Benjamin Eckstein

Let’s talk about music.  I’ve been thinking about this post for a while now but am finally getting down to writing it.  Music is arguably one of the most powerful mediums we have; it can so strongly help to create a mood or emotion and can stay with you for hours or days (even when you don’t want it to).  But film or video might even be more powerful a medium because it can benefit from having music AND visuals.  I am a big fan of music and it has always played an important part of my life; prior to starting a career in video, I was working and heading in the direction of being a music engineer.  (In fact, I met my wife through music production.)

Finding music to accompany my videos is easily the hardest part of post-production, and I feel strongly that the decision can make or break the mood of the final piece.  It can easily take hours to find what I am looking for, and I often will preview dozens of tracks against what I am working for before I find the right piece.  (I actually find it to be an agonizing and painful process at times.)  I have also had the (crushing) experience of finding a track that I think works perfectly and then have a client come back and say they want something else.  I think that is the hardest part of picking music, because it is so subjective.  I have also had clients give me music to use for a video that I felt strongly was not right for the piece, and then it’s about having a discussion with them, but ultimately the decision falls on the person with the checkbook.

I think if you look at some of my videos, you will (hopefully) feel that music plays a strong role in each of them, and that it has been carefully selected for each piece.  There is a mix of originally composed music, production music, as well as commercial (un-licensed) tracks.  (The use of un-licensed tracks is a topic of further discussion, and something I don’t use for paid client work, but will use for personal demos.)  In an ideal world I could always use original compositions for each of my videos, as there is generally no better way to get music that fits the mood, as well as the visual cues of the video, but it is often cost and time prohibitive.  The two composers who I have used most often are Jason Jordan and Russel Wolff, two very talented guys.

Which brings us to production music.  I feel we’ve come a long way since I started in this business 10 years ago, when it comes to the offerings of production music.  Back then, a production company typically purchased a library of CDs (generally for an ample cost), with a wide array of tracks.  But I always found that the selection was typically quite lacking, and among the hundreds (or thousands) of music cuts in the library there were only a small handful of tracks that did not SOUND like production music, and I found that I was always going back to the same tracks.  Searching through the CDs was generally a pain in the butt, and in general it seemed like you paid a lot for a small selection of usable material.

When I went freelance 3 and a half years ago, I thought I’d have to invest in some sort of music library but was not looking forward to doing so.  Fortunately I found a wide array of web-based libraries where you pay by the track, and the search options, as well as the quality and diversity of tracks, was much higher quality.  The cost to license an individual track ranges from site to site, and is generally more expensive than the per track cost if you own a library, but I’d rather only pay for what I want to be using.  I still find that there are a lot of tracks on these sites that sounds more like elevator music than what I’d want accompanying my videos, but for the most part there is a lot of high quality tracks.

So without further ado, here are a few of my go-to websites for production music:

Audio Network:

This site has a great interface for searching and previewing tracks.  I can play a track in the web browser and demo it against my Final Cut Pro timeline as a quick way of seeing if it fits in with the piece.  There are a few composers that contribute to this site that I go back to again and again, but I’m always finding new tracks and composers here.  Almost every track has several versions in different lengths, mixes (drums or no drums, for instance) which is super useful.  They also have different licensing costs depending on the usage, starting at around a dollar (for personal use), so I’ll download a bunch of tracks for a specific job, then buy the appropriate license once the client signs off on the video and whichever tracks we use.  I am also finding that I am hearing tracks from this site on commercials, reality shows, etc, more and more, which I think is a testament to the material that is here.

Non-Stop Music:

I recently discovered this site (thanks to someone on Twitter) and am just starting to use it.  They have a pretty deep selection, but the sound quality is all top-notch.  They have a range of licensing types, and will setup custom libraries if you want to purchase a blanket license for parts of their collection.  Their customer support is excellent and I’ve spoken with a rep from their company a few times.  As part of their service you can contact them about a project you are working on and they will (free of charge) suggest tracks for your project.  I haven’t taken advantage of that yet, but I plan to.

With Etiquette:

I haven’t used this site yet, but I like where their head is at.  They seem to be catered more to the wedding market, with mostly non-instrumental tracks, but the quality is stuff that I’d listen to on my ipod.  They only have a small selection of artists now and I think they need to expand on this (and could easily do so), but what they have is great stuff.  I imagine I’ll have a project at some point where I’ll go here for a track.

There are countless other music sites out there and I’d love to hear what you use.  Happy scoring!

Tags: editing, freelance, music, music libraries, post-production

Posted Monday, August 30th, 2010 and filed under Blog. Both comments and pings are currently closed.