We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daniel Tauber a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Yes! And I’m very grateful I have been able to. The biggest step in creating that full-time living off of music was when I started working with Audiomachine. They were wonderful in helping me and new hires get up to the production standards needed for the modern trailer industry and they were invaluable in helping me learn and grow as quickly as possible. As a result of this, each year has just gotten easier to sustain myself through the music I write for them.

The biggest thing to help speed up the process is just embracing each new experience as it comes by, even if it seems daunting, and having a great support network behind that you can learn and lean on if needed. Learn by doing and frequently get opinions from other people, there are fewer ways to learn faster.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Sure! So my name is Dan Tauber and I write music for trailers for video games out in LA. I’ve had my work featured in advertising campaigns for things like The Last of Us Season 2, The 2022 Winter Olympics, and Amsterdam, and have written a lot of in-game music for games like Call of Duty Mobile over the years.

As I mentioned earlier, starting with Audiomachine was the way I found my way into the industry and I find myself writing music in a crazy different array of styles to fit different client requests. For instance one day I could be working on a neoclassical soloistic cello piece and then the next day doing hip-hop or writing horror music with knife scrapes and distorted synths. It’s a privilege to work on all these different projects as I continually learn something different from each that I bring into another project in a different style. Maybe that hi-hat pattern in the hip-hop track makes me write a different string ostinato, etc, etc.

I’ve been very blessed to have had my music used on all these different campaigns over the years but I would say the most proud I feel is from the messages I see of someone hearing the music I write and them telling me how it made them feel or how it helps them through a difficult time. Evoking those feelings is what I got into music for in the first place and being able to provide that to people is what I feel the ultimate sense of gratitude from.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The first story that comes to mind isn’t in LA but in Boston when I was studying Film Scoring at Berklee. I remember feeling like everyone in LA was going to be way more talented than I was so I felt the need to take on as much as possibly could at once to improve as quickly as possible and to also get used to creating great material when I was exhausted to just train that muscle. So I remember getting permission to take all of these advanced classes at Berklee at the same time. So I’d be finishing one assignment at like 2 am and then forcing myself to start the next one right afterward. So yeah, I created the conditions to force myself to write well when I was sleep-deprived and drained for month after month but I ultimately think it helped me when I started at AM as it helped mentally prepare me for the intimidating demands that were first placed on me when I started.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think the biggest thing is the fact that there is a blurring between the lines of work and life. There are so many times when I work where I’m just having fun and enjoying myself and I feel like it’s not a job but something that I do naturally and am just being paid for. I think I can feel like that because of not only my interest in what I do but also because I’m lucky enough to see the positive impact it gives people who I write the music for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dantauber.com
• Instagram: @danielntauber

Image Credits

@latorivictoria