It would be really nice, when sitting down to compose a custom score for somebody, to be able to just do whatever you pleased. No restrictions. Well, when you’re doing custom work, restrictions, constrictions, whatever you want to call them, do exist and there is no getting around them. The question is, what are they and how do you deal with them? Are there some that are beyond your control to the point where concessions will have to be made? In this article, I’m going to cover a few of the constrictions that you’ll find when composing royalty free music and how best to handle them. Hopefully, what follows will be of some use to you.

Before you ever sit down to write one note of music, the first constriction you’re going to have to deal with is your client’s budget. Not everybody is made out of money. Some clients will have very limited budgets. Now, there are quite a few ways to deal with these. The best way to illustrate this is with an example.

John Doe needs a Celtic soundtrack for a 10 minute video. Your normal rates are about $100 for each minute of music created. You make a quote to the client of $1,000. Your client tells you that they are only budgeted for $500. What do you do?

You have several options that I can think of off the top of my head. I have no doubt that there will be more.

1) You can take the job for $500. As a new writer, this may actually be your best option in order to build your reputation.

2) You can suggest to your client to take 5 minutes of music and either cut the video to 5 minutes or sprinkle the 5 minutes of music throughout the 10 minute video.

3) You can cut down on your production time for the music by maybe leaving out some instrumentation that you would normally put in and simplify the arrangement. You need to make your client aware that this will be a stripped down arrangement in advance.

4) You can turn down the job.

After you have finally ironed out the details of the project the next constriction that you’re going to have to deal with is the video itself. As I pointed out in another article, certain types of videos lend to certain styles of music. Trying to go against the grain will, more times than not, lead to a poor product, especially in the eyes of the client if they’re expecting a certain kind of sound in their video.

While the constriction of the type of music comes into play, this also brings up the problem of how this music is going to be recreated. Do you have all the VSTs that you’ll need in order to duplicate the sound that you’ll need?

For example, just recently I decided to do a country western series. Unfortunately, missing from my arsenal was a good slide guitar and pedal steel guitar. There was no way I was going to pull this series off so I had no choice but to go out and get these two instruments. Ran me about $150.

When you’re in the business of creating music for people, you’re going to run into times when you’re going to need things that you don’t already have. You need to be willing to continue to invest in your business if it’s going to be successful.

After you’ve gotten the details of the track down, then there is the constriction of time. Oh my, how I wish there were more hours in the day.

Every client is going to have different requirements in regard to time. Some will need their project within a week while others can wait months for it if need be. It’s best you find this out when you take the deal. The last thing you want is to agree to a project that can’t possibly be completed in the time required.

So what about scheduling? Remember, you’re probably going to have more than one client if you’re successful at all. How often do you accept jobs? Do you work on just one at a time or is it possible to take on multiple clients?

Personally, I will never take on more than one client at a time. My goal is to make THAT client as happy as possible. I can’t do that if my efforts aren’t concentrated on that one project. You’ll have to decide what’s best for you. Just remember, there are only 24 hours in a day and you can’t promise work that can’t possibly be delivered in the time frame required if you take on too much. That’s the best way to damage your reputation.

After scheduling is worked out, the next thing you have to deal with (yes, it happens) is changes in the client’s needs or if the client isn’t happy with the work that’s been done.

Like it or not, your client probably has a certain kind of music in mind for their video. If what they hear from the finished product doesn’t match their expectations, they’re not going to be happy and they’re going to request a rewrite. You have to decide, and let them know up front, how many rewrites you’ll allow.

Here is how I handle this. I allow an unlimited number of rewrites but reserve the right to terminate the project if I see that it’s not going anywhere. You’ll get a pretty good feel for this when your client has just rejected your fifth draft that this is probably a lost cause. Eventually, you need to cut rope and take the loss of time and income.

And you’re going to run into other things along the way that might only pop up once in a blue moon. How you handle them will contribute to the success or failure of your business.

Creating royalty free music is an exciting career. Each day can be different. Each day can be an adventure. So my advice to you is simple.

