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[rogerlevy]

Someone suggested on my topic in Audio to post here (C.A. Sinclair) so here we go.

I'm interested in doing freelance composition for video games (and possibly other things but right now just concentrating on that), and I'm just trying to get some pointers. I did Protonaut last year and enjoyed that a lot, Andy Moore and Greg Wohland gave me a lot of time and space for experimentation so what came out of that was both good and slightly profitable.  But not all my experiences were as awesome as that.  So, I want to do more, and I want to do it right.  How should I self promote?  What works? 

(Btw I should add I'm not planning on making this my sole source of income, just thought I should mention that.)

I recently made this demo reel.  So far the responses have all been good.  Where should I show it? 

OK, post is long enough.  Whatever you have for me, I'm willing to take.  Domo arigatou

[Vino]

I think that more than just a demo reel you should have a website with information about yourself. What games you've worked on is one of the most important things you can relate, shipped-title experience is pretty essential to getting work so doing free work for any indie games or mods that you think have a good chance of shipping is a good call.

It's good that you have a nice mix of different songs in your reel. As an employer I would want to see someone who can do a large variety of music. I like your music by the way. What tools are you using?

It might help you to do sound design as well, because composers are some of the poorest people in game development and sound designers are slightly less poor.

Conferences, while expensive, are a great way to network and hand out your card.

Good luck!

[rogerlevy]

I've used a mix of tools; from Soundforge and Cakewalk way back, to Audacity, FL Studio, Reason, pxTone, and a handful of VST's, Soundfonts, and a sizable collection of samples.

Well, I hope not to be poor.  I kind of have this naive dream that my stuff would be a major enough part of the games I work on that I'd be ... "included" accordingly.  I think that music is way more important to the game experience than people realize - look at VVVVVV.  very simple and stark game; without that first-class soundtrack, would people enjoy it to the extent?

I'm willing to do "spec" work - is that the right term for that?  I also do sound design, but not a ton.

Thanks for your advice.

[LazyWaffle]

Good luck, your demo reel is awesome! Anyway, there's not much more to say. Just set up a website with your demo reel, and some other music you've done. In addition, I'd definitely put your resume up if you're freelancing. From there, just look for people who need composers and direct them to your site. Once again, good luck, your talent is too good to put to waste

[rogerlevy]

Hey guys, does anyone think it would be alright to have an audio-portfolio website built totally in Flash?  Is that a bad idea?  I have this idea for a pretty cool site that I intend on building myself.

[Perrin]

Hey guys, does anyone think it would be alright to have an audio-portfolio website built totally in Flash?  Is that a bad idea?  I have this idea for a pretty cool site that I intend on building myself.

I'd always recommend building against building website in Flash. It's not really the done thing anymore and hasn't been in a long time. Flash is really nice for games and embedded media like music and video but not for content and structure of your site.

[bauer]

Nice work, I really like the reel! Keep it up and you'll get rewarded with lots and lots of cash!

[cliffski]

I've employed a number of musicians over the years and paid thousands of dollars to them. I've also spent a lot of time looking for musicians.
The situation as I see it is this:

1) You have an absurdly hard job. the market is FLOODED with musicians wanting to do game music. I get roughly 1 application to do music for my games every week. As I do a game every 12-18 months, thats a lot of oversupply.

2) From my POV, the point of your website is to prove to me you can do high quality music of the style I like. If your homepage is flash, I don't care, but it also doesn't impress me. I'm not after a web designer, but a composer. The best thing is to make sure you have as many examples as possible, in as many styles as possible. References from happy customers is welcome too.

I've maybe looked at 100 different composers websites. At least 10 of them I skipped immediately because they had some fancy plugin to display their music samples which wouldnt work, or took ages to pre-load stuff. Simple wav or mp3 files ALWAYS work.

Good Luck, i hope this helped, even though it might sound a bit negative, just saying how it is. The good news is, that money is rarely a factor in picking a musician. Having the ability to do the right style is more important than being 20% cheaper.

[rogerlevy]

Thanks, cliffski.  I think that was exactly what I was looking for, and some of your points are definitely going to influence the portfolio site I'm working on. 

Do you think it would be a good idea in my case to learn more styles?  I mean, would you personally have wanted to use any of the styles that were in my reel?  This is sort of just a survey sample.   I am going to set up my portfolio site with the reel and basic info (incl. my single credit ) first and then think about styles I could hone or branch out into.

[rogerlevy]

OK, I'm working on my site and one thing I'm worried about is contact.  I cringe at the thought of having my email be a mailto link, for a bunch of reasons one of them being the concern that I'll get nothing but spam.  Should I build a contact form?

EDIT: Duh.  Yes, I should.

[weasello]

Or: just get a decent inbox that has good spam filtering. My email address is open and available in plaintext & mailto links all over the web (even as a sig in some forums!) and GMail has yet to let a single spam through.

[rogerlevy]

Truueee... well, FoxyForm made the contact form too easy NOT to do... I'll have both. I reeeeally don't want people to have a reason to say "well, I don't see any contact form, screw this" or "well, I don't see any email link, screw this".

[rogerlevy]

Well, it's done.  Let's see what happens.