You’ve finished shooting all your footage. Now you need to mix that sweet, clean dialogue. Finally, you can finish your final cut. But something still feels incomplete. Although the story is solid and the visuals are great, it lacks emotion. The music is now.
It’s all about the feeling.
It’s not easy to find music for your video. It doesn’t matter if the music is too fast, too slow or too loud. It is important to consider how the music you choose will affect the emotion and feel of your video.
If your piece is a somber reflection on the suffering of the down-and out in your city, you shouldn’t choose anything too happy or upbeat. However, it’s important to avoid picking anything too sad. You want your promo spot to promote a local animal shelter to touch the heartstrings. But, it should also feel hopeful.
This is where I want to take you. It’s hard to find music that matches or enhances the emotion in your video. But it’s one the most important decisions you will make.
Voice of an angel
Although it’s tempting to use your favorite song from your favorite artist, this is probably not the best decision for many reasons. Licensing a pop song is not an easy, quick or inexpensive task. We’ll still be talking about licensing. It won’t help to keep the attention on your content. It’s likely that it’s also a favorite song of many people.
Remember that the goal of the game is to enhance your story, not take attention away from it. People who start tapping their feet and singing along to your backing track are probably not paying enough attention to the star of the show, your story.
If you aren’t a Bach or Beethoven fan, chances are someone is singing your favorite song. This may not be a problem if there’s no dialogue in your video, but it is almost impossible to mix a song with lyrics underneath.
Keep your songs simple and not too dynamic. It can be difficult to keep the backing track under your dialog if the music changes too frequently from soft to loud.
Needle in the haystack.
Okay, we’ve discussed how important it is for music to be found, and how difficult it can be to find it. So where can you find it? There are many places to get stock music, but fewer places to get good stock music.
The Music Bed is my personal favorite. They have some of the most amazing stock music. Their search tools allow you to search by genre, tempo and mood, length, or any other useful categories. You can download full-length preview tracks to use in your edits to ensure you get the feeling you want. Premium Beat is another great option. Premium Beat’s library has a more stock-y sound, but is less expensive than The Music Bed.
Please register and license.
You think you have found the perfect song? You found it on an obscure CD at your aunt’s house. Aunt Helen was the one who gave you the selfie stick that you used to record your dialog track?
It’s the perfect piece for a piano and will match your video better than you could have hoped. It’s okay to use it. You don’t have to know this artist if you don’t mind using it.
You can stop there. Give the CD to Aunt Helen. Then, head to The Music Bead, Premium Beat, or any other legitimate stock music library to LICENSE the track you plan to use.
If Aunt Helen is your favorite pianist, you can use her.