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Blog2019-12-20T01:05:50+02:00

November 2019 Q&A

How to email music supervisors, how to research music libraries, how I got rid of the perfectionist mindset, how you can organize your catalogue and track your music submissions.

October 2019 Q&A

What’s a stinger? How should you structure songs for licensing? How much should you charge for a license in a music library? Which application form do you need to fill out to register songs with the US Copyright Office?

August 2019 Q&A

In today's live session, we talked about best practices to get your music on popular TV shows, how to prepare stem files, which songs to choose when you submit music and how having your music on Spotify can impact your licensing opportunities.

July Q&A

In today's live session, we talked about saving time on metadata, finding libraries that have lots of visitors, an easy way to think about loudness levels, how to handle ISRCs, stem files and lots more.

June Q&A

In today's live session, I answered and shared my thoughts on two big questions. 1- Do you still get royalties when your music is in a "royalty-free" library? 2- How do you overcome the fear of submitting music? Both answers are counter-intuitive.

May Q&A

First ever Creative & Productive YouTube live session. We talked about mixing and mastering for film and TV, how to write good emails that get answered, music libraries that buy-out your tracks, how the market of sync music has changed over time.

Booohooo…. I’m not famous or rich yet…

Do you know what's the best way to freak out? Comparing yourself to others! And what's the best way to keep your sanity? Take it step by step, little by little, Celebrate your accomplishments and never EVER forget: YOU'RE ONLY HUMAN! It's fine if you binge on TV shows once in a while. You SHOULD be spending quality time with friends and family. Life is NOT about working or hustling all the time. At least not for me. Now go ahead and download your FREE Weekly Planning Tool. It's help you remember to celebrate your accomplishments and hopefully avoid overwhelm.

Mozart and David Bowie Are Not That Great…

Or are they? ? STOP comparing yourself to others in the public eye! While there are some genius exceptions and some not so genius exceptions (hello reality-TV)… QUALITY COMES WITH QUANTITY, wait for it…. OVER TIME! 99.9% of the time. In other words, practise, practise, practise, create, create, create and ENJOY the journey while you’re at it. Before you know it, you’ll have created TONS of quality music! You may never reach the heights of Mozart or Bowie but you sure can try and get as close as you possibly can! Pep Talk Key Takeaways But guess what? They also wrote some pretty crappy tunes! Mozart wrote between 41 and 68 symphonies depending on who you ask. Beethoven's best known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets. The Beatles recorded 237 original songs (on top of 70 cover songs!). What's the point otherwise? Life is a journey made of ups and downs. The life of a musicians tends to have higher highs and lower lows. Try to enjoy the journey. Ready To Make More Music? Check out the exact method I used to write exactly 100 tunes in the space of 12 months. At the time, I was traveling as part of my full-time office job.

The Truth About Time? You have plenty of it!

Think you don't have enough time to do anything? Think again 😉 Every week is made up of 168 hours. Here are a few assumptions: 8 hours in the office 5 days a week 8 hours of sleep every night 1.5 hours to get ready in the morning 1 hour commute twice a day 5 days a week 1 hour lunch and 1 hour dinner 5 hours a week to buy groceries, keep the house clean and do laundry That leaves 32.5 hours a week for your family, your creative projects and, not to be neglected, YOU! Your schedule could look something like this: Now I'm not suggesting you follow this schedule exactly, nor any schedule for that matter. But I AM suggesting you take the time to sit down and map out what your non-negotiable commitments are and where you can gain some wiggle room. For example, some of you may be able to negotiate working from home a couple of days a week to save time on commuting. Perhaps you can afford to delegate some of the house stuff like cleaning and laundry or you can start ordering online and having your groceries delivered at home during the week to avoid spending endless hours shopping for food on Saturdays. If you have kids and spend your weekends driving them from one place to another, maybe it's time to take a minute and ask yourself if they need to be participating in every single social event or if they might enjoy spending more [...]

Hey there lazy, this one’s for you!

