TAXI member, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Croteau
By Paul Croteau
Which musical task is easier, writing a song or composing an instrumental cue for TV? For me, it’s a no brainer: instrumental cues are easier to write than a song.
Defining the Cue
Instrumental cues range from complex, dramatic orchestral compositions to relatively simple “snappy, happy, hand-clappy” pieces, as veteran TAXI member Matt Hirt recently called them on an episode of TAXI TV. However, simple is not always easy. As Steve Jobs once said, “Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”
For context, let’s first define some parameters. The music heard on television covers every imaginable genre and level of complexity. Writing an orchestral film score or large ensemble arrangement is an extremely complex and time-consuming task—one that is not part of this comparison.
The largest body of television music consists of what is typically played underneath dialog or in the transitions between scenes. Imagine a reflective piano emphasizing an emotional peak, or tension strings and percussion setting the mood for an investigation, chase, or fight scene. Or perhaps, whimsical, bouncy, pizzicato strings or mallet instruments adding levity to a quirky situation. A single 30-minute episode of a reality TV show can have over a hundred musical moments. These instrumental cues are the bread and butter for many successful composers.
When a song is the final goal, you have to create music plus lyrics. Then you have to perform the music and sing the lyrics. Personally, I'm not even close to being a singer. So if I were to pursue songwriting, I’d need to find a collaborator that can sing, or at the very least, find a competent singer in the genre I’m targeting for a particular song.
Will that person work for a percentage of the song, or do I need to pay cash? And, if I write songs in multiple genres, I probably need to find, schedule, record and pay multiple singers for each of them.
Why Instrumental Cues Are Easier
- Less people involved in the creative process
- Less content means less complexity
- No worries about lyric creation or a vocal performance
- Less likely to suffer emotional attachment to the music
- Less production work required to create a finished product
Less People Involved
Some songwriters prefer to work alone, but many have seen or experienced the joy and motivation of collaboration. Working with others is a fantastic way to expand your musical horizons, try new things, expand their industry relationships, and find more placements.
But the more people there are, the more complexity you have. Schedules need to match, paperwork needs to be signed, and creative differences can arise. This can also happen with instrumental composers, but my experience has been that many composers work faster and better alone, or with limited participation from others. This can lead to more work getting finished in a shorter amount of time.
"Lyrics add a layer of complexity to the musical process."
Lyrics Add Complexity
A good lyric is not something one just pulls out of thin air. You can’t poke at a keyboard or draw something in piano roll notation, and after a few tweaks have a usable melody or motif. Lyrics add a layer of complexity to the musical process.
Lyrics Have to Fit
When writing songs for TV and film, you have to write lyrics that are somewhat generic and universal. If you write lyrics with specific names, seasons, days, locations, gender, time, etc., your lyrics may not work well in the context of many story lines or scenes. Writing instrumental music doesn’t carry the burden of vocabulary as a potential deal breaker.
Lyrics Add Emotions
Songwriters can be notoriously attached to their words. For many, the struggle to craft just the right phrase, and then enough of them to create a wonderful song, is wrought with emotions, especially if the writer is drawing from personal experience to tell their story. So, after the hours, days, weeks, or longer that it may take to complete a song, it can seem like a gestation period to some, and signing some or all of their rights away to their “newborn” work is not an easy task.
Less Production Work
Thanks to the awesome technology we have today, the engineering quality bar continues to be raised. The mix has to sound good or it can hurt your chances. Adding a vocalist on top of the music adds several layers to the production. You have to find a quality singer that is dependable and available, you have to schedule time to record, then you have to engineer the vocal production so that it fits well with the music.
Instrumental composers may have some of the same concerns when adding live instruments to their work, but it could be argued that recording and producing vocal tracks is more challenging.
One Size Doesn’t Always Fit All
Like many things in life, this topic is subjective, and the debate will continue. But for me, composing instrumental cues is less complicated, faster, and more likely to result in my music being licensed for TV shows more often.
At the end of the day, creating quality music of any kind is a challenge that can offer wonderful rewards if you’re willing to invest the time and effort.
See Paul’s TAXI profile here.