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Advice on writing drop-in-place production music


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Hi All; long time lurker, first time poster on the forum :)

 

I'll get right to it; I want advice, hints, tips, tricks, on creating film music that a producer could drag, drop and loop in their video session.

 

A client has seven 2.5-3 minute films that need one piece of music that can be adapted to each film. I will not be composing individual tracks to each film; instead, I need to figure out a way to create one piece of music that can be adapted easily by a non-musical producer to match the length of the films he's working with, specifically by dropping an intro, loop, and outro audio file(s).

 

For example, if one wanted to create INTRO-MIDDLE-OUTRO .aif files that a film producer could simply drop into their Final Cut timeline and then decide when they wanted an ending, how would one do that? I assume I should/shouldn't use/do a lot or X, or Y effects because of X Y and Z consequences? (please fill in the X Y and Z with your personal knowledge, wisdom, experience)

 

I don't even know what kind of technique or system to call this; (customizable production music?)

 

I hope this makes sense, and if it doesn't, please let me know!

 

Thank you!

 

-Eric

 

My Logic X utilized a tricked out i7 16GB DDR3 RAM 2012 iMac, multiple hard drives and Alesis qx49 MIDI controller connected via two usb hubs, powered by one 1500+ Cochrane matter/antimatter core, and two LF-44 nacelles

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  • 2 weeks later...

As a composer and a videographer, I can tell you that the odds of any one piece of music fitting numerous films is highly, highly unlikely. Plenty of filmmakers do this, but the music can only fit generically (unless the crew is smart and has the picture edited to match the score). Also, depending on the nature of the videos, that's a client I might think was daft—seven videos utilizing the same score? Seems almost comical, if they're for distribution.

 

That said, there are plausible reasons for such a request: my own videography company makes scholarship recruiting videos for high school students trying to be scouted by colleges. We've put together what's essentially an assembly line system where clients can choose their own graphics package and music track (from about eight and a dozen bespoke options, respectively,) to add a sense of personalization to each video. I'm slowly working my way through the music offerings, but my approach has been more composition-based than production-based. The music is intentionally written with multiple sections of varying lengths, and harmonies are closely watched so that any one section can jump to another section if necessary without anything sounding out of place. Each section is bounced individually, then a couple "cuts" of differing lengths are put together and bounced, and keeping in mind the idea of any one section being able to flow naturally into any other, the production is kept simple, with no lingering effect tails or similar (at times, the production can hurt for this, but it's a calculated loss given the audience and purpose of the video).

 

Beyond that, there is software that I've seen video editors discuss in Facebook editor groups that will assemble underscores based on given input in a sort of Band-In-A-Box-on-'roids sort of way, but I don't remember its name off-hand, and I suggest you don't forward that information to your client, lest they possibly ditch your services for a computer.

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  • 5 months later...

Director and Editor here, when selecting music for a video edit we look for music that has multiple crescendoes per track. The more "ups and downs" a track has, the better. We also look for tracks that don't have abrupt endings.

 

I analyze waveform first when selecting a song from a stock site for a video project (we use APM at my place of business, GASP), if the waveform is all one height with no peaks or valleys, I know I'm looking at a track that's going to be tricky to use for creating buildup and release in my edit. So if you make a track that has some variance throughout, with a smooth ending that hangs and is easy to cross fade out, you're setting your client up for success. If your client isn't prepared to edit music a little bit you should have a talk with the editor :). Good luck!

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Good point that people can, and do, judge a track in part by looking at its waveform display ... which sites like SoundCloud make it fairly impossible not to do. Both the "peaks and valleys," and the "jaggedness" of the waveform, and the general ebb and flow of the song itself, are things that you see at a glance.

 

Although I'm nothing but a hack amateur 8) at this point, I have spent time exploring the technique of constructing a song by creating sections of varying length ... lengths that are multiples of a complete measure, and others that purposefully are not ... engineering each one to begin or to end on a particular note, and to maintain intervals such as a fourth or a fifth when placed alongside another one. Some of these sections are retrograde (backwards), inversion (upside-down), or both, of phrases that appear elsewhere. I've found that one can create several different songs ... several very-different sounding songs ... by combining these pieces in the timeline. Songs can also be tailored to "hit" a specific beat-count. Interestingly, although the compositions are specifically composed of repeated and somewhat-contrived phrases, to my ear they don't sound like they came out of a spray-can.

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