Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

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Casey H
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by Casey H » Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:47 pm

Massive over-analysis. All the educational materials you cited are excellent. But not everything fits perfectly textbook. That's the case in any profession. I'm a software engineer. If a customer asks me to make something and it goes against what's in the textbooks, which way should I go?

It sounds like you are taking a very exacting surgical approach to your music as if there is a a magic one-size-fits-all formula. You need to step back, focus on the ref tracks and the key points of a listing. Worrying about whether that contradicts books and other advice is not helpful and a waste of time and energy.

Good luck!
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by cosmicdolphin » Tue Jul 13, 2021 12:55 am

superblonde wrote:
Mon Jul 12, 2021 3:53 pm
[*] Homorhythmic. No polyrhythms
[*] No rubato
[*] Full tutti rests are OK
I've had a number of trailer style tracks on TV and in Libraries but I have no idea what any of these mean. Reverse Engineering is good but can lead to analysis paralysis if you go too far.

Most trailer type music is simple , you can sketch it out on a piano pretty quickly. It's all the window dressing that takes the time.

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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by Telefunkin » Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:23 am

No-one has to prove you wrong. The good folk here are willing to spend their time freely offering their best advice based on their own experiences with the intention of helping. Its not adversarial or competitive, and you can take it or leave it.

Casey's right. IMHO nobody really cares about formulae, analysis and terminology, beyond study. Ultimately, its only the 'big picture' that counts - literally. If the creation would work on the same playlist as the refs you're probably good to go. If not, there's more work needed. That's all a screener, library and music supervisor are going to care about. When viewers are watching TV they won't care either. If the music marries well with the video and helps guide the viewers thoughts then it works, regardless of whatever words you might choose to describe it, or how 'clever' it is or how 'dumb' it is. Its just sounds intended to enhance a mood, and the semantics are irrelevant. My advice would be to go more with the gut and less with the head, because emotional impact will always win over technical content - assuming its the right emotion :).

A long time ago I heard a story about a song critique session where a song attracted some negative comments for not quite delivering. The writer then spent quite some time justifying and explaining the details of the song's content so everyone could understand it, to which the mentor replied something like... 'Well that's fine then. Are you going have all of that explanation printed on the song's front cover?'
Last edited by Telefunkin on Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by superblonde » Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:25 am

This 1 sentence from the library is the confusing one maybe because of grammar and their obfuscating newly-coined phrase (which they shouldnt be using since it destroys clarity).

"Rather, your arrangements should keep the pieces interesting by creating what we call 'sound substance' (little sound tinkering, layering, development within existing elements (e.g. percussion), etc)."


I guess that means, they want all of these and related, in small amounts, "sound tinkering" and "layering" and "development within existing elements (e.g. percussion)", "etc".

Though grammatically, they say "little", it could mean "little to none" for all of those, as in, "do not add 'sound tinkering' nor 'layering' nor ' development within existing elements'".
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by Casey H » Tue Jul 13, 2021 12:34 pm

superblonde wrote:
Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:25 am
This 1 sentence from the library is the confusing one maybe because of grammar and their obfuscating newly-coined phrase (which they shouldnt be using since it destroys clarity).

"Rather, your arrangements should keep the pieces interesting by creating what we call 'sound substance' (little sound tinkering, layering, development within existing elements (e.g. percussion), etc)."


I guess that means, they want all of these and related, in small amounts, "sound tinkering" and "layering" and "development within existing elements (e.g. percussion)", "etc".

Though grammatically, they say "little", it could mean "little to none" for all of those, as in, "do not add 'sound tinkering' nor 'layering' nor ' development within existing elements'".
I see you took to heart our comments about over-analysis. :lol: :lol: :roll:

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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by superblonde » Tue Jul 13, 2021 12:48 pm

I suggest you may want to take a step back from this thread for a week.
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by superblonde » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:19 pm

edit - to not confuse anyone with my typed up notes from studying several tracks, i've removed it
Last edited by superblonde on Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:17 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by superblonde » Wed Jul 14, 2021 2:02 pm

edit - to not confuse anyone with my typed up notes from studying several tracks, i've removed it
Last edited by superblonde on Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by superblonde » Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm

edit - to not confuse anyone with my typed up notes from writing new tracks, i've removed it
Last edited by superblonde on Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:18 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Emotional trailer-stye instrumental

Post by cosmicdolphin » Fri Jul 16, 2021 1:58 pm

superblonde wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm
My submitted track has a waveform which can be compared to the previous images.
Don't know about anyone else but I get no images just broken link icons in all thee posts
superblonde wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm
Music has a big problem, words to describe music basically don't exist,
Lol really, because you seem to have found an abundance
superblonde wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm
and one of these 🙈 "I'm illiterate yet still successful!"
I taught myself but literacy has zero to do with musical ability, history is littered with great musicians who only ever played by ear. Not that you have to be a great musician to make production music, you just need to be to able to make the right music whether you transcribe it all onto a lead sheet or draw it with your mouse into a DAW. It doesn't matter to the end user as long as it works in the scene.
superblonde wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm
I don't have plans to read the book "War of Art" by Steven Pressfield, or his other books, which are cited frequently as a reference in the panels and livestreams.
I read the first chapter...couldn't really identify with what the author was saying - didn't apply to me...never picked it up again.
superblonde wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 12:20 pm
Steve Barden mentions in one of the interviews I cited in this thread that he prints out important listings on paper and highlights or underlines or circles specific words in the description, to ensure he is reading the listing carefully and interpreting terms correctly, and that he keeps this printout handy throughout the entire project to use as reference.
Yes it's a good idea , I used to do this for the first couple of years with Taxi. Some DAWs have a text notes area you can paste it into or there are plugins that let you paste text into if your DAW doesn't have that option. Eventually you work direct with Libraries where the briefs may be very brief..just a sentence and some reference tracks. Understanding what makes the reference tracks tick is more important IMHO than interpreting the lingo in the brief because those are often subjective and / or inconsistent as every person has their own way of describing things. What doesn't change is the source material. The template is already there in the reference tracks ...how hard can it be ? Sometimes it's a good exercise to try and make a replica of a section of a ref track and see how close you can get..you will learn more than reading the brief.

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