Enjoy the ride.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re looking to get into the royalty free music business or if you’re wondering how hard it is to create so you can get a better appreciation for what creators have to go through, you might want to read this article. It very well may turn into a real eye opener for you. Or it may just be what you suspected all along.

Creating any kind of music, whether it’s royalty free or not, is a difficult process. For some people it comes easier than for others but I don’t think there is anybody on this planet (including the top composers) who will tell you that it’s easy.

For starters, there is coming up with the idea itself. What kind of music are you going to create? There are so many different styles of music. Just go to Wiki and look up “list of musical genres” and your mind will be totally blown away. Just in the broad genre of electronic music there are dozens of sub genres. Yes, the types of music out there are staggering in numbers.

Now fortunately, a lot of the decision making process is going to be determined by the demand. If you’re writing a custom piece for somebody and they’ve got a certain kind of video that lends itself to a certain music style (like a circus video) you’re going to almost be locked into a certain style of music. Doing anything else would probably not fit into the video itself.

But quite often you’re staring at a blank canvas that can go into many different directions and choosing a genre becomes a very difficult thing. When that happens, I find it’s always best to go with my strengths. What music do I feel most comfortable creating? I answer that question and then move on to the actual creation process.

But the creation process doesn’t end with the genre of music. What key is that music going to be in. What’s the tempo going to be? What instruments are you going to use? How long will the piece be? These, and many other questions, need to be answered. You’re not going to just sit down and start banging on the keyboard. Well, I guess you could. But rarely does that turn into anything productive.

After all that is mapped out and you know exactly what you’re going to write and have answered all those other questions, the next stumbling block is the technology end of it. How are you going to piece this together?

Having a digital audio workstation (DAW) can make a lot of the process easier to navigate. A DAW is very flexible. It can accommodate just about any method of working.

For example, one way to piece a song together is to insert a separate track for each instrument (VST) that you’re going to use. This is probably the most common way of putting a musical track together but it’s not the only way.

Another thing you can do is create a loop track using some kind of sequencer. Now sequencers have come a long way from the old days. In the old days a sequencer could only play one part, monophonically, and with a limited number of notes.

Today, sequencers are much more complex.

For example, Cubase 7 comes with something called Loop Mash. What this is can be explained this way.

Loop Mash can take a number of different tracks of sounds and combine them together. The sounds can be mixed in a variety of ways controlled by sliders. Sounds can be faded in and out. Random patterns can be created. Fill ins can be added on the fly using other controls.

I personally use Loop Mash for some of my dance tracks as it’s great for beat music where you want a little variety in your beats and want to be able to control that variety in real time.

Loop Mash takes a little bit of time to get used to but it’s time well spent as it’s a very versatile instrument.

After you’ve decided how you’re going to put your music together the next step is actually recording the song. How are you going to do this> Are you going to play everything in real time? Are you going to input the notes in step time or import them from a musical scoring software like Finale? Are you going to play the notes at reduced speed, especially if there are some tricky runs and you’re not the best performer in the world? All of these questions need to be answered.

What about after the music is all recorded? Are you going to add effects in the post processing? A lot of what you hear on songs that makes them sound good is the effects processing.

The most common effects processing is reverb. That’s how so many songs sound like they’re coming from a big concert hall. But if you do use reverb, what kind? Will you use a big hall or a plate? Will it be an analog reverb or a digital reverb? How dry or wet will it be? Wet reverb meand there is more reverb sound than natural sound. Will you use reverb on the whole song or just certain tracks?

How many different effects will you use? Just some of the common ones are reverb, distortion, overdrive, delay, compression, bit crunching and phase shifting. For some tracks, too many effects will muddy it. For other tracks, too few won’t make the tracks sound authentic for that genre.

For a dance track, are you going to compress the crap out of it or are you going to allow it to have a more natural sound? There are so many different levels and kinds of compression.

A fat dance master compression will essentially equalize the levels of each instrument across the whole track and pump up the volume greatly. A more subtle compression will do some equalization of levels but not pump up the volume as much. Which is more appropriate for the track you’re doing?

