Creating Production Music
Creating Production Music
Production Music exists as a sound recording; to create it, these days you have to be an expert in writing and recording it. If you have not done so already, you might find it helpful to read the page: "What is Production Music?".
Getting Production Music published is hard and the field is competitive. You have to have exceptional talent, patience, thick-skin, enjoy hard work, be lucky and be determined! To enter into the field, you need to be able to create Production Music that is better than anything out there.
Despite that, making Production Music can be a very creative and useful experience. There is much opportunity for new invention
What constitutes good Production Music? Music that works. Nothing else matters.
Techniques
To discover some of the tricks, look at some different TV programmes and listen. Be analytical, think about why and how the music has been used and why it works with the images.
A Composer's Tool Box
Here are some musical techniques for creating Production Music; you can make up your own exercises to aid self-learning.
Basic Sounds
Simple sounds can sometimes work well. I mean sounds, and not sound effects. E.g. a single sustained note can be very effective as a bed, underscore or suspense track. No introduction is needed. Is a single note music? Perhaps not, but it can attract royalties all the same.
Ostinato
For the next level up, more musical interest and flexibility comes from using an ostinato. This is a repeating pattern used either alone or as a basis for variations. The pattern introduces two new elements: rhythm and harmony. Ostinati range from simple types, e.g. a sequence of repeated notes (rhythm but no harmony) to ones involving chord shapes (rhythm and harmony). E.g. the ground bass of baroque music, the "D'Alberti bass" left-hand keyboard accompaniment, riffs in the 12-bar blues sequence or looped samples in a sequencer. The ostinato has been around a long time, for good reasons.
Character of the Main Theme
In "What is Production Music?", the uses of extended melody were found to be limited except when the Main Track is used as title music. In most other cases, the Main Track's material can be motivic without being melodic. (A motif is a very short segment of melody used as a building block, e.g. the opening notes in Beethoven's fifth symphony).
After a short introduction (which gets straight to the point), the Main Theme is presented. It is helpful to to devise a Main Theme that ends "openly", i.e. one that does not end with a cadence. The Main Theme can have a simple structure and has a duration of up to say twenty seconds. The next goal is to expand the material to create a longer track that retains its character and does not sound boring
Variations
After the statement of the Main Theme, a sequence of variations can be used to maintain interest without changing the overall character too much. Each variation should be open and continuous, i.e. there should be no strong dividing cadence; each variation should flow into the next without interruption. There are many examples of open variation form including: ground bass, ostinato, chaconne, and passacaglia as well as the blues.
Variations can be made by the standard methods of adding or reducing the number of notes and their values, adding or subtracting voices, altering the harmonic background and changing the rhythm.
The Ending
A Production Music track should have a strong and positive ending which signifies a big "downbeat", a release of tension. The music that leads up to this is a big "upbeat" during which the tension increases. It is desirable to have an ending separable from the Main Track because the ending can be used as a short sting.
Recording Techniques
Production Music recordings must sound as if they were recorded by professional musicians in a professional recording studio. Hard work is needed to get electronic music to sound real. Here are a few thoughts:
Adding a live recording of a one instrument to a mix of synthetic sounds can be effective
Avoid quantising MIDI tracks unless needed
If you have to have strings use only high quality string samples
Drums should not be mixed too high and use reverberation sparingly; it must not blur the track. Position instruments at different effective distances from the listener in the mix.
Finally use the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid; less is more!
