IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 |
(MUSIC)
| | 00:04 |
Hi. I'm Brian Lee White.
In this course, we will work our way
| | 00:07 |
through the process of scoring music to a
commercial ad spot from start to finish.
| | 00:13 |
Starting with the creative brief or break
down the client's material, temp music
| | 00:19 |
(MUSIC) and setting up the session to work
with picture.
| | 00:24 |
Next, I'll move on to the musical building
blocks that make up a compelling
| | 00:28 |
commercial composition.
Including drums and bass (MUSIC), thematic
| | 00:36 |
elements (MUSIC) and sound design.
(MUSIC).
| | 00:46 |
After that, we'll discuss the revision and
delivery process to the client.
| | 00:51 |
I'll share with you many tips and
strategies for working with clients,
| | 00:55 |
creating a solid scope of work, and
discuss basic music licensing.
| | 01:00 |
So if you're ready, I'm ready.
Let's get started.
| | 01:03 |
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| What you need to know| 00:00 |
The core goal of this course is to give
you a broad brush look at the entire
| | 00:04 |
commercial composition process from
initial create a brief, to final delivery
| | 00:08 |
using a sports drink commercial as a
specific example.
| | 00:14 |
While I will describe many of the steps I
take to assemble the composition, this
| | 00:19 |
course is not intended to be a primer on
music production in any specific genre or
| | 00:23 |
a primer on music theory in general.
In other words, I'm not going to spend
| | 00:30 |
hours giving you a step-by-step breakdown
of how I program the specific base sound
| | 00:34 |
or how I use certain chords or certain
snare samples in this very isolated
| | 00:38 |
commercial example.
My goal is to give you a Big picture look
| | 00:43 |
at the process from start to finish, and
point out insight that I have gained from
| | 00:48 |
many different commercial projects in many
different styles.
| | 00:54 |
While watching the course, keep in mind
that the end goal is not so much the
| | 00:57 |
specific musical aesthetic of the specific
score for this very specific commercial
| | 01:02 |
You might not even like the style of music
we use or even the product we're marketing
| | 01:06 |
at all.
Instead I want you to focus on the big
| | 01:11 |
picture of the process and the steps
involved to go from, we've got a
| | 01:15 |
commercial that needs music to, invoice
paid, great job dude.
| | 01:21 |
So on that note, let's get started.
| | 01:23 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 |
If you're a premium member of the
Lynda.com Online Training Library, you
| | 00:04 |
also have access to the raw audio material
used to create the exercise content, as
| | 00:09 |
well as, all other audio and video
examples featured throughout the course.
| | 00:16 |
In the exercise folder, you'll find a
series of subfolders including PDF's of
| | 00:20 |
the creative brief that we'll go over.
I also have full stems of the music.
| | 00:27 |
I'll be using Pro Tools, but you can use
these WAV file stems to bring into any DA
| | 00:32 |
or workstation you might be using.
We also have the temp music example, the
| | 00:39 |
video we'll use in the course, as well as,
the voice over.
| | 00:43 |
If you're a monthly member or annual
member of lynda.com, you don't have access
| | 00:48 |
to the raw audio files but you can follow
along from scratch with your own assets.
| | 00:55 |
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|
|
1. The AssignmentReviewing the creative brief| 00:00 |
Most composition projects will have some
form of creative brief or description of
| | 00:05 |
the task at hand.
The brief is a vital part of the
| | 00:09 |
composition process because it gives the
composer important insight into both the
| | 00:13 |
client as well as the product or service
that is being marketed and helps him or
| | 00:18 |
her create a game plan for the music.
While the format and makeup of creative
| | 00:24 |
briefs can vary depending on whether they
are created by a specific commercial music
| | 00:29 |
house or the ad agency overseeing the
project, they may also include important
| | 00:33 |
information regarding the style of music
they're looking for.
| | 00:38 |
The format, say 15 seconds, 30 seconds.
Is it TV?
| | 00:43 |
Is it web, etc., and any temp music that
they feel works well with the spot and
| | 00:48 |
possibly a reference cut or some story
boards of the actual commercial.
| | 00:55 |
Lets go through an example by breaking
down the creative brief of our sports
| | 00:59 |
drink commercial and try to identify any
information that may help us during the
| | 01:03 |
composition project.
So I opened up the creative brief PDF,
| | 01:08 |
which I included an exercise asset.
It's for your reference.
| | 01:13 |
And as I browse through here, first off we
all we can see that H plus is a high tech
| | 01:17 |
sports drink designed for athletes as a
hydration alternative to water.
| | 01:24 |
We can see that it's all-natural, low
sugar, all that good stuff, but as we
| | 01:28 |
scroll through, we get into some of the
real important information about the brand
| | 01:32 |
itself, which will help us identify how to
best support this brand with music.
| | 01:40 |
So here we can see, H-plus athletes are
sophisticated, not aggressive, clever, not
| | 01:45 |
confrontational, Work hard and play fair.
These are some great insights for shaping
| | 01:52 |
a musical score that we'll get into more
later.
| | 01:56 |
Next up we have a script of the VO and
some style frames.
| | 02:00 |
The script and the style frames would be
incredibly useful if we didn't actually
| | 02:04 |
have a rough cut of the commercial,
because they would help set the tone and
| | 02:08 |
the mood of what the music might sound
like.
| | 02:13 |
But in our case we have a rough cut to
work from, which we'll review in a
| | 02:16 |
subsequent movie.
In addition to the main creative brief,
| | 02:20 |
I've also created a mockup of a music only
brief that composers will often receive
| | 02:25 |
from a music house.
This provides some of the same
| | 02:30 |
information, but also includes important
specifics like the length of the piece.
| | 02:35 |
I can see here it's a 30-second
commercial.
| | 02:38 |
How we should utilize the temp music.
So here I can see that the client likes
| | 02:43 |
the Dubstep electronic vibe of the temp.
So the final track should lean in this direction.
| | 02:49 |
I can see that the picture is locked here.
I can see some other notes about the temp
| | 02:53 |
track is a little too aggressive and
they're looking for something more
| | 02:56 |
anthemic and melodic.
And I have some information about the
| | 03:01 |
delivery requirements, the specifics on a
stereo mix of music only with no
| | 03:05 |
automation, a reference mix with music and
VO, and the format of the files I need to
| | 03:10 |
deliver, so 48k AIFF files with a two pop
at the head we'll go over that in detail
| | 03:15 |
in another movie.
So now that we have a good idea of the
| | 03:22 |
product and who it will be marketed to,
next we'll review an actual rough cut of
| | 03:26 |
the commercial to see how everything is
working in context.
| | 03:31 |
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| Reviewing the cut| 00:00 |
Many commercial composition projects will
include at least a rough cut of the video
| | 00:05 |
or a wire frame or slides in the case of
an animated or visual effects heavy spot.
| | 00:11 |
Well, the creative brief gives us a good
idea of the brand and the potential customer.
| | 00:16 |
A cut of the actual commercial with any
temporary music and voice over can tell us
| | 00:21 |
much more about the aesthetic and feel of
the project and can really help get those
| | 00:25 |
creative juices flowing.
In our H Plus example, we're fortunate
| | 00:31 |
enough to have a near final cut of the
video with both temporary music and voice over.
| | 00:37 |
So let's check it out.
(MUSIC).
| | 00:40 |
You work hard.
Play harder.
| | 00:43 |
Water can't get you back what you lose.
H Plus Sport has what you need.
| | 00:49 |
Natural electrolytes from plants, not
chemicals.
| | 00:53 |
H Plus sport isn't made in a lab.
Too much sugar dehydrates you, and robs
| | 00:58 |
your energy when you need it most.
H Plus Sport only has 5 grams.
| | 01:03 |
Everything you need.
Nothing you don't.
| | 01:06 |
H Plus Sport.
Natural rehydration.
| | 01:09 |
>> So, just as the brief described, we
have a high energy commercial spot with
| | 01:13 |
lots of quick cuts and stutters to get the
viewer excited about the project.
| | 01:19 |
The temp music in this case suits the
style of the video edits, but in my
| | 01:23 |
opinion it tends to obscure the
voice-over.
| | 01:26 |
And sounds a little too aggressive to me.
Which, from the creative brief we learned
| | 01:31 |
that an H Plus customer was a smart and
sophisticated athlete but not aggressive
| | 01:36 |
or confrontational, as this music leans
towards.
| | 01:42 |
As a quick note regarding the temp video
from the client, remember, if the director
| | 01:46 |
is looking for the music and sound design
to hit picture in a certain way, like in
| | 01:50 |
our example commercial, communicate the
importance of a more final or picture
| | 01:54 |
locked cut of the video.
Otherwise, you may find yourself in a
| | 02:00 |
revision nightmare with a vicious cycle of
re-editing your music to new cuts of the video.
| | 02:08 |
Sometimes this can't be avoided because
things happen at the last minute and stuff
| | 02:12 |
needs to change.
But you'd be surprised how many editors
| | 02:16 |
just don't think about the ripple effect
their actions will have on the music and composer.
| | 02:23 |
So a firm dialogue and proper scope of
work is highly recommended to keep the
| | 02:27 |
revisions process as smooth as possible.
Now that we reviewed a cut of the
| | 02:34 |
commercial and come up with a few rough
notes and ideas, next we'll dig deeper
| | 02:37 |
into the temp music and see what's working
and what's not.
| | 02:42 |
And how we can gather inspiration and move
forward with an original score of our own.
| | 02:46 |
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| Working with temp music| 00:00 |
When scoring a picture, whether it's a
commercial, TV or film project, one or
| | 00:04 |
more Reference or what's called temp
tracks are usually included with the
| | 00:08 |
Creative Brief or rough cut of the video.
Temp or Reference music serves a variety
| | 00:15 |
of vital functions in the production
process.
| | 00:19 |
One, it allows the client director and/or
music director to get a feel of the
| | 00:23 |
emotional direction the music should take
and how the viewer will feel when they see
| | 00:27 |
and hear the piece.
By using existing pieces of music, the
| | 00:33 |
team can get close to the feel and energy
they're looking for without paying for
| | 00:38 |
custom music that may or may not work in
context Additionally Temp music gives the
| | 00:43 |
editor something to cut to while they're
working out the tempo and pacing of the
| | 00:47 |
video edits.
From the rough cut, you may have noticed
| | 00:54 |
then in our specific example, the editor
has cut heavily to the tempo of the temp music.
| | 01:01 |
So we'll take that into consideration when
we decide the tempo of our original piece.
| | 01:06 |
In addition to the brief, the reference
material gives the composer tangible sonic
| | 01:11 |
clues as to what the client and director
thinks is going to work.
| | 01:17 |
Emotional adjectives like intense and
aggressive or thoughtful and pensive can
| | 01:22 |
only go so far because they're so
subjective and open to interpretation.
| | 01:28 |
A direct musical example of what the
client thinks describes a specific emotion
| | 01:33 |
or adjective is worth so much more than
handful of words, because it gives the
| | 01:37 |
composer and actionable outline to work
from.
| | 01:42 |
So let's listen to our Temp music again in
isolation, and discuss what is and isn't
| | 01:47 |
working, and point out some specific
things we might want to put into our
| | 01:51 |
original music.
(MUSIC).
| | 02:24 |
So this piece definitely has the
excitement element covered.
| | 02:28 |
But like we said earlier, it's a bit too
aggressive for the brand and lacks any
| | 02:32 |
specific theme or memorable melody.
The technical stutter edit however do work
| | 02:39 |
really well with the way the cut is
shaping up.
| | 02:42 |
So, we'll try to maintain some of that
with a bit more subtlety and
| | 02:46 |
sophistication in our original piece.
Now, if how the reference should be
| | 02:51 |
utilized is not specifically outlined in
the brief, it's important to discuss the
| | 02:56 |
reference for Temp music with the Creative
Director or agency.
| | 03:01 |
For example, is the reference perfect but
couldn't be licensed?
| | 03:05 |
Or like in our H Plus example, it might be
the right mood, but there are things that
| | 03:09 |
definitely need to change to make it work
in this context.
| | 03:14 |
In some cases, the reference is a popular
song by a well-known artist.
| | 03:19 |
Many times, it's much cheaper to pay a
composer to write a sound alike in the
| | 03:23 |
style of a specific song than it is to
license the original work.
| | 03:28 |
Did the client try to license the song
with the artist or publisher but was
| | 03:32 |
denied or could not afford the fee?
If this is the case, you'll need to be
| | 03:37 |
especially careful about how much you lean
on the reference for the final piece.
| | 03:43 |
Sometimes, you may be asked to recreate a
sound or melody more closely than you are
| | 03:47 |
comfortable with.
So be sure to express and document any
| | 03:52 |
concerns you have upfront with the client.
Many times, you'll be the most experienced
| | 03:58 |
ear on the job as far as music is
concerned.
| | 04:01 |
In my experience, the client usually
respects you looking out for their legal interests.
| | 04:07 |
In the case where's there's absolutely no
Reference music or Temp track, it's a good
| | 04:11 |
idea to play Music Director yourself and
seek out your own temp material and review
| | 04:14 |
them with the client to see if you're on
the same page.
| | 04:19 |
This serves two functions, it let's you
know you're on the right track with a much
| | 04:23 |
smaller investment in time than composing
an original piece and it gives you
| | 04:26 |
something to chew on for inspiration.
Doing this is really easy, all you have to
| | 04:33 |
do is open up the video on one window,
open up your iTunes or streaming music
| | 04:37 |
service in another and start
experimenting.
| | 04:41 |
You might be surprised at what does and
doesn't work in the context of picture.
| | 04:46 |
I find this process of coming up with my
own temp track so effective that
| | 04:49 |
oftentimes I'll seek out my own additional
references based on the client's reference tracks.
| | 04:55 |
This gives me a larger pool of inspiration
to draw off of and reduces the risk of
| | 05:00 |
ripping off any one reference piece too
closely.
| | 05:04 |
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| Decoding client expectations| 00:00 |
Well many new composers might think that
it's their stellar composition skills that
| | 00:04 |
will win them the placements they pitch
on.
| | 00:07 |
It's often a composers' soft skills that
end up setting them apart from the pack as
| | 00:12 |
a consistently successful commercial
composer.
| | 00:17 |
One of the most important things to
remember when pitching, or even composing,
| | 00:21 |
final content for a commercial project is
that it is just as much, if not more about
| | 00:25 |
what the client is feeling as it is about
what you personally believe is ultimately
| | 00:29 |
appropreate for the project.
