Latest / 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast / Production Music Q&A LIVE!

Transcript

Production Music Q&A LIVE! · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Good afternoon, good afternoon everybody.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: This is Dave Kroff and welcome to the 52Q's podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Whether you are just starting out or maybe you're a seasoned professional, I guarantee you you are in the right place.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Like I said, my name is Dave Kroff and it is so good to be with you today.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We are live.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We are live with our friends across the world.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It is so good to be with you for a very special live Q&A episode and we are recording this.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It's going to be great, really looking forward to spending a fantastic hour with you answering your questions.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: We've got questions from the 52Q's community and we're going to be taking your questions live as well.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So far, we've got Thomas, pete, jake, dex, linda Les was hanging out with us a little bit earlier.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: We've got Del also hanging out in the chat.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: What is good, everybody, it is so good to be with you.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Hey, if you enjoy what we do here at 52Q's, why don't you give this video a thumbs up?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Or, if you're listening on the podcast app, go ahead and enter a five star review.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: For me, it really does help folks, just like you find me.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: But again, as I mentioned, every week, this episode, this entire channel will not be possible without the incredible support of our member subscribers at 52Q's, who give their real, actual, real life money to help keep all of this afloat.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And so, in addition to being members of the community, they also get extra features like live streams, workshops, zoom feedback sessions, hours and hours and hours of archives and the opportunities to submit their cues to real music libraries.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So, hey, if you're feeling stuck and maybe you're ready to take your career to the next level and you want to really push into sync music, then head over to 52Q'scom and join us.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It is free to join and membership plans start at just four dollars a month.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So it is so good, like I said, it is so good to be with you today.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: We're going to have a fantastic, a fantastic time, so let's go ahead and jump in.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Good to see Jens, good to see Yuka.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, you are some of my favorite people.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: It is so good to have everybody, everybody, with us.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Dex is over in London staying up late, but no band playing in the background.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dex was a is an alumnus of our Mastermind program, and I want to say on the front end our Mastermind, our January Mastermind, is very, very, very close to being sold out, to the point where, if there is interest in in having more because usually we cap out at six, maybe seven, but usually we cap out at six but if there is interest, I am totally open to opening up a second section, possibly afternoon section for folks in the US and a morning section in for folks over in the UK, or even further, even further beyond GST.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So, if you are interested, head over to 52Qscom, slash Mastermind.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: That cranks up the second week of January and really, really looking forward to all of that.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: But I think I'll have to check with Mrs 52Qs I'm not sure if she's in the chat yet, but at last I looked.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: We might only have one seat available and we just we just opened opened the doors on Tuesday for that.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: So, like I said, if that's something that you are interested in, head over to 52Qscom, slash Mastermind and register.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: We do have payment plans and all of that.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: It's a 12-week program Would love to have you covering everything from project management, task management to pitching, to libraries, to motivation, sustainable creativity.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of folks who are, who are members of the community, who are alumnus alumni, alumni of the Mastermind program, and it is a really, really good thing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: All right, so I want to jump right in with with our questions.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: We've got questions from, like I said, from all over the community, and we're going to go ahead and start with Dell.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I know Dell is here and Dell says what is our asks?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: What is the best approach for adding edit points to tracks?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Crossfading within the structure of the track itself or adding a bar between sections?
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: That's a fantastic question and let's, let's, let's, keep in mind what edit points are for there, there to help give pauses and breaks for editors to to cut add dialogue If it's a dramedy queue, add punchlines, and good edit points are are like like the like the great wall of China.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: They are visible from space, and so, if I pull up, this is this is just my SoundCloud page here and you can actually see the edit point.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: So this is a queue called Pounce De Leon, which is a, which is an African action queue that we did during one of the live streams over at 52 queues.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So coming up to this edit point, right, so that is an edit point, so we come back out of it.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Another edit point this is a a queue called Sneak Charmer, a little dramedy queue Now for me.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Now those were two different types of edit points.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: They were both kind of cliffhanger-y edit points, but one kind of lands onto the downbeat Right.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: So one, two, three, four stop on a pause and that pause can be on tonic or it can be on, you know, five, quarter, something like that, creating kind of a cliffhanger moment.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: So that was one, two, three, four downbeat.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Let me back that up a little bit more for you so you can kind of see it Pause, let let the audio tails fade, naturally, but don't don't artificially dive them down and you don't need to go to absolute zero where a snake charmer happens a little bit Two, three, four, one and two and three, and right, one and two and three and and it creates that little pause and then things kind of sneak back in and a good editor can go in and chop that and create lots of space.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: So so that is how I do edit points.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: As far as crossfading, I don't always add a bar I it.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It's not an always thing.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: The reason is because some tempos don't require it, some audio tails don't require it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I kind of have it breathe a little bit.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Let's look at another one.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Like I said, good edit points are visible from space.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Here's another, another edit point.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: This is a cue called Tyka on me.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: It's a Japanese percussion cue.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: All right, so that one wasn't a full beat.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Let's see if we can find any.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Here's some some more edit points.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Dramadis cues have tons of little edit points all all throughout.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Let me fast forward a little bit.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: All right, so that was just a beat right there.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So that's how I think about edit points and I hope, hope, that makes sense.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Dell, I know you're in the in the chat and if you have any follow-ups, please, please, let me know.