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Vol. 1, No. 1
June, 2004
Published by UniqueTracks Production Music
John Bickerton - Creative Director
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Featured Articles...
- What you should know about your production BEFORE you add a music soundtrack
- ABRACADABRA by Phelios Gets A Retro-soundtrack from UniqueTracks' "Martini Sessions"
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UniqueTracks News...
- New Products in the PipeLine
Featured Articles
What you should know about your production BEFORE you add a music soundtrack
Too often choosing the right track from a music
library is like hacking your way through overgrown jungle with no map and no sense of direction. It's a time-intensive, hit-or-miss process that requires listening to multitudes of the wrong selections.
After a while your brain becomes numb and everything blends together and sounds the same. To further complicate things, you're often searching for music right at the project deadline so there is pressure to find tracks fast.
The fastest way to find the right soundtrack for your work is to first identify the underlying feeling - the emotional thrust - of your production.
Many project creators only think about what
STYLE of music they want (i.e. rock, Techno). A better way to proceed is to look for music based on the emotional character of your work.
When you know your project's emotional themes, you will cut an incredible amount of time from your search.
DISTILL YOUR PROJECT DOWN TO
ITS EMOTIONAL BASE.
This is what film composers do. After meeting with the director to discuss the film's meaning and concept, the composer immerses him/herself into the film and begins to investigate its emotional essence.You can do the same thing. Here is a simple exercise to try with your own work.
- See yourself in each scene as an eyewitness
to what is happening
- Become emotionally open to the events that occur.
- Freewrite your reactions. (Freewriting is writing that's done quickly without any self-editing - you just want to get your ideas on paper in a way that you'll remember)
- After the production is over, take your
freewriting and look for 1-5 keyword phrases that best describe the emotion(s) of what you've experienced.
This technique will work just as well for a 15
second Flash animation as an hour-length video documentary. In each case you want to understand the emotion at the heart of your project so you can choose music that elevates your viewer's experience.
Here's an example of the process...
Let's say you're giving a 2 hour talk on
"Better Time Management" and you want some background music to use in your PowerPoint at the beginning, end, and during the break.
You do the exercise above and here is a sample of your freewriting...
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...better time management = organization,
productivity, structure...getting things done
a sense of being in control,- order - stress free
living, flow, mind like water...
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To derive your emotional keywords from this, look at the benefits of features like productivity and organization.
Benefit of productivity - accomplishment
Getting things done - satisfaction, freedom,
liberation
Benefit of Organization/Order - peace, harmony, well-being
Now begin searching the music libraries listening for music that highlights feelings of satisfaction, freedom, that gives a sense of peace, harmony, accomplishment.
Remember, you're still not locked into any specific musical style, you're searching for music that will adequately speak to the emotional content of your work.
On the UniqueTracks web site we have sorted every track in our library by its corresponding emotional keywords. If you need a track to underscore the feeling of "satisfaction" or "peace", all you have to do is click a link and you'll be presented with a listing of all the tracks in our library that correspond to those feelings.
Click this link to try it yourself...
Once you know the feeling you are looking for,
finding the right track becomes much easier because through the process of drilling down to the emotional core of your work you have already filtered out most of the music choices that don't apply. You have narrowed your search, created a map, and a way to avoid getting lost in the production music jungle.
ABRACADABRA by Phelios Gets A Retro-soundtrack from UniqueTracks' "Martini Sessions"
Music from our lounge CD collection, "The Martini Sessions", provides the soundtrack for Abracadabra, a clever update on classic computer games like Donkey Kong and
Super Mario Brothers.
When playing Abracadabra, you find potions, keys, bags of gold while taking a wand-waving wizard on a spellbinding journey.
Abracadabra is playful and light-hearted yet challenging as you work your way through the different levels of the game. There is also a campy, tongue-in-cheek element which is amplified by the "retro-lounge" soundtrack.
Abracadabra provides a great example of using the soundtrack to highlight the emotional theme of the work. See article above.
Download a complete working demo (pc)
(first 9 levels) You can also hear a trailer for the game that includes the Martini Sessions soundtrack on this page.
Phelios, Inc. is an independent video game company which creates entertaining games for the MAC and PC platforms. With very small kids to the brightest adults in mind, Phelios strives to create quality video games to provide people of all ages and backgrounds with engaging game play.
All the Phelios games I sampled were artful and entertaining.
My favorites...
Abracadabra
Lua Lua (my 3 year old daughter is in love with this game!)
Bongo Boogie - variation on the classic Breakout game
Doubler Gold
All games have a fully-working demo for download in either PC or MAC OSX format.
Have some fun and check out these addictive games by Phelios.
More information about "The Martini Sessions" can be found at this link
New Products Releases
1. Techno and Rock Loops CDs
Loops make perfect soundtracks for Flash animations, kiosks, Powerpoint presentations, shockwave movies - any project where file space is limited. These tracks are specially cut so that they can be easily "looped" to form a continuous groove. We've also included 30 and 60 second broadcast mixes of each loop.
2. We don't have the title yet, but watch for this delightful album of Pop Rock instrumentals in the style of Sheryl Crow, John Mayer and REM.
3. We've added 10 more classical CDs to our
classical library which will be released by
September. Sets include the complete Swan Lake ballet by Tchaikovsky, the famous Four Seasons by Vivaldi, the Toccatta and Fugue by Bach, and a brilliant CD of choral music that must be heard.
UniqueTracks Product Information
UniqueTracks Home Page
MP3 Online Downloads - Download individual tracks right to your desktop
Complete Listing of our CD Collections - Available on Audio CD and CD-ROM
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Written by John Bickerton
Creative Director, UniqueTracks.com
(c) copyright 2004 UniqueTracks.com
PO Box 150414, Van Brunt Station
Brooklyn, New York 11215
USA
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