll learn how to record audio in FL Studio and how to export music from the software.
Chapter 3, Designing Music with Themes, Leitmotifs, and Scales, provides you with the music theory to give you a solid foundation for composing songs. Here, you'll learn how to use themes, motifs, and leitmotifs to make your music connect with your movie or game project vision. You'll learn how to use scales, modes, and the circle of fifths chord wheel to give structure to your music arrangements.
Chapter 4, Orchestral MIDI Composing, shows you how to create music for orchestral instruments. You'll learn how to make software plugin instruments sound just like live instruments. You'll learn techniques you can use to compose for string instruments, such as violins, violas, cellos, and basses. You'll learn how to compose MIDI for orchestral chord progressions and considerations for mixing orchestral instruments.
Chapter 5, Creating Sheet Music with MuseScore, Scoring with Fruity Video Player, and Diegetic Music, shows you how to create sheet music from any FL Studio project with ease so live musicians can read and play your music. You'll also learn how to use Fruity Video Player. If you want to compose for films or video game cut scenes, Fruity Video Player lets you sync music to visuals. Then you'll learn about designing sound effects.
Chapter 6, Influencing Mood with Music and Designing Emotional Music, explores how to compose music for a variety of genres. You'll learn how to compose music that scares your listener, such as music for horror films and games. You'll learn how to design terrifying jump scares, as well as how to compose happy music, sad music, romantic music, and how to create tension and epic music for trailers.
Chapter 7, Creating Interactive Music for Video Games with Wwise, teaches you how to compose interactive music for video games. You'll learn about the Wwise software and see a demo game with sound integrated into it. You'll learn about the interactive horizontal re-sequencing and vertical remixing music techniques and see how Wwise can be used to implement these techniques. You'll also learn how to create music in FL Studio for use in vertical remixing.
Chapter 8, Soundtrack Composing Templates, provides you with tips for overcoming writer's block. You'll be provided with template lists to make your composing efficient and production-ready. You'll also learn about resources to continue your music journey beyond this book.
The goal is to create music that fits your visuals while sounding polished. To get the best results, you need to be creating music on a regular basis. Composing music is just like playing an instrument. If you want to get good, you need to practice. Unlike playing an instrument, when you're composing music, you're less focused on the technique and more focused on the end result of how the music fits the project you're composing for.
You need to think in terms of the big picture about how to design a song for specific emotions, how the song fits the visuals, and how everything relates to your client's vision. Do these things well, and you're on your way to becoming a composer.
This book will give you many tips and tricks, but you still need experience to learn. To apply the lessons in this book, you'll benefit most by having a project to compose for. I recommend finding a moving visual that needs music. This could be a video, video game, or live performance. Then you can directly apply and relate the skills you pick up in this book to your own circumstances.
While reading this book, you can share your music and collaborate in the online Facebook group with other readers/students here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/musicproducerandcomposercommunity
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This section will introduce you to the business side of composing for clients, including how to deal with clients and organize and plan soundtrack projects.
We will cover the following chapter in this section:
Chapter 1, The Business of Composing for ClientsIn this chapter, you will learn about the business of composing music for clients. We will discuss how to land a job composing music so you can get started, how to prepare for meetings with clients, and how to obtain actionable project requirements. This way, you'll be able to strategically satisfy your clients every time.
We will discuss planning a film score and useful methods for collaborating with other musicians so that you can work efficiently. Finally, we will discuss how to collect music royalty revenue so you can earn passive income from your compositions.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
Landing your first composing gigPreparing for meeting clientsPlanning a music scoreCollaborating with othersAdvice for avoiding rookie mistakesThe day-to-day tasks of composingLanding a job creating music for clients is not like getting a regular office job. Music jobs are rarely posted on job boards and the interview is different from traditional interviews. This is for a good reason. The task of composing music requires a very specific set of traits that are not easily evaluated by reading a resume or asking traditional interview questions.
Let's take a moment to put ourselves in the client's shoes. Imagine you're a director who has just finished creating a movie. You've spent time carefully revising a script, running casting calls to find actors who look the part and have the right chemistry, scouting filming locations, and planning shoots, and are finally in the process of editing the footage in postproduction. You now need scenes in your film to hit certain emotions, and you need music that's tailored just right to do this.
After expending all that effort trying to make sure every detail fits the film precisely, do you think you would hire someone you've never met to make the music? Perhaps if they're famous with a solid track record you might. But if you haven't heard of them before, then you're going to need some evidence to prove they can deliver. You need to trust that whatever music is composed will be aligned with the overall style of the film. That information can't be obtained by reading a resume or asking traditional interview questions.
When a client needs someone to compose music for their project, the first thing they do is think about their current connections. Is there someone they already know who can do the job? With the exception of music videos, the music doesn't come first—the project comes first…which means the music is often an afterthought. An important afterthought, but if there is no project, then no one is asking for music.
What does this mean? It means that the best odds of you landing a music job is being already known by the people creating projects. Ideally, they should know about you long before they start looking for someone to compose music. If you want to compose music for films, you should be hanging around with people who are actively making films. If you want to compose music for video games, you need to be hanging out with people who are making video games.
Figure out which films or video games are getting created locally and find ways to enter those communities. Learn everything you can about the projects getting created. Ask questions, explore their past projects, and volunteer to help with their projects in any way that you can. The more you can do to establish your presence, the more natural it will be for you to compose music for them. Of course, you also need to establish yourself as a capable and professional music composer.