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: But that's how I think about edit points, either on the downbeat or on the like, the off, on the and the sections.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: So excellent, excellent, excellent.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Also, editors don't always call them edit edit points.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: We learned from one of the workshops we did with with one of our editors, josh Siegel.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: They call them stop downs, stop downs where a little break in the action and then things come back.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: And then Dell's follow-up question to quantize or not to quantize?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: That is the question.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Here is my rule of thumb for quantizing If it is an instrument that it would be played by a human with their hands or face, then we have a little bit of wiggle room where we can not quantize.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: But it is a super fine line between something that sounds quantized and something that sounds like an or sounds unquantized and something that sounds organic, let me say.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Let me say that again, there's a fine line between something that sounds organic and something that sounds kind of sloppy and and has an error.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Now, when we're dealing with MIDI instruments, you know, I have a keyboard here, I have a keyboard down here there are myriad things that can interrupt the performance, and I don't mean you.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: You can put your hands on the instrument, but you might have I don't know, you might have a CPU spikes because some drop box decided to suddenly start syncing.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: You might get an email, you might have a fat finger moment, it could be weird.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Latency there are so many things that can affect a performance, a MIDI performance, that is beyond your control.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Introducing latency into the signal, you add one, one plug in and it adds a ton of latency.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So because of that I feel like I can't always trust my own MIDI performances.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: So I always hard quantize and then ease the strength of those quantizing I will if I'm doing like layered strings.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I won't just hard copy and paste those.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I'll actually perform them.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: For the most part, I'll perform them multiple times so that each layer has its own quantization variables.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And so I'll hard quantize, lock everything to the grid and then ease the quantization by about 15 to 25%.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And if I'm doing layered strings and by not copying, pasting, pasting those layers, then strings strings A is going to have a different quantization than strings B, even though they're both 75% quantized.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So I hard quantize and then relax.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Things that are synth based, things that have pulses, delays, those are absolutely locked onto the grid Because if you don't, then things that aren't quantized will be magnified as the pulse continues on, and that's if you got multiple pulses and multiple things happening.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Then that creates a world of hurt down the line.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, definitely, definitely hard quantize.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But thank you so much for those questions and thanks for getting us off to a great start Coming up with Michael Reschke.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I know Michael and Yuka are longtime supporters.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: I think they are like, oh gee, facebook folks, and I see that Yuka is with a Yuka.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Yuka is from Japan, reed is American but lives in Japan and so you know, I know it's early in the morning for Reed.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's like five or six in the morning and so, hello all you folks on the other side of the planet.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Let me let us know how tomorrow morning looks and if we should bring an umbrella.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Anyway, michael asks.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I have a question.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I was wondering what your approach, what my approach is for getting to know your sound libraries or plugins.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Do you just dive in and try to break it, making mistakes or using YouTube?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: If you have another approach, that would be great.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: To libraries and plugins have so many layers to them, it seems daunting task to learn and to use them.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Man, brother, that is the God's honest truth and one of the downsides of we just got out of Black Friday, like every plugin manufacturer is having sales and everything, and it is so easy to kind of get into the brain of oh, gotta vacuum up all of these plugins, gotta get everything, everything, everything, and we can really fall prey to gear acquisition syndrome.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But for plugins.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So if you bought anything over Black Friday, then I just take some time, and that's the thing.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Don't just keep buying.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: If you're missing something in your library, that's one thing, but if you're buying something just because it's new and fancy and shiny, if you don't really need it, then I would recommend not buying it, like I did not buy Diva by Yuhei, even though I saw it was on sale and I wanted it and I wanted it for a long time.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: It might be one of those things, like Omnisphere, where I finally buy it and wonder why in the world it took me so long to buy it.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: But that remains to be seen.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: But to your question, my approach to learning new sound libraries is I try to carve out some time and just audition patches.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I find I personally have a hard time watching YouTube videos for long, like 45 minute YouTube videos, where they're just going patch after patch after patch and you all know I love the unfinished and everything that he does and he gives exhaustive, exhausting, exhaustive patch demos where he's just like this is this patch and this is this patch.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: And I gotta be honest, like I said, I love Matt and I like own nearly all of his patches, but I've never watched one of those videos in their entirety because I just can't.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So getting in there, putting your hands on the instrument and just playing around, if you find something that inspires you, then just start writing, then just start writing, but you just have to spend time with it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It's like learning a new instrument.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: It's like if you get a new saxophone and you gotta break it in.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You just have to know where all the edges of that map is.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing keeping us from learning our libraries me included is buying too many new libraries, buying new libraries instead of learning the libraries we have.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, just spend some time.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: There's no, there's nothing to nothing that beats just putting your hands on an instrument playing around.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: If you are so inclined, you can start cataloging them.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You can I have logic pulled up here and you can actually let me get that face out of the way.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: You can start making patches and putting them here in your patch library.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: You can create a spreadsheet.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Whatever is helpful for you.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You can do that.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I don't personally do that, but I've seen lots of folks do that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: All right, so I hope that question helped for you.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I hope that answer helped.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Nathan asks once you get an album signed to a library, is it common practice for the composer to upload it to a streaming service like Spotify and SoundCloud?
