Your style is too old fashioned!

Does it bother anyone, who may be a decent composer of an older genre (whose style is mainly influenced by older styles,) that you can't get hired to do a music project/soundtrack because your style is too old fashioned sounding? Take movies for example. Some old movies have excellent soundtracks. If you were to compose something of equal quality for a new movie, it would not be accepted because it has a old sound to it. How it is organized is of a different standard, just like movies are different nowadays. What do you think about that correlation, and how do you best describe the differences of today's expectations and of yesteryear's, if you were to get hired for something big.

Well you have to keep in mind the people who are hiring you. They want something specific for their movie and if you can not deliver what they want they wont hire you.

Take example a movie I just scored:

I learned for the first time that I have to filter my own creative voice in order to deliver what the director wanted. I dont write in an old fashion style, in fact I have had to learn how to write in ALL styles. This years movie required me to write in a folk Americana style that I am not use to writing in, but that was because the movie focused on Americana themes of working class families struggling while still maintaining a lightheartedness undertone. Last year the composers that wrote the music for last years movie had to learn how to write in a pop style due to the fact that the director wanted pop music that fits the scene.

You kind of have to be able to write in many styles instead of one in order to really market yourself as a composer of incidental music for film, theater, and other media outlets. Composer who limit themselves to one type of music can not possibly deliver the kind of music every one would want attached to their project.

You have to remember that a big project is a collaborative effort on all parts and you have to find a middle ground. As a composer to a major project, you are just a small part of a big thing.

I agree. On the other hand, I do like perfection a certain style of music, and I may not be ready to show off to all. But I always like to keep an open mind since its a requirement to score to others expectations. I'm always worried that they may not appreciate my flair, or that I'm being too original with it. It's not necessarily that it sounds too much like one thing, but that what the person who hired me says I want this and not so much of this. He puts it in vague terms for me. I always have a problem just copying some form, that I always need a fresh sheet in front of me. It's something I have to learn to handle.

Yeah!!! That happens to me all the time! Actually sometimes I get worse things: "Sounds like a videogame." I almost thought about writing for Video games, but I'll stick to my Romantic ideas. I agree with the guy above though, you have to be flexible, but it doesn't mean that you can't put a part of yourself in your music.

I think you have to bend a lot for film writing since there's so much collaboration, more-so than most genres, that goes into the final product. That being said, I don't know why you would come across so many directors that want new, modern sounds. If anything, film seems to be a place where you can revel in tonality and romantic orchestration without fear of judgment.

Keep in mind that even long ago in the days of yore, artists and composers have always had that problem and will always continue to have it. For example if you were living in Vienna in the 1780's and composed something in the style of the old 'pedantic' Bach (baroque) you would get laughed out of the city and nothing of yours would be performed. Similarly if you're in the mid to late 1800's and you write something that sounds like Mozart while all your contemporaries are writing Lisztian, Wagnerian, Berliozian things then you'll get laughed at and ignored and none of your works will be commissioned nor performed. So this is a perennial problem we all face, in the end if you're unable or unwilling to adapt you're basically relegated to keeping your passion as a hobby, i.e. compose on the side for your own pleasure and that of your friends and family, that's what most of us who are classical/baroque revivalists do anyway. We have no delusions about one day being famous/discovered/hired/signed to do classical-esque/baroque sounding 'pastiches.'

It bothers me that the standard composer mentality seems to have become this sense of entitlement that puts us above being judged my an audience. If you're asking people to listen to your music or pay for it, learn to deal with it. We've played up the victimized "no one understands my art" anecdote quite enough.

"I think you have to bend a lot for film writing since there's so much collaboration, more-so than most genres, that goes into the final product. "

I'm far from a seasoned filmscorer, but I've got one commercially-released indie flick under my belt and I can confirm the above from my own experience. The first thing to realize is that it ain't your project. It might *feel* like it is, and it can give you huge satisfaction (I've never felt anything quite like I felt when hearing my score played back from behind a 40 foot screen on a beautifully-tuned system at a small theater at Fox studios for the premiere). But the director is the storyteller, and if he decides the best cue you've written gets in the way of his vision for a scene, it's gone in a heartbeat. And sometimes, even with the director on your side, the producers or even the film editors can convince them to drop or edit a cue they don't like.

And the real kicker is...they are probably correct more often than you are. Not always, but let's face it--they make movies and we write music. It's a movie, not a concert.

The best you can do is to learn the script inside and out, talk with the director and learn his/her take on the project, what it should feel like to the audience. And hopefully, if you set aside your own prejudices, when you do express yourself it will be within the parameters the director has given you to work with.

I did persuade my director to go in some directions he didn't originally want. I regret a couple of those decisions now--I think my instincts here and there were too 'tv' for a feature film--and the others I'm fine with.

I see a lot of movies--3-4 per week. I started when I got the film assignment and just never stopped. There are definitely movies made with grand old-fashioned scores. They aren't usually thrillers or youth-targeted romantic comedies, but they exist (Defiance comes to mind). These are expensive scores to record, of course, and most films don't have anywhere near that kind of budget, so we hear a lot more cheap scores with one-finger ominous sampled drones these days.

But check out Marco Beltrami, for a good example of a guy who pulls it off by often including one or two full orchestra cues with smaller cues fleshing out the rest of his score. he's a current fav.