Any experienced composer will tell you
| | 00:36 |
that the best piece doesn't always win the
spot, and could likely show you specific
| | 00:40 |
examples where the music that ended up
winning the spot, or the revision that
| | 00:44 |
ended up in the final, was clearly not
what they felt would have worked best.
| | 00:52 |
Many times, we joke about being
psychologists deciphering the complex
| | 00:55 |
emotions of the client.
The reality is, if you don't try to put
| | 01:00 |
yourself in the client's shoes and get
inside their head, you'll end up on the
| | 01:03 |
losing end of a revision cycle, or worse,
get passed on the spot altogether.
| | 01:10 |
While there are no hard and fast rules
when it comes to figuring out what the
| | 01:14 |
client actually wants, here are some of
the things I try to consider and factor
| | 01:18 |
into my game plan.
First off, why me?
| | 01:23 |
Are you hiring me because you love my
work, vision and aesthetic as a musician
| | 01:27 |
and composer, or are you hiring me as more
skilled labor to approximate another
| | 01:32 |
musician's work?
Sometimes it's a combination of both.
| | 01:38 |
This may come across as sounding jaded,
but that's not my intention at all.
| | 01:42 |
We're working on music and that means
working with emotions, egos, tastes, and
| | 01:47 |
preferences that may differ signficantly.
It's really easy to step on toes and get
| | 01:53 |
yours stomped on in the process.
Learning to compartmentalize these
| | 01:59 |
emotions and maintain professionalism is a
vital skill for any composer.
| | 02:05 |
So, knowing where you stand in regards to
creative license and planning accordingly
| | 02:09 |
for that can help keep you sane and
employed.
| | 02:13 |
Reading between the lines.
In many cases, a composer will be pitching
| | 02:19 |
for the spot against other composers or
music houses.
| | 02:23 |
And the brief and accompanying materials
may be the only information they have to
| | 02:27 |
go off of in hopes of winning the spot.
Sometimes, you have to read between the
| | 02:34 |
lines and use your previous experience
with a specific client or music house to
| | 02:38 |
better tailor the pitch to a specific
project or client.
| | 02:43 |
The client may say they're looking for
something, let's say, ultra-modern or
| | 02:47 |
aggressive in the brief, but if your
experience tells you their sense of
| | 02:51 |
ultra-modern or aggressive is a little
right of center Instead of arguing about
| | 02:55 |
it, just adjust accordingly.
If you have a good relationship with the
| | 03:02 |
client, agency or music house, you may
want to get their personal take on the
| | 03:06 |
brief by asking questions.
Sometimes you can get the inside scoop and
| | 03:11 |
gain valuable insights beyond the brief.
What are the creative directors favorite albums?
| | 03:17 |
What's their age group?
Think about things like this when you're
| | 03:21 |
planning the music.
Rock that pitch.
| | 03:25 |
Sometimes pitching for a commercial is a
two-part process, where ideas from many
| | 03:29 |
different composers are presented to the
client with the intention that the client
| | 03:33 |
chooses one and begins to refine the idea
into a final piece.
| | 03:39 |
In this case, you have to win the pitch
before you even start the revision process.
| | 03:45 |
If I know there are a lot of composers
pitching for the spot, I might
| | 03:48 |
strategically move further away from the
temp music in attempts to wow the client
| | 03:52 |
with something gutsy and original.
Even knowing full and well that I will
| | 03:58 |
likely have to come back and tone it down
in subsequent revisions.
| | 04:03 |
Think of it this way, if there are 20
composers playing it super close to the
| | 04:06 |
reference track and the client is sitting
in a review session listening to
| | 04:10 |
essentially variations on the same theme.
Something outside the box that catches
| | 04:17 |
their ear could be just the ticket to
winning the spot.
| | 04:21 |
This kind of thinking is a calculated
gamble of course.
| | 04:24 |
In fact any pitch is a risk worth time
spent may not pay accordingly, so always
| | 04:29 |
plan your strategies around that.
Bottom line anything you can do to learn
| | 04:35 |
what makes the client tick can only help
you meet their expectations and facilitate
| | 04:40 |
a smooth composition process.
Adjusting your definitions of specific
| | 04:46 |
musical styles or emotions can be
difficult, especially for the type of egos
| | 04:50 |
most musicians carry around.
But I guarantee you, it will only give you
| | 04:55 |
an edge and make your life as a composer
easier and more successful.
| | 04:59 |
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|
|
2. Setting Up the SessionCreating a new session and importing the video/dialogue| 00:00 |
Before we can jump into making music, we
first want to get our session set up accordingly.
| | 00:05 |
Now, I'll be working here in Pro Tools,
but I've provided all the raw assets in
| | 00:08 |
the exercise folder that you can work with
in any DAW that supports video.
| | 00:13 |
So I'm going to start here by creating a
new session, and I'm going to go ahead and
| | 00:18 |
work in our delivery format of AIFF at 48
k.
| | 00:23 |
Now, if you decide to work at 44 or Wave,
it's not that big of a deal, you can
| | 00:27 |
always change the sample rate later.
But I figure, since we know our delivery
| | 00:32 |
format, we might as well work with that
from the get go.
| | 00:36 |
And here, I'll go with 24-bit interleaved
and Stereo Mix for my I/O settings.
| | 00:42 |
Go ahead and save this as H plus
commercial.
| | 00:46 |
So I have an empty session here, and what
I want to do is bring in my video track,
| | 00:51 |
make sure that the frame rate in the DAW
is set up correctly, and I want to bring
| | 00:56 |
in my dialogue and temp music, make sure
everything's synced up so then I can move
| | 01:01 |
on to scoring the music.
So I'm going to pull up my Exercise Folder
| | 01:10 |
here and we'll grab our RoughCut, we'll
import that final cut a little bit later.
| | 01:18 |
And I get asked if I want to import the
video as a new track and I want to do that.
| | 01:23 |
I don't want to import the audio from the
video, most of the time QuickTime's have
| | 01:27 |
audio embedded.
That's fine, sometimes I'll work with that
| | 01:31 |
but I actually have separate dialog and
Temp music that I'm going to bring in in
| | 01:34 |
the next step.
We'll just go ahead and put that at the
| | 01:38 |
beginning of the session.
So that's there and we got this really big
| | 01:42 |
window that popped up.
That's just our video screen and the first
| | 01:46 |
thing I notice here is that my frame
rate's in red.
| | 01:50 |
And that's because my DAW is not set up to
display timecode at the correct frame rate
| | 01:55 |
of this video and that's why that's lit up
in red.
| | 01:59 |
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go
into my session Setup, so Setup > Session.
| | 02:05 |
Then I'm going to change the Timecode rate
here to match that.
| | 02:08 |
So 23 97, very popular item code rate for
HD digital video.
| | 02:14 |
And so, now that shows up in white and we
can just go ahead and test some playback here.
| | 02:23 |
Cool, that looks good.
So now, I want to bring in my dialog track
| | 02:26 |
as well as my Temp Music, make sure that
all syncs up.
| | 02:30 |
Switch back here to my Exercise Folder,
bring in that temp music just kind of drag
| | 02:35 |
back to the tracks list and my voice over.
Drag that in.
| | 02:42 |
Now, let's just make sure this all lines
up.
| | 02:45 |
I'm going to go ahead and turn these down
just a bit.
| | 02:51 |
(MUSIC).
Seems to be pretty synced up here.
| | 03:08 |
Just one more note, if you are working in
Pro Tools, you can disable the video track
| | 03:13 |
by clicking this O here.
Most DAWs have a way of disabling the
| | 03:17 |
video track without actually deleting the
video track.
| | 03:21 |
And, what that does is it allows you to
work without the video decoding putting a
| | 03:25 |
strain on your computer.
If you're working with a very high
| | 03:29 |
resolution video file, maybe it's 1080p or
something like that, it can really put a
| | 03:33 |
strain on your computer CPU, especially on
a huge session where you have lots of
| | 03:37 |
plug-ins and things like that.
Typically, I like to work with more of a
| | 03:43 |
proxy cut or a low resolution of the
video, something that's not really
| | 03:47 |
going to tax my computer.
And it's just a preference so that I can
| | 03:52 |
use a lot of plug-ins and things like
that.
| | 03:55 |
But I'll still turn the video track off
sometimes just so that I can work free
| | 03:59 |
from that strain.
So now that we have our cut along with our
| | 04:04 |
voice over and our Temp Music, all put
together in a session, now we can move
| | 04:09 |
along to setting up the tempo which we'll
do next.
| | 04:14 |
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| Selecting tempo(s)| 00:00 |
Tempo is a critical component in any score
to picture because it sets the mood and
| | 00:04 |
pacing of the entire spot.
And will drive many of your stylistic
| | 00:09 |
choices when it comes to instrumentation
and tone.
| | 00:13 |
Now in our example, because the editor
relied heavily on the reference track's
| | 00:17 |
cadence for his cuts and based the energy
and pacing on its rhythm section.
| | 00:24 |
It's an easy choice to go with the same
tempo for our original piece.
| | 00:28 |
In this case we're working 140 bpm, and
that's a very common tempo for this style
| | 00:33 |
of Dubstep music.
Now if you don't know the specific tempo
| | 00:38 |
of your tempo track there's many ways you
can figure it out.
| | 00:41 |
Sometimes I tap tempo with a little iPhone
app.
| | 00:44 |
There are more complex ways to do it in
the DAW, using Identify Beat.
| | 00:48 |
However in this case I was pretty
confident that it was 140.
| | 00:53 |
So I tried it and it ended up working out.
Now we'll go ahead and set that.
| | 00:58 |
Just double click on the song starts, the
little red diamond, and I'm going to type
| | 01:03 |
in 140 here.
Now with this specific piece, you might
| | 01:07 |
notice that as I go here on my grid, the
temp music is not lining up here.
| | 01:13 |
The downbeats are not lining up with my
grid.
| | 01:17 |
Now this piece is indeed 140 bpm, but a
lot of times the downbeat of the music
| | 01:21 |
doesn't happen with the first frame of
video.
| | 01:26 |
It might happen a little later or there
may actually be a pick up.
| | 01:30 |
So what we need to do in this case is go
in, I'm going to switch to Slip Mode, and
| | 01:34 |
I'm going to take my song start and I'm
actually going to move that measure one,
| | 01:38 |
that downbeat, over to start with the
first transient here of the temp music.
| | 01:46 |
And the reason that I'm going to do that
is so that now my grid Lines up with the
| | 01:50 |
temp music.
And because the editor cut to that temp
| | 01:54 |
music grid, it's going to make my life a
whole lot easier when I go placing my
| | 01:58 |
drums, my percussion, my stutters, and all
the cool little things that we're going to
| | 02:02 |
try to lock to picture.
So just remember that music doesn't always
| | 02:08 |
start at the downbeat on the first frame
of video.
| | 02:12 |
It may be a little later, it may be a
little earlier.
| | 02:15 |
Sometimes there is a pick up, or it
happens on the end of a 16th note.
| | 02:19 |
So just be aware of that and you may need
to kind of play with your song start in
| | 02:22 |
addition to the tempo.
And I can just verify that by coming over
| | 02:27 |
a little bit later and I can see yeah, my
downbeats line up really well.
| | 02:31 |
And if I just click through, I can kind of
see some of these action moments where he
| | 02:34 |
has cut, where he's jumping down there
into the sand.
| | 02:38 |
See he's throwing the ball and the lights
flash there.
| | 02:41 |
So that's going to work out real well for
us.
| | 02:44 |
If you don't need to hit specific moments
of picture, so you've got something where
| | 02:48 |
the edits don't heavily rely on a specific
tempo or cadence of music, what you might
| | 02:52 |
try doing is previewing different pieces
of music against the picture until
| | 02:56 |
something feels good.
Again, there's no sense in spending half a
| | 03:02 |
day composing something, only to find out
it doesn't work at a basic level of tempo
| | 03:06 |
and pacing.
So use reference material of your own to
| | 03:10 |
get a good sense of mood.
In the case where there are certain
| | 03:15 |
elements on screen that the director or
the ad agency want to hit picture, maybe
| | 03:19 |
it's little flashes, or in our case the
soccer balls being hit or a logo pops up
| | 03:24 |
on the screen.
A lot of times they won't give you temp
| | 03:30 |
music that is cut so well, like in our
case, and so what you'll need to do is
| | 03:35 |
actually go through and find those spots
where that action happens, and lay down
| | 03:40 |
some markers and sort of visualize them
and play with the tempo.
| | 03:48 |
Scale it up and down until you find
something that kind of falls in to place.
| | 03:53 |
You might be surprised, you know, one hit
could be a downbeat, the next hit could be
| | 03:57 |
a set of triplets that you can put in, but
until you lay out some markers you really
| | 04:01 |
don't know where you stand with the tempo.
In the event where hitting picture will
| | 04:07 |
clearly require complex tempo changes, you
might want to assess whether the style of
| | 04:12 |
music your client is looking for can
accommodate those kind of tempo or meter
| | 04:16 |
changes without ending up sounding awkward
to the viewer.
| | 04:22 |
For example, if you've got a quirky
orchestral track, that can flex quite a
| | 04:26 |
bit in regards to timing and tempo without
sounding too weird.
| | 04:31 |
Whereas a four on the floor dance track or
a rock tune people tend to expect those to
| | 04:35 |
have a very reliable rhythmic pulse, and
it can kind of be jarring if there's
| | 04:39 |
shuffle, that can sound awkward or
amateur.
| | 04:44 |
So, in the end it actually might be easier
to ask the editor to adjust the cut of a
| | 04:48 |
few frames to hit the music rather than
try to get the music to follow the cut.
| | 04:55 |
You won't always get your way in this
regard, but it never hurts to ask.
| | 04:59 |
So just assess that with the director, and
with the editor, see if that's a possibility.
| | 05:06 |
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| Marking keyframes| 00:00 |
In any project where I want to emphasise
certain moments of the picture with music
| | 00:04 |
or sound design.
