Hello from County Kerry, Ireland

Welcome, Stephen! Congrats on your achievements so far - those are great! Others will have more to say about how to promote yourself / your music, but I'll throw in my two cents. One question, are you trying to sell more music, or get more work as a film composer? I'd consider those two different things.

In my experience as a film and game composer, competitions are not fruitful as far as advancing my career or increasing my recognition. They're fun to enter and can give you some nice videos to put in your demo reel. If you want to promote yourself in order to be called upon for more work in film scoring, then it's important to mingle with film makers. There may be a film community in County Kerry - a place to start. Show up to film festivals where you can, and start mingling with people. Some of this can be done on line - reaching out to filmmakers whose work you like to introduce yourself, getting on forums, discussion boards, and Discord. You can increase your online presence - have an Instagram profile, a website, a Youtube channel. There doesn't seem to be a way around all this footwork; it's just something one has to do.

Hope this helps.

Warm welcome, Stephen, from the Florida Gulfcoast
@musicalweather offers some solid advice regarding promoting your own work

Good to have you with us; you are in the right place to pick up some valuable tips & insights

musicalweather said:

Welcome, Stephen! Congrats on your achievements so far - those are great! Others will have more to say about how to promote yourself / your music, but I'll throw in my two cents. One question, are you trying to sell more music, or get more work as a film composer? I'd consider those two different things.

In my experience as a film and game composer, competitions are not fruitful as far as advancing my career or increasing my recognition. They're fun to enter and can give you some nice videos to put in your demo reel. If you want to promote yourself in order to be called upon for more work in film scoring, then it's important to mingle with film makers. There may be a film community in County Kerry - a place to start. Show up to film festivals where you can, and start mingling with people. Some of this can be done on line - reaching out to filmmakers whose work you like to introduce yourself, getting on forums, discussion boards, and Discord. You can increase your online presence - have an Instagram profile, a website, a Youtube channel. There doesn't seem to be a way around all this footwork; it's just something one has to do.

Hope this helps.

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Thank you for your very kind and helpful reply @musicalweather, I really appreciate it.

If I sell some tracks, I won't complain - and I've already had fees for the live presentations I've made and the Spotify stuff gets some listens. But, at my rather advanced stage in life and being semi-retired, I'm looking to do something 'fruitful and with purpose', through my music.

I prefer working with instrumental music and think I might have some ability regarding film/TV scoring (obviously, that's only my opinion - as I've no proof of that as yet).

So, I'd like to work with film and/or TV makers - and am happy to work with no or low budget ventures, just to get my digits dirty at the keyboard.

I'm not aware of a film community in Kerry, although that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and I'll dig a bit deeper to find out. I do know of Irish film networks (and one of them actually has all those words in its title) - but they can be something of a 'closed shop' to newcomers and, of course everyone with a DAW is a composer!

I've been a professional photographer and photography teacher for 40 years, and I know that everyone with a camera is a photographer, too. So nothing much has changed. I get (or got) the work I did - with some very large organizations like Pfizer, Dorling Kindersley and national newspapers - because of 1) a lucky break or 2) Asking the right person about work at the right time and 3) being good at what I did once I got inside the door (as they say in Ireland). I doubt that working as a composer is very much different.

Incidentally, I have posted a link to my entry for the Winter Indie Film Music contest in another thread. I thought I'd post it here too, in the hope that no one will tell me I'm already over-ambitious. It doesn't play well over a phone, so ear/headphones are recommended for the best sound.

Greetings to the Motherland! My family came to the States from County Cavan a couple centuries ago, loads of people with my surname in Cavan... pretty enough place, but not nearly as beautiful or interesting as Kerry, in my opinion. I envy your premises, it's utterly beautiful there. (And I like rain.)

I've been seeing some absolutely stellar, world-class acting and writing coming from Ireland lately, and I'm sure most of them are based in Dublin (maybe a handful in Cork or Galway?), but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some talented cinematic weirdos in Kerry. I, personally, would dig around locally and try to meet some in person. The internet is great and all, but it's extremely saturated and almost impossible to filter signal from noise. So in addition to the competitions you're doing, I'd highly recommend finding people in your independent film community, such as it might be, and see if you find anyone you get along with personally. In-person relationships are still the most effective way to move forward in the music business... maybe now more than ever!

Best of luck however you go.