Composers and Arrangers

The physical conditions of a composer’s workplace can vary according to personal taste and what is affordable. Some work in expensive, state-of-the-art home studios, others in a bare room with an electric keyboard or a guitar. An aspiring composer may work in a cramped and cluttered room in a New York City tenement or in a Hollywood ranch home.

For the serious composer the work is likely to be personally rewarding but financially unrewarding. For the commercial composer, some degree of financial reward is more likely, but competition is fierce, and top earnings go only to the rarest of individuals. Getting started requires great dedication and sacrifice. Even those who have more structured and stable work lives in academia must give up most of their spare time to composing, often sitting down to the piano when exhausted from a full day of teaching. There are many frustrations along the way. The career composer must learn to live with rejection and have the verve and determination to keep coming back time and again. Under these circumstances, composers can only succeed by having complete faith in their own work.