Music Spotlight: Hotels.com

Hotels.com books a flight in free fall . . . fun!

OMG: The I'm-In-Pain Microphone

Really, I have no words . . . 

Rant: Music (Un) Supervised - When Bad Music Happens To Good People

Please put down the Chalupa!

I not sure what to think about the person who selects the music tracks at live sporting events (ya know, the music that happens in between plays) . . . but if I hear "Pump Up The Jam" or "Paradise City" or "Enter Sandman" one more time . . . I will commit ritual seppuku. 

Sure, you were in a high school rock band, maybe even the #1 DJ at Camp Manatawanda . . . but just because you have an iPod now like the rest of us that you listen to on your morning commute doesn't make you a music maven.  When it comes to public and professional projects, enlisting the help of a good music supervisor is often times a really good idea.   

Solid music supervisors have access to and command of a vast catalog of music, have musical knowledge and experience, are keenly aware of emerging and popular trends and TASTE.  Their job, day in day out, is to help you find and narrow down an appropriate selection of music for your film, television show, advertisement, video or live events, and their most important job is to make you (their client) look great!  

Now, I am not advocating not conducting your own music searches.  For those of us who have the time and love being involved in the creative process (and that's most of us), combing through the online music search tools and auditioning tons of library tracks are terrific ways to jumpstart the music selection process . . . but when you start getting a sense of the creative direction . . . that's a great point to bounce it off the people who live and breathe to help you make decisions on music.  Moreover, share the music that you found in your search with them as its always a good way to help them get on the same page so they can nail it for you! 

m2c 

Tech Review: The Mystro Music Licensing App

All hail Mystro!

Download it here. 

Mystro is a simply designed, user-friendly desktop app delivering over 7,000 premium licensable music tracks to creative professionals in the film, television and advertising industries.  It's unique not only for its compact UI design, but also for the powerful feature set it packs into its (whopping) 1.2 MB file size.  

And after taking it for a test drive . . . We can also say it's SUPER FUN to use.

Gone is all the clutter and bells and whistles and front and center are the basics . . . easy search and album browsing . . . easy listening . . . and a really unique drag'n'drop feature that lets you pull the music you like right in to your Final Cut, Avid, After Effects, Motion or other project sessions.

For the budget conscious - there is a dedicated section with a great catalog of production music tracks across all key genres.  For the people with some room, there is an awesome premium catalog of songs from independent artists and bands.

Best of all, it's tiny and tucks away into a little icon on the side of your screen so it doesn't get in the way and you can keep it open while working in your other creative suites.    

Check it out.

Tech Review: TWO THUMBS WAY UP!

Nike Boom! (and the importance of splits)

Don't hate the playa . . . love the game:

Music libraries that don't have splits for their music tracks significantly limit your creative choices and limit your mix possibilities.

If you have to take it off the shelf, chance are you will have to make compromises. So be wary.

Quality music catalogs have splits available on most tracks and getting splits on music tracks allows you to turn up, turn down, add or take out instrumentation or vocals and, in general, gives you creative flexibility so you can get a tight fit to your picture and great results.  Importantly, it allows you to customize the track if you need to add (or take out) that extra special somethin' somethin'.

How do I know whether or not the music track that I like has splits available? 

(just ask the music library supervisor and they will let you know . . . )

Custom Stock Music - The New Hybrids

Given a choice, we would all have originally scored music for our projects.  We get it.

But, budgets sometime dictate the need to use production music off the shelf.

What's a girl to do?

These days, a few companies are (legitimately) custom scoring their library music and results can be awesome when done right:

Yes, it costs a bit more than the rate card . . . but it is still a big savings compared to original music and you can still get that warm fuzzy feeling knowing you got a kick ass piece of music for advertising.