Striking the right note

Part 7.- You are going to read an article about a composer of background music called Michael Reed. For questions 43-52 choose from the sections (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

 

In which section does the writer mention...

Michael being unsure which programme his music will be used for? 43.-____

evidence of the wide range of Michael’s professional expertise? 44.-____

Michael appreciating the opportunity to try out different things? 45.-____

the need to be strict about scheduling the composing of music? 46.-____

Michael getting fed up at one point in his musical career? 47.-____

some music which gives the listener a false impression? 48.-_____

Michael enjoying a new feeling of being in total control of his work? 49.-_____

the difficulty of working for an unpredictable financial reward? 50.-____

Michael briefly forgetting that he was the composer of certain music? 51.-____

the factors which affect how long Michael needs to compose some music? 52.-____

 

Striking the right note

David Waller goes to meet Michael Reed, a composer of background music.

A.- Your ears slowly fill with sound, first with sme foreboding cello, then an aerie female vocal and the occasional bang of a drum. The sounds gain in intensity before suddenly breaking into the epic sweeep of a full orchestra. Eyes closed, it sounds like the soundtrack for a nightmarish futuristic, film landscape, but this is a simple house in Devon, England Michael Reed welcomes me and shows me to his self-built studio in the basement. There the composer of music for film, commercials and television has a giant sound desk, monitor speakers, piles of dusty synthesisers, and a full drum kit. Reed has produced hundreds of pieces of music in this room, layering a mix of computer samples and live instrumentation. A piece, he says, ‘could take anything from 15 minutes to five days, depending on everything from the complexity of instrumentation to how tired you are, it’s really difficult to say,’ Right, on this day I’m going to write this bit of music. ’But when it comes down to it, you have to.’

 

B.- The majority of Reed’s output is library music, pieces written to a brief but with no specific purpose, to be picked up later by shows and film trailers that need a soundtrack. It’s usually not until he receives his foru monthly statement of earnings that he sees where his work has ended up. In the last period, that meant a soap opera, cookery show and a documentary about dogs. ‘I once went on holiday to Lake Geneva,’ he says. ‘I turned on the TV and saw an advert for Visit Turkey and my music was in the background. Another time I was in my old house and heard some music I recognised coming through the wall. I liked it. Then I realised I’d written it!’

 

C.- It’s an old way to encounter your own work and certainly it’s not the music career he had envisaged. At university, Reed studied musical composition and afterwards had his heart set on becoming a drummer. He ended up playing in sessions at the prestigious Abbey Road recording studios. But the reality of life as a professional drummer was rather tedious, with endless car journey all over Britain, transporting his drums around. But then some music industry friends introduced Reed to composition work. His first succesfully pitch for a television commercial earned him $3,000 and provided a valuable lesson: it was better paid and being in charge of the whole process was far more fulfilling. He goes back through his millions of files and digs out samples of his work, from classical pieces recorded with a full live orchestra through pop, drum and bass to specific work he has produced for films.

 

D.- Yet from business point of view, working in the music industry is like sailing on a rocky sea. Reed risks producing work that he never gets paid for. While his four-monthly earnings statement will have hundreds of individual entries, the total for each individual track could be anything from thousands of pounds to pennies. I’ve been doing it 15 years now and there doesn’t always seem to be a correlation between what you’re most proud of and what makes you the most money.’ Still, Reed is happy about the unexpected decision his music has taken him in. ‘You have to remember that you can do something cool with each piece and experiment with new sounds. Then you suddenly find yourself really enjoying what you’re writing… I’m really lucky.’