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I realized it would depend on the library, but was wondering what your experience has been.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: My experience is that, because nearly every one of my libraries is exclusive.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That means that the library owners have assumed the copyrights.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So I will still get my royalties, but what I don't have is control over where those go, and it's really up to them.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: It's up to them if they wanna really sit down on a Spotify.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Now I have seen this trend change really kind of over really over the last five years.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: It used to be that Spotify and nobody really cared.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody was gonna, because at the end of the day, who's really gonna listen to it?
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: But it does become a point of brand and marketing awareness for the libraries themselves.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Like, if a library is pitching to a client, if they can point to Spotify and they look at all of our releases, yes, they could go onto their source audio file and our source audio account and all of that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: They could do all of that.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: But if they can point to Spotify and start posting about it on Instagram and LinkedIn, it creates this kind of this, dare I say, legitimacy.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the right word.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, but there's a reason that, like, extreme music puts their music out on Spotify.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: That's Hans Zimmer's crew and the remote control studios.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Guys, they don't need to put their stuff out on Spotify.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: You know these big trailer companies put their music out on Spotify because it creates market awareness for their company.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it's not up to you, the composer, it is up to the library.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: So you would not as the composer if you have signed an exclusive deal and they are maintaining the copyright.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: You would actually be in breach of that copyright if you try to put it out on Spotify yourself.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: This is why so many of the taxi listings insist that your cues have not been put up to the DSPs.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Right, the digital service providers Now are.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Is it digital streaming platforms?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, jury is out on that.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: But as far as SoundCloud, my personal philosophy is is I upload into SoundCloud as private links and so you will see, like this guy is private, these are private.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: These are all cues that I've written and I use them as private links, really as a way for me to track my own plays.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I use Spotify to listen to my playlist and to new cues in the car and in my AirPods and all of that stuff.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I realize that I said Spotify.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I'm at SoundCloud.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I realize that SoundCloud doesn't have the greatest, doesn't have the greatest quality.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: It's like 128 bit MP3, or 128, 128k MP3.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: However, if it sounds good on SoundCloud, then chances are it's gonna sound pretty darn good elsewhere, and so I keep things private until they make air.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Now, once they make air, they've shown up on my cue sheets or on ToonSat or whatever.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Then I will make it public and then I will usually add an as heard on whatever right.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: But this is, I have this arrangement with my publisher and they're okay with it.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day they get to call the shots.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So if they're cool with it, then cool, then go with it.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you're kind of at their discretion.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm coming back to Simon's question, but Yens had a follow up question to Nathan's.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't both the publishing library and the composers equally benefit from uploading a production music album to streaming services like Spotify?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I especially think about production music cues which have a more storytelling, film score or song like structure, as they may fit quite well to the audience of streaming services at the same time.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: For instance, our recent quirky Christmas albums with 52 cues.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That's a really good point.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, publishers are in the business of publishing music for TV placement and streaming services are a, not even a second or tertiary, they're a quadrary thought.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: There it's way down the bottom.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Now the cool news is is, I think streaming services or not streaming services, catalog services have gotten hip to this, have gotten hip to this.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: So Source Audio, which is one of the largest players in the catalog management system, source Audio, is now starting to offer DSP services.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Source Audio's like biggest client is music libraries, and they recognize that music libraries are starting to put their things out on Spotify, and so five, 10 years ago you had to partner up with CD Baby or Tunecore or whatever, and it was kind of a pain.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: But then we have folks like a DistroKid and even like SoundCloud offers DSP services, and so SongTrader also offers DSP services, and so Source Audio recognizes that this is a part of the market that they should take advantage of, and so they are.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And I think the writing is on the wall.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, it's still up to the publisher.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It is mutually beneficial, but you're not gonna get rich off of it.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, streaming royalties are terrible, they're absolutely terrible.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: They're even worse than like international cable, which can be pennies, which it all adds up, but Spotify and getting folks to stream your music.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: The value isn't in the streams themselves as much as it is the market and brand recognition.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, dex mentioned going back to Round Robins.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: If you have Round Robins in the instrument, often quantized work as well, but I often drop back by one or two milliseconds if it seems like that's a fantastic point.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Regarding quantization, when you're dealing with especially strings, strings and wind instruments which can have a pretty slow attack envelope, you have to anticipate that change and nudge them forward.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: So you have to kind of forensically place them.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: But that's something to keep in mind.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Really good point.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And Dex also follows up and says if you are starting out buying libraries, I would go for a decent string libraries as they can often be the most telling MIDI sounds but most universally used in multiple genres.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yep, oh, really good to see.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Jeff man, what is up?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Hope you're doing well.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Jeff has a question.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Since many of us mix in cans, meaning headphones what is my preference and why?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Open, semi-open or closed?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you all know that I've done a video on my Desert Island headphones.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Which are these guys right here?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: These are the Sony MDR 7506s.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I'll get those nice and close to the camera so that you can freeze frame if you wanna pick those up, and I used these religiously for a decade longer than that.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I love these.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: They are closed back, but being closed back and being Sony's, they're not without their challenges, meaning the lows are really exaggerated and the highs are really exaggerated.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But I've learned to mix in them.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't until earlier this year when Sony released the MDR MV1s, which are really the open back versions of these.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Now I know they don't look quite the same.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: These are super light, they're made of super thin aluminum and they are open back.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And what I have discovered?
