Get a set-up for making soundtracks and earn from your music

Fancy yourself as the next Hans Zimmer? If you’re set on a career as a soundtrack creator then you’ve come to the right place…

One of the most stable pathways to monetising your music right now and get your music heard on screen is by signing up your tracks to one of the many sync libraries that welcome incoming pitches. Their role is to act as middlemen between you and those looking for music to suit their film, television, video game or advertising projects. Making so-called ‘production music’ is a real skill in itself, as you often have to strike a balance between your own artistic individuality and making the sort of ‘sync-able’ music that has the broadest possible appeal.

While this sector has very much exploded over the course of the last decade, working with film and television in mind is, of course, one of the most well-trodden pathways for professional musicians. Soundtracking is an expansive, varied art form, yet there are a number of tools, approaches and mindsets that are fundamental. For one, you’re going to need a DAW that has solid video support if you’re going to be writing specifically for a picture (or need to edit your soundtrack cut later). While there are now more than a few DAWs that have this functionality, we’re going to recommend one which is used by many of the world’s greatest composers. Cubase Elements 12 contains everything you’ll need for slick video-synced writing, and it’s a relative steal at just £85.

Having an assortment of sampled real instruments is certainly useful, and our friends at Spitfire Audio have recently been making specially curated selections from their larger libraries available, at astonishingly cheap prices. For just £25 a pop, we’d definitely recommend you dip your orchestral toe in the water with one or two…

It helps to have a broad array of synth sounds at your disposal too, not to mention ways of making your sounds evolve in odd and interesting ways. As with our previous entry, we’ve also thrown in a recommended extra from our CM Plugin Suite, that should help you add a bit of cinematic width to your track.