You know that feeling you get when you start thinking about all the things you have to do? It's the same feeling you often get when you compare where you are to where you want to be. You've been busting your ass off and can't seem to make any progress, you feel like you're no closer to reaching your goal or living your dream. You start beating yourself up, telling yourself you're lazy and not good enough, that you should probably just accept your fate and stop even trying. Well... it doesn't have to be that way! First of all, EVERYBODY is "lazy"! At least everybody I enjoy spending time with. I'm not interested in robots who act like they have it all figured out. I LOVE my "lazy" friends who have time to hang out with me. I LOVE being "lazy" and watching a good movie with my family. Not choosing to work 80 hours a week is not being lazy, it's living a life that's actually worth living! Having said that, if you work a 40 hour a week office job and are looking to spend more time on music or other creative projects, I explain how you can work 80 hours a week and have a great time doing it (well... at least for the 40 hours outside of the office if you don't enjoy that part at all) right over here. So... getting back to the sense of overwhelm and how to avoid it, here's my technique: get [...]

The Muse Strikes by 9 A.M.

Building a morning routine that includes a 30 minute music session has been the single most impactful decision in my life when it comes to composing. Before that, I used to wait for inspiration to strike. For periods of time, the muse showed up fairly often and then it stopped, for months at a time, as I got distracted by life. Between 2003 and 2006, I must have written and composed 10 songs per year, maybe a little bit less, probably not a little bit more. Lyrics, melodies and arrangements came pretty easily and I was happy. Then I lost a loved one and got writer's block for the first time. Between 2006 and 2011, I probably wrote 10 new tunes, maybe 15. Then in 2012, feeling lonely in a big city (London if you ask), I went to music school and started learning about sound engineering, sound design, orchestration, mixing, jingle writing and all sorts of fun and exciting stuff. By the time I got back to Paris in 2014, I had another 15-20 tunes ready. Didn't do much in 2015 as tragedy struck again. What I'm showing here is that between 2003, when I started writing my own songs, and 2015, my musical output was a slave to my emotions. The first period as an enthusiastic 20 something was pretty fruitful until I started doubting myself and asking too many questions. Then another productive spell came as I found myself isolated and sought comfort in music until life through poop in my [...]

Can a creative be productive?

Mmmmm... let me think... Many many years ago, a pompous math student argued that artists don’t produce anything of value. I looked at him, just as confused as he looked at me. We simply didn’t get each other. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about what artists in general and musicians in particular bring to the world. I’ve narrowed it down to a simple idea: art brings excitement to our lives. Whether we love or loathe a piece of art, art makes us feel alive. Excitement is what keeps us going. Love, friendship, sky-diving, music, horror movies, adventure books, board games, spirituality, all these occupations give us a sense of purpose. Without any of these, there’s not much left. On the other side of excitement comes boredom, when we struggle to connect our existence with a deeper meaning. An area of my life that has left me feeling dull and unexcited in the past few years is work. * * * In the corporate world, productivity is everything. The employee trades their time for money as companies seek to maximise the return on that particular investment. Depending on the company and employee, the pressure to deliver is more or less humane, often times comparable to caged animals in a zoo. Similar to casinos, it seems, the house always win. Think about it. Let’s say you work full-time in an office for 4,000$/month. That’s about 1,000$/ week which comes down to 200$/working day. That’s what most would consider a good monthly salary, 200$ for about 8 hours of your time. Yet, [...]

10 steps to get started

Hi there, This is a post for composers who don't know where to start, beginners or seasoned musicians who are in a rut and want to get going (again). Step 1: block out the next 30 minutes, set your timer and commit to no distractions until it goes off Step 2: open your DAW Step 3: import a song you like and find inspiring Step 4: change the tempo of your DAW project to the song imported (tip: download a BPM counter on your smartphone and start tap tap-ing) Step 5: listen to the song while writing down the arrangement in your DAW (e.g. intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, bridge, chorus, instrumental, chorus, chorus, outro) Step 6: listen to the song again, and over and over as you create one new instrument track for each new element of the song you hear (e.g. drums, bass, rhythmic guitar, lead guitar, vocals, violins, ear candy, riser) Step 7: keep listening to the song as you add empty blocks where each instrument is active Step 8: delete the song you imported earlier from your DAW Step 9: save your project (it's an important one that one, don't forget to save your project!) Step 10: get going! Choose the instruments you're going to use (analog or otherwise) and fill in those blocks!

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