Assistant to a composer

Career Path

For a long time, working as a composer’s assistant has been touted as the first step toward a career as a composer, serving as a sort of practical apprenticeship. Today, however, it's far from being solely an educational experience. Most assistants are treated as employees first and foremost, with the consequence that they are expected to bring a seriously developed skillset to the table from day one. The job of an assistant sometimes seems to have more in common with the work of film orchestrators, copyists, and assistant engineers than that of a composer.

Still, the opportunity to learn from the composer—and the other members of the composer's team, which functions almost as a small music production company—should not be undervalued. When assistants feel they have gained enough, usually after a year or two, they break off and head in new directions. Some might join Hollywood music production houses, others might start new freelance careers as orchestrators or copyists, and a lucky few might make it as film, television, video game, or freelance composers.

Finding Work

Assistantships are fairly unlikely to be advertised on conventional job listing websites, so it might be a matter of creating a position rather than finding one. As such, it's doubly important to be assertive and to advocate for one's own importance and usefulness. Aspiring composer's assistants should reach out to established composers whose work they appreciate with an explanation of their skills and abilities, as well as a proposal for how these abilities could improve or aid the composer's process.

Professional Skills

• MIDI
• DAWs
• Audio mixing
• Audio engineering
• Music composition
• Orchestration
• Arranging
• Music preparation
• Organization
• Problem solving

Interpersonal Skills

Television composer Michael Price (Sherlock) explains it well: “It’s kind of unlikely that you’re going to want anyone with an attitude. You’re going to be working closely together, through late nights, so a sense of humor is going to be important. The composer is going to be dealing with lots of political and big-picture pressure that you may not even be aware of, so they’re unlikely to want someone less organized than them. Or less committed. But what they would, I’m pretty sure, appreciate, is someone who could be proactive, forward-thinking, and solve problems, both technical and musical, before they came up."

Work Life

Most composers work in a home or external studio, where they're joined by a team that may be as small as one other person (their assistant) or as large as ten employees with different professional specialties. Aspiring assistants should expect early mornings, late nights, and long hours, especially when a deadline is approaching.