Giving Up Control Over Your Music

As discussed on this Patreon many times before the current generation of media composers differs quite a bit from the generations of composers from just a few decades ago.

Quite a few of them are most comfortable in a DAW and don't just write the music but also produce it. This constellation leads to a degree of control over the music that goes way beyond what it used to be. Nowadays, you can shape, process, and alter the sound of the music to a granular detail. Technology allows to stitch together a performance out of dozens of takes, sometimes down to single notes. The choice of the instruments, the ambience, the microphones etc. has become a huge factor in the fetishization of sound in media music over the last couple of years.

And yet, even this creative process has the moments when you need to give up the ultimate control over your music.

At latest during the film dub when the music is put against the picture, the ultimate control will be lost. Unless you manage to be present all the time in that phase and shape the music to your liking (which only in very high budgeted movies is actually possible), you will need to allow for alterations to your initial vision. Even more control is lost in the playback chain for the audience. In spite of THX standards etc., movie theatres sound considerably different and the bad ones really have horrible sound. But also whether the audience consumes your music on their phones etc. obviously has a tremendous impact on the music.

But there is one major factor that has even more impact. Having experienced this with my own music but also as orchestrator for other composers, the biggest factor where you give up control is when it comes to orchestral recordings.

I've spend quite a bit of time explaining to composers that are used to the "ultimate DAW control" that there are loose factors in a scoring session that are beyond control. Most often, these discussions started when the composers asked me to start micromanaging score sheets, for instance by requesting to exactly replicate every nuance of their MIDI controller curves with dynamic markings in the score.

Real musicians can not be expected to behave mechanically and exactly replicate the same thing with every take. And even when you have the same musicians as before, for instance recording them on another day can make a huge difference, with some of the maybe being well rested while others having a bad day. Add the factors of room, temperature, mic placement etc. to this equation and the lack of perfect control becomes overwhelming.

I have a history of working with real orchestras since the beginning of my professional career and therefore I know relatively well where the "wiggle room" of such a performance is. However, when working as orchestrator for composers who have one of their first time experiences with orchestras, I can relatively often observe how stressed out they might become over the control they need to give up. They often tend to have a very clear idea of the sound in their head and fear that this might not translate well into notated form. Very often they ask whether there should be a verbal instruction written in the score that explains their idea and what they want where I very often advise to not clutter the page with endless instructions and let them do their thing first and if that is not to the composer's liking direct a few words at the conductor or the musicians.

From my experience, trying to micro manage the notation has rarely lead to the desired results. Often, verbal instructions in the score were misunderstood or ignored while just explaining in a few words what you want during the session has lead to a satisfactory result quickly.

And yet there were the occasional composers who were disappointed about the fact that the live musicians couldn't exactly replicate the performance that they had programmed into the demos using samples from players with a very characteristic playing. Just think about the currently very popular almost breaking sound of a solo cello that we hear in such scores like JOKER or THE REVENANT which is a very specific performance by the players that they recorded (or in the case of JOKER the playing of the composer herself) and a very specific micing of the signal which you can not expect from a "regular" section player in a scoring stage.

It takes quite a bit of experience to develop a feeling of what to expect when recording with musicians and also to anticipate where the interpretation might differ from the demo or the vision of the composer. On the other hand do I sometimes see that composers get so hung up in the idea of how it should sound that they lose the view for a different but maybe even better interpretation of their material.

Personally for me, I quite often embrace the lack of control that happens at several moments during the creation of music as it sometimes can lead to surprising new and fun new things. And considering the special circumstance of working with live musicians, the added view on the musical material by professional musicians with their own perspective can sometimes even be eye opening.

The composer who sits in their studio, controlling every parameter of their creation is a quite attractive stereotype of our generation, yet allowing the possibility or even embracing things to get out of control can open up the creative process to new and fascinating results.

No matter where on this spectrum you see yourself, it is essential to understand that there are moments when you simply need to let your work slip out of your control.