These are all questions you have to answer.

And then finally, after the song is actually finished, you need to document everything including come up with a description for the song so that somebody reading it can get a pretty good idea of what it will sound like before they preview it. This saves them time listening to tracks that won’t even be close to what they’re looking for.

Sometimes writing the description is the hardest part of the whole process. Describing music is not easy.

And I haven’t even covered the actual purchase process of all the things you’ll need. What if you’re on a limited budget? What instruments must you have and what can you live without?

Then there is marketing your business. Contrary to what you may believe, build it and they will come doesn’t work anymore. You need to promote, promote and promote some more.

So as you can see, creating royalty free music is a complex process. If you’re going to do this for a living, you better love what you’re doing.

It will make the whole process a whole lot easier.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re looking to purchase royalty free music for monetary purposes, you’re probably wondering what the most popular style of royalty free music is so that you can get the biggest bang for your buck. Wrong thinking here. There is actually no such thing as “most popular” when it comes to this industry. In the article to follow, I’m going to explain why and then give you a general guideline as to what you will probably want to look for depending on the project you’re doing.

The simple reason why there is no such thing as a most popular kind of royalty free music is because the uses for such music are so varied. I mean let’s be honest here. Would you use the same kind of music for kids playing in the park as you would for some guy in makeup cutting off a chicken’s head? (My apologies to Alice Cooper)

Of course you wouldn’t. The question you probably should be asking is “What is the most popular kind of video?” And of course the answer to that is there is no such thing. There are many different kinds of videos and many of them are equally as popular, generally speaking.

So the simple answer to the question “What is the most popular kind of royalty free music?” is there is none. However, that answer doesn’t really do us a lot of good without further clarifying it or at the very least refining the question a little. So let’s ask this question.

“What’s the most popular kind of royalty free music for motion picture trailers?”

Ah, now we have a little bit better picture of the whole thing. What do you immediately think of when you think of some big box office smash like Superman or X-Men or Spiderman?

Big over the top orchestral score of course, with lots of horns, strings and timpani. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re almost obligatory for every superhero film.

But would you use that same over the top orchestral score for those kids playing in the park? Of course not. It would turn that video into a comedy. It would literally be laughable. Why? Because music evokes emotion and the emotion evoked by a big orchestral score isn’t going to work for kids playing in a park.

So what WOULD work for kids playing in a park?

Well, here’s something I got off of YouTube that works very well actually. A little nice guitar music.

Kids Playing

Maybe you might have a flute playing or even a mellow string quartet. You certainly wouldn’t have horns blaring away with timpani pounding in the background. It just doesn’t work.

What if you’re making a video about a foreign land like India? Well, in that case, you will probably want to use instruments from the region.

Ah, but how do you know what instruments are even in a piece of royalty free music? Well, most sites will list the instruments used in the track. I do this for every single one of my musical tracks. That way you can get a pretty decent idea of what the track will sound like before you even listen to it.

Here’s another YouTube track.

India Mix

Read the instrument list under the video.

Now the above isn’t pure traditional India music. It’s kind of a hybrid piece almost bordering on Bollywood style with quite a bit of American influence. But you get the idea.

This music would not work for the “Kids Playing” video. Not in the least.

Oh, you will also notice that all photos in the video were used under a Creative Commons license and each photo was given a link to where it came from. Very well done on their part and real classy.

What if you were producing a murder mystery video and had this scene where somebody was skulking around a corner? What kind of music would you use for that? You certainly wouldn’t use that rather bombastic India piece above. That’s not skulking. That’s a bull crashing into a China shop.

You probably want something that sounds like this.

Murder Mystery Music

Notice how mysterious and ominous it sounds?

Wait a minute Wags. What does mysterious and ominous sound like?

Ah, and now we get to the crux of this whole conversation. Why does certain music evoke certain emotions from us? That in itself is a whole course on human psychology and how music effects the emotions and totally beyond the scope of this article.

So here is a very brief and incomplete explanation as to why music makes us laugh, cry, get the chills and so on.

