Your Gig Is Your Next Audition: Elvin Ross on How to Become a Film Composer (Episode 22)

Everything you do is an audition.

Elvin Ross is a composer, producer and director, and the owner of E. Ross Studios. For years he has written the music for Tyler Perry's stage plays, TV series and films, from Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion to House of Payne and The Haves and the Have Nots. In Episode 22 of The Career Musician, he sits down with Nomad to talk about how a church piano player from New Orleans became a film and TV composer.

If you want to know how to become a film composer without the film school route, Elvin's story is a good place to start. His training happened in his own studio, years before anybody called him a composer.

Seven days to a show

Music was always in Elvin's house. His mother is a classically trained pianist and vocalist. He started on drums, then gravitated to piano and organ, playing for community choirs and churches. He actually went to school for architecture, drafting and engineering, but he was already doing better as a musician than an entry-level architect would. So he chose music. In his words, it chose him.

The turn came at an Easter service in Atlanta in 1996. Elvin was on piano. Tyler Perry, who had gone to the same large church back in New Orleans, came up afterward and asked if he wanted to play for the stage plays he was doing. They set a meeting for Tuesday. By Tuesday, Tyler's music director had quit, taking all the music with him, and there was a play going out in seven days.

Elvin wrote the show, hired the musicians, and seven days later they were up in Baltimore. After that, he says, Tyler figured out the best way to handle Elvin under pressure: give him everything. That's Luck = preparation + opportunity. The opportunity was a quitting MD. The preparation was years of church gigs.

The Tuesday cue that opened a movie

Long before film work, Elvin spent time in his little home studio imitating and emulating scores, just dreaming he might be a composer one day. Then Tyler made Diary of a Mad Black Woman. At the spotting session they told him they wanted original music for the opening, and Elvin pulled out something he had written during those quote-unquote Tuesdays. It became the opening cue. Neither he nor Tyler had any training in film, and the movie opened at number one.

The same thing happened in TV. Tyler put his own money into a sitcom pilot and asked Elvin for some bumpers, the short musical transitions in and out of scenes and commercial breaks. TBS picked the show up with a deal Elvin remembers as 200-plus episodes. In his words, the bumpers turned into a lifetime of pay.

That's the business lesson. Music that airs on TV is your intellectual property, and your performing rights organization (ASCAP, BMI or SESAC in the States) tracks it and pays you over time. Elvin's first TV work paid almost nothing upfront. He looked at it as an investment in himself and a resume builder, and it turned into residual income. Nomad's advice: if you're not signed up with a PRO, do it now, and learn the difference between score, soundtrack and sync. Make Music Your Business.

Listen like a doctor

In a meeting with a director, Elvin does a lot of listening. Sometimes people think he's half asleep. He's absorbing what they want him to translate into music. He compares it to a doctor listening to a patient.

He has learned not to oversell. When you oversell in the meeting, what you bring back often isn't what they were looking for. Some directors say "just do it, let me see if I like it." Some micromanage and drop temp music into the cut so you can get in the neighborhood. Your job is to read which kind you're dealing with. He will sometimes play a snippet of where he's going early, but he knows that can backfire if they can't hear past an unfinished sketch.

And yes, it's okay to say no. If something is outside his strengths, like a straight rock project, he'll pass. If it's one rock cue inside a film, he brings in someone who does it well.

An appetite for the work

Elvin prices projects to fit the situation. A big-budget film gets a big price tag. Someone with good music and no budget might get a break. These days he has an agent, a manager, a business manager and attorneys. But he didn't start there.

"I built the team as needed... My appetite was the work. Not the success, not the money."

Elvin Ross, 31:07

He started out doing it for free just to get the opportunity. That turned into a first check, then a residual, then a resume. Work begets work. He also warned against jumping onto somebody else's journey because you want their car or their house. If he had done that, he says, he would have limited himself to what they had.

His picture for how to carry yourself is a peppermint stick, two colors swirled together.

"I'm confident that I can deliver you this, but I'm humbled by the opportunity."

Elvin Ross, 33:15

When someone hires you, they're taking a chance. Bring confidence and humility to the table together.

Your gig is your next audition

Elvin's advice for working with clients is simple. Show up, deliver on time, and better yet, deliver early. When the director gives notes, don't push back. Just do it. He once wrote a piece he loved and was told it was beautiful but not for this movie. He took it as a chance to show he's a team player. A composer gave him this advice early on: don't wear your feelings on your shoulders.

"The gig that you're working on is your audition for your next gig, because they start talking to one another."

Elvin Ross, 45:01

He has seen it happen. One studio called another to ask about him, and the first thing out of their mouth was that he's a great guy and easy to work with. They already had the music. They wanted to know what he was like to work with. Everything you do is an audition.

That attitude carried him into directing. When he was approached about music for a documentary on the renaming of an island in The Gambia, the idea grew into him directing it. The film became Kunta Kinteh Island: Coming Home Without Shackles. His lesson from years around Tyler: don't be intimidated by opportunity. Just go for it.

The takeaway

Elvin never went to film school. His training was hours in his own studio, mimicking scores and not knowing it was preparation. Keep doing the work even when you don't feel qualified, deliver early, take notes without ego, and build your team when the work calls for it. Nomad's close: daily compounding efforts really do make a difference. If you're working toward that next opportunity, the free Get the Gig guide is a good place to start. You can find more of Elvin's credits on Discogs.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

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