I like to take a couple minutes to lay
| | 00:08 |
down some markers on specific spots I want
to play up with a musical, a rhythmic edit.
| | 00:15 |
Most DOS allow you to lay out some form of
marker or bookmark throughout the session.
| | 00:21 |
In Pro Tools they're called markers, I
just want to make sure that I'm seeing
| | 00:24 |
them here.
View.
| | 00:26 |
And I want to make sure that rulers,
markers is checked.
| | 00:33 |
Now what I can do is go through here, and
I'm going to use my grid in this case to
| | 00:36 |
help me.
But if I didn't already have that tempo
| | 00:40 |
from the temp music set up I would work in
frames mode so that I can go frame for
| | 00:43 |
frame through the video.
And I'm going to go through and I'm
| | 00:49 |
going to find certain spots where I need
to hit picture, like these first two
| | 00:54 |
moments where I have the flash one
(MUSIC).
| | 01:00 |
And I'm going to mark those so I'll hit
enter on my numeric keypad to get a new
| | 01:03 |
memory location.I don't really need to
name this.
| | 01:07 |
I can if I want to be really organized,
but in this case I'm just going to go
| | 01:10 |
ahead and be the, name to the default,
because really what I'm looking for is
| | 01:13 |
just this little chevron, just a visual
indicator.
| | 01:17 |
I can go through and mark that second one.
Anytime you're editing to picture,
| | 01:21 |
sometimes what you can do is just set up
your nudge so that it's time code.
| | 01:28 |
And you have a value here of one frame.
So this is hours minutes seconds frames so
| | 01:35 |
we want to switch this to one frame.
So actually let me do that 00, 01.
| | 01:42 |
Great, and now I can use my Plus and Minus
keys on my numeric keypad to go frame at a
| | 01:47 |
time and maybe find some other parts like,
that's kind of a cool cut where it
| | 01:51 |
switches, right there.
So we'll lay down one.
| | 01:56 |
And I'll just kind of go through here on
the edits, it's kind of neat, and I'll
| | 02:00 |
find different moments that I want to play
up.
| | 02:05 |
That could be neat, this sort of soccer
ball kick.
| | 02:10 |
Now I'm not going to go through this whole
piece but normally if I was actually doing
| | 02:14 |
this, I would take five, ten minutes to
kind of go through and layout different
| | 02:18 |
moments I wanted to play up.
And this does a couple of things for me,
| | 02:23 |
alotta times I like to disable the video
track and work I do this for a couple of reasons.
| | 02:30 |
For one, when the video track is on it
takes up a lot of system resources so if
| | 02:33 |
I'm using a lot of virtual instruments and
plug ins, you know that doesn't jive so
| | 02:37 |
will with the video track processing high
definition video.
| | 02:42 |
Two, when the video track is enabled in
the Pro Tools, it only allows me to make
| | 02:47 |
selections or start or plate back at a
frame boundary.
| | 02:52 |
And in the case of this video, we only
have about 24 frames per second, so but
| | 02:55 |
doesn't give me a lot of accuracy in terms
of making selections of things I might
| | 02:59 |
want to loop or stutter, since its always
quantizing those to the nearest frame boundary.
| | 03:06 |
So I'll disable the video track and I will
work just off of these markers.
| | 03:12 |
The other thing that these markers will do
for me when I'm working to picture is
| | 03:16 |
kind of give me a larger perspective about
the spacing and number of musical events
| | 03:20 |
or devices that I want to sync to picture.
And whether those moments relate to my
| | 03:27 |
rhythmic or not.
And maybe I'm putting them too close together.
| | 03:32 |
So in this case, you know, I have a lot
going on here.
| | 03:36 |
And that's cool because it's kind of a
jumpy cut but it really allows me to see
| | 03:39 |
like, hey I might have too much going on
here but I really don't have anything
| | 03:42 |
happening over here.
It just gives you a nice visual view
| | 03:48 |
without looking at the video or rewatching
it every time to see when are those
| | 03:52 |
moments that I'm going to want to hit.
Now, if I was doing sound design and
| | 03:57 |
specific things needed to happen like the
advertiser said, hey, we need you to use
| | 04:01 |
this sound effect when this happens.
What I would do is label these memory
| | 04:06 |
locations and that would just save me time
later so when I was importing all my
| | 04:10 |
different sound design I could just
quickly lay those out against my memory locations.
| | 04:17 |
I don't have to go chasing down the video
every time I want to spot a new sound.
| | 04:21 |
So take advantage of whatever form of
markers or memory locations your DAW has
| | 04:27 |
when working to picture.
| | 04:30 |
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|
|
3. Building the TrackCreating a game plan| 00:00 |
Well sometimes you just have to dig in and
start throwing around notes and sounds to
| | 00:04 |
see what's going to work.
I like to take a brief moment to collect
| | 00:08 |
my thoughts and make a plan based on the
creative brief, the cut of the video I
| | 00:11 |
received, and any other reference
material.
| | 00:15 |
Now, in the case of our example commercial
for H Plus, I know that I definitely want
| | 00:19 |
to maintain that halftime dubstep tempo
and feel to match up with where the editor
| | 00:23 |
is taking the jump cuts and stutters.
But instead of going completely agro with
| | 00:30 |
the instrumentation, like we hear in the
reference track, I think working towards
| | 00:34 |
something more elegant and thematic is
going to serve the product and the
| | 00:37 |
voiceover much better.
Remember, an H Plus athlete is
| | 00:43 |
sophisticated and clever.
And while the product and (INAUDIBLE) the
| | 00:47 |
commercial is modern and tech-forward, the
drink is all-natural.
| | 00:52 |
So I think I will try to blend some of the
electronic and glitch elements that we see
| | 00:55 |
in the temp with some more traditional
thematic instruments to round it out.
| | 01:01 |
So let's break down the plan into some
simple actionable bullet points.
| | 01:06 |
For the drums, again I want to maintain
the dubstep drum vibe, but I'm thinking
| | 01:10 |
more arena anthemic punchy drums in that
classic halftime pattern rather than the
| | 01:15 |
super electronic sounding drums.
And we kind of want them to be punchy and
| | 01:21 |
energetic, but not as spastic as the temp.
Now for our electronics and tech sounds,
| | 01:28 |
what we want to do is bring in some
glitchy rhythmic elements to hit the
| | 01:32 |
picture, how the temp is doing, and keep
the viewer interested, keep the momentum
| | 01:37 |
of the cut going.
And so, in that case, we are going to Lean
| | 01:43 |
on the reference cut a bit, but probably
not as spastic as to not cut into the
| | 01:47 |
voice over or obscure the voice over so
much.
| | 01:52 |
We have to remember that the voice over is
the most important part of the commercial,
| | 01:56 |
because actually selling the product,
describing the product, so We want to be
| | 02:00 |
careful not to do anything that obscures
that.
| | 02:04 |
I said earlier, I really want to do some
kind of melodic theme, that's going to
| | 02:09 |
linger in the viewer's head, and really
help identify the brand.
| | 02:15 |
The drums I kind of want to lean more
anthemic so I want to do that with the
| | 02:18 |
theme also.
You'll notice from the temp music that
| | 02:22 |
it's kind of just melodically nonexistent,
it's just kind of wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
| | 02:28 |
It's not really switching in between
different notes.
| | 02:31 |
So I want to see if I can add a melodic
element that's going to gets tuck in
| | 02:35 |
someone's head after they watch the
commercial.
| | 02:40 |
I want to tie all of my stuff together
with some sound design just to kind of
| | 02:44 |
take it over the top.
So some electronic sound design elements
| | 02:49 |
like crashes, swooshes, risers, bombs, and
things like that to really exaggerate the
| | 02:54 |
emotional moments or cues in the picture.
So at the beginning when those lights
| | 03:00 |
flash, I really want to make that seem big
and huge.
| | 03:03 |
And at the end when the logo shows up I
really want to take that over the top with
| | 03:08 |
some extra sound design.
Remember, every project is going to
| | 03:13 |
require a different approach depending on
the style of music the requirements from
| | 03:17 |
the client and your own artistic process.
But taking a few minutes to make a rough
| | 03:23 |
outline of where you think you want to
take it can really help keep you focused
| | 03:27 |
and on task.
Unlike making, let's say original artistic
| | 03:32 |
music where artistic freedoms and
unlimited time is the norm commercial
| | 03:36 |
composers often work on extremely tight
deadlines.
| | 03:41 |
Sometimes only having a few hours to put
together a solid idea.
| | 03:45 |
So building in some organization and
efficency to your creative process is a must.
| | 03:51 |
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| Constructing the rhythm section| 00:00 |
Now that we're all set up and have a plan,
we can start building the track.
| | 00:05 |
Now, for the purpose of this course and in
the interest of continuity and time, I've
| | 00:08 |
broken down this stage into four sections
starting with the drums and percussion.
| | 00:14 |
Full disclosure, I built this track over
several days with my production partner,
| | 00:18 |
and the order with which things occur in
an actual scoring scenario generally
| | 00:22 |
doesn't follow any one prescribed set of
steps.
| | 00:26 |
So what I want to do here is describe the
individual sounds that make up the whole
| | 00:30 |
piece and discuss some of the thought
process that went into those parts.
| | 00:36 |
So I've gone ahead and brought in my drum
tracks and you'll find those stems in your
| | 00:40 |
Exercise Folder.
You can bring them into any dock.
| | 00:45 |
And I just want to go through here and
discuss some of my ideas behind the sounds
| | 00:49 |
I use for the drums, and let's just go
ahead and watch the piece as it sits now.
| | 00:56 |
(MUSIC).
So that's a really good start, and fairly
| | 01:28 |
simple here, I really just have this main
Drum Loop where we have the kick and snare
| | 01:32 |
all in one track.
And, I actually found this really cool
| | 01:36 |
Drum Loop as is that just had the kick and
the snare pattern, really kind of this
| | 01:40 |
arena rock meets dubstep drum pattern, I
thought it sounded really cool.
| | 01:46 |
(MUSIC).
And what I did, is I edited it in some
| | 01:55 |
parts to just change it up the beat, kind
of make it fit with the picture a little
| | 01:59 |
bit more.
One thing you might have noticed is here I
| | 02:03 |
kind of built in a little break going into
that scene where she kicks the ball and
| | 02:07 |
there's kind of big energy release there.
(MUSIC).
| | 02:16 |
Here, put in some fills.
(MUSIC).
| | 02:28 |
Repeating the kick there.
I've even edited some separate accent
| | 02:33 |
kicks onto this track and all these are.
It's just that same kick drum here copied
| | 02:41 |
to another track and then EQed to filter
out all the high end so you get this low
| | 02:45 |
filtered kick that is the pickup for the
big kicks above.
| | 02:52 |
(MUSIC).
So it's really just the same sample, it's
| | 02:58 |
just cut in a different way, and I do this
a lot.
| | 03:00 |
Now, the Hi-Hats come in here after that
dramatic moment there.
| | 03:05 |
And they just kind of change their pattern
picking up the pace as it moves on to the
| | 03:09 |
end of the spot.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:19 |
Getting kind of fast here, picking up the
energy.
| | 03:23 |
(MUSIC).
And as far as the sound of those Hi-Hats,
| | 03:34 |
I just found a natural drum kit, Hi-Hat
sound that had a really nice big ambiance
| | 03:39 |
to it cause I wanted to obtain that big
arena, rock, dubstep, drum feel.
| | 03:45 |
So these Hi-Hats worked real nice.
The only other thing I've got here in my
| | 03:50 |
Percussion section are these things that
I'm calling the tech loops, and let's just
| | 03:53 |
listen to those in isolation.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:10 |
And you can hear it's a bunch of kind of
glitchy stuff going on in the stereo field
| | 04:14 |
and I added a delay to that to kind of
extend that, a ping pong delay, so you
| | 04:18 |
kind of hearing this left and right subtle
glitchiness.
| | 04:24 |
And the reason why I wanted something like
this is I want it to bring some of that
| | 04:27 |
glitchiness from the temp music.
But make it a little bit more subtle so it
| | 04:32 |
doesn't stomp on all of the dialog.
So I want that techy futuristic feel, but
| | 04:37 |
I edited it and it kind of tucked it into
the mix so that it's not overpowering the
| | 04:42 |
dialog or the voice over track.
So we can hear all of these things combined.
| | 04:48 |
(MUSIC).
And you'll notice that the tech loops
| | 04:56 |
really play off of the main Drum Loop.
So you can see they're kind of filling in
| | 05:00 |
the gaps where that snare drum sustains.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:13 |
So there's almost kind of this call and
response thing going on between the
| | 05:17 |
glitchy tech loops and the main Drum Loop.
The cool thing about this halftime dubstep
| | 05:23 |
drum pattern is it leaves a lot of space,
so when that snare hits, there, you have
| | 05:27 |
this big gap that you can fill in with
cool little details, because it's not
| | 05:31 |
always playing on the two and the four
like a regular rock beat.
| | 05:37 |
There's just a whole ton of room there
that you can play off of.
| | 05:41 |
So you can have halftime elements as well
as regular time elements.
| | 05:45 |
Here, we've got the Hi-Hats that really
pick up the pace with this sixteenth note.
| | 05:50 |
(MUSIC).
So you've got that cool break down feel of
| | 06:01 |
the half time drums but that momentum of
the sixteenth note Hi-Hat driving it and
| | 06:05 |
these little tech loops filling in the
gaps.
| | 06:10 |
Next, we'll move onto the base and some
other techy elements, to kind of really
| | 06:14 |
give this a good rhythm section
foundation.
| | 06:18 |
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| Adding the bass| 00:00 |
Now that we have a strong foundation with
our drums and percussion, I can move on to
| | 00:05 |
building the bass parts.
In Dubstep and most electronic music, the
| | 00:11 |
bass components of any mix are very, very
important.
| | 00:15 |
And so you can see that I have many
different bass parts that I've brought in
| | 00:19 |
from the music stems.
I have two Reese basses, which sound like this.
| | 00:24 |
(MUSIC).
They both kind of play off of each other.
| | 00:32 |
I have this very high base that I call a
base steamer (MUSIC), it's kind of airy
| | 00:39 |
with a little bit of sub energy.
