I'm gettin' tired of your shit, people looking for musicians.
Look. Sit. Listen for a moment. I've even organized this for you people.
Here it is:
GUIDELINES ON GETTING A MUSICIAN ON YOUR PROJECT TEAM.
1. DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROJECTS AND WHEN TO GET A MUSICIAN
Games
First off, you don't even need a musician until very late in the process of the game making most of the time, so if you're trying to make a flash game, don't get musicians right off the bat. That just makes things way harder for everyone, because you have to keep tabs on something that doesn't even matter yet, and we have to make something that you want with no prompt at all. So don't do that.
Animations
For this one you need them a bit earlier, but not by much. Before animation begins, all the voices, sound effects and music need to be put in, so this one is alright to ask for a musician early on.
Other Shit
This depends on your hopefully good judgment. Most of the time with other types of projects you don't even need music composed for you. You can just look in the audio portal for stuff, that's part of the reason why it's there. So use it.
2. GIVE THE MUSICIAN INFORMATION
Any sensible musician who is left in the dark will leave the project because you don't respect them enough to give them any damn information on it. If you want us to make something good, you have to give us background. If you put nothing in, you're not getting anything out.
If you're making a flash game, great! Let us see it.
If you're making an animation, great! Let us see the script.
You have to give us information so we can do our job. It's like if you go and tell a graphic designer "Design a logo for _____!" and that's it, no former logos or ideas or guidelines or nothing. We don't work like that.
I feel that personally and abroad, we are left in the dark all too much, and this needs to stop. Even if it's something as simple as PONG, don't do this to us.
3. IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU GET, DON'T BE SHITTY WITH US.
You are getting free music for god's sake. If you aren't happy with it you can go somewhere else. Companies would pay thousands of dollars for some of the fantastic composers on this website to make them music, and you are getting it FOR FREE. Now I'm sure most musicians reactions would be to scrap it and start again, but seriously. You're getting free services to make whatever you're doing come to life. However, if you ARE paying a musician and aren't liking what they're giving, go ahead and be shitty, but be shitty nicely. This leads me to my next point.
4. RESPECT YOUR MUSICIAN.
This applies for everyone in the project, not just musicians, but besides coders I feel we get some of the worst of it. The people working on your project are not machines, they are human beings and have feelings and lives outside of the internet.
Being a musician isn't easy. Being a writer or a coder or an animator isn't easy either. EVERYONE MATTERS. The point of a project team is to combine the talents of a bunch of different people to make something awesome. That being said, treat everyone equally, and don't look down upon them because you don't think their job is hard or requires "talent." Say that what they do doesn't require talent to a coder, and I personally guarantee you aren't willing to write 10,000+ lines of code for your game in two weeks, or write you a working script in three days, or waste away four weeks making a one minute animation, or spending nine hours tweak-equalizing something that doesn't sound right.
As long as the person, no matter their skill level, is putting effort and passion into making what you are creating great, they deserve your respect.
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Thank you for taking the time to read. If this type of post doesn't belong here, I'm sorry.
If you have anything to add or corrections to be made to what I said, feel free to post it and I'll look at it.
Thanks so much!
