Hello, and welcome to my blog. My name is Fabio, and I am a professional composer currently working on a number of games - a few, casual, browser and mobile games, and a creative platformer greenlit for Nintendo Switch.
Today I am going to talk a little about my path to making this a viable career. As I did not have the most conventional musical formation, let me start with this: it took time.
Being paid to do what I like still feels like I won the lottery. It also feels like this is all a dream and I dread the moment I'll wake up.
But this is what I like to do: composing for films, devise new solutions for interactive music, designing sounds (be it for a synth, or for a movie scene). So, being that I am doing exactly that for the time being, I can call myself fortunate.
Now let's get back to the moment when I could confidently call myself a professional composer, instead of "just" composer.
See, that word, professional, means something. I began calling myself a professional composer only when I ditched my previous jobs and this, and only this, became my primary source of income.
Do you want to know when that happened? When I was 37. To give you some perspective, I am towards 39 as I am writing this.
So, by the power invested in me by the God of Mathematics, I declare it took me only 30 years from that first recorder flute at age 5, to my first paid gigs as a composer!
Maybe those brave few of you that are reading this are going to be discouraged by what I am saying, however I must point out that this was my personal experience, my personal... journey, in a way, to professional music composition. Yours might be totally different.
Now, there is also a very simple reason why it took me so long to be a full-time composer. It's the bills piling up and the powerful need to feed the family, and the fear that a self-taught musician would never be able to make composition a viable career choice.
Let's not digress on my entire life history, which comprised a few abrupt turns from 6 years of conservatory, to 6 of aerospace engineering, to 14 years of hotel customer service and front office management. Suffice it to say, there was a time when I started believing in composing for films, and it was when I received my first credits, let alone my first money, for it.
It is life changing: something happens, and you suddenly realise that you have a skill that somebody, somewhere, is willing to pay for.
So don't get discouraged, and seek out that first, paid gig. It will change your mindset. No matter how low will be the income from the job. It might just be pocket money for a day or two, you might be able just to pay a dinner out for your family with it (this is exactly what I did with my first paid composing job), but believe me...
There will be a sparkle.
I will write some more on my first steps as a composer in future posts. I will try and focus on easy, down-to-earth advice that draws from my experience.
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