Reasons to hire a Music Composer

Whether you are a seasoned or amateur film maker, you will need to understand that music in a motion picture does affect the mood significantly. When you have a scene of a person who is dying, a sad music theme will greatly enhance the feel of the whole thing.

Some film makers decide to go for a cheaper alternative, which is what many people call, the "Stock Music". These music are pre-composed music uploaded by composers, which are extremely cheap and are royalty-free. They go by a cheap monthly subscription basis, and users have a full access to thousands of different music to choose from.

But, cheap things always has its downsides. When we talk about film music, there are many sync points in a film to take note of. Take for example, a sudden scene change at timing 01:20:12 from an action cue to a romantic cue. If the film maker were to use stock music, it will have an abrubt change which it may not sound natural. This is where a Music Composer comes into play.

Composed music is generally much more expensive, and the price range varies with the experience and the status of the different composers out there. Some may charge as low as US$500 for a 3mins music cue, and some may charge upwards of US$10k or even much more!

The reason for the high pricing is because composing music takes a lot of work and man hours. A piece of 1 minute music may take around 1 full day or up to a full week to complete, depending on the complexity of it, and the speed of the composer.

One thing to note is that composing a piece of music does not just involve composing its melody. There are other things to include for its final deliverables like the chords, the instrumentation, the MIDI samples and many more. Besides, there will also be studio production time where an engineer needs to audio mix the entire thing, and it would take even longer if there are live players involved in the production of the music.

In general, most film makers, when the budget allows, will definitely choose having a music composer to compose the film's music, instead of choosing stock music. Below is a summary of the pointers:

1. Flexibility

Having composed music gives the flexibility in the video editor to make different cuts, which the composer will be able to sync to. In such sense, the composer will sync his music composition to the video edits, rather than the other way round.

2. Greater Feel

Not all sad / happy music brings out the same sad / happy feel. The best way to bring the best out of it is when the composer sits down and views the motion picture, and composes his music based on the scenes that he sees. This brings a greater feel and experience to the entire show!

3. Best value

Though its more expensive, the video editor is free to edit the scenes, and after editing, it can be returned to the music composer to re-edit his music to fit the new video cuts in the film.

Besides all these, the last and most important pointer is that when you have an original composed piece of music, and if it goes viral, there is an additional income called "Royalties". These can increase revenue to the overall business revenue of the film.

Have you decided if you are looking for a composed piece of music?

Alvin Khoo is a musician who manages his events company supplying Wedding Live Band at Musical Touch. He writes on an ad hoc basis on topics and live band for Corporate Events.