Danger's of composing for money.

[Chuck Lucy Finale]

I have never composed with the intent to please other's ears, so I'm curious of those who do. Do you ever feel that your music has suffered because you are trying to please an audience? Perhaps it won't affect you if your music tends toward the mean.

[Deane Ogden]

The trick is that if you *love* music but do not *love* film, you aren't going to be very satisfied as a composer for film (or TV, or whatever...).

You have to have passion for both. It amazes me how many "film composers" cannot name for me their Top 5 favorite movies. That's like a professional football player not being able to name his favorite games. It's just not going to happen if you are truly into the gig.

My music has never suffered in lieu of trying to please an audience. I am 200% proud of everything I've written so far. Now, that's not to say that I think some things I've done are better than others, but I have never felt like I wrote "a bad score" because I was worried about pleasing people's fickle tastes.

When you write to film, there has to be a part of you that assumes that some people just aren't going to "get it"... It could be that they don't like the genre, the actors, the director's style, or the music. It really doesn't matter. Film is subjective and highly personal, just like music.

There is never a "right" answer.

Deane Ogden
http://www.scorecastonline.com

[Tyler]

Nope, because there is always an audience to listen to what ever I make, no matter how weird or strange or me it is. The concern for pleasing an audience is really mostly a popular music or music intended for a large audience thing. Usually in the fine arts world of music, the audience doesn't have an expectation. They just want to hear you as a composer. Look at the composers of the 20th century to now. Do you think Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Webern, Cage, Reich, Torke, ect., wrote music for the masses? They wrote in styles that were, at there times, revolutionary and/or controversial. Some of these composers music is still controversial and if presented to a mass audience would not be at all appreciated.

Now when it comes to film or other incidental music, then you might have to compromise yourself a little. But that is because the music is not the main focus, but instead it is a contributing factor to a large art that you as the composer have little to no control. When scoring films, you are mostly trying to enterprate what the director wants for the film.

[Kento]

There's an article on this topic by Hugh Macleod, the author of gapingvoid.com which he calls the "sex & cash theory". In short, the idea is that you will always need a kind of daytime job that has more limitations to contrast the more chaotic freedom of "sex", but the "cash" can be good for training artistic skills, even if it is "cash" and not "sex".

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html