And then an extra bass sub, that you can
| | 00:47 |
see plays off a lot of the Reese basses to
add extra low end in certain sections.
| | 00:53 |
(SOUND).
And then to add just a little rock and
| | 01:08 |
roll attitude I've got electric bass
guitar (MUSIC), and that's just going to
| | 01:14 |
drive those eighth notes in this section
where our hats pick up.
| | 01:21 |
So let's listen to all those together.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:44 |
And so you can hear that this main bass
Reese here actually isn't just one virtual
| | 01:49 |
instrument being played on a keyboard.
There's so many different sounds happening.
| | 01:55 |
(MUSIC).
And what that actually is, it's the
| | 02:04 |
composite edited together of many
different bass articulations.
| | 02:08 |
A lot of times when people listen to
electronic music they try to relate to it
| | 02:12 |
with a traditional music and instrument
paradigm where its like oh what instrument
| | 02:16 |
is that and how do you play that part in
real time.
| | 02:22 |
Like its a guitar or a piano, or even a
virtual synthesizer, and the fact is you don't.
| | 02:28 |
Many things that go into making electronic
music are actually cut together in stepped time.
| | 02:34 |
So you may make a lot of different
articulations.
| | 02:38 |
From a synthesis, one that kind of has a
sign like this.
| | 02:40 |
(SOUND) You know, it kind of goes wow.
And then maybe another one that (SOUND) (SOUND).
| | 02:47 |
So you have all these little articulations
that you've laid out and then you cut them
| | 02:53 |
together like pieces of the puzzle and
here, these are just acting as accents on
| | 02:59 |
the different parts of the picture.
So, you can see here when these first two
| | 03:06 |
flashes come in it creates this really
cool techy futuristic feel with those drums.
| | 03:12 |
(MUSIC).
kind of emphasize that little stutter with
| | 03:22 |
this little bass Reese (MUSIC).
And so those Reeses there by kind of a
| | 03:28 |
main techy bass elements, and the other
bass is kind of there to kind of fill in
| | 03:31 |
the gaps that are left from the stuttery
edited sound that we've got going on.
| | 03:38 |
Like I said, the bass steamer is just this
high airy bass that kind of just fills
| | 03:41 |
things in.
Let's take a listen with and without.
| | 03:45 |
(MUSIC).
So it's very subtle.
| | 03:52 |
It's just adding this haze or air, giving
a cool cinematic feel to everything.
| | 03:58 |
(MUSIC).
A lot of things might not make sense in
| | 04:04 |
isolation, but as they're layered they're
each lending something to the overall composition.
| | 04:12 |
This sub is just bringing our low end
energy (MUSIC), and you can see it's cut
| | 04:17 |
against these other low-end bass Reeses,
so that we're not building up too much low
| | 04:22 |
end in the mix at any one given time.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:32 |
So these two are kind of responding to
each other.
| | 04:35 |
(NOISE).
So even though I am using many different
| | 04:48 |
bass parts is thought that they're all
happening at the same time so my low end
| | 04:51 |
isn't getting super muddy here.
If I were to just have all my basses
| | 04:57 |
happening all at once I would build up the
low end fairly significantly and then I'd
| | 05:01 |
have to deal with that and the kick drum.
And it could get pretty muddy but what I'm
| | 05:07 |
really looking for is these different
flavors coming in and out just to keep the
| | 05:10 |
listeners ear tickled and interested.
But not sort of overwhelming the dialogue
| | 05:15 |
we can bring the dialogue back in and
we'll just go ahead and turn it up a bit.
| | 05:20 |
(MUSIC).
You work hard and play harder.
| | 05:25 |
Water can't give you back what you lose.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:28 |
H Plus Sport has what you need.
Natural electrolytes from plants, not chemicals.
| | 05:35 |
H Plus Sport isn't made in a lab.
>> So all these things just kind of
| | 05:40 |
combine to give me a really interesting
sound pallet, that sounds very futuristic
| | 05:44 |
and keeps the listener interested.
The last thing I just want to mention here
| | 05:49 |
is this kind of electric bass guitar.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:54 |
And that actually is a virtual instrument
bass.
| | 05:57 |
So that's not a real bass guitar being
played, that's a sample of a base guitar
| | 06:00 |
even though I do play base, the reason I
went with a sampled base is that I wanted
| | 06:04 |
something that is very tight and accurate.
So something that stays with the
| | 06:09 |
quantization of the drums and really
drives it forward.
| | 06:13 |
So this really driving eighth note rhythm
that's going on when everything kicks in.
| | 06:18 |
(MUSIC).
Has what you need.
| | 06:20 |
Natural electrolytes from plants, not
chemicals.
| | 06:23 |
H Plus Sport isn't made in a lab.
>> And on this sound I'm really not using
| | 06:28 |
it for too much low end.
I'm really using that honky midrange of
| | 06:32 |
the bass, so this eighth note electric
bass isn't really my sub energy or my low end.
| | 06:38 |
It's almost acting as a baritone guitar.
It's just providing that nice honky drive
| | 06:44 |
in the midrange frequency.
So sometimes I'll use a bass and remove
| | 06:49 |
all of the bass frequencies, just because
I like its upper frequencies, or
| | 06:53 |
harmonics, that are going on, that add
something into the mix.
| | 06:58 |
So this base and rhythm gives us a really
good foundation to build a theme on top of
| | 07:02 |
with melodic elements, which we'll talk
about in the next movie.
| | 07:08 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a theme| 00:00 |
Now that I have a solid rhythm section and
foundation, I can start thinking about
| | 00:05 |
some melodies, some harmony and building a
theme for this piece.
| | 00:10 |
And that's where we can really dig in and
start to come up with cool ideas to relate
| | 00:15 |
to the brand and the viewer.
And really just bring some additional
| | 00:22 |
organic elements into this very techy
electronic piece.
| | 00:26 |
Remember what kind of wasn't working for
me or the client in the temp music was, it
| | 00:30 |
had all the right rhythm section stuff,
but kind of melodically it really didn't
| | 00:34 |
go anywhere And really stepped on the
dialogue, so what we want to do is kind of
| | 00:38 |
add that additional melodic element and
make sure that it also works with the
| | 00:42 |
dialogue and is memorable for the viewer.
So I've flown in my melodic tracks from my
| | 00:51 |
stems folder here and we've got a couple.
We've got a dub siren, an ES2 melody
| | 00:57 |
that's from the ES2 synthesizer in logic.
A couple of guitar tracks and a vocal pad.
| | 01:05 |
So let's just go ahead and listen to what
those sound like here in context.
| | 01:15 |
(MUSIC) So we've already established a
chord progression with our bassline here
| | 01:33 |
you can hear it really clearly with the
bass guitar (MUSIC).
| | 01:55 |
(MUSIC) So the melody is really just
going to play off of that, either
| | 01:58 |
harmonize that or follow that, and what
you'll notice is that my melodic elements
| | 02:02 |
don't come in until right around the five,
six second mark.
| | 02:07 |
So I'm really creating this dramatic
entrance at this moment of the commercial.
| | 02:12 |
(MUSIC) Whereas there's that sort of free
section with the h plus sport logo that
| | 02:18 |
comes in and she kicks the ball.
So I'm really just kind of creating this
| | 02:25 |
dramatic transfer of energy.
When I add in the sound design we're
| | 02:29 |
really going to drive it home with some
wooshes and some symbols and some crashes there.
| | 02:34 |
But the idea is it kind of just started
out with the basses and the percussion,
| | 02:38 |
kind of get it brewing, and then I take it
someplace else with this melody.
| | 02:43 |
The bass kicks in, the Hi-Hat changes.
So, even though it's a 30-second spot, I
| | 02:48 |
kind of want to have these different
sections of energy to kind of push and
| | 02:51 |
pull the listener So that there always
staying interested in what's happening
| | 02:56 |
both on screen with the visual as well as
in the music and the dialogue.
| | 03:02 |
So let's break these down we've got
something I'm calling the dub siren (MUSIC).
| | 03:12 |
(SOUND).
And what that is is just kind of a sampled
| | 03:16 |
siren sounds.
You know, a lot of people will call it a
| | 03:20 |
dub siren because it's used a lot in
dub-styled music.
| | 03:23 |
And it's just been sampled and pitched
across the keyboard, so that it can be
| | 03:27 |
played melodically and there's some delay
on it.
| | 03:31 |
And the cool thing is this is really just
layering with the guitars that are playing
| | 03:34 |
the same melody.
(MUSIC) So by themselves they might
| | 03:40 |
kind of sound a little tooty like a little
whistle.
| | 03:47 |
Maybe a little bit cheesy but as a layer,
they create a really nice texture against
| | 03:52 |
the tone and the timbre of the guitars.
The guitars being, are sort of organic,
| | 03:58 |
real instrument element, that someone can
kind of attach to that guitar and that
| | 04:02 |
base guitar are kind of our real rock
elements and then we've got all these kind
| | 04:06 |
of techie elements.
The guitar and the dub siren are playing
| | 04:12 |
this main melody that follows the base
line.
| | 04:15 |
This really simple da da da da da, (MUSIC)
nice and memorable.
| | 04:26 |
(MUSIC) And so, there's a response so that
initial sort of hook melody, very simple,
| | 04:34 |
it's just a few notes, and then I have a
response, another guitar comes in and kind
| | 04:43 |
of harmonizes with that.
(MUSIC) And then I have a follow-up for
| | 04:52 |
this third melodic phrase just to kind of
end it off.
| | 04:57 |
Just tie it all together.
(MUSIC)
| | 05:01 |
So very, very simple melody.
It's not a solo or a lead or anything like that.
| | 05:13 |
It's just, so I mean that the listener is
going to remember and then identify with
| | 05:18 |
that brand.
It's not going to argue with the dialog
| | 05:22 |
too much.
We probably want to just check that here
| | 05:25 |
real quick.
(MUSIC) And we're going to actually
| | 05:29 |
automate the music down a little bit, and
even use a couple tricks to kind of EQ out
| | 05:38 |
some of the frequencies that the dialogue
is going to take up, just so we don't mask
| | 05:47 |
our dialogue, since it's so important.
Now the other two things we can take a
| | 05:59 |
look here.
This little ES2 melody.
| | 06:08 |
(MUSIC) Just a little additional harmony.
But what that's doing, it's kind of
| | 06:11 |
providing this nice sucking sound that's
kind of acting as a delay to these guitars.
| | 06:16 |
You hear the guitar and then this ES2
melody kind of sucks out of that.
| | 06:21 |
And that was actually achieved with a side
chained kick drum that's causing it to
| | 06:28 |
kind of swell wow, wow, wow, up and down.
So you get this nice volume envelope.
| | 06:42 |
And remember, our tempo is actually 140,
so that would be sort of a 140 bpm side chain.
| | 06:48 |
Quarter notes playing 140 bpm therem even
though our drum beat is kind of a half
| | 06:52 |
time thing.
And this is fairly common in sort of
| | 06:56 |
electronic music at this tempo where you
have these elements that may be Sweeping
| | 07:00 |
and swelling and creating a rhythmic
interest at the regular time, the 140 bpm,
| | 07:04 |
as well as the halftime.
That would be the 70 bpm.
| | 07:10 |
That's what our drums are doing, and then
we've got this vocal pad.
| | 07:19 |
(SOUND) And that's just adding a little
bit of extra interest to the piece.
| | 07:28 |
(MUSIC) Just a little extra cinematic kind
of special sauce, kind of just layering in
| | 07:39 |
there, adding in just a little bit of
extra harmony to it.
| | 07:50 |
This is actually a sample of a real vocal
heavily processed and pitched up on the keyboard.
| | 07:59 |
(MUSIC) With lots of reverb and delay in
there so you can barely recognize it as a
| | 08:06 |
human voice because it's been pitched up
so much.
| | 08:13 |
And sometimes, it's cool to take organic
elements like voice or naturally recorded
| | 08:18 |
instruments that you've mic'd up and then
process them in a way that either pitching
| | 08:22 |
them up or heavily processing them with
effects to kind of give them that
| | 08:26 |
electronic edge.
So you still have these really emotional
| | 08:31 |
qualities that organic elements bring
Bring but you're kind of bringing them
| | 08:36 |
into that tech or electronic fold so
you're kind of getting the best of both
| | 08:40 |
worlds there.
So now that we have a really strong melody
| | 08:45 |
to go with our composition piece that
relates to our h plus brand we can ties it
| | 08:49 |
all together with some sound design that
we'll talk about in the next movie.
| | 08:56 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Crafting sound design| 00:00 |
So we've got a nice rhythmic foundation,
we've built a really cool theme to
| | 00:05 |
identify with the H plus brand.
Now I want to tie it all together with
| | 00:11 |
some really cool sound design elements.
Some of the things you may have heard up
| | 00:16 |
to this point kind of seemed a little
awkward because there wasn't these sound
| | 00:20 |
design elements filling in the gaps.
It's not necessarily that I'm going to do
| | 00:26 |
these last or do these first, it just made
more sense for continuity in this course.
| | 00:31 |
Now, let's go ahead and listen to some of
these sound design elements that I've
| | 00:35 |
pulled from our Effects folder of our
music stems and see how they fit into the
| | 00:39 |
entire composition.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:13 |
So its really starting to come together
with the sound design.
| | 01:17 |
Now that could mean anything from basic
cymbals, I've got this sort of dark gong
| | 01:23 |
here (SOUND).
And I really like this sound, because it's
| | 01:27 |
a cymbal, but it's very dark, and it
doesn't have a lot of high end in it.
| | 01:33 |
It's very moody, and it works really well
in any cinematic sequence.
| | 01:39 |
What it actually is, is a gong swell that
I cut in half, so that I kind of created
| | 01:43 |
my own attack out of it.
(SOUND) And it sounds a little sharp in
| | 01:53 |
isolation, but when that's added to the
kick drum you don't notice that hard transition.
| | 01:58 |
It actually works in your favor as a bit
of a transient or punch.
| | 02:02 |
(MUSIC).
So it gives me that nice splashy, dark
| | 02:13 |
cymbal sound there.