The human brain is very complex and, under normal development, trained at an early age. What I mean by trained is this. We are taught at an early age that sounds in general mean certain things.

If we hear footsteps in the distance walking through some leaves at a very slow pace, we are taught that this could mean that somebody is creeping up on us slowly and that we should be afraid for our lives.

What about the sound of a waterfall? Something about that sound is very peaceful and tranquil. We are calm when we hear it.

Then there is the sound of a gunshot. When we hear that we are startled suddenly. We are also afraid, unless of course we grew up with guns. Then maybe we’re excited.

The point is, each sound, because of the way we were brought up and taught, evokes a different emotion from us. And there are literally thousands of sounds in the world.

Well think about how many different sounds of music there are. And each one of those sounds evokes emotions from us similar to the sounds in our everyday life that makes us feel angry or sad, excited or afraid.

We could try to analyze each musical sound and find a corresponding real life sound that matches it (such as a short tuba note and a human passing gas) but that would take forever and wouldn’t get us very far. But the tuba example above is why we find the tuba to be such a funny sounding instrument and why it is heard in so many comical tunes.

When you understand what emotion each instrument conveys, you can then get a better idea of what kind of music you’re looking for in order to match the emotion your video is trying to get across to the audience.

Over time, this process becomes very intuitive and you can go through it without even thinking.

Until that time comes, listen to a lot of music and see how you yourself feel.

More likely than not, others will feel the exact same way.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you are a purchaser of royalty free music and would like your music to stand out from the crowd, this article will offer some useful suggestions that will do just that.

Let me start by being perfectly candid about this. Let’s face it, when you download a piece of royalty free music from this or any other site, you’re getting a stock piece of music. That means it’s no different from the same track that somebody else downloaded.

Of course the exception is if you have a piece of royalty free music custom made for you. The upside to that is that nobody else can use it. The downside is that it can be a little pricey and some people just can’t afford it.

So if you download a stock track, what can you, as a licensee, do to make that piece of music stand out from the other people who have downloaded and used the same track?

Note – The suggestions that follow will require you to have various pieces of software. Some are cheap, or even free, while others may cost a few bucks. It all depends on how deep you want to go with this.

For starters, you can take your piece of music and break it up into smaller pieces. Now if the track you downloaded is only a 20 second clip, obviously this isn’t going to be possible, or at the very least is going to be difficult to do. But for longer tracks of a few minutes, this is very easy.

What you do is take the track and import it into something like Audacity, which is free. Highlight a section of the track and export that section to another file. Continue doing this throughout the entire track until you have about 4 or 5 different sections of music. To make these tracks sound smooth, you will probably want to fade in and out for each track, otherwise they will sound cut. Then blend them into your video or project at different locations. This will make the music sound much different from the original track if done right.

Another thing you can do is run the track through an effects processor. Some effects processors that are free are fairly decent but you will probably want to spend a few bucks to get a good one. The effects that you can apply to the track are quite numerous.

For starters, you can apply reverb or echo to the track, especially if the music was recorded dry to begin with. A lot of my tracks are so that you are able to do just that to the track. In fact, in many tracks, I use as little processing as possible.

You can also run the track through a phaser or flanger to give it that psychedelic sound. A heavily phased musical track can sound totally different from the original especially if you combine it with the next two effects.

The first one is time shifting. That is actually speeding up or slowing down the track. A good time shifter can do this without changing the key of the music. Of course if you want, you can do both.

That brings us to the second thing, key transposition. This can be done in addition to time shifting or in place of it. Together, it really breathes new life into the piece of music.

If you want to get really creative, another thing you can do is mix two or more pieces of music together. This works best if the music is related in some way.

Thinking ahead, I created two series of tunes that take this method into account. One of them is what I call my Fitting End series. These are solo piano pieces that can be mixed in various ways. The pieces are relatively short (between 20 and 45 seconds on average) but when combined can turn into a long piece of music.

Another series I’ve put together is my piano and violin duet series. There are some great similarities between the pieces so that they too can be mixed and matched in a number of ways.

