Musical Career Paths That Aren't Starting a Band

There’s music in all areas of life. Starting a band or setting up a solo project might be the career that most musicians aspire to, but there are lots of different industries that can use our skills. Somebody has to make calming lift music that’s just the right level of annoying, working out tunes that keep nervous lift users relaxed but don’t send commuters to sleep. Someone too needs to create music for video games, with everything from the almost endless catalog of slots games, of which the best are collated by the team at comparison platform oddschecker, to major Triple ‘A’ console titles each requiring catchy and fitting backing soundscapes. It might be that your calling is creating emotive music for films, capturing the stories of the characters on screen in complex melodies. The point is, there’s a lot more to music than what’s at the top of the Billboard charts. Here are some career paths that prove that.

Creating Games Music

As we mentioned already, creating music for games is a worthwhile and often lucrative career. It should go without saying that this career path will probably suit those who already have an interest in gaming and it will be absolutely necessary for you to have a real flair for composing your own music. A lot of games studios involve their music creators with the rest of their sound team too, so if you find it fascinating how sounds-effects from ray guns to dragons and crumbling rocks are made to sound totally realistic, then this could be a great job perk too. Although a degree isn’t essential for entering into this career path, it can provide a breadth of knowledge and often a bit of a shortcut to the more creative positions.

If you decide that this could be the career for you then strap yourself in. Creating the score for games provides an exciting and challenging career path, particularly for those who are keen gamers already. You could be working on so many different styles of music in this career that no matter how niche your tastes, there’d be projects that you would simply adore. Those who love rave music might find themselves working on something zippy for a car racing game, or something super electronic for a space age slots title. Whatever you end up working on, you’ll need to be able to compose quickly and create polished sounds working from an, often small, studio. Thinking about music as cues instead of full compositions can be a helpful skill to develop, as well as studying the game music that is widely accepted as brilliant.

Film Scores

Whilst writing music for games can often be very fast-paced and quite a solo experience, writing scores for films is quite the opposite. Although we all know the likes of Hans Zimmer, there’s a whole team of people around him that make his epic scores possible. Like game music creation, you can get a degree in film score composition, but it tends to be a master’s degree. You could choose to study for a bachelor’s in music more generally and then seek an internship at a film production company.

Whatever route you choose to begin this career, it will certainly be an exciting one. You’ll be working with lots of talented musicians, collaborating to achieve music that is powerful and poignant. As well as your fellow musicians, there’ll be times when you need to sit in with actors, directors, and writers to seek out the parts in films that require amplifying with music. It’s for this reason that versatility and the ability to listen, take feedback well, and collaborate effectively are all essential skills that you will need as a film score composer. You also need to be well versed in a variety of different music, some films have dance music scores, others classical. As a general rule of thumb, a ninety-minute film will need forty-five minutes of original music and there are usually around two to four months to complete the work. That’s quite a lot of music in quite a short space of time when you consider that an album can take years to create, and is often around the same runtime.

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