First off, describe exactly what you do.
I am a musician who plays a bunch of different instruments like guitar, bass, ukulele, lap steel and keyboards. Through a friend I got to do the music for a couple of MTV shows — just some background music. That turned into 13 shows. Also, I just got a position for the Reverend Run show, Run's House, doing all the background music for the entire show — like, a composer for the series. Before, a lot of this stuff was "spec".
Spec, meaning freelance?
Meaning I wouldn't get paid a licensing fee, but I would get royalties from BMI on the back end. So it was kind of like a promise that in the future I would get something, which is cool if you're just using stuff you already have. But if you have to sit there and record stuff for them then it's a gamble, because you don't know how much money you are going to get or if you are going to get any money.
You're kidding me!
They're not known for being very generous. That's a reputation thing, but they will use your music if they like it and promise you royalties in the future.
Do you mind me asking how much you are getting from the royalties?
With royalties, it's really unpredictable. I have stuff on a lot of shows and some seasons just a couple of shows will run. That will be reflected in the check. Then some seasons a bunch of shows will run at the same time, and they usually do 30 cycles for three months for each one if the show is successful. That pays off. If it's a good quarter, it can be $15,000 to $20,000.
Daaaaamn!
But then it could be a $1000 check. The other thing is that you have to get in a cycle with royalties. You get the first royalty payment nine months after the show airs. So you have to wait. If I did music today for a show, it wouldn't air for another two months. Then nine months from that time is when you get paid. So really it's eleven months to a year when you'll get paid. You have to be in the cycle of getting old checks so that you can keep getting money and not wait for it. But in the time in between royalty checks, I'm also getting paid to write sound-a-likes. If they can't afford to use Quincy Jones or Herb Albert, if they can't afford to pay the licensing fees or they don't want spend the money on them, then they have a guy like me who writes music in his closet and who will write a sound-a-like. And they'll get a couple for a lot less than what they would pay for a license. And those [licensing] fees are a lot — if you were going to buy a licensing fee of let's say, Herb Albert, that could be $4000 without even using the real master of it. Basically what I do is make background music for these shows and I copy music in a lot of different styles. They have me doing all kinds of different stuff, but I try to maintain a thread of my style, which I think doesn't take itself too seriously. A lot of stock music is just that — stock. I try to keep it interesting. It is commercial music, so you got to crank it out, but you don't want to do it like you're going through the motions.
Name off all the equipment you use for this job.
I have a pretty old G4 with, believe it or not, only 450 MHz, that I got for $200.
And it's able to handle everything?
I don't know how, but I have the memory maxed out. It has Tiger on it and I'm running Logic 7 and Reason 3. As an interface, right now I just have an M-Audio MobilePre USB. I'm going to add a really good mic pre very soon. I sometimes use a Presonus TubePre before the M-Audio to warm and/or dirty things up, especially direct bass. I have a couple of nice condenser mics — the Audio Technica 2020 and 2021, large and small condensers. And then I have an old Sennheiser stage vocal mic that I really like for certain vocals and guitars. I have an M-Audio 61-key controller that I use for programming melodies or for Logic or whatever. I try to mix on the same speakers that the editors use for the Avid systems, these Roland speakers that are nothing to speak of.
But they're using them at a professional level?
Yeah. I got a set of them from the guy that outfits MTV with their systems. I have used those lots of times to mix the TV stuff because I know that's where they're going to be listening to it a lot. And because they are crappy speakers, if you get a really good sound out of them, it sounds really balanced. I try out a lot of different sound systems, but they are a great starting point.
They're probably mimicking what a TV speaker system is like.
Yeah, it's very close. I think it's good to try multiple speakers — like I have some iPod speakers that are really good for that because they're really small and you can't hear the stereo mix, because the speakers are so close together.
How do you do drums?
Sampled drums tend to go over well, so a lot of times I will make drum loops in Reason, or I'll take samples in Logic and make a little drum track. But a lot of the TV spots are so short — a lot of times they run for 15 seconds and they are not usually over two minutes — so you can get away with using a pretty static track and then adding fills and what not. It doesn't have to be too creative, because a lot of the time they don't want to distract from the scene.
It's crazy that you can make a living off that simple of a setup. And as budgets go, nothing seems more than $300.
All the stuff that I've done, meaning all the TV music and my record Better Late Than Never, which is maybe 200 pieces of music, I didn't pay a dollar to record it. It's music that plays all over the world on TV and it's made in a tiny walk-in closet with a very minimal setup. I don't have a maxed-out studio. You wouldn't believe it if you saw it. The reason why I have been able to do this is that I have always been recording. I started out with a Yamaha 4-track. If you have a great setup, sure, it's easier to work. You don't have to do the little "rigs" that you have to do on my system. Like before I got Logic, I was making tracks in Reason and doing a sub- mix of that and exporting into Pro Tools and adding stuff on top of that. It was just a lot of extra steps that now I don't really have to deal with as much because Logic has MIDI in it.
Was Logic the most expensive thing you bought?
It probably was. But it was well worth it. It's great — very intuitive. Getting it set up was a little tough because I'm not some super-tech, but I finally got it going, and ever since then it's been really easy to make stuff.
Is there room for creativity in your work?
