Handful of questions…

[joshrose]

So I’m trying to get serious about production music, and I’m preparing to start sending out tracks. My previous experience has only been with libraries like Pump Audio/Getty and that sort of thing. 2 years ago I sent out lots of CD’s to libraries I found on this site, and never really heard much back. It was disheartening, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Looking back, it wasn’t actually surprising, because I was just stripping vocals out of songs I had written, and calling them “production music.”

I think I write much better production music now, and I have a small playlist of examples ready to send out.

So here are my questions…

First of all, do you have any advice for me about my tracks? What can you say about the writing or production?

Currently I work about 30 hours a week mixing music, both live and post mixing. I’m in a position where I can probably dedicate 8-10 hours a week to writing production music, and if I could turn this time into $150-200/week, that would be really useful. I know there are some libraries that offer contracts/pay up front, cover production costs, etc. Is it sensible for me to target libraries like this? Being that I don’t have 1000 tracks to put into libraries right now, it’s gonna be a bit of a crapshoot in terms of royalties. In short, are there libraries I can target that can get me a small/steady cashflow going up front while I build my catalog?

Thank you for any advice you may have. I know I have a tremendous amount to learn.

[Art Munson]

Hi Josh,

You might try looking in this forum about libraries you might try.

Music Library Questions

Best of luck!

[Mark_Petrie]

Hey Josh, I think your tracks are great.

One observation – the tracks overall tended to stay at the same level of intensity throughout. Although you don’t want to make drastic changes in mood or style, it’s always good to have some development in a library track so that the finale / last section has a pay off.

My advice would be to start with the smallest section, develop throughout, add in a breakdown section, then swell / fill into a final big section with a definitive / final sounding ending.

The ending is arguably the most important part for TV editors.

[joshrose]

Mark, thanks very much. I appreciate the compliments, and the advice as well. I was actually trying NOT to build the songs too much, or have too much dynamic variation. From some observations, it seemed to me that this might be a problem for syncing over speech. But I’m very new to this, and I’m sure you have a lot more experience than I do, so I’ll definitely take your advice.

I wonder if there have been other discussions concerning dynamics on MLR in the past? I would be really interested in reading any discussions about arrangements and dynamics in production music.

Thanks again for your reply. I’m gonna use your arrangement advice on some upcoming tracks.

[Mark_Petrie]

Yeah you don’t want to be jumping up and down in dynamics, but nice drops, short pauses – these make great edit points. The piece should generally evolve from smallest to biggest. No point in giving someone two minutes of pretty much the same material, when they could just loop a section if they wanted to.

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