You thought your music was just right to start with, so why are people telling you to change it? Because they're paying you — and because they might actually have a point...
John Cleese once noted that the problem with the world is that everyone wants to create and no‑one wants to maintain. For the jobbing composer/producer, the painful truth is that the chances of your music being signed off by a client on the first pass are slim. Tweaks, revisions, edits, rethinks — call them what you will — are all an integral part of the job, and everyone hates doing them.
Why should this be? Are the kinds of people who commission music more pushy and opinionated than others? When they get their teeth checked up, do they question every tool their dentist picks up, asking him to try a range of drill bits and anaesthetics before settling on one they prefer? No, the problem is that music is special. It reaches us all in a deeply personal way. Studies show that dairy cows yield more milk if music is piped into their sheds, and even vegetables grow better when played Mozart, so it's hardly surprising that higher-functioning life-forms (and some TV executives) should have something to say about it.
Growing Pains
"They want death metal with Elizabethan folk instrumentation. Let's see if we can put the hurdy-gurdy through the Dual Rectifier...”
Occasionally, you get a client who genuinely doesn't know what they want, and will send you down some randomly chosen blind alleys that you know are never going to be worth exploring — "Can we try a sort of Slipknot death-metal fusion with hints of Flamenco for version six? Yeah?” — but more often than not they are simply trying to get you to fulfil the vision that's in their head.
I recently went back and had a look at some work-in-progress tracks I did for ITV's Dancing On Ice. From my original demo of the title music to the final signed-off track, there was a total of 19 different versions. Each one progressively evolved in a very organic way, leading to the conclusive final version, and, with the exception of the first demo, every single one was produced through gritted teeth, with a heavy heart and a feeling of never‑ending dread that I was being guided by the client from hell who had clearly lost their way.
They Might Be Right
Here's the point, though: every single version apart from the last one was crap. The producers were completely correct in their guidance, steering me (albeit, at times, reluctantly) to the end. Never forget that while you might know your onions about making music, they have lived and breathed their projects for a lot longer than you have. They have the bigger picture, and know more about what they are trying to achieve than you do. Sometimes these things are developed over years, and when they call you up, for you to assume that you know what they need is often the height of arrogance.
When being asked to amend and develop your music it pays to be humble. It's a privilege that they didn't fire you after Demo 1, and the uncomfortable truth is that, like it or not, the customer is always right.