Don't Wait Until You're "Ready"

One of the very common excuses I keep hearing from beginning composers is "I'll wait until I'm ready and then start trying to aquire jobs and start networking. I feel like my chops are not up to a professional level yet."

There are several problems with that attitude:

The first one is that you will never really know when you are ready. Where is that line that you cross that qualifies you as "ready" for the job? Is it when you know how to produce a proper mockup? Or are you ready when you mastered the writing chops of the grand masters? The truth is that there will never be a "ready" in a sense that you never will feel absolutely confident about every job that comes your way. Personally, I have been working in this industry for more than 15 years now, but there are still regular instances where I feel like I'm thrown into the cold water and need to swim. The great thing about this job is that it keeps challenging you. Being confronted with a specific genre of film or particular needs of the music and needing to solve that for the first time in your life is just what keeps happening in this job. 

Projects are so diverse and unpredictable that it is really hard to be routined and "prepared" for every job that might come your way. Of course, the more you do this, the easier it is to find strategies to solve problems and the more confident you become in your ability to get a job done even if it is challenging but this should not hold you back in pursuing this career also on the business side of things because there is a second big reason why this strategy is problematic:

The business and networking side of this job needs to be practiced as well and it needs just as much routine as writing music. It is really problematic to try to separate the creative job of a media composer from the business job of being a media composer. Even with the most advanced writing chops and great skill to score a movie or game, no one will hire a composer who behaves awkwardly during the communication or in business negotiations. Being a great person to work with is even more important than being a great composer so if your communication skills lack the routine and professionalism of your writing skills, you hardly will have a chance to compensate for that. So it is essential to practice these two sides simulatenously.

A lot of people who use this argument of needing to get to a professional level first have a wrong assumption. They often think that when their writing chops are good enough that they are able to create impressive demos, a potential client will come along and hire them based on these demos and suddenly they will be able to work in this field.

So the third point would be that careers (almost) never start out of the blue. There never is this one project that rocket launches your career but a stable and successful career needs to be built up just like your writing chops. So any time that you lose building up your career because you want to focus on your writing first is wasted time.

The more productive approach would be to grow your chops with your career. Nobody who films a student or amateur movie expects a Hollywood grade score from their composer, so even if you feel like you can't reach your full potential yet, it would be very unwise to let such a opportunity slip by because you don't feel up to it or feel like this project is not good enough for your portfolio. 

Every aspect of this career needs practice and every aspect of this career needs to start small. It will not help you to consciously stall one aspect for the benefit of another one, so don't wait till you're ready but jump in the cold water and swim.