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Whenever I was mixing in the 7506s, I would run Sound ID Reference, which is a plugin which can offset the let me get these out of the way which can offset the frequency bias of any number of headphones Super, super cool plugin.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So I always ran with that.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: But I noticed that when I changed to these headphones they sounded like the 7506s with the plugin turned on, but I didn't have any plugins.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So while it's not a totally flat response, I have found that this has given me a much flatter response, and so I do.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: The only thing I don't do in these headphones these days is tracking, because they're open back, you will get sound bleeding out of the earpiece and into any microphone you're recording.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So I'm really a fan of these.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Some folks swear by the Sennheiser is it the 650s?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Some folks swear by those.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a Sony guy and I like the fact that these headphones have a replaceable cord velour earpieces.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: This is it feels like plastic but it's actually aluminum.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: They're really really light.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I have bigger ears and so they're nice big cups and they're super comfy.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It was an adjustment.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: It was an adjustment going from those Sonys to these Sonys and going from closed back to open back.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I had tried open back before.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I picked up the Bear Dynamics 770s and I hated them Absolutely.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I still have them.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: They are my in case of emergency pull.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: If I need headphones to throw in a backpack because I'm going somewhere and I just need headphones, I'll throw those in.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: But I really did not like those and because I knew I wanted open back, I like being able to kind of hear the room, hearing my voice in the room through my headphones.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: That was a real adjustment.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: But I really love these MDR 7501s.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: They weren't cheap.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: They weren't cheap, but I was able to pick them up and I'm really really happy I did.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dex loves his 990s.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: They're open.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Back, yeah, the 7s.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, I got the 990s, not the 770s.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: The 770s are the closed ones, the 990s are the open ones.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Those are the ones that I had and I did not like those.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, though, oh, I will say those 990s were the most comfortable headphones I've ever.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: They're these big circles and they're like pfft.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: They were the most comfortable headphones I've ever owned, but I just didn't like the sound.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it really.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: You can mix and master in AirPods.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You can mix and master in beats.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Don't let anybody tell you you can't, because, at the end of the day, knocking things over in my desk.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it's about learning your headphones, learning what a good mix sounds like in your headphones and what a bad mix does.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: You can overcome it, and I'll argue with anybody who insists that only the real musicians and real producers mix in the room.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: But there are so many variables the quality of your speakers, the quality of your room treatment, the math that goes into your placements, not to mention, you know, the shape of your room.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: There's so many variables that headphones quite frankly eliminate, but they do bring their own challenges that you just have to overcome.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: So yeah, jeff likes the eight 80s, the semi open.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: But thinking about trying something else, I would go to the nine 90s, if you like the eight 80s.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I would stay in the bare dynamics because you just like Sony's or Sony's or Sony's, sennheiser's or Sennheiser's or Sennheiser's and I this is my personal belief if you stay in the family think you'll have less of an adjustment.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I was going from Sony 7506 closeback studio headphones to bare dynamic nine 90 open backs and it was.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: It was a bridge too far.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I could not leap that Rubicon.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: But, yes, excellent question.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, jeff.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Really really do appreciate that.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Simon asks a question.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I hear lots of names assigned to different cues in production music tension, dramedy, trailer but not a huge amount of resources listing them all or talking about what makes what makes them what they are and not something else.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: The best specific resource I found, and what prompted this question, was listening to the interview with Rob Astor and hearing about all the specific sports cues that are required in that market.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you can point to which could help someone new in the production music field or someone branching out into different styles.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I found taxi listings a little unhelpful for this, although the reference tracks are great, because you can only see the cues for what's being requested.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: My recommendation would be to go to some libraries.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Go to some libraries.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: So one of my favorites is Atomica Music.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I love Atomica Music and you can go into here, into tracks let's go into albums.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Or let's not go into album, let's go into tracks.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And here you can sort by.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Let me zoom in.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: You can sort by genre, you can sort by mood, you can sort by libraries.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: So if you wanna know like what hopeful, determined hip hop track sounds like oh, I lost it there we go hip hop.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: There are a handful for you to try.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna click on any of them, otherwise we'll get demonetized.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But by the way, speaking of remember earlier I said you could see good edit points from space.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Look at that, look at those nice, nice, chunky edit points.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: You can see them right there.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Yep, that's a healthy looking waveform.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: And so, going to, I like Atomica Music.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: For this I also like is it the supervisor, the supervisorcom?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And in this you can search for by genre, and this is a scorekeeper, as you can search by mood, by energy, and you can also by scenes, right?
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: So if you wanna know like, what drama cues look like and here are different types of scenes that you can search through Tender moments, unresolved ending, and so I, my only recommendation would be to spend some time in a library.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: There isn't necessarily a repository of definitions, although this is something that 52 cues is looking to help.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: This is what part of the Almanac is about is putting these things together and helping to educate folks just like you, just like you, and so that would be my recommendation.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: And the two that I lean on a lot are Atomica Music, which is AtomicaMusiccom.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I like the supervisorcom, and if you really, if you really wanna swing for the fences here and go to the top, top of the deck, extrememusiccom this is the Honsimmer folks, and remote control studios.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: And let me see if we click on search and you can instrument genre labels so you could type trailer let's do romantic trailer, I don't know.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Let's see what happens, yep, so these are all tracks that line up.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of kind of reverse engineering, but the albums are also super helpful.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Like if you go over to Atomica Music, instead of clicking on tracks, click on albums, click on albums and then you can see okay, so here is Lucky Day Pop, modern Elegance, heartening Moments, cinematic, ambient, piano, deep Investigation, lo-fi, pizzicato, and so, yeah, under suspicion, yep, yep, spend some time on the libraries and that will, I think, get you pointed in the right direction.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: But really, really appreciate that question.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And finally we have another question from Ilya.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Ilya says I can't attend, but what is the difference between having publisher shares versus writer shares?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Do they pay differently, and does having one or the other make a big difference in the long run?