I like turning things like gongs or really
| | 02:17 |
big cymbals into crash cymbals because
they don't have as many high frequencies
| | 02:22 |
but they still give me that nice air and
impact.
| | 02:27 |
Now I also have this thing that I'm
calling end hit, and I use it in 2 places
| | 02:30 |
at the end, to seal the deal, if you will,
on the logo.
| | 02:35 |
(MUSIC).
And that's kind of a (SOUND) sound, that
| | 02:42 |
just kind of explodes with some extra
frequencies and that little side chain
| | 02:46 |
swell on the ES2 rings out with that.
(MUSIC).
| | 02:54 |
And here I'm actually using it to fill in
this gap, so this is where I'm saying it
| | 02:57 |
may have sounded awkward before because we
have this build up point where the basses play.
| | 03:03 |
(MUSIC).
This sucks into this downbeat here, and
| | 03:15 |
then all the instruments come in here,
just a bit later.
| | 03:19 |
So it's just kind of cool anticipation and
build up to this release but then there's
| | 03:24 |
a second release on the next beat.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:30 |
So, we got this boom, smack.
(SOUND) Excuse my terrible singing there.
| | 03:35 |
This is a really cool musical device that
creates two moments to picture here.
| | 03:41 |
There's this little flash of the camera
there with the logo.
| | 03:46 |
And then the second impact when the melody
comes in (MUSIC) So she kicks that ball
| | 03:52 |
and the guitars drop in with the beginning
of the theme.
| | 03:58 |
Now I have two swells.
I have a reverse sweep, (SOUND) and that's
| | 04:02 |
just white noise sweep with a little bit
of EQ filtering, so it sounds like it's
| | 04:07 |
rising up.
(SOUND) And then I have a reverse cymbal,
| | 04:13 |
(SOUND) and so they're very similar
sounds.
| | 04:18 |
(SOUND) (SOUND) It's just they're slightly
different.
| | 04:21 |
So I kind of get this suck into one and
then suck into another for a really cool
| | 04:24 |
effect, and I use this reverse cymbal
again towards the end.
| | 04:28 |
(MUSIC).
And it's just this nice subtle push and
| | 04:33 |
pull that I'm adding.
I'm really just trying to draw out these
| | 04:37 |
different emotional moments of the cut and
transition the energy between these
| | 04:41 |
different moments.
And electronic music does that really well
| | 04:45 |
with sound design, because you typically
don't have the same kind of organic guys
| | 04:49 |
in a room playing, you know, so we have to
do it with other elements.
| | 04:55 |
So sweeps and swells and explosions to
kind of really build and release energy.
| | 05:02 |
And that actually works really well in a
cinematic or to picture context, cause
| | 05:06 |
it's kind of these over the top almost
trailer style sound effects that we're using.
| | 05:13 |
Now I've emphasized some of these hits
here, with a Sub hit.
| | 05:18 |
(SOUND).
And that's just kind of like an 808 style
| | 05:21 |
boom, that's just really going to shake
the subwoofer if the listener has one.
| | 05:29 |
(MUSIC).
So without that, it's just kind of puny.
| | 05:36 |
So we really just want to shake the
speakers.
| | 05:39 |
And if you're listening on tiny little
laptop speakers you're not going to hear
| | 05:42 |
this, but if you put on some headphones or
play it through your bigger sound system,
| | 05:44 |
you really hear that shake the walls
there, and that's what we're looking for.
| | 05:49 |
(MUSIC).
To layer that with that end hit there, so
| | 05:55 |
that we get this really nice big hit.
Without, (MUSIC) with, (MUSIC) really seal
| | 06:04 |
the deal.
So, the sound design effects act as glue
| | 06:09 |
that really brings it all together, and
sells it to the listener.
| | 06:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Printing a version for review| 00:00 |
It's a good time to send a rough draft of
what we've got going on to the director to
| | 00:05 |
receive any feedback and get some notes on
our direction.
| | 00:10 |
What I typically find when I'm working on
a piece of music whether it's for myself
| | 00:14 |
Who are for a commercial project or a
score, is that I spend half the time
| | 00:18 |
getting 90% of the way there with an idea,
and then the other half the time,
| | 00:22 |
finishing off the last 10% of details.
And, as a perfectionist, it can be hard to
| | 00:30 |
not want to fully realize your idea and
spend a ton of time getting every last
| | 00:34 |
detail in check before sending it off for
review.
| | 00:40 |
However I can say from experience it's
generally a good idea to get feedback
| | 00:43 |
sooner rather than later, in case the
director really doesn't like the idea at a
| | 00:47 |
fundamental level.
In other words, if you went and spent that
| | 00:52 |
extra 10% in a day of putting all these
little details together, it's not really
| | 00:56 |
going to make a difference, because maybe
they just don't like the theme or the
| | 01:00 |
beat, or just the basic elements, and so
you want to get that feedback in the mix
| | 01:04 |
as soon as possible, so you know that
you're working towards the right direction.
| | 01:13 |
Now, at this point I like to submix all my
music elements so I can control their
| | 01:17 |
volume against the voiceover and do a
quick mix here between the music and the voiceover.
| | 01:23 |
And so what I'll do here in Pro Tools is
I'm just going to select these tracks.
| | 01:28 |
Hold down option shift on the Mac or alt
shift on the PC and click on the output
| | 01:31 |
and send them to a new track.
I'm going to send them to a new aux track,
| | 01:36 |
I'm going to call that music.
Now most DOS have a way of sub-mixing
| | 01:40 |
tracks into a single volume fader so you
can add plugins and automate them against
| | 01:44 |
other things.
In Pro Tools has an Aux Track here and so
| | 01:49 |
I've got all these elements here in this
music submix.
| | 01:55 |
>> (MUSIC) H Plus Sport has what you need.
Natural electrolytes from plants, not chemicals.
| | 02:04 |
H Plus Sport.
>> And that allows me to control the level
| | 02:07 |
against the voice over so I can do some
quick automation and some quick group processing.
| | 02:14 |
And what I'm also going to do to the music
here is just add a quick little mastering
| | 02:18 |
insert just to kind of congeal everything
together.
| | 02:22 |
I really like this Maserati group plug in
for just quick little mastering jobs.
| | 02:28 |
I'll just switch it to master here.
And we're just going to adjust some of these.
| | 02:31 |
>> Water can't give you back what you lose
(MUSIC).
| | 02:36 |
H plus Sport has what you need, natural
electrolytes from.
| | 02:40 |
(MUSIC) That's just going to give us a
little extra level, kind of even out all
| | 02:44 |
of the music.
I'm just looking for feedback here and
| | 02:48 |
typically I'm not the one that's going to
be doing the final mix of music to
| | 02:52 |
dialogue if I'm just the composer.
If it's a small project, I might be tasked
| | 02:57 |
with doing that.
But generally on the larger projects, I
| | 03:00 |
would just send off the finished music as
a stereo track, or as stems, to the dub
| | 03:04 |
mixer, who would then combine it with all
of the elements.
| | 03:09 |
So we can just hear what this guy's doing
(MUSIC), just give me some extra level.
| | 03:18 |
(MUSIC) Cool.
Now what I want to do is just add a little
| | 03:24 |
automation here against the voiceover.
So when we start out, kind of want to be
| | 03:30 |
loud and proud with that first hit, but
then we're going to dip it down, make a
| | 03:34 |
little room here.
Dip it down when the dialogue comes in.
| | 03:40 |
Let's hear that.
(MUSIC) Maybe I want to bring it up here (SOUND).
| | 03:59 |
Maybe we won't be so dramatic.
>> (MUSIC) You work hard and play harder.
| | 04:04 |
Water can't give you back what you lose.
H Plus Sport has what you need.
| | 04:09 |
Natural electrolytes from plants, not
chemicals.
| | 04:14 |
H Plus Sport isn't made in a lab.
(MUSIC) Too much sugar dehydrate you and
| | 04:20 |
robs your energy when you need it most.
H Plus Sport only has 5 grams.
| | 04:25 |
Everything you need nothing you don't.
H Plus Sport, natural rehydration.
| | 04:31 |
Let's kick it up here on this last little
hit so we get nice cinematic hit at the end.
| | 04:38 |
Thing you don't.
H plus sport, natural re-hydration.
| | 04:45 |
So, what we actually want to send the
director, is we want to send them a mix
| | 04:49 |
with the music only, so they can review
where the score is going, and a mix with
| | 04:54 |
the dialogue.
Now I typically at this stage like to send
| | 04:59 |
things back as QuickTime movies all
together.
| | 05:03 |
So that the director can review it
wherever they are on their laptop, on
| | 05:07 |
their phone, they don't have to go marry
it back with the video in the editing suite.
| | 05:12 |
And so what I can do here, I just want to
make sure on my master output that I'm not
| | 05:16 |
clipping anything.
>> From plants, not chemicals (MUSIC) H
| | 05:20 |
Plus Sport isn't made in the lab.
Too much sugar dehydrates you and robs
| | 05:25 |
your energy.
>> That looks pretty good, and so what I'm
| | 05:28 |
going to do is make sure my temp music is
muted, I don't want to add that in there,
| | 05:31 |
and in fact I probably just want to
right-click and make that in active so I
| | 05:34 |
don't accidentally bring that into the
mix.
| | 05:39 |
So I'm going to go ahead and select the
entirety of my video here, up at the top,
| | 05:43 |
and I'm actually going to balance this to
a Quicktime movie.
| | 05:48 |
So we'll go ahead and leave this at 48k
interleaved and click balance here.
| | 05:55 |
>> And will go ahead and save this to our
desktop.
| | 06:01 |
And we're going to say H Plus music plus
VO.
| | 06:05 |
>> (MUSIC) You work hard, and play harder.
Water can't give you back what you use.
| | 06:12 |
H Plus Sport has what you need.
(MUSIC) Natural electrolytes from plants
| | 06:19 |
not chemicals.
H Plus Sport isn't made in a lab.
| | 06:23 |
Too much sugar dehydrates you and robs
your energy when you need it most.
| | 06:27 |
H Plus Sport only has five grams.
Everything you need, nothing you don't.
| | 06:33 |
H Plus Sport, natural rehydration.
>> Cool.
| | 06:38 |
So I waited for that to bounce in real
time there.
| | 06:40 |
Now I also want to give a version of the
mix, just music only.
| | 06:46 |
So what I'm going to do is go ahead and
mute my VO and do the same thing.
| | 06:50 |
I'll turn off my volume automation.
So I'll just set that to off and we'll
| | 06:55 |
just turn that up a bit so we have some
nice level.
| | 06:59 |
Again I'm not being super critical here
about all the levels.
| | 07:02 |
I just want to send the director something
that they can review.
| | 07:05 |
So I just want to make sure it's not too
soft or really clipping.
| | 07:08 |
We can scrutinize things later when we do
the final deliverables once everything's approved.
| | 07:14 |
So I'm going to do the same thing now,
just bounce to Quicktime movie, same
| | 07:19 |
settings here.
We're going to go to the desktop and we'll
| | 07:29 |
just say music.mov.
(MUSIC).
| | 07:35 |
(MUSIC) (MUSIC) So let's just make sure
those printed correctly, when you're
| | 07:48 |
balancing a QuickTime file and ProTools,
you don't actually see the video preview
| | 08:02 |
of that balance.
Now this is different, in different daws.
| | 08:12 |
Most daws allow faster than real time
bounce, so you can just export that quickly.
| | 08:17 |
So I just want to minimize this here and
go check my video just real quick.
| | 08:22 |
We'll just go ahead and check this one.
(MUSIC) That looks good.
| | 08:25 |
Let's just check our dialog version.
>> (MUSIC) You work hard and play harder.
| | 08:34 |
Water can't give you back what you lose.
>> (MUSIC) H Plus Sport has what you need.
| | 08:40 |
>> Excellent, so we can send these two
movies off to the director or the ad
| | 08:44 |
agency and get some feedback on what's
working and what's not working, and then
| | 08:49 |
begin the revision process.
| | 08:53 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Review and ReviseUnderstanding the review and revision processes| 00:00 |
Unless you happen to get lucky and hit it
out of the park on the first submission,
| | 00:03 |
there's a very good chance that you'll be
asked to go through one or more round of revisions.
| | 00:08 |
The revision process is an important step
in the composition flow where the client
| | 00:13 |
or creative directors can provide critical
feedback on the piece, discuss what is and
| | 00:17 |
isn't working for them and hopefully
provide a clear set of ideas for potential
| | 00:21 |
changes that will take the revision
process in the right direction, resulting
| | 00:25 |
in a final piece that everyone is proud
of.
| | 00:32 |
Typically, the way the review and revision
process works is the composer submits
| | 00:36 |
their best take on the music based on
information provided in the creative brief
| | 00:40 |
and reference material, as well as their
own creative vision and experience on the piece.
| | 00:47 |
The client and/or creative director will
review this submission and provide
| | 00:51 |
feedback to the composer, hopefully
constructive feedback with concrete likes
| | 00:55 |
and dislikes, or specific direction on
what they want changed.
| | 01:01 |
After receiving the notes, the composer
will then evaluate, ask any question, and
| | 01:06 |
voice any concerns or get clarification on
anything her or she isn't quite sure of.
| | 01:13 |
And then make a plan to rework the piece
for re-submission to the client.
| | 01:18 |
Depending on the specific project or
contract this process if often repeated
| | 01:23 |
many times until any issues or concerns
are ironed out and the client is satisfied.
| | 01:29 |
Because the revision process almost always
has some form of criticism a composer's
| | 01:34 |
work, be it constructive or otherwise, it
is often the most difficult part of the
| | 01:38 |
process for the composer to deal with
emotionally.
| | 01:43 |
Especially if they're used to being their
own artist and visionary.
| | 01:47 |
In my experience, the biggest mistake a
composer can make in this stage is to get
| | 01:52 |
overly worked up or stressed out over the
revision notes, no matter how critical
| | 01:56 |
they may be.
For one, it puts you in a state of mind
| | 02:01 |
that makes working on anything incredibly
hard.
| | 02:06 |
And secondly, it often isn't worth the
extra stress in the first place.
| | 02:11 |
As musicians, we often wear our hearts on
our sleeve.
| | 02:13 |
Music and emotions are forever fused
together in our minds, even if that music
| | 02:18 |
is for a sports drink ad.
