I personally would rather listen to a shorter reel with a variety of styles when browsing potential composers. I don't know if anyone has the time to review hundreds of candidates while listening to full soundtracks. If a composer sparks my interest I'll dive deeper for sure.

I would also keep your audio reels short, but make sure the reviewer has an option to dive deeper and listen to more lengthier versions if they wish.

Just my opinion.

I'm with Rutin. Short pieces are absolutely better.

Think of it from the point of view of the person tasked with finding the right composer for a game (on a big enough project, that's the music director.) They are short on time, and have to listen to dozens of reels. Are they going to spend an hour, or even fifteen minutes, on each of the initial reels? No. Assuming that they don't already know who they want to use, they're going to graze for things that fit what they're looking for.

Your best bet is to choose about five styles, and have a reel with a 8-12 second highlight from each of those styles. This ends up being about a minute. Fade each highlight in over a second, out over a second, and keep a second of silence between each. Then, if that reel catches the fancy of the listener, you can have a link for more information, that can have deeper, fuller tracks. However, again, if the music director is mostly interested in your orchestral score with a naval theme, having to sit through a couple of trap epics and deep house boomers to get to that, is not a good use of time, so one link per style for the follow-up is still better.

Another tip is to make the background images bland, but pretty, for each style. A slowly panning shot of a softly lit well-engraved orchestral score. A cut of slowly billowing clouds. Lightning strikes over an African horizon. That kind of thing – don't attempt to “set the scene” too much to force your trance anthem into a cyberpunk sci-fi horror aesthetic, because that will bias everyone who is looking to make some other game.

For me I see two issues in this post:

• Does producing an entire OST within one project/session work?

Yes. It doesn't quite well. This is the method I use. I know several game composers who keep their sessions separated out by cue. I get this approach because sometimes you can run out of resources, especially with really large sessions so you need to make each track it's own project file. I've done this before for certain games that require a certain setup and really push my hardware to the max. But for other projects, I'll do my best to keep all of the cues (or tracks) all built within one large project file. The advantage here is once you set up your master chain, you can render out all of your tracks through that one chain. The issue with multiple project files is if you change your mastering chain midway through production, you need to make sure to remember to keep those changes consistent across many different project files, instead of just one.

• Does it make sense to create an entire demo reel out of one OST?

Not really. Mostly because many audio directors or hiring managers just don't have a lot of time. So the amount of time they're gonna spend listening to your work is VERY, VERY, VERY little. The other issue is lack of range. Most OSTs, but not all, fall within a certain range that can be somewhat narrow. For example, it's rare to hear a OSTs that has funk, orchestral, hip hop and country music all sprinkled through out. Sure, you may have some fusion happening or some carry over. But not enough to show enough possible range. So most people tend to create shorter montages of various styles/tones/moods and approaches. This is in attempt to convey the amount of range and flexibility they have as composers.

It could possibly work if you wanted to show how you could “red thread” a motif or idea and place it in a variety of settings and tones. But even then, I would do so with highlights instead of full tracks.

Most people forget that demo reels are meant to be an introduction only. Leave them wanting more. Hope that helps! Good question!

Berend Salverda said:

@Rutin Thank you for your reply! Don't all those reels kinda start to sound the same after a while, especially when listening to hundreds?

When listening to your 30 minute OST, I just picked random spots to play here and there. It's all the same basic vibe. I'm not saying it's bad music at all - please don't misunderstand me. You do good music! But it's all the same basic style, tone and mood from what I heard (and I sampled quite a bit of it).

I say all of this to point out even having a really long, full OST type of demo reel doesn't avoid having it begin to sound the same. It's all one flavor.

Another, perhaps strange analogy, is how folks will often get a flight of various beers to try out different brews to see what they like. Whereas a full OST is mostly just 1-3 flavors throughout.

Berend Salverda said:

@Tom Sloper Thanks for your reaction, why do you think so?

Because what Nathan said. I don't have time to listen to a whole album if I'm looking for a music resource. All the other demo reels are short and sweet, and that's for a good reason. The one that doesn't conform doesn't look special and desirable - it looks uninformed.