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Well, royalties from the PROs are split up into two halves, so the royalties come in and half of the royalty goes to the writer and half of the royalty goes to the publisher.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: And often sink fees and sink license fees that we get from placements are also split 50-50 as well, and so the system is just set up that way.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: It's just set up that way to split the royalties and they generally pay 50-50.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: But the publishing is usually taken by the publisher, by the catalog, by the library.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, truth be told, there's nothing stopping you from being your own publisher.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: You can sign up with a BMI to be your publisher, but just know that you're the one doing all the legwork and you're the one finding home for your music, making relationships with music supervisors and all of that, and so it's just two halves to the business, the business partnership.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: This is why I like to think that having a publisher is not having like an agent.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Publishers aren't your agent, they are your partners in this, and so that's how those are split up.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Now, publishing shares and writer shares can be split up multiple ways.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: You can have multiple writers, you can have multiple publishers, but it's really up to the publisher to determine how that gets all kind of split up.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: And they generally to your second half of your question do they pay differently?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily To the PRO, it's just pointing the money elsewhere, pointing the money elsewhere.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: But, ilya, I hope that helped for you and in my experience, most publishers start out as composers right and then they just work their way towards being a publisher.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: As their relationships grow and as they make new relationships right and they start networking, they can find homes for your music or kind of like what we're doing in 52Qs and with the family plan and part of.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: We mentioned how our family subscribers have the opportunity to pitch to real libraries.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what that's about.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: That's what the briefing room is about, and I'm gonna go ahead and pull this up for you so you guys can see it.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Right now, like I said, we have a feature called the Briefing Room, and the Briefing Room is real briefs from real libraries, and so these are libraries that I have a relationship with, some of whom I am functioning as a co-publisher.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: So, for example, we have this Spanish guitar documentary or we have a golf documentary and the publisher asked for Spanish guitar cues and so put the brief out and some folks submitted to it and I'm sending those up to the library tomorrow morning.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: We just finished collecting cues for the PGA on CBS through my CBS publisher and we are now working deliverables for that, and so we put briefs up all the time and we have here are some of the past briefs that we've had, and so this is a feature and I'm not here to sell you on it, but this is me like literally transitioning from being a composer and then realizing, wow, I have these relationships with these libraries and I can't write all the music and so bringing folks along, and so these opportunities are me functioning much like a publisher and it's just a natural extension of a career.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: You start writing and you write for 10 years or so.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have relationships with folks and they're gonna say, hey, man, do you have this?
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: I don't play Spanish guitar, but I know some amazing folks who do, and so I connect them.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Yep, for sure, let's see.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Mike asks a while back I wrote a theme for my wife's YouTube show that got quite popular.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't get any money for it, but in the future, how would one monetize a theme song, a theme song on YouTube?
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: My recommendation would be to release it on the DSPs the digital streaming platforms iTunes, spotify and all of that Then register it with content ID, which means that every time the theme song plays, you would get royalties for that, or you would get the royalties or partial royalties from the performance, from the ad revenue that comes from that video.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, if you're looking to land it with a publisher, then you need to contact them, maybe get it signed to a library, or I mean, if you think it can hold its own, then maybe you could pitch it to a sync agent.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Now, sync agents often deal with vocal music and so if it's not a vocal up track which is what those are called like a vocal up.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Then they might not necessarily want your cue, but the first thing I would do is run it through content ID and you could go ahead and run that theme song now, because back episodes, I mean it won't count for back plays, but if those episodes old episodes are still getting played, then they can start generating new revenue for you.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: For sure, for sure.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: All right answer.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Jeff's question as well.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Ms Juju Beats.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: What is happening?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: This is so good to have you with us today.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Pete asks.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I have about 90 airings across four TV shows from 18 tracks placed this year.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I feel this is a promising start but have nothing to compare to and was just wondering your thoughts, given your experience.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: My thought is is that 90 placements on 18 tracks is killer?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: That's a killer ratio, absolutely killer ratio.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And you said this is kind of your first year, generally about five years.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I would count on about five years for the ball to really get rolling.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I mean it can take two years for a cue from.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I have an idea for a cue to getting paid.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: It can take up to two years.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Like you can have an idea for a cue and let's say it takes a month to write and get revisions and then you get it pitched and then they take it and so then it gets absorbed into their catalog.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: That might take three to six months, and then it might take three to six months to get it like the artwork and everything get it published.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: So you might be a year in and then it gets pitched and then it gets placed and by the time it might take another three to six months to get placed in a show and then it might take another six to 12 months for that cue sheet to show up in your statement.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: So it just takes a lot of time, takes a ton of patience.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And I tell you, the toughest part, friends, is about year two and three, because you'll start to see some trickle, which is super exciting.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: You eat your first placement and you're like, yes, and you'll have that slow motion moment and you'll probably, if you're like me, you'll probably remember where you were when you hear your music on TV for the first time.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: It's super exciting and then you'll get super high on that right.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: But then it'll take a while for more placements to come through and that lull in year two and three takes a lot, takes a lot of patience.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Man, you just got to keep with it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Got to keep with it and then so you'll get it's a slow arc right.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: But year two and three is when you're like this isn't going anywhere.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I hate my life, this sucks, I'm going to give it up.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: I should be making tons more money by now.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: It just takes time.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: It just takes time.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: You're very welcome, pete, appreciate you.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Dex says my first accepted cue was in 2017.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: It took three years to turn up as a royalty payment in 2020.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Best day of your life.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Dex wants to know what flavor of coffee.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is coffee.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, the mastermind folks, no better.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, it is coffee.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: It is a 2023 Christmas blend.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Starbucks Christmas Blend, which is like aged Sumatra, and I bought a ton.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I usually buy you.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Go back through my Instagram.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: You can find like 18 pounds of coffee and just a few weeks ago I finally finished it off and then bought the 2023 blend and it's really amazing how much better fresh coffee is versus two year old coffee.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: If I wasn't drinking this then, based off of Enrico Capparelli's suggestion, lavazza coffee.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Big fan of Lavazza as well, big fan.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Pete asks is it okay to ask for placement information from your publisher upfront of your next BMI statement, assuming that they have the cue sheets.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I would wait, because what you don't want to seem is like hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, you got my cue right.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Is it placed yet?
