So what does it cost?
Pricing happens to be one of the hardest questions to answer – you don’t really know for sure until it’s done! That really helps for giving realistic estimates!
“How much do you charge for one page?”, is something I get asked often. A simple lead sheet with chords and no lyrics, something like this, would take me about 15 minutes. My hourly rate is a moderate $24. So this page would cost $6. Then there are pages from Big Band arrangements which I usually make for 11×17 paper, like this, they usually average out around $9-$12 per page over the whole piece – unless you have total craziness on every page. A different matter is for example classical guitar music which these days often comes with guitar TAB in addition to the traditional notation. Once you figure in dynamics, two or more independent voices and other pesky details I can easily spend 45 minutes on a page, bringing this to $18. The same happens with orchestral scores like this, where an average of $12-$18 per page isn’t unusual.
After we had kids I needed to change my pricing guidelines because working at home with two toddlers in the next room charging by the hour seemed unfair to the customer and myself. The music software I use has a very handy feature which can count all the stuff you enter into a piece of music: notes, lyrics, chords, etc. When I use the counting feature on this tune I come up with 182 items which then get multiplied 0.035 = $6.37. The factor of 0.035 I found was in use by many professional publishing houses and it gives a very fair price. Especially since it doesn’t matter how many times I have to run and change diapers (ok, they are teenagers now).
While I prefer to use the counting method for pricing there are things that are priced by the hour. For example when I do a big band arrangement the complete score is created first. This would be charged by the counting method. A lot of customers request a MIDI recording for proofing which can take a few minutes to a few hours to set up properly, depending on the details (such as drum or percussion parts). Charged by the hour. Anything that needs to be changed or corrected is done by the hour but unless your manuscript is a total mess to read this usually is just a few minutes of time. Finally the parts are created and Dorico, Finale and Sibelius make their parts from the material in the score so nothing has to be re-entered and usually the only time consuming steps here are layout specifics such as page breaks, etc. This is charged by the hour.
For a good estimate I request to see a few average pages of the manuscript. ‘Average’ big band arrangements (score, part & recording) are in a range of $250-$350. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me.