But in the case of commercial composition,
| | 02:23 |
we have to remind ourselves that for
almost everyone else in the process, it's
| | 02:27 |
business as usual.
We're selling a sports drink, no hard
| | 02:31 |
feelings, no personal attacks.
Just business.
| | 02:35 |
So instead of saying, oh, they hate my
synthesizer lead, so I hate them.
| | 02:39 |
Whatever.
This is stupid.
| | 02:40 |
Try thinking something like well, I really
thought that synth lead was awesome, but
| | 02:44 |
it is their product and vision that I'm
working toward, so let me see what I can
| | 02:48 |
do to make this better for everyone.
It's okay to voice any concerns or
| | 02:53 |
elements that you feel strongly about in a
professional and collected manner.
| | 02:59 |
But keep an open mind to others tastes and
preferences and stay professional.
| | 03:04 |
Now that we're familiar with the process
as a whole, in the next movie we'll
| | 03:08 |
breakdown the specific revision process
for our H Plus commercial.
| | 03:14 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Breaking down the client review and revision notes| 00:00 |
So we sent off the mixes for client review
and got some really great feedback.
| | 00:05 |
So, let's review the notes and discuss
some ideas for implementing the client's requests.
| | 00:10 |
Here's the email message that the director
sent me.
| | 00:14 |
Hey, Brian.
I really, really, really like this.
| | 00:17 |
The melody is great.
Would it be possible to add back in a bit
| | 00:20 |
more of the dubstep glitch of the temp?
If the needle was at 50% before, push it
| | 00:26 |
to 65 or 70%?
Let's see what we can do to the music to
| | 00:30 |
give the editor a stronger foundation for
stutter time-cut options.
| | 00:35 |
So let's break this down.
First off, he likes it.
| | 00:38 |
Awesome.
So we're headed in the right direction.
| | 00:40 |
But it sounds like he's attached to some
of the stutter edit glitchiness of the
| | 00:44 |
original temp, for the editors to riff off
more.
| | 00:47 |
Remember, we originally discussed that the
temp really sat hard against the
| | 00:51 |
voice-over, making it hard to understand
the dialogue.
| | 00:56 |
So my biggest concern with having as many
set or edit breaks as the temp track was
| | 00:59 |
it would risk the music getting in the way
of the voice-over, which we don't want to do.
| | 01:06 |
In this case, I erred on the light side
and from the notes, it sounds like the
| | 01:09 |
director would like to see what we can do
to reincorporate some of that.
| | 01:14 |
Now, after discussing my concern regarding
the dialogue with the director, he
| | 01:18 |
completely understood my concern and we
both agreed on upping the glitch factor
| | 01:22 |
while staying sensitive to the voice-over
and maintaining that thematic feel.
| | 01:29 |
And once you receive the notes, no matter
how cryptic or vague they may be, it's
| | 01:33 |
always a good idea to create some concrete
steps to implement and push the revision
| | 01:38 |
process forward.
For this round of note0s, a few things
| | 01:43 |
come to mind.
One, in order to help define the jump cuts
| | 01:47 |
more, I'll beef up the percussion and add
more stutter edits to the drums.
| | 01:52 |
Second, I'll also look for spots to break
up or mute the melodic tracks to enhance
| | 01:56 |
the edit points and attempt to give the
director that extra 20% of aggressive
| | 02:00 |
glitch he's looking for to help the
editors out.
| | 02:06 |
Part of what makes great commercial or
jingle composers so effective is their
| | 02:10 |
ability to create actionable ideas out of
even the most opaque revision notes.
| | 02:16 |
This kind of intuition comes with practice
and experience in dealing with many
| | 02:20 |
different personalities.
Remember, anything you can do to create a
| | 02:24 |
better relationship with your clients and
directors, can really help when it comes
| | 02:27 |
to deciphering their comments and give you
an edge come revision time.
| | 02:33 |
Of course, when in doubt, discuss your
revision plans with the client, share your
| | 02:37 |
ideas and concerns, and come up with a
solid game plan before digging back into
| | 02:41 |
the track.
| | 02:44 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Implementing the revisions| 00:00 |
So, I have my Revision Session open here.
And I want to go through some of the
| | 00:04 |
specific things that I did to the piece,
based on the feedback notes that I
| | 00:08 |
received from the director.
Now, if you're following along with the
| | 00:14 |
Exercise Assets, the only new addition to
the Revisions is this Trash Percussion stem.
| | 00:21 |
And you'll find that in the Music Stems
folder, if you want to bring that into
| | 00:25 |
your session.
Again, some of the notes we received were,
| | 00:30 |
generally they like the piece and the
theme and where it's going.
| | 00:34 |
They just wanted a little bit more glitch
and edginess to play off some of the cuts
| | 00:38 |
in the video.
So, that trash percussion is a good place
| | 00:43 |
to start.
What I did is, I layered my initial drums
| | 00:46 |
here, with these kind of trashcan sounds
to give them more impact and weight.
| | 00:52 |
So, let's take a listen.
(SOUND).
| | 00:55 |
Over here I even did a little stutter.
(SOUND).
| | 01:03 |
So, you can see his footsteps here.
(SOUND).
| | 01:05 |
I really wanted to play that up, and so
let's listen with those drums to see how
| | 01:10 |
they kind of accent each other.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:19 |
So, you can see they add an additional
weight.
| | 01:21 |
Let me mute those.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:29 |
So, just in various places I've used this
sort of trash percussion to accent certain
| | 01:34 |
events with the rest of my drums.
(MUSIC).
| | 01:51 |
That's a cool little moment there, where
he stutters his football.
| | 01:54 |
And so, in addition to taking this trash
percussion loop that I found and cutting
| | 02:00 |
it up, what I also did is edited the drum
loop quite a bit.
| | 02:07 |
You can see there's some edits in here.
One you may have noticed, this little touchdown.
| | 02:11 |
I just duplicated that snare.
(MUSIC).
| | 02:17 |
Here, I kind of did this kick stutter
along with the trash percussion.
| | 02:20 |
(MUSIC).
So, really what I'm doing a lot of is just
| | 02:29 |
taking the elements I already have and
just copying and pasting them.
| | 02:33 |
You can see here with the drums, I've done
that quite a bit.
| | 02:36 |
(MUSIC).
Now, let's just listen to the whole piece.
| | 02:46 |
(MUSIC).
And that's a really good example right here.
| | 02:57 |
I'm actually taking some elements out to
kind of emphasis some of the percussion
| | 03:01 |
and edits I've done.
I've actually muted the bass here.
| | 03:05 |
Got a little mute right here.
And that's just going to add additional
| | 03:09 |
emphasis to what's going on in the drums.
(MUSIC).
| | 03:19 |
So, by muting that bass steamer, so let's
hear what that sounds like with.
| | 03:23 |
(MUSIC).
It just adds a little more drama and
| | 03:28 |
contrast when we bring everything back in
at the next point.
| | 03:32 |
(MUSIC).
It just makes this moment a little bit bigger.
| | 03:40 |
A moment where everything flashes and she
kicks the soccer ball, so it's just giving
| | 03:44 |
us more contrast.
Sometimes it's not about adding more.
| | 03:48 |
It's about taking away what's there so
that you have more contrast against the
| | 03:52 |
things that are happening.
Another place where I tried to add in a
| | 03:57 |
little bit of that stutter tackiness, is
here in the electric base guitar.
| | 04:01 |
Let's listen to that.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:09 |
So, what I've done is I've taken the last
note here and just kind of stuttered that
| | 04:15 |
three times.
So, I get this cool effect.
| | 04:19 |
And then, that kind of follows some of the
things I'm doing, and the drumette as the
| | 04:23 |
tech loops and things like that.
So, if we listen in context it's subtle
| | 04:28 |
but it's cool.
(MUSIC).
| | 04:42 |
So, it's just adding this extra layer of
tackiness without being too aggressive.
| | 04:46 |
Again, what I wanted to do with add back
in some of that tackiness of the temp.
| | 04:52 |
Without turning it back into the super
aggressive bro step track.
| | 04:56 |
So, keeping it elegant and thematic, but
giving back some of those stutters and
| | 05:02 |
techie elements by taking what I had and
editing it.
| | 05:07 |
Now, here's another spot where I actually
muted some stuff to let other elements
| | 05:11 |
come out.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:16 |
And so, what I did is a little tape stop
effect on my guitar tracks and some of my
| | 05:20 |
base stems.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:25 |
So, we got this (SOUND).
And so, what that's doing is just giving
| | 05:32 |
me again, more contrast elements, the
music kind of stops with this tape stop effect.
| | 05:37 |
And then, it starts back up again on this
little sort of touch down thing that the
| | 05:40 |
guys doing on the grass.
(MUSIC).
| | 05:49 |
So again, it's another example of sort of
taking things away to make the thing that
| | 05:54 |
comes right afterwards more pronounced.
There's some stutters here on the guitar.
| | 06:00 |
I added an extra track.
Sometimes it's nice to just take and
| | 06:03 |
duplicate a track, so that you have
another track to edit and work from.
| | 06:08 |
So, if we zoom in here and take a look at
what's going on with these edits.
| | 06:12 |
I'll just make that a little bit bigger so
you can see them.
| | 06:16 |
This is the same guitar part, I just cut
it to a new track.
| | 06:23 |
(SOUND).
To kind of create this swell.
| | 06:27 |
(SOUND).
So, in context really subtle, but it just
| | 06:29 |
kind of adds that little extra bit.
(MUSIC).
| | 06:51 |
Cool.
So, hopefully you've seen that by taking
| | 06:53 |
and sort of reworking some of the elements
that we already had, because we knew they
| | 06:57 |
were working for the director.
I don't want to go too far down a rabbit
| | 07:02 |
hole when I already know something's
working.
| | 07:05 |
I've just taken and reused some of the
ideas I've already created.
| | 07:09 |
To give them more of what they want.
More of those stutter edits but it kept
| | 07:14 |
the same theme.
And really, just added that trash
| | 07:17 |
percussion track just to beef up the
percussion and those edit hits in certain spots.
| | 07:22 |
I'm not trying to totally reinvent the
whole track here and I think it's at a
| | 07:27 |
spot now.
Where we really covered those revision
| | 07:31 |
notes, those concerns and now we can go
ahead and send it back to the client.
| | 07:37 |
And if it's good, then we can go ahead and
print our final delivery asset.
| | 07:43 |
Our music and our voice over and send
those in.
| | 07:47 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Strategies for managing projects with extended revisions| 00:00 |
One of the biggest obstacles most
commercial composers run into is an
| | 00:04 |
over-extended revision process.
For one reason or another, no matter how
| | 00:09 |
many rounds of revisions you make, the
client still isn't happy with the work and
| | 00:13 |
you end up in what seems like a
never-ending cycle of notes and revisions
| | 00:17 |
that extends towards Infinity.
Well each situation is different, and
| | 00:23 |
ultimately it is your job to navigate your
own professional relationships.
| | 00:28 |
Generally you can sum up the rationale
behind extended revisions into a few categories.
| | 00:35 |
Communication problems, too many cooks in
the kitchen.
| | 00:40 |
And issues beyond your control, issues
beyond the music.
| | 00:44 |
So, here are some things that I tried to
address when dealing with a seemingly
| | 00:48 |
unlimited revision process.
One of the biggest obstacles during the
| | 00:54 |
revision process is a lack of
communication or to be more specific lack
| | 00:57 |
of communication between the lead decision
makes and the composer.
| | 01:03 |
If at all possible it is extremely
important that you are communicating
| | 01:06 |
directly with the people who are making
the decisions.
| | 01:11 |
Who are deciding whether or not your track
is working or isn't working and why it
| | 01:14 |
isn't working.
I can't count the number of times an
| | 01:18 |
extended revision process was due to the
simple fact that desires were lost in
| | 01:23 |
translation between layers of editors and
middlemen.
| | 01:28 |
Many times the key decision makers are
extremely busy and hard to get a hold of.
| | 01:33 |
Oftentimes, this requires being a little
bit pushy and chasing some people down to
| | 01:37 |
get at the real information you need.
Remember, describing musical qualities is
| | 01:43 |
hard for even trained professionals so you
want to try to get as close to the source
| | 01:48 |
as possible to avoid excessive revisions
due to ill communication.
| | 01:55 |
The next one that comes up is what I like
to call too many cooks in the kitchen.
| | 01:59 |
And I think you know where I'm going with
this.
| | 02:01 |
Sometimes it isn't a lack of communication
but indecision between creatives with too
| | 02:06 |
many different opinions pulling the
revision process in different directions.
| | 02:11 |
Now this can be a tough one to deal with.
Because all it takes if for one person to
| | 02:16 |
have a different set of tastes and the
whole thing becomes a train wreck.
| | 02:21 |
Now in this scenario you have to do your
best to politely, but firmly express your
| | 02:26 |
opinion when two sets of notes don't add
up.
| | 02:30 |
Parse through revision notes that are
contiguous and work towards a common goal
| | 02:34 |
and move in that direction.
Unfortunately this often means showing the
| | 02:39 |
client that something won't work by
implementing it into the cut.
| | 02:43 |
And sometimes you have to play off the
personalities of the creative team by
| | 02:47 |
identifying the authority figure of the
group and lean on their notes the hardest.
| | 02:52 |
The natural leaders of the group will
often be able to win over their
| | 02:55 |
counterparts come decision time.
Did I mention this is a lot like being a psychologist?
| | 03:01 |
The third thing that comes up are
generally issues that are outside of your control.
| | 03:07 |
In certain cases the problem is not with
the music but some other aspect of the project.
| | 03:14 |
Maybe the cut isn't working.
Maybe the original concept is just not
| | 03:18 |
being realized or Just isn't that good in
the first place.
| | 03:22 |
In this scenario the music often comes
along for the ride, ending up in the same
| | 03:26 |
revision cycle loop as everything else.