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Is it placed yet?
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: If it's been like six to nine months and you're just curious, then you could ask, but I would give it no less than six months before you really start asking.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: The other thing is, if you got placed and you caught it on your tune set, or maybe even caught it live, or it has shown up on your cue sheet or no, and it's not showing up on your cue sheet, then that's a call right away to your publisher just to make sure, and I would recommend loading up tune set.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: The free version allows you to load up 50 tracks, right, and so let me do.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: That Allows you to load up 50 tracks and I load up 50 tracks and it's great.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it's free and it's also a really good way to kind of to pat out.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Your IMDB is finding things that show up on tune set.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to log into tune set here in real time.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Let's see, let's see if it will wake up.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I will say tune sets website is criminally slow.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Come on tune set.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: It's really really slow.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: And, to be honest, it's kind of a miracle that tune set even works.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: The idea that it's recording all TV all the time all over the world, that seems like that shouldn't really be a thing, but it is, and so I was trying to try to show you.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: But tune sets being really slow, like literally, like it's just so, I can't really, I can't really show you.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Mike asks for people who make a living is there an average number of tracks released before you can burn the bridge of your day job?
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Man, I won't have a one in one in one way, like I'll let you know, I'll let you know when that happens.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: But the rule, the rule of thumb that I've been working towards, is a thousand tracks.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: But, like Dex just said, I don't necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily give up your day job.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, and it's not for the faint of heart.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm being honest, I've had royalty checks as big as $23,000, but I've also had royalty checks as low as 41 cents and everything in between.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: And and it is not for the faint of heart, and especially as trends change, you have cues which get a ton of love for like two years and then suddenly fall off and you have zero control over it.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: By the way, it looks like tune set finally decided to to show up, and so here's my tune set.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I just I registered just a handful of tracks and it's great seeing all these placements across the world and I do use these.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I'm see if there's anything new.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: There's anything new that I can add.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Last again, I've added these already.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Hello, heston.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Alarm in Alberta.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: This is a show called Alarm in Alberta, bell Collective Still a Mystery.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Ooh, I wonder if I've added that.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Let me, I'm going to go to my IMDb here.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: This is what I do.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: So here's a show called Still a Mystery and the episode's called a Community Betrayal.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: So there's the show Still a Mystery.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I've added this to my IMDb.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: This is a lot of how I use tune set, so we're going to go ahead.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: We're going to find the episode.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Click on episodes.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Let me go back to here.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: What was the episode called A Community Betrayal?
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Let's find a Community Betrayal.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: The other thing is is that they're not always all in here, so you're kind of at their whim.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: All right, oh there, it is right there.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: All right, so I'm going to go here and I am going to go edit the page and I am going to go here into the music department.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Add one credit.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've added this to my IMDb.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, I will add.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I will search for me there.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I am right there and I'm not the composer for IMDb.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't write the theme music.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not the music supervisor.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: We are additional music and unfortunately, here on IMDb there's not a, there's not, there's not a category for additional music.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Don't put composer.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I did the score, but instead I use other and then composer additional music.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Check these updates and okay, it's yellow because I've already entered this.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: So I've already entered this, so I don't need to add those.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: But that is what this is what I use to tune sat a lot for to help my IMDb page, and so if we look up my IMDb, you can see all those, all those, all those credits, which is really cool, looks great.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Of course, I do a ton NFL on CBS.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I do a lot with temptation Island, and that's when you see like 95 episodes since 2015, 42 episodes of the NFL today and a lot of PGA placements as well.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Those are probably closer to the bottom 32 placements of golf and all.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: That's not what I'm here to do.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: But yeah, there we go.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, dex, you don't want to rely on quarterly payment to pay all your bills.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: That would scare the Paddington out of me.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean part of the reason I still I'm at.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I've got my official branded full sale mug here.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Part of the reason I'm still at full sale.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, I love to teach, but also I get benefits, you know, and it is a day job.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: I'm just super thankful that it dovetails pretty, pretty seamlessly with what I do professionally.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I don't I?
