A composer who only ever writes songs ends up writing the same one over and over. Not for lack of talent, but for lack of any new constraint: nothing in the working frame forces a detour. Changing form — screen music, video games, stage work, loops, commissions — is the fastest way to unlock ideas, and incidentally to open revenue channels the song form never gives you.
Why you go round in circles
Composing is demanding work, and you make progress every time you create something new. The problem shows up when the new things start resembling each other: same length, same verse-chorus structure, same line-up, same way of opening. After a while the brain takes the same paths because nothing obliges it to take others.
Free composition, with no constraint of form, looks like the ideal situation. It is in fact the hardest: with no frame, you fall back on your reflexes. A constraint closes doors — and forces you to open others.
Five forms to explore, and what each one demands
Screen music
This is the most formative, because it takes control of time away from you. A four-second sting, a thirty-second title sequence, a pad that has to hold an entire scene without ever taking over: the sync points are set by the edit, not by your phrasing. You learn to make an idea exist inside a duration that is not yours — a skill that transfers directly to songwriting, where we always keep too many bars.
Video games
Here the music has to loop cleanly and survive repetition without wearing thin. It also often has to be adaptive: layers that come in or drop out depending on the action. This is architecture far more than inspiration, and it forces you to think of a piece as a system of strata rather than a line.
The stage: theatre, dance, circus
The constraint is human as much as technical. The tempo follows an actor or a dancer, not a click. Cues fire on a gesture. You learn something the studio never teaches: how to compose something that accepts not being at the centre.
Pure instrumental
If you normally work in service of a voice, take it away. The whole narrative load then has to travel through the instruments: textures, timbres, tensions, silences. This is the exercise that exposes arrangement habits fastest, because you can no longer lean on the lyrics to hold attention.
Loops and sample libraries
Apparently the most modest form, in reality the most exacting: producing a usable loop means one that is clean to align, tonally neutral, interesting without being intrusive. Nothing trains production discipline better — and it is a commercial outlet in its own right.
What I saw from the technical side
I spent years in control rooms and running studios, watching composers of every background come through. The strongest were not the most virtuosic: they were the ones who had worked in several formats. A composer who has done screen work knows how to cut; a composer who has done games knows how to build layers; a composer who has done stage work knows how to leave room. Those reflexes are audible from the first listen to a demo.
The exercise: rescore an existing film
The best starting point needs no commission, no client and no budget. Take a public-domain film — Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is the textbook case — and write a new score for it. You will be neither the first nor the last, and that is precisely the point: the film imposes its timings, its breaks and its silences on you, without any director having to hire you.
Three rules to make the exercise worth something:
- A short deadline. A five-minute sequence, not the whole film.
- No escape route. No folding the exercise back into a song structure the moment it gets difficult.
- No obligation to release it. The benefit is in the process. If the result is good, so much the better; if it is not, you have still learned to work under constraint.
What it changes on the income side
Each form corresponds to a different distribution and payment circuit. A song lives on the platforms; screen music lives inside an audiovisual work and earns royalties on every broadcast; a loop lives in a sample library; stage music lives on a tour. These are distinct economies, with distinct cycles, and above all very different levels of competition.
This is exactly the reasoning developed in making a living from music without being famous: the least visible markets are often the least crowded. Working across forms is how you make yourself eligible for several of them.
What the video covers
In the video above — in French — I describe the small challenge I set myself, working on covers on one side and loops on the other, and I run through the forms a composer can go and explore: song, instrumental, screen music, video games, sample libraries. The guiding idea is the same as here: a constraint of form makes you progress faster than total freedom, and it opens distribution channels you had not considered.
Frequently asked questions
- Isn’t changing form just spreading yourself thin?
- Spreading yourself thin means running five projects at once and finishing none. This is about completing one full exercise in a new form, then coming back to your usual work with one more tool. The difference lies in going all the way through.
- Do I need particular equipment to compose to picture?
- No. Any DAW lets you import a video and work to timecode. The real learning is not technical but methodological: accepting that the edit decides, and that your theme gets cut in the middle.
- How do I know whether a new form suits me?
- Watch what tires you and what entertains you during the exercise. If building layers energises you, games are for you; if you enjoy serving a narrative, screen work; if you take pleasure in cold precision, sample libraries.
- Can this work be reused in my own project?
- Often yes, and it is one of the least expected benefits. A texture developed for a scene, a loop designed to be neutral, a motif written for a dancer: that material recycles very well into a piece released under your own name.
Going further
- Practise, practise and… practise — the instrumental counterpart to this gymnastics.
- Offer your services to get known — turning these exercises into real collaborations.
- Music business: where to start — placing this work back in the wider picture.
