Getting The Most Out Of Production Music: A Guide for Directors, Editors and Producers

Production music represents an ever-growing percentage of the music you hear on TV and streaming platforms, and in movie theaters. A few decades back, ‘library music’ was seen as the poor cousin of the music industry, but today production music is great quality, and many A-list film and TV composers have their hand in production music catalogs.

I believe the right composer custom scoring your project will still deliver the best result, as they’ll give personalized creativity, craft and inspiration to every frame of your picture. But when schedule, creative flexibility or budgets make production music your solution, there are several strategies you can employ to make sure you get an excellent result. The steps listed here are mainly oriented towards creating a soundtrack for a complete long-form project, as opposed to just a single use sync license for an advertisement or promo, where production music is also often used.

Many networks, production companies and other music users tend to have blanket license deals in place with existing libraries, which will dictate the library you use. Otherwise, you can find a list of all the best libraries on the Production Music Association website pmamusic.com

When you know what production music library you’re using for your project, here are some steps to take to maximize your result.

1.  Ask the production music catalog to come up with musical suggestions for you – most libraries are eager to help, and based on your brief, will come up with track or album suggestions to point you in the right musical direction for your project. Many production music catalogs have genius music directors who know their catalogs inside and out, and will quickly give you a set of great choices. Many production music catalogs will also be happy to come up with custom tracks for your project, which allows you to craft music with the special needs of your pictures in mind.

2.  Dig into the catalog yourself to find the best options – Musical taste is very subjective, so while suggestions from a production music company are generally helpful, if you get really good at finding options in the catalog yourself, you’re likely to get the results closest to your own taste. Just browsing around, clicking on labels, albums and tracks and listening, can be fruitful, but for the very best results becoming a master of search is vital. Most good production music catalogs have detailed descriptive metadata attached to their tracks, and it’s reflected in the highly sensitive search engines many have today. Searching according to mood and emotion keywords produces great results. Production music metadata also reflects musical genres, sub-genres and styles, so putting some thought into where your needs fit within the broad spectrum of music is important. If you’re hearing particular musical instruments, most production music has this tagged within its metadata. Musical tempos, from slow to very fast, can also be used in most search engines. Some will even allow BPM information (beats per minute.) Don’t be scared to try anything that comes to mind when searching.

3.  Don’t settle for the first track you find that feels right – Even though it can be time consuming, it’s really important to come up with as many options as you can to try against your picture. What works against picture is often unpredictable and rather mysterious. Build playlists of lots of options. Then try them against picture, but again don’t settle for the first one that seems to work. Try and build at least five options of tracks that work, and study the differences between them in detail to figure out what supports your visuals and story the best.

4.  Become great at editing music – when a composer scores your film he or she is focused very much on the important ‘beats’ of the story, where mood, emotion or pace changes with dialog or visual actions. Often these beats require a change of musical tone, pace or emotion. When you’re adding production music to visuals, it’s important to map out the beats of the scene, and ideally use different pieces of production music to match the different tones, paces and emotions required. Production music works least effectively when it’s added to a scene with not enough regard for the changes in story and character that happen during that scene. I remember my film school professors telling us again and again how ‘character arc’, or how a character goes through major changes during a story, is the most important and satisfying component of great stories – music needs to reflect this key element. To transition from one production music track to another, or even to another section with the track that maps more effectively against the story beats, excellent music editing is required. This means learning how to dig into the waveforms of the track, and cut on musical beats in a way that doesn’t sound choppy or messy. Small cross-fades from one track to another often help smooth this, but bad cross-fading doesn’t sound good, and it’s important to really master this skill. You should never be able to hear a cross-fade – if you do, it hasn’t been done right. Sometimes ‘tool kit’ elements like crashes or whooshes may be employed to cover a transition from one library track to another. With Protools you can really get into the deep shape of the musical waveform, and making very precise edits will result in a smooth, fluid result. Music editing is often a very under-appreciated art, but an art it is.

5.  Use alternative mixes and stems – most good libraries have plenty of alternative mixes and sometimes also ‘stems’ of their tracks, the individual instrumental elements. Sometimes you may find a track feels a little big for the visuals, or a particular element may be bothering you against the picture. Often digging into the alternative mixes of tracks will find you a version that feels better against the picture. Stems allow you to sit and play with all the different elements of a track, piecing together a version that works best against picture. Also try editing between different mixes of the same track according to what your picture needs. A scene might work well starting on a smaller sounding mix, but then progressing to a bigger sounding alt mix as it develops, or vice versa. Again, developing your music editing skills will greatly enhance your results with production music, particularly when working with alternative mixes and stems.

6.  Don’t use fade-outs of tracks unless absolutely necessary – most production music tracks end on a smooth musical ‘button’ that can signal the end of a scene or important story moment. Too often, editors will just fade out a production music track when the need for music is finished, rather than taking the time to edit to the smooth button on the end of the track. This is one of the major differences you often hear between custom scored music and projects using production music. Again, music editing skills are vital, and it’ll add a much more professional sheen to your project if you create proper ‘button’ endings.

7.  Be aware of the differences between score, source and ‘scource’ – Before the existence of production music libraries, the composer was largely responsible for the score, or ‘non-diegetic’ music, underscore that enhances the emotional impact of the visuals and story, but does not occur within the actual world of the scene. ‘Source music’ on the other hand is music that occurs within the world of the story, for example, coming from a radio within the scene. In general, source is music that sounds like popular songs rather than traditional movie score. And then of course, there’s ‘scource’, something in between, song type material that does not necessarily come from within the world of the scene, but gives an emotional kick to the visuals in a similar way to score, operating from a non-diegetic space. In modern TV and film, music editing will often move us seamlessly back and forth between these three types of music. Often a track might start as source, then as the scene or visuals change, the track may increase in volume or tone to become scource, and then perhaps with the right editing transition into a more typical score cue. When we’re using production music tracks, it’s always important to imagine what the particular use of the track is for, and edit accordingly and with the right intention. Audiences are accustomed to the differentiation between these different types of music, and will respond to visual content that observes these conventions, and uses them effectively. Often ‘futzing’ or ‘worldizing’ tracks that are intended to function as source will help audiences with this distinction, for instance adjusting the frequencies of a track at mix time to reflect it playing through a radio in the scene, or with a spatial reverb on it to reflect the physical space of the scene, and so on. Be sure to focus on the differences between these types of music when you get to the final mix, so your mixer treats them correctly.

8.   Look at the big picture – when you’ve gone through all of these steps and edited music to your entire project, watch the whole thing through and pay attention to the overall feeling and flow of the music. One of the advantages of a custom score by a composer is that it feels unified and well structured. Often projects using production music can feel choppy, jumping from one type of track to another, with material from multiple composers. The music can start feeling like a bit of a patchwork. It’s difficult to entirely eliminate this effect, but paying attention to it helps, and sometimes replacing some of the cues with others, paying attention to style, the composer used, and so on. Ideally you want everything to feel like a seamless flow, one unified musical work. Others might say a string of different sounding cues more accurately reflects the multiverse ‘post-modern’ media-driven world we live in today. A score like ‘Babel’ used a patchwork effect to great advantage in telling its story.

9.  Sleep on it – Just like you would with writing, re-drafting, often multiple times, can take something from good to great. When you’ve done all you can do, take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes and ears. Often you’ll have a new perspective and be able to make the changes to really elevate your project to new heights.

Happy listening and editing!

Check out the Lalela production music catalog at www.lalela.com

Check out Alan’s composer website at www.alanlazar.com