Soundtracks
Whether your project will get an official soundtrack release or not, I highly recommend you always create a soundtrack when you’re done. If nothing else, you’ll want to have it for yourself and it’ll help you create better sounding tracks for your demo reel as I will discuss below. Besides you never know what the future holds and when having a soundtrack may come in handy.
When I finished scoring Jasmine and the film was released in festivals, I created a soundtrack album, which I decided to self-release. I really didn’t expect anything to come of it, yet about a year later an opportunity came along and Varèse Sarabande were interested in possibly releasing the album. Since the album was already cut and mastered, it was a very cheap and easy release for them and it became the first title to be released under their Signature Series! And just like that I got to check off an item from my bucket list – have an album released on Varèse Sarabande. If you’re interested you can get your own signed copy here. There is also a digital version available on all the various digital platforms.
When cutting a soundtrack don’t just put everything in and in show order. The first thing you should do is listen to your tracks and go through and “trim the fat,” edit the cues so any vamping, repeating, or noodling that isn’t particularly compelling is eliminated. If the cue is in a specific meter with occasional off-meter bars that were clearly created to hit picture, make little edits to make those bars at the original meter, it makes for a better listening experience.
Next rearrange the track order to create the most compelling listening experience possible. I find that usually this means going in order but occasionally swapping cues around for a more enjoyable listen. If you have very short cues, see if you can edit them into other cues or creating suites so they feel like a continuous piece rather than having lots of short tracks. Pay attention to the spacing between the tracks, the timing of the silence between cues is part of the listening experience and you want to create an enjoyable flow to your soundtrack.
When you’re done cutting your soundtrack, always master your tracks. If you can’t afford to get them professionally mastered, take the DIY approach and do what you can. At a bare minimum adjust the levels so the peaks are all even and the quiet cues aren’t too quiet. You don’t want people reaching for the volume as they listen to your soundtrack. Even better, use something like iZotope’s Ozone, which has lots of presents that can be used as a great starting point. And of-course if you can afford it, have them professionally mastered.
Remember that when you send your tracks out as demos, they are competing with all the other music that is being heard. If they don’t measure up technically, it’s unlikely they will get a fair shake creatively. Which leads to my final note on soundtracks and demos – when creating MP3s make sure you have awesome metadata in the files. You want to have nice artwork, the name of the track, the name of the album it came from (if it’s a custom demo for a project you’re trying to land, use the name of the project), your name and most importantly your contact info! Always have your email and phone number in the comments field so the person listening can easily find you and reach you should they want to. I also like to have a few descriptive words in the group field, this helps me when searching through my catalog for tracks to send as demos for specific pitches. Below are a couple of iTunes screenshots with good metadata.
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You may want to read my blog post Good File Naming and Metadata Practices for Your Audio Tracks for