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine if it wasn't something like full sale, I would.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: I would be burning the candle on both ends to try to try to find my way to where I wouldn't have to.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Jeff asks how many placements should you have before you start an IMDB page?
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: That's a good question, brother.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I would say one.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: You've got to start with one, as long as it's not it's one that already is out there and exists.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: Right, because you can, you can like write your own IMDB entries, like some of these I added myself, I think, like this major champions Invitational.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I added some of these masters tournaments, but it's, it's kind of a pain, I'm not going to lie, it's a real pain in the butt.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: So I don't, I don't bother adding if the show isn't there, I don't.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I don't mess with that anymore.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I don't mess with that anymore.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: For example, and I'll pull up my, my Csac, I can show you a Csac Q sheet.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to show you all the all the nitty gritty here, but I can show you a Q sheet at least.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: All right, so here here in Csac, like that, I don't think that masters tournament is in these basketball tournaments not always being boomerangio.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: This is a show that I've gotten a ton of placements on, like you can see, boomerangio, boomerangio.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: None of these are in IMDB, so I could add them if I wanted to, but I don't.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I don't really feel like messing with it because it is.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: It is kind of a pain in the butt to to futz with all of that.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: So I tend not to.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: But, jeff man, if you got one, go for it.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: If it's one that already exists, like you've gotten some NFL placements, I believe right, and so if you can find those, those episodes of the NFL on CBS, so if we go, like the NFL on CBS and we'll, I mean we got 65 years, let's do 2023.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And often they will all be here.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: So here are.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: So this is into playoffs of last season and here's that's last season, last season, and so this season starts right here.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, I think if the, if the, if the cards already exist over on IMDB, then I would add it and then I would put that IMDB logo on my website Because it's a credit, it's absolutely a credit and it is your credit and no matter like if you never get placements ever, ever again, that placement can never be taken away from you and that is yours.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Dex asks are you a composer with CSAC, but a new composer?
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: That isn't an option.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: That is correct.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Csac is an invite only and generally I mean, it's a really.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: It's not really.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: It's relatively a small organization.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Compared to ASCAP and BMI, it's a very small organization, but it is invite only and generally they work with folks who have placements.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: And so I started out on ASCAP.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: I love ASCAP, had a really good time with them.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: Fantastic resources, their website is great.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: They have some of the best Q sheets in the business.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: They're super fast.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Their website is fantastic.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: But I got invited to join CSAC.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: It was just better for me as far as the type of placements I was getting, because in general these are broad generalizations.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Right, in the US, ascap is going to give you more payout for the type of placement.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: So if you get a theme music, then you're going to get a better payout for ASCAP.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: If you get high, high rated like, if you get placements in a bunch of highly high ratings like eyeballs, nielsen ratings, then BMI is probably going to pay out more, right, because it's, you know, television and everything where CSAC in general puts their puts more of an emphasis on length of play.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: And so I wasn't getting a ton of high rated placements, but what I was getting I was getting really long placements, or rather I was getting a lot of placements on golf, like the waste management open on like random Saturday in June, right.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And so I switched over to CSAC and have been really, really happy there.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I do miss some of the bells and whistles that ASCAP has, but on the other hand, like I have a personal rep that I can call up and it's really nice kind of not feeling like a number and I understand that that's just how it is, that's how it is over in ASCAP, because it needs to be, and that's fine.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: I'm totally.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: I totally get it.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: It's totally fine, all right.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Any other questions?
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Got a couple more minutes left here.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Got a couple of more minutes.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: We're gonna see if any questions came in over here at 52Qs.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dex PRS was the obvious choice, but you went for BMI's.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I was advised a lot of placements would probably be in the US.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're getting TV placements, then I think BMI is the right choice.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Now there is a question.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Right now Saw a question come through one of the YouTube chats about no, it was a topic suggestion BMI going for profit and being bought by a.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna misspeak, all right, I don't know the finances, but equity firm, I think, is what it is and that's, admittedly, that's a little scary, right, it's a little scary because generally, no happy ending, no happy corporate ending, started with the phrase and then our company was bought by an equity firm.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: In general, no happy ending started that way at the start of the book.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: But I will say that there are a lot of people in BMI and it being private, I don't think is the death knell that some folks think.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It is mainly because I mean, csac is private, it's for-profit, it is private, it is not necessarily beholden to Congress or anything like that, and so that means that they can move a lot more faster, they can react to market changes and that kind of thing.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: The equity firm is a little scary, but that's really all I know about it, and I do have a lot of friends in BMI.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: If I wasn't with CSAC, I would be with BMI.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Dex says AI is a bit scary too, but let's go there.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I personally think we just need to get on with the job of composing thoughts.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Ai is like it's the boogeyman, right, it's the next thing that's gonna scare everybody, it's gonna take our germs and all of that, and I think it's overblown.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think we need to be ignorant of it, but I mean you could go back.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: I mentioned this before.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I think John Philip Sousa hated the player piano because it was like taking our jobs and you can either adapt to it, embrace it and absorb it into your own workflow, or you can resist it and then get left behind and it's not going away.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: It's not going away, and so resisting it, I think, is futile, and so we just need to see where the edges of the map are and figure out how we can use it, how we can use it responsibly and find the things that it can't and probably won't ever do well and do those things well, right, I think writing emotion.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I think AI is coming for that low hanging kind of corporatey kind of bland music.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's coming for that much the same way that it came for bland corporate stock music, stock photos.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: I was reading a Reddit thread the other day and a small business Reddit thread and they were saying, hey, I make like clip art and my business is hemorrhaging because AI Well, I mean having a business selling clip art.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: I mean that's, it's cool, but that's kind of low hanging fruit.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: And if I'm being honest and let's all be honest with ourselves here production music is lower hanging fruit than, like, what John Williams does and what Hans Zimmer does.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: It's not to diminish production music.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: It's important 46% of the film and TV industry utilizes production music and I don't think when a company like Sony or Netflix or whatever drops $100 million on a show, they're not gonna look for AI, but like rooms to go or a local law firm, they're gonna use AI and that kind of thing.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: Dex says like playing the saxophone, yeah, or like, yeah, playing, I think playing a live instrument is going to become an increasingly valuable commodity.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: It's part of the reason I started learning to play that guy and it's part of the reason I got in ukulele.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: It's part of the reason I put shakers on everything so that I can add a real thing.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Instead of buying a $500 sax of VST, buy a $500 saxophone and learn to play it.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I still submit that a mediocre performance of a real instrument will sound better than the highest VST.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Linda says AI can't perform like ooh, I'm not gonna try to pronounce that, dex, you play sax.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: All right, yeah, and it's not going to.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: But where can AI help us?
