The Sound of Disappointment: Why Your Project Deserves Better Than a Stock Music Library
As a composer, my job is to create the right music for a given piece of media. I can’t stress enough the immense value that custom music brings to a project. For me, composing is like solving puzzles, and writing music is one of the most challenging and rewarding puzzles out there. Music isn’t just fancy audio wallpaper; it’s a secret weapon that infuses your content with emotional depth. Sure, there are multiple ways to solve the puzzle, but there are countless ways to botch it with the wrong music and, worse, to turn your content into a symphony of disappointment.
It has taken me years of practice and study to understand the value of nuance. You must achieve music that harmonizes with the content, blending in, rather than sticking out. Going big and bold is perfectly fine, but it’s all about finding the right moment, and striking a balance is vital. Executed poorly, mismatched music or feeding the audience the wrong emotional content will spoil the moment.
Whether working on a film, TV show, web series, video game, or even a podcast, my goal is to find the right solution for the puzzle. With an original score, I’ll craft music tailored to your project’s unique needs. Together, we’ll create a one-of-a-kind score that plays nice with your content, keeping subtlety and balance in mind.
A bespoke score promises a flawless marriage between music and other elements, taking your content to new heights. As a composer, I utilize techniques like hit points, swells, and dynamics, ensuring seamless integration and tonal consistency. Orchestrated textures, themes, harmony, rhythm, and melody all work together like a well-oiled machine to portray the correct emotion for a scene.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room: those giant, all-you-can-eat, royalty-free music libraries. Stock library music certainly does have a place. But to be frank, most of these collections are hot garbage. I’m often asked to dig through a library to find the “right track” for a client. It is seldom a pleasant experience that yields a good result. Most of the music content is amateurish, poorly mixed and unmastered. There are exceptions, but even the “diamonds-in-the-rough” are exceedingly difficult to find because the media asset management systems are poorly constructed and badly organized. Fundamentally, there is no decent metadata standard for describing music, so this is a real challenge for those that are sifting through the chaos trying to find music that will fit correctly into a scene. Trying to describe music with an overly simplified lexicon is like painting with spaghetti — it just doesn’t work. Then, if you are lucky enough to find something that you actually like, you spend way too long editing the track, slicing and dicing and finding awkward fades and loop points until the music doesn’t even resemble its former self. Eventually, a square peg gets crammed into a round hole. This is not an approach that yields successful or professional results.
In contrast, let’s discuss custom music. Modern music production tools and techniques have become so streamlined and efficient that I find it much faster to write, produce, mix, and master an original, custom-fit piece of music than the “hunting-through-the-rando-chaos” alternative described above, yielding infinitely better and more custom-tailored results.
Podcasts are a prime example of where you often find mismatched music sourced from stock libraries, often due to budget constraints. It’s glaringly obvious when a podcast haphazardly stitches together tunes from a library, resulting in a tonal and stylistic patchwork. Congratulations, you’ve added some sonic wallpaper, but it leaves your audience feeling, well, not much. This is a missed opportunity.
Another common example of mismatched music is when corporate, industrial, and medical or science videos use overly emotive, epic, or anthemic music. I see this one all the time. The result? Content that portrays a tone of being less serious, unprofessional, or worse, cheesy. Sure, it is possible for a stock library track to check the tempo and style boxes, but it often lacks the emotional finesse needed to support the story. A custom score, on the other hand, aligns perfectly with the emotional tone and intended message, transforming your content into a captivating experience.
In conclusion, music has the capacity to be the unsung hero of any piece of content, and a custom score can make all the difference. Teaming up with a skilled composer ensures your content leaves a lasting impression on your audience. A bespoke score isn’t an afterthought — it’s the secret ingredient that adds emotional weight and tonal character to your media, avoiding the sound of disappointment.