What should you do before you start applying for composing jobs? You should do everything you can to establish a brand portraying you as a capable music-composing professional. There are lots of musicians out there—only a subset of them can make original music for other people in a professional setting. You want potential clients to know that you are part of that special group.
Many good live musicians don't have the skills to be good composers, while many composers aren't great live musicians. There's overlap for sure, but there is also a separate composer skillset that is required to do composing that is much more than being good at playing music. Not to worry, though—this book will teach you everything you need to know to get your skills up to par.
Here are a few quick steps to make you appear instantly more professional to potential clients:
Have a professional-looking music website that displays your music and music-creating services. The website should at a minimum have samples of your music, a short biography about you, and your contact information.Have your past music easily accessible so you can provide it at a moment's notice. I personally use SoundCloud as my site of choice when I need to provide links to my portfolio. SoundCloud is a website where you can upload your music, and listeners can listen to it without having to log in.To learn more about SoundCloud, visit https://soundcloud.com.
Get business cards. Even though people don't need business cards anymore when contact information can be plugged into your phone, a business card makes people think you're serious about what you do. Business cards are also convenient to hand out at events. If you don't have business cards already, go make some.Create an email account dedicated to music business-related activities. Make sure your email address sounds professional.Create a Facebook page dedicated to your music-related business. When you share a post saying that you made music for a project, it acts as free advertisement for you.Even better than a Facebook page, create a local community group or Facebook group related to your music business. When I was in university, I wanted to create films, but there weren't any film-making groups on campus. So, I created my own. This helped to foster a community of filmmakers and gave me opportunities to get started creating my music portfolio. I was also lucky enough to enroll in classes about creating video games, which gave me my first shot at composing for games. If you're a student, you have a golden opportunity to organize student groups around music/films/video games. There are always lots of like-minded people eager to join as members. Make the most of these student opportunities while you can.Next, let's talk about networking.
If you want to compose, you should be going to meetup events where films and games are being planned. Find out where the producers, filmmakers, actors, and writers are gathering.
If you're interested in finding existing groups or creating a local community group, consider checking out the following website: https://meetup.com/. Meetup is a website that helps you find or host local events. Sometimes, you can find film- or video game-related events near you. If they aren't any nearby, consider starting a Meetup group yourself.
Another good place to start networking is at amateur film festivals, where there are always parties for meeting and greeting. Meet and greets at festivals may not be specifically listed on the event brochure. If so, ask around at the event, and you'll invariably discover that some members are going for refreshments afterward. At meet and greets, give your business card to everyone before you leave, and get their contact information. Do everything you can to make friends with the people who are the project creators.
After the event, send a text or email reminding people of who you are, something relevant to the conversation you had with them, and that you'd like to follow up. Perhaps send them a link to a song you made. Then, routinely follow up with them on a regular basis by calling or sending them a message to keep up to date with their activities. I have always found the atmosphere at amateur film festivals to be inclusive and welcoming to newcomers, so if you're new, this is a good place to start.
It's unlikely that meeting someone at a meet-and-greet event will land you a job outright. I've never seen that happen at a first meeting. It's always a series of bumping into the same people at several events until people eventually begin to recognize your face. Each time they see you, it becomes easier to make yourself relevant to their project. Then, when you feel it's time, mention you have some music you'd like to send to them for consideration.
Don't know what to do at these events to get started when networking or how to break the ice? Here are some safe conversation starters:
I find it's often good to play the new-in-town card. People like to introduce new people to events. You can ask what the host likes about the event and how they got into it and ask who's attending and whether you can be introduced to them. Even if you've been to a particular event once or twice before, sometimes it still helps to pretend that you'd like to be introduced around as this can make it easier to enter into a new circle.What project are you working on at the moment? Be genuinely curious and find out any details that you can about their project. People like to brag. When they brag, you can learn a lot if you listen.How did you get into ____? For example, directing, producing, writing, game making, and so on.You can volunteer to help organize existing networking events; this is an easy way to get your foot in the door and make yourself relevant. It might even give you the opportunity to show off some of your past work. Perhaps you can find some excuse for a demonstration to show off your past projects. If there's some way you can make a short presentation, it's a guaranteed way to get your face recognized at an event.
In order to get a composing gig, you usually need to have some previous music-composing experience. People want to see what you've created in the past before they can trust you. In the beginning, it may feel like a nasty loop you're stuck in. You need work to get experience, but you need experience to get work. What if you don't have any past work to point at? Then, you may need to create some work for yourself. Sign up to create films for amateur film festivals. Go to these film festivals and try to recruit people who are interested in creating a short film. These people may turn out to be looking to hire a composer further down the road or—more likely—happen to know an event to attend or someone who happens to be working on a project.
There are lots of film contests that are open to the public. If you're interested in submitting films to film festivals, the following website lists festivals, contact information, and submission criteria to enter into them: https://filmfreeway.com/. You can see a screenshot from the FilmFreeway website here:
Figure 1.1 – FilmFreeway
The FilmFreeway website has filters that help you narrow down the type of film that you want to participate in. You can filter for entry fees, countries, dates, and submission deadlines. The website breaks down film festivals into the following categories to make it easy to find the type of film you're interested in:
Figure 1.2 – FilmFreeway Categories
In addition to Categories, you can also filter by the film's genre/focus:
Figure 1.3 – FilmFreeway Festival Focus
If you're looking to find film festivals to participate in, FilmFreeway is an excellent resource.
In recent years, I've found Facebook to be a useful tool for cold calling. On Facebook, you can join Facebook groups dedicated to your local film- and game-making community. In these groups, you can see postings from people networking and
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