There are specific qualities to a song that music producers are expertly skilled to recognize, to distinguish and interpret into layman’s terms — it’s why they’re an essential designated point person when coordinating deliverables between a client and composer.
It’s these very qualities that can easily make or break how successful a song fits into a creative project, whether it be a commercial, film or even a podcast. Seeing it as this is what Marmoset’s Creative Services Team does (whether it be for music licensing projects or original music scores), we’re going to walk you through some helpful tips to keep in mind when using keywords to find the soundtrack you’re envisioning.
Do emotions run high?
Have you ever worked on a video project and considered it “bright” in regards to the cinematography or even the content itself? Are you considering the emotive qualities of the visuals when concluding how the song accompanying the video should sound?
Maybe the video is designed to feel empowering, upbeat or imaginative even. But how would such a term be used to search and filter out the results you’re actually wanting?
When considering the mood of a song cataloged on Marmoset’s browse page, site users can search by a keyword (i.e. “bright”) but without having some instrumental qualities in mind, the results may not be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s also why Marmoset’s music roster is so meticulously tagged and labeled — when our A&R Team is adding/categorizing new songs to our music collection, they consider the presence of instruments, tempo and pace and how all these elements add up to impact a song’s overarching mood.
Let’s look at “Brighter Than Expected” by Marmoset artist, Paper Rabbit as an example. The song’s composition is orchestrally enriched with piano and strings — notably there is treble presence. As an exercise, check out the song and think about what adjectives come to mind. Would you have entered “bright” as a descriptor when searching? If not, would “optimistic” or “whimsical” have been better search terms?
A bit like searching through a crossword puzzle, it’s all about finding the right words to transcribe an accurate description — it may not seem imperative but every word adds up to identify how a song should ultimately “feel.” And factoring in musical elements like frequency, treble, pace and tempo are key not exclusively for exploring an online catalog of music; for an artist, it can also prove useful when arranging a song. Think about if a client described their dream song as “gutty”, you might consider what instruments would deliver a “rule-breaking” kind of attitude, even being mindful of the song’s frequency (i.e. mid-range).
Digging into sonics and interchangeably using non-musical terms to describe a song also comes in handy when requesting Marmoset do a search on your behalf. When our creatives scour our roster to deliver a curated list of music, we’ll first ask some detailed questions to learn what you’re envisioning for the project’s soundtrack — being descriptive of how you envision the details we covered can produce quicker and more precise results.
Considering these musical terms we hope you’ll feel empowered the next time you search or describe a song to your composer, a music producer or even when creating your own music.
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