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The power of networking.

News, stories and advice for composers, songwriters and musicians.

by Gareth Davies

March 2023

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Music Room newsletter. I’m Gareth: a composer for TV and a podcast producer & host. If you’d like to learn more about me and what I do, you can do that here.

And that’s quite enough about me.

I hope you’ll find some useful information in this newsletter, support and advice that might help you in your own music life.

In February I flew to Miami for the first time to be at Kidscreen, a worldwide conference built around kids’ media. As freelancers it’s important to get out there and network, despite our inbuilt desire to stay in our studios and create (or is that just me?). I’m still not great at striking up conversations with strangers, but I make myself do it. Why? Well it’s the only real way to start developing relationships that might end up with work. And here’s the thing, you sometimes start up conversations with people who will end up as life long friends - it happens! In the Music Room community group on Facebook (also a great network) we’re starting to talk about and recommend conferences and events that have good networking opportunities. Come and contribute!

If you prefer to pick and choose episodes, here they are:

Frank’s item

The Adler book of Orchestration, I think, it's one of the best. When I started it was one of the best tools. I mean, I think there's loads of orchestration books today. Even the Henry Mancini Book of Orchestration is really cool, like how simple his stuff is, but yeah, I would say The Adler book of Orchestration.

Frank’s advice

Know your craft and know what you're weak at, and then try and work on that. And I think the most important thing is: just write. You know, doesn't matter what you write, as long as you write. I think the more you write, the more you can establish a voice, which I think is what the most important thing is, and that's something that will always make you stand out from the crowd. And I think that comes from nonstop writing,

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