EP1 - Are You Selling Out for Sync

Do you think you need to change the way you write music to get it into TV & Film? I answer that question here… along with something the manager of the 'Sex Pistols' told me.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hey, it's Chris, and today I wanted to talk about whether you should write for Sync, meaning should you compose songs specifically to try to get it into TV and film or not, or just write your own stuff and then try to find the opportunities to do that.

So, I can go through a lot of different theories and things that I've heard and things that I've seen. I would prefer just to rely on my own long experience in Sync Songwriter, watching all the sync placements my students have gotten and how those have happened.

I can tell you that 90% of them have happened because they did not write for sync placements. So they didn't focus on trying to make music to fit into a particular show, movie, or ad. The whole idea is you can write as an artist and still get all kinds of sync placements by finding the opportunities that are looking for your kind of music.

So you don't just want to have a shotgun approach. You want to be able to take your music, figure out where it belongs first. So you're aiming at the dart board. You're not sort of having a blindfold on, pin the tail on the donkey or something, which of course never works. You want to know and be able to see the target that you're hitting... you're shooting at- to hit it in the bullseye. S

o. ultimately what it comes down to is figuring out, as an artist, what do I like to write? What do my fans want to hear? What satisfies my heart, my soul, my 13-year-old self that will approve it? Whatever that measuring stick is for you, go by that. Be faithful to your music.

My music supervisor friends always tell me they prefer authenticity. They want to hear something that's real, something that really touches you as a piece of art. Something that is really going to transport the listener, the viewer of the show, movie or ad into a place that is artistic and has the feeling of what the director intended.

So don't think about sync placements when you're writing your music. Write your music to be as true as it can to the goal that you've set out for yourself. After that, you can find the places where it belongs. You can find the right people who will put it in those places. That's the critical part.

Not to say that you can't write for sync. It happens all the time. It used to happen a lot more, you know, or especially if you write to cue, right? If you've got... if there's composers or people who are working for a studio, or they've hired you to score music for a movie and so on. You are writing for sync and there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and there's plenty of people who have success doing that.

But overall, if you really want to make sure your art is exactly what you want it to be, and at the same time be able to get it into TV and film, write from your heart. Don't try to second guess what you think you should do. It's the same old advice that you probably heard about. Don't write music to try to get a label deal. Be who you are.

So I have a little story that ties in really well with that.

So when I first started my band with my brother, we went to a conference and one of the keynote speakers was Malcolm McLaren. He was the manager of the Sex Pistols. So, we were a little late and we got into the venue. We were trying to get to the room where he was speaking, and he