Now if you find yourself here often, make
| | 03:31 |
sure you have a clear scope of work that
includes what a reasonable amount of
| | 03:35 |
revisions is for the money that they are
paying you and stick to it.
| | 03:40 |
We'll cover some tips for scope of work in
another movie.
| | 03:44 |
Regardless of the revision scenario you
may be facing I just pointed out a few
| | 03:48 |
that are failry common at the end of the
day it often falls on you to stay
| | 03:52 |
confident in your work and ideas and help
reassure the client that a certain
| | 03:55 |
direction is the best solution.
If you were truly confident in your work
| | 04:03 |
the client will be too.
| | 04:05 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Final Delivery and Additional TopicsPrinting the music for delivery| 00:00 |
Since the director has approved our last
revision, bouncing or printing the
| | 00:04 |
approved music for delivery is the final
step of the composition process.
| | 00:10 |
At this stage we will print the final
stereo mix of music in the format that the
| | 00:14 |
client has requested.
So, just to review that, let's pull back
| | 00:19 |
up that Music Brief.
And what we want to deliver is a music
| | 00:24 |
only, so no voice-over, stereo mix without
automation.
| | 00:29 |
In addition to a music plus video
reference delivered as 48k AIFF files with
| | 00:35 |
a 2-pop at the head.
And I'll explain what a 2-pop is and I'll
| | 00:41 |
show you how to make that.
Now, it says the dub mixer may request
| | 00:45 |
discrete stems in the same format.
They haven't yet.
| | 00:49 |
I'll talk a little bit about that.
But let's start with the music only stereo
| | 00:53 |
mix without automation.
And so what I've done here is, instead of
| | 00:57 |
an ox track, I have all of my music tracks
dumping into an audio track here in Pro
| | 01:02 |
Tools so that I can easily print that to a
new track in real time inside this session.
| | 01:09 |
This actually is really helpful when I
need to print stems or individual tracks
| | 01:14 |
solo to send out because I can just record
everything in line down to this track.
| | 01:20 |
And here I can also have my automation
that I have turned off right now when I
| | 01:24 |
need to print my reference mix with the
voice-over.
| | 01:28 |
So let's start by recording our music mix.
Our music-only mix.
| | 01:32 |
I've muted the voice-over.
So I'll start at the beginning.
| | 01:35 |
(MUSIC).
Now that I have this as a file here, what
| | 01:44 |
I want to do, and I'm just going to go
ahead and hide the video track, is I
| | 01:56 |
want to make sure I cut off and fade out
any tail, so that it drops right in real
| | 02:09 |
nice with their music.
Now, sometimes if they're going to fudge
| | 02:26 |
the edit, make it a little bit longer or a
little bit shorter, you can just leave
| | 02:29 |
that tail in there for the dub mixer to
deal with.
| | 02:33 |
I'm just going to assume we want to
deliver something that's nice and clean
| | 02:36 |
that just drops right in.
And so what I want to do is make sure that
| | 02:39 |
based on the length of the video, I'm just
going to select the video track, and I'm
| | 02:44 |
going to drop that selection down On to
our music track here.
| | 02:49 |
And I'm just going to trim that Command+T
on the Mac or Control+T on the PC.
| | 02:55 |
And I'm just going to add a little fade,
just like that.
| | 02:59 |
Now, the music brief said that they wanted
a 2-pop.
| | 03:04 |
So what is a 2-pop?
You hear this a lot in post production and
| | 03:08 |
a 2-pop, is a 1k sine tone that's one
frame long, that happens two seconds
| | 03:12 |
before the first frame of video.
So, to make this 2-pop, I actually need to
| | 03:18 |
make some room in my session.
Right now, we can see that the video
| | 03:23 |
starts immediately.
We received a video that doesn't have any
| | 03:27 |
bars or two or any 2-pop built into it.
Since I know this is exactly the first
| | 03:32 |
frame of the video that I have right here.
I can easily just add, so Event > Time
| | 03:38 |
Operations > Insert Time.
Let me just switch to time code here and I
| | 03:42 |
want to insert exactly two seconds so I'm
going to type in 02 there.
| | 03:48 |
So right at the start, I'm going to insert
two seconds and what that does is it moves
| | 03:52 |
everything over, so you can see I've got
all of these checks.
| | 03:56 |
It's going to move over all of the audio
meter tempo events, any of the tick based
| | 04:00 |
elements there.
And that gives me room to actually put in
| | 04:05 |
my one case sign tone.
So what I'm going to do here is go ahead
| | 04:10 |
and set my grid to a frame.
And now what I can do is zoom in, right
| | 04:16 |
there at the beginning.
And make a little selection here.
| | 04:20 |
I want to print a 1k sine tone.
Now I can go into my audio suite, and I
| | 04:24 |
can go into the signal generator.
And I can print a sine tone at 1000 hertz.
| | 04:32 |
However, there's a shortcut that I can use
and on the Mac that's Control+Option+Shift+3.
| | 04:39 |
On the PC that would be start, alt, and
shift, and the number three.
| | 04:44 |
And so see that creates a little tone for
me, don't even need to use the audio suite
| | 04:49 |
and I have a little (SOUND) beep there.
(SOUND) So we can see that that happens
| | 04:55 |
two seconds before the first frame of
video.
| | 04:59 |
And I want to actually incorporate this
into my audio delivery.
| | 05:02 |
So I'm going to just go ahead and select
that whole bundle, and I'm going to
| | 05:05 |
consolidate that into one file.
So I'm going to consolidate the clip, or
| | 05:10 |
Option+Shift+3 on the Mac, Alt+Shift+3 on
the PC.
| | 05:15 |
All DAWs that I've used have the ability
to consolidate files in line on the track.
| | 05:21 |
I could also just bounce that out in a
bounce to disc command.
| | 05:25 |
If you don't have access to a sine tone
generator, you can find sine tone samples
| | 05:29 |
on the internet.
They're fairly ubiquitous.
| | 05:33 |
Again, it's a one K tone, one frame long,
and what it ends up sounding like is.
| | 05:38 |
(SOUND) (MUSIC) Just like that so, now
what I can do is I can select this.
| | 05:47 |
I'm going to go ahead and name this here,
we're going to call this H Plus Music Final.
| | 05:53 |
And I need to get that out at the correct
format, so I'm going to go here to my
| | 05:58 |
Clips list and I'm actually going to Find
that where that's selected and I'm
| | 06:02 |
going to Right Click and I'm going to
export that out of my dot as a stereo
| | 06:06 |
interleaved 48 k.
I want to make sure that's in AFF here.
| | 06:15 |
I'll just go ahead and put this on the
desktop, so we know where everything is.
| | 06:20 |
And I will export that.
Great.
| | 06:24 |
So I don't actually have to bounce it out
again when I'm just exporting it.
| | 06:28 |
That's the beauty of printing inline to a
track like this.
| | 06:32 |
Now what I want to do is I want to get my
VO mix out with this.
| | 06:36 |
So I just want to preview this against the
automation that I have in here.
| | 06:44 |
You work hard and play harder.
Water can't give you back what you lose.
| | 06:48 |
H Plus Sport has what you need.
Natural electrolytes from plants, not chemicals.
| | 06:56 |
H Plus.
That sounds good.
| | 06:58 |
And I want to show you a quick little
trick for making the dialouge sit on top
| | 07:03 |
of the music.
If I go here to my mix window.
| | 07:08 |
I'm going to enable a plug-in here on my
music submaster called Trackspacer.
| | 07:14 |
And what this does.
As it uses a side chain that I've sent
| | 07:18 |
from my dialogue VO track.
So I've sent a bus With some level into
| | 07:22 |
it, into the side chain of Track Spacer.
Most modern DAWs feature a side chaining
| | 07:28 |
ability and this plug in can be used in
protols in our tasks or AAX plug in as
| | 07:33 |
well as in any other DAWs a VST or audio
unit plugin.
| | 07:39 |
So you can use this anywhere.
It's a cool little plug in from waves factory.
| | 07:42 |
And what it does, it listens to the input,
and it does a real time FFT to create a
| | 07:47 |
reverse dynamic EQ if you will, so check
out how this is working.
| | 07:53 |
>> (SOUND) (MUSIC) You work hard and play
harder.
| | 07:58 |
Water can't give you back what you lose.
H Plus Sport has what you need.
| | 08:04 |
Natural electrolytes from plants, not
chemicals.
| | 08:09 |
>> So I just want a bit of a ratio and
I've bracketed it between a few
| | 08:11 |
frequencies here, between about 150 and
4,000.
| | 08:15 |
And what it's doing is just actively
ducking the music in those frequencies
| | 08:18 |
based on the dialog.
I don't want to do anything too awkward,
| | 08:23 |
and ultimately the finished mix is going
to be mixed by a dub mixer.
| | 08:28 |
So they're going to use my music spam, but
I do want to present my music against the
| | 08:32 |
voice-over in the best light possible.
I want to make it seem like yeah, that
| | 08:37 |
music blends really well with the
dialogue.
| | 08:40 |
And it really sits so you can hear
everything and just sounds pleasant.
| | 08:44 |
because that's just going to make my life
easier in terms of getting paid, getting approval.
| | 08:49 |
So I'm going to go ahead and leave that
on, that's working real well.
| | 08:53 |
And so I want to print one version out of
the voice-over.
| | 08:57 |
Now I could create another new audio track
to bounce this down to.
| | 09:01 |
But what I'm going to do instead is I'm
just going to take and select the dialog
| | 09:04 |
all the way to the beginning here.
And I'm just going to just do a bounce to disk.
| | 09:10 |
And since my music has the 2-pop, that's
going to be included along with the VO.
| | 09:15 |
I just want to check this one more time.
>> (MUSIC) You work hard Sounds good.
| | 09:22 |
And then I'll file and bounce to disk.
Bounce to disk is going to use the
| | 09:27 |
selection, and again where going to choose
our 24 bit AIFF at 48K Interleaved not too
| | 09:32 |
many people would ask for multiple mono
its kind of an old format.
| | 09:39 |
And we are printing from our main outputs
here we'll hit bounce and we're going to
| | 09:43 |
save that again to our desktop.
So we'll just grab the name for that music
| | 09:49 |
and hit save.
(MUSIC) You work hard and play harder.
| | 09:56 |
Water can't give you back what you lose.
H Plus Sport has what you need.
| | 10:04 |
Natural electrolytes from plants, not
chemicals.
| | 10:07 |
H Plus Sport isn't made in a lab.
Too much sugar dehydrates (SOUND) Greets you.
| | 10:12 |
And robs your energy when you need it
most.
| | 10:15 |
H Plus Sport only has five grams.
Everything you need.
| | 10:19 |
Nothing you don't.
H Plus Sport.
| | 10:22 |
Natural rehydration.
So let's just check those.
| | 10:27 |
Make sure everything's cool, nothing's
missing before you send them in.
| | 10:32 |
I always like to kind of triple check
everything.
| | 10:34 |
Sometimes even after I upload the files, I
make sure that the link works so that I
| | 10:37 |
can actually download it again.
It's just attention to details that matter.
| | 10:43 |
(SOUND)
(MUSIC)
| | 10:48 |
Sounds good.
>> (SOUND) (MUSIC) You work hard and play harder.
| | 10:57 |
Water can't.
>> That sounds good also.
| | 11:00 |
Go ahead and just switch back to pro
tools.
| | 11:03 |
Now again you may be asked to print stems
and what that means is just soloing
| | 11:06 |
specific groups of tracks like the drums,
the bass, the melodic tracks.
| | 11:12 |
And the effects and printing them as
separate stereo files so that they can be
| | 11:16 |
mixed or adjusted to the voice-over.
That just depends on the project or the
| | 11:22 |
scope of work.
A lot of times, they'll ask for those specifically.
| | 11:28 |
So it's nothing something I would normally
deliver if I wasn't asked.
| | 11:32 |
A lot of times they're just going to go
ahead and use your music mix.
| | 11:36 |
One thing that you do want to remember is
to leave the automation off the music so
| | 11:41 |
that they have control over how the level
sits next to the dialog.
| | 11:47 |
Usually I'm not mixing the voice-over so
it doesn't really matter how it sounds.
| | 11:51 |
Sometimes I have to do that on smaller
projects.
| | 11:54 |
Again it's just important to communicate
that in the scope of work, which we'll
| | 11:58 |
talk about in the next movie.
| | 12:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding and managing scope of work| 00:00 |
If there's one thing that ends up getting
most composers in trouble when something
| | 00:04 |
goes wrong, it's the scope of work or lack
thereof.
| | 00:08 |
What is a scope of work you ask?
A scope of work is a basic outline of what
| | 00:13 |
the job is, how much you'll be paid,
approval of that job or work, and when the
| | 00:17 |
work is due along with any other legal
verbage relating to ownership of the
| | 00:21 |
masters and/or publishing.
Sometimes this is bundled into a larger contract.
| | 00:29 |
Sometimes it's separate.
But if executed correctly by both parties,
| | 00:34 |
it can save you a lot of hassle and
arguments down the road.
| | 00:38 |
The main thing a scope of work document or
contract tends to have is a description of
| | 00:42 |
the work that you'll be doing.
With any creative project it is imperative
| | 00:48 |
that you explicitly define what it is that
you're actually providing for the client
| | 00:52 |
in writing.
Get very specific, for example are you
| | 00:56 |
composing one minute of music or two
minutes?
| | 01:00 |
Or is there a range?
Will you also be recording the voice over
| | 01:04 |
or adding additional sound design and
having to mix the entire project?
| | 01:09 |
What if the client says, I don't know how
much music we will need so just bear with me?
| | 01:13 |
Well, in that case, set a per minute rate
and define it in the contract.
| | 01:19 |
For example, I'm going to get X dollars
per minute up to a certain amount.
| | 01:24 |
Otherwise what ends up happening is that
at the 11th hour, the client suddenly
| | 01:27 |
finds an extra 1, 2, 10 minutes of footage
to throw into the cut and calls you up and
| | 01:31 |
says oh, by the way, we'll need 10 more
minutes of original music for the money
| | 01:34 |
we're paying you.
And you don't want that to happen.
| | 01:41 |
So you always want to have a clear
description of what it is that you're
| | 01:44 |
doing and be as specific as possible.
The next thing you usually find in the
| | 01:50 |
scope of work is information up about
payment or pay structure.
| | 01:54 |
This is pretty simple, how are you getting
paid for the work in the description?
| | 01:59 |
Is that payment paid up front, upon
delivery, split into the specific
| | 02:03 |
milestones, Again you want to be specific.
