Creating visuals with the music in mind is a great way to inspire your shooting process. While searching for music, you should sort by mood, genre, and song structure. Below, you’ll discover some tips to help you plan creatively for your next video project. Ben Hess, director, cinematographer, and Epidemic Sound Ambassador, shares his tips for planning your soundtrack. Hear how to choose the best music to match your vision.
Here Are The 4 Tips for Finding the Best Music for Your Project
1. Diegetic
Indie filmmakers often choose to include diegetic music in their projects, but this type of music can also be used in a variety of ways. These off-screen sounds can add an extra layer of depth. In other cases, diegetic music can simply be used as a background sound.
Diegetic sound, as the name suggests, helps tell a story, and can make viewers care about the characters or the story. Because sound is at least half of the picture, filmmakers must consider how the sounds in their project will impact the audience and sell a scene. For example, MelodyLoops is the best platform for you. However, this song was not playing during the recording of the scene, so it was later added to the editing process.
2. Complementary
When choosing a soundtrack for a project, the right mix of acoustic and instrumental sounds will help your audience relax and focus on your content. Acoustic music, particularly string music, offers a calming, serene vibe that’s perfect for a variety of media. This type of music is great for interviews, instructional videos, and tutorials, among other projects. An inviting melody will attract viewers and help your project move forward without getting in the way. Make sure that the choice of the music doesn’t distract viewers from the primary content, as this can cause viewers to skip the media and move on to something else.
3. Color coding
If you’re working on a project and want to be able to choose the perfect song or playlist, color coding is the way to go. This method of searching for music is particularly helpful for secondary groups within a larger collection. In this way, you’ll be able to easily identify the right song or playlist for your project based on its mood. But before you begin color-coding your music collection, you should first assess the mood of your audience.
When students are young, they respond well to color as a teaching tool. This method works well for young children with developmental disabilities, and it has also proven effective for students with learning disabilities. While typical learners will eventually graduate from color coding, many LD students and special needs children will fail to read notes without it. The benefits of color coding for music are widespread, and the technique can help your audience understand the concepts of music.
4. Public domain
Using public domain music for your project is a great way to avoid paying for song licenses or royalties. Music is used for almost everything today, from commercials to classical works. But if your project is for commercial use, you may need a different type of song. If you’re making a commercial video, you probably don’t want to use scratchy jazz or Victrola recordings of opera. And, if your audience is comprised of tech buyers, medieval madrigals are not the best choice.
While you can still use music from famous public domain composers in your project, you will need to know that copyright protections don’t apply to sound recordings.
