To impress a client, your work needs to be IMPRESSIVE

One of the fundamental principles of Audio Masterclass is that if you want to get work in the audio industry, you have to be able to impress potential clients. If your audio or music is not impressive, then the work will go to someone else whose audio or music is impressive. There is no shortage of people looking, indeed hungry, for work. A potential client can simply say, "Next!" without a moment's hesitation.

So here's an example where the client wanted someone to produce a sampled drum track. Note that in the professional industry, if real drumming is required, it is no problem at all to hire a drummer. So when a sampled drum track is requested, it should sound like a sampled drum track.

Here is candidate No. 1 for the job (If you can't play these .wav files directly in your browser, you should download them to audition in your DAW)...

Candidate 1

Well it fulfills the criterion of sounding like sampled drums, so maybe the client will pick up the telephone. But before he does so, he hears this...

Candidate 2

No contest. This work is much more inspiring. (It is worth noting that the editing isn't perfectly clean, but that can be OK in the context of sampled drums. It adds texture.)

Similar issues apply in all areas of audio and music. There is always someone else around who can do the work, so to get yourself picked, any demonstration material you produce has to go the extra mile and impress the client.

By the way, if there were twenty more demo tracks to listen to, the very best example might not get heard. The client will stop at the first that makes him go, "Wow!" and pick up the phone. But that's the way the business works. Sometimes you just have to keep knocking on doors until one opens for you. Once you have built relationships with a number of clients, your telephone won't stop ringing.

The moral - be impressive and you'll get work.

P.S. The image is of Julia Domna, wife of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Empressive or what?