If the scope of work changes, you can
| | 02:09 |
often re-negotiate the price and request a
bigger budget, but not unless it's all
| | 02:13 |
clearly laid out.
Sometimes in this section there may be
| | 02:17 |
what is known as a kill fee.
And what that does is it outlines what
| | 02:21 |
will happen if the client decides to
cancel the project or go in another
| | 02:25 |
direction, after a certain amount of work
or time has been put in.
| | 02:31 |
So for example you've already done many
revisions of a certain piece and they
| | 02:34 |
decide, you know what, we're just not
going with this project or this commercial.
| | 02:40 |
Often times, composers will insist on some
sort of kill fee that says well, if you
| | 02:44 |
decide not to use my work I get x amount
of dollars.
| | 02:49 |
Not always, but this is something you
might find in a scope of work.
| | 02:53 |
You also want to have information specific
to the delivery or the approval of what
| | 02:58 |
you are giving to the client.
A deadline is usually in the client's best
| | 03:03 |
interest, but it's also in yours, because
it allows you to plan your schedule and
| | 03:07 |
take on additional jobs accordingly.
So when are the deliverables due?
| | 03:13 |
Will the assets be delivered in phases?
How many revisions are you willing to make
| | 03:17 |
on the work before it's approved?
Upon approval you want to make sure
| | 03:22 |
someone signs off on the work as in ask
are we good can I send you the invoice.
| | 03:28 |
Once the client signs off based on the
outline scope of work if they come back
| | 03:32 |
two four months later and change their
mind its at your discretion whether you
| | 03:36 |
want to charge them for additional
revisions.
| | 03:41 |
Closure is your friend.
You want to move onto other projects so
| | 03:45 |
don't get stuck in a lifetime of
indentured servitude because you didn't
| | 03:48 |
have a well planned scope of work with
your client.
| | 03:53 |
Now many times in the scope of work there
would be some section about rights attribution.
| | 03:58 |
Often this can be in an entirely separate
contract all in its own.
| | 04:02 |
But what they're outlining here is who
owns the work essentially after it's done.
| | 04:09 |
Are you licensing this work to a client
for a certain term or amount of time or is
| | 04:13 |
it a work for hire, what's known as a
buy-out?
| | 04:17 |
As in they no longer retain rights to sell
or license that material to anyone else.
| | 04:24 |
At the end of the day depending on your
relationship with the client, sometimes
| | 04:28 |
the scope of work is very loose or may not
be on a signed contract at all.
| | 04:34 |
It could just be an email or a phone
conversation.
| | 04:37 |
You know you need to manage those
relationships yourself, not giving you any
| | 04:41 |
legal advise in this regard, always
consult with your attorney on anything
| | 04:45 |
where you feel you need to.
I generally like to at least get an e-mail
| | 04:50 |
or something in writing stating the
basics, the what, when and how much.
| | 04:56 |
Many times you may decide that the
relationship is worth being flexible for,
| | 05:00 |
and you maybe bend what's in the scope of
work.
| | 05:04 |
That's entirely your choice, but I have to
say I've never regretted having a clean
| | 05:08 |
and clear scope of work at the start of a
job.
| | 05:13 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Basic music licensing and publishing| 00:00 |
I'd like to start this movie out by saying
that I am in no way an expert or legal
| | 00:04 |
authority on music licensing and any
information I provide here shouldn't be
| | 00:09 |
confused as legal advice.
Remember, it's always best to discuss
| | 00:14 |
contracts and legal matters with your
attorney.
| | 00:19 |
The topic of music licensing and
publishing, along with the legalities and
| | 00:23 |
intricacies that accompany it, could take
up an entire four courses in itself so
| | 00:28 |
what I want to do here is just give you a
brief list of things you may want to consider.
| | 00:36 |
And seek out more information on if you
plan on working in the commercial scoring
| | 00:41 |
or commercial jingle industry.
When you're creating and licensing work,
| | 00:47 |
so will be used in a commercial context,
it's important to understand your rights
| | 00:51 |
as a composer as well as the different
ways clients may retain your services.
| | 00:58 |
A lot of times the big thing that comes up
in a discussion like this is are you
| | 01:03 |
licensing the music you create or are you
working under a buyout situation or what
| | 01:08 |
is called work for hire.
Sometimes you'll be contracted to produce
| | 01:16 |
music under what is known as work for hire
or buyout.
| | 01:21 |
And in this scenario you're accepting the
negotiated fee as a full payment for your
| | 01:26 |
services and transferring the rights of
the composition and masters permanently to
| | 01:30 |
the client.
In most cases what this means is you got
| | 01:36 |
paid to do a job and they own the work
that you did outright.
| | 01:41 |
They can use it again in the future, they
can sell it to someone else or license it
| | 01:44 |
to someone else without asking you or
paying you any additional money.
| | 01:49 |
Some people would say this is a bad
arrangement for the artist,but in some
| | 01:53 |
industries, for example video game
compositions Buy out contracts are the norm.
| | 01:59 |
They're the regular thing.
Music is generally work for hire on a per
| | 02:03 |
minute basis so you need to get your money
up front.
| | 02:07 |
For me when deciding to work this way,
it's really simple.
| | 02:12 |
Is what they're paying me what I need to
get for my time and contribution?
| | 02:17 |
If I know going in that this is all I'm
going to make from a specific piece of
| | 02:21 |
work, I will negotiate my fee.
Accordingly, one of the common attitudes
| | 02:26 |
that accompanies these types of agreements
is the what ifs.
| | 02:31 |
What if it's super successful then I don't
make a million dollars.
| | 02:35 |
Anyone who's worked in the industry long
enough, they'll tell you that most things
| | 02:38 |
don't make a million dollars.
In fact most things don't generate any
| | 02:43 |
money on the back end for one reason or
another.
| | 02:46 |
So getting paid a fair price up front for
your services is not always a terrible scenario.
| | 02:54 |
You may also have the option of licensing
the music that you work on and this is
| | 02:57 |
where things can tend to get a little bit
complicated.
| | 03:02 |
For many commercial compositions, the
client or agency will license your work
| | 03:06 |
for an agreed upon licensing or what is
known as a sync fee.
| | 03:10 |
In this scenario, you will retain
ownership of the work, but have agreed to
| | 03:14 |
let the client use it in a certain context
as outlined in the license contract.
| | 03:20 |
Sometimes, the license is exclusive
meaning the client may use it for an
| | 03:24 |
agreed upon period of time under specific
conditions and you may not license that
| | 03:28 |
work to another client or agency during
that period.
| | 03:34 |
While other times it will be what is known
as non-exclusive and you can attempt to
| | 03:37 |
license your work to as many different
clients as possible.
| | 03:42 |
Sometimes, you can have one piece of music
that's been licensed five, ten, 15 times
| | 03:46 |
to different things.
I'm sure you've heard popular songs show
| | 03:50 |
up in different tv shows, commercials,
movies, stuff like that.
| | 03:55 |
Where the licences can get tricky is that
unless you're negotiating directly with
| | 04:00 |
the ad agency or client, the music
licencing fee is often split between the
| | 04:04 |
music house that the ad agency solicited
and the composer.
| | 04:10 |
In this case the music house would get a
piece of the sync fee as well as any
| | 04:14 |
publishing or PRO royalties on the back
end.
| | 04:18 |
The tricky part is that the music houses
have clever ways of hiding the splits that
| | 04:22 |
they're sharing with the composer.
Sometimes they'll say we split our quote
| | 04:26 |
creative fee 50-50 with the composer, and
you might think, well, I guess that's fair.
| | 04:32 |
They get half for sourcing the work,
sounds like a deal.
| | 04:34 |
When the reality is that the quote
creative fee may only be 20% of the total
| | 04:38 |
fee they are charging to the agency or
client.
| | 04:43 |
Now, ultimately, if you're a small
potatoes composer then you might just get
| | 04:47 |
what you can get, and that's that.
But it might be empowering to know that
| | 04:51 |
everyone isn't your buddy and most people
are looking out for their own business
| | 04:54 |
interests and there's no shame in looking
out for yours.
| | 04:58 |
Now, if the work will air on television,
film, or radio, or other medias that are
| | 05:03 |
owed performance royalties, sometimes
streaming on the internet is included
| | 05:08 |
here, there may be opportunities for
publishing royalties through a performance
| | 05:13 |
rights organization or a PRO.
PROs collect royalties on their members
| | 05:20 |
behalf and these can be a lucrative part
of your business model.
| | 05:26 |
A big national ad spot might pay more in
back end royalties, than the original sync
| | 05:30 |
license fee.
Publishing is a very complicated topic
| | 05:34 |
with many variables.
So to start, I suggest that you joint a
| | 05:38 |
performance rights organization, like BMI,
ACAP, or SESAC in the United States.
| | 05:44 |
Many offer free memberships to writers,
and be sure to take advantage of all the
| | 05:49 |
free learning material that they offer on
music licensing and publishing.
| | 05:55 |
Also, depending on the specific spot,
there may be additional performance rights
| | 06:00 |
and royalties on the table, including SAG,
or Screen Actors Guild, as well as
| | 06:04 |
regional or national union affiliations.
So you want to be sure to discuss these
| | 06:10 |
with the person that is licensing the
music.
| | 06:13 |
The music house will generally know.
The terms of the license and what's
| | 06:17 |
involved, if anything, on the back end.
Earlier in the course I mentioned that
| | 06:23 |
many commercial composition gigs start as
pitches, or demos, where a lot of
| | 06:26 |
composers will pitch an idea to the client
and the client will pick their favorite to
| | 06:31 |
refine and license for their project.
Because the commercial music house wants
| | 06:38 |
to win as many spots for their business as
they can, they will often pay composers
| | 06:42 |
demo fees to write these pitches.
So you would get paid a small fee just to
| | 06:47 |
submit an idea, and that fee would offset
some of the time and risk you invested in
| | 06:52 |
writing something that may not be chosen
by the client.
| | 06:57 |
In this scenario, it's important to know
whether or not you retain the rights to
| | 07:01 |
your pitch material when paid a demo fee.
Some music houses insist on retaining
| | 07:07 |
rights to the pitches you write.
This allows them to submit it again on
| | 07:12 |
future projects and jobs.
If in the future, they end up licensing
| | 07:16 |
your pitch, they would generally pay you a
portion of that license.
| | 07:20 |
Now I try to avoid giving up rights to my
pitches at all cost, because I know that I
| | 07:24 |
will likely be able to use that pitch or
rework a form of that pitch for other
| | 07:28 |
opportunities latter on down the road.
And I prefer to retain all rights to that
| | 07:35 |
material so I have all my options open,
because demo fees are generally very low
| | 07:39 |
between $200 and $300 which is pretty
standard.
| | 07:44 |
To me its not worth letting rights to
original music go for that much but your
| | 07:48 |
situation may vary so.
The best strategy if just to beware of
| | 07:53 |
what's going on and plan accordingly.
There's something else that come up a lot
| | 07:59 |
in composing for film or commercials or
television is what's known as library music.
| | 08:06 |
Music library have and always be a popular
source of commercial music licensing.
| | 08:11 |
A music library consist of already
finished works in different styles and
| | 08:15 |
genres that a music director or ad agency
can browse through and see if something fits.
| | 08:22 |
There are huge non exclusive music
libraries as well as small boutique
| | 08:26 |
libraries whose music is exclusive to the
collection or a group of composers.
| | 08:32 |
Either way they generally offer their
compositions with a preset licensing fee
| | 08:37 |
depending on the usage case, like
television or web ad or a film.
| | 08:42 |
And have prenegotiatied with the composer
that they can freely license the works for
| | 08:47 |
that fee to whoever stops by and pays it.
In this case the client doesn't need to go
| | 08:53 |
through individual negotiations with the
composer.
| | 08:57 |
They've already pre-filled out a contract
with that composer that they can go
| | 09:00 |
license their music on their behalf.
So it saves time under tight deadlines.
| | 09:05 |
This is why a lot of music directors like
to use libraries, because they know they
| | 09:09 |
can license a piece of music very quickly
and be covered.
| | 09:14 |
For the composer, the advantage is you can
have dozens of works sitting in a library
| | 09:18 |
earning you money passively without you
having to make revisions Or work on custom
| | 09:22 |
pieces for a specific project.
That sounds great.
| | 09:28 |
So what's the downside of a music library?
What's the con?
| | 09:31 |
Well, the licensing rates are usually
significantly lower than what you'd get
| | 09:36 |
for a custom composition or if approached
directly by a music director to license
| | 09:40 |
your work.
So you need to have a lot of really good
| | 09:44 |
library cuts sitting around in many
different libraries.
| | 09:47 |
If you want to earn enough just from those
licensees.
| | 09:50 |
Established composers who have lots of
industry contacts and relationships with
| | 09:55 |
music directors may wich to avoid
undercutting themselves by offering their
| | 09:59 |
work in low cost libraries.
Now at the same time, libraries can be
| | 10:04 |
great opportunities to get your work
placed when you don't have a huge network
| | 10:08 |
of music directors, agencies or music
houses knocking on your door asking for
| | 10:12 |
your work.
So it can be a really good place to start.
| | 10:17 |
I want to reiterate that the topic of
licensing and publishing and everything
| | 10:22 |
that goes along with it is very complex.
And I've just scratched the surface here
| | 10:27 |
where it pertains to commercial music
licensing specifically.
| | 10:32 |
I highly encourage you to do your own
research and seek out more information on
| | 10:36 |
the topic.
Of course, when in doubt, have your
| | 10:39 |
attorney or lawyer review any contracts
before signing.
| | 10:43 |
If you don't have an entertainment
attorney it's probably a good idea to find
| | 10:47 |
one that you can call on in those
situations.
| | 10:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 |
Thanks for watching.
I hope you took away some great tips and
| | 00:03 |
insights from this course, and are ready
to score your next big commercial project.
| | 00:08 |
If you want to learn more about me and
follow my projects, be sure to follow me
| | 00:12 |
on Twitter @brianleewhite or visit my
website at brianleewhite.com.
| | 00:17 |
Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
| | 00:19 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
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