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Ai?
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you how AI is helping me right now.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Last week's podcast episode on Star Trek, I used AI to organize my thoughts.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I used AI to create outlines and help me brainstorm ideas.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Yep, I use chat GPT.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: We use chat GPT all the time.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Chat GPT has shaved off probably about four hours of copywriting in our week between me and Shannon.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Now, what I don't do is just wholesale copy and paste.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: That's nope.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: You got to know what you're talking about and, likewise with music, you've got to know what you're talking about.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Yehudi Menuhin?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Is he the?
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: I saw a video where a super famous violinist was playing like in the subway and nobody was paying him any attention.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I think I've got a concert in Carnegie Hall later today, and so I just don't think we need to be afraid of it, and I think folks who embrace it don't lean.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: It's like using loops.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Use it as a tool, not as a crutch Right.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Use it to supplement your creativity, not to anchor your creativity.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I think you're going to be okay, so we probably have time for one more question.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: I do need to start wrapping up here today.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: It's been really great hanging out with you.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Any other final questions?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Any other final questions?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate everybody, everybody today.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: We'll give it another moment or so and while we wait, I just want to encourage you once again.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: If you haven't joined us over at 52Qs, we would absolutely love to have you.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Like I said, it's free to join.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Memberships start at just $4 a month and that is for our neighbor tier, where you get access to our live streams and our Almanacs.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Our friend tier gets access to our weekly Q breakdowns.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: We also do monthly career and industry workshops with extensive archives.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: They get access to our friend zone chat group and then we have our family program, which gets their own family chat group as well.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: They get access to weekly Zoom feedback, actually bi-weekly Zoom feedback sessions.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: They get access also to our briefing room and the briefing room is where you are pitching to libraries, pitching to libraries and so, yeah, we'd love to have you.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Plans, like I said, start at just $4 a month and our mastermind cranks up here at the beginning of January.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: We would love to have you as well over there, just like one or two seats left If we have enough.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I am totally open to having multiple sections, to having two sections.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I'd rather have two sections of four people than one section of seven and then turn like three people.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: We three people away.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Let's see, dex asks favorite Voyager episode.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, blink of an Eye.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: It's the episode I mentioned the other day, definitely not the one where oh, what is it called?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm forgetting the episode.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: It's where Tom Paris goes like past warp 10, and he evolves faster than everybody and then he turns into a salamander and then he kidnaps Janeway and they go to a planet and they have salamander babies.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: So, tom Paris, for the record, tom Paris and Catherine Janeway have salamander babies that they left on the planet, and the one with eight, four, seven, two.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a really scary villain, super scary villain.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: And is that your?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Are you brand new to Voyager?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Are you brand new to Voyager?
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, blink of an Eye is the one I mentioned last week on the episode.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: It is so freaking good my favorite episode and also stars a very young Daniel Day Kim, a very young Daniel Day Kim who went on to be in Lost and Hawaii 5.0, and everything Okay.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: So you know about Fluidic Space and all that stuff.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Anyway, that is going to do it for us today.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, it is always so good to hang out with you.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Love doing these live.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: We are gonna be doing a live Q&A at least once every few months, and so be on the lookout for those.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: And once again, a huge word of thanks to our family, friends and neighbor, neighbor subscribers.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: As a reminder, we are shutting down our Patreon at the end of the year, so if you're watching the live streams and you want access to those, then you're going to need to join us over in the neighbor group.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: But it is always so good.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Just know that I love and appreciate all of you.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Next week.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: Next week, we are rolling our interview with Jameson Nathan Jones, who is a composer, a YouTuber and a free thinker, and he also, much like Anne-Catherine Dern, says the quiet parts out loud, so you don't want to miss that.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: That is coming up next week, but that is going to do it for me.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: As always, a huge word of thanks Until next time, peace.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: The 52Q's podcast is copyright 2023 at 18 Studios.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: All Rights Reserved.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: The music played on the podcast is copyrighted with respect to owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: For more information, and including joining the community and submitting your cue for consideration on the podcast, head over to 52Qscom.