So essentially what you do is this. If you need a piece of music for a project, grab a hold of maybe 4 or 5 different related pieces and then splice sections of them together in various ways. Naturally you will probably want to do a lot of fading in and out in order to achieve a smooth effect.

Okay, why would you want to do these things? Well, like I said, the music you’ve downloaded is the same track that somebody else has downloaded. But why does that matter? It matters because when somebody hears something that they’ve already heard, especially if this is for monetary purposes, they tend to tune it out. Something in their brain says “Oh, I’ve head this already.” By making slight or not so slight changes to the music, you help avoid the tuning out process.

Naturally, all of this is going to depend on what rights you have with the music you’ve purchased. Some royalty free music stipulates that the music cannot be modified in any way. Fortunately, that is not the case with any track that you get from me. All my tunes come with unlimited rights.

Is all this mixing and matching, processing, cutting, clipping and mayhem worth the effort? Well, that depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your video or project. If you want to give your prospect a completely unique experience, this is difficult to do with stock music, especially if it’s a long piece of music and especially if, for some reason, that piece of music becomes popular. By taking a few extra steps to alter the sound, you give yourself a better chance of standing out.

Point is, when you do purchase a piece of royalty free music, again, depending on the rights you get with it, you’re not necessarily stuck with what you purchased. With a little creativity, you can turn that stock piece into a truly original piece of work.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

You’re probably wondering what would happen if you made a video with music and put it up on YouTube. Would you wake up the next morning and find it gone? Well, there is no easy answer to that question. I myself have had one YouTube account closed and to this day have no idea why.

What I’m trying to say is this. You can rationalize anything that you do as being legal, but anytime you deal with a third party site (one that you don’t own) expect things that you wouldn’t expect because they happen. When you don’t have control of the site, you can never be totally sure.

Having said that, within reason, what follows is a pretty good idea of what you can expect when putting music videos up on YouTube. Please understand that your mileage may vary greatly.

Before we get into royalty free music specifically, let’s talk about music in general.

There are actually only a few reasons why a YouTube video will be removed.

1) Terms Of Service Violation – This actually has nothing to do with the music itself. A TOS violation means that the video had some kind of nudity, language or violence issue that was against YouTube’s terms of service. If that’s the case, the music in the video could very well be yours, written by you and even known to be written by you. Doesn’t matter. If you violate their TOS, the video will come down, period.

2) Content ID Match – Videos are removed that come up as a content ID match. YouTube has some kind of software that actually surfs their site and if it sees two identical videos and the original, made by the creator, has a copyright on it, the duplicate video will be removed. This is done automatically and will display on your “My Videos” page informing you that your video has been removed and why.

Now there is an exception to this but it’s up to the copyright owner. He can, should he choose to as an alternative to having the video removed, block it (prevent it from being seen), track it or monetize it. By the last one that means putting ads around it in an attempt to get money from each time his video is shown on your YouTube channel.

This is why, in many cases, you will see duplicate videos from the original and the duplicates, when they start playing, will have all these ads displayed over the video itself. That is the copyright owner trying to monetize your use of his work.

3) DMCA Takedown Notice – This is when the copyright owner of the video (doesn’t even have to be on YouTube) sends YouTube a DMCA takedown notice claiming to hold the original copyright (they have to prove this) and YouTube will then immediately remove the video. These notices usually come from big music companies. Some are more tolerant than others. Some will not allow under any uncertain terms their video displayed on YouTube. This is usually because of fear of loss of income from CD sales and the like.

Here is what you need to know about these notices. When YouTube gets one for a video that you put up, you get a strike against your account. Once you get three strikes YouTube will remove all your accounts and videos and ban you for life.

No, they are not fooling around. This is some serious stuff.

Okay, so how does all this relate to royalty free music? Well, this is where things get tricky. If you’ve read one of my earlier articles where I explained about Creative Commons and how royalty free music can later be copyrighted itself, you can probably see how this can get ugly.

Let’s take this scenario.

Say John Doe creates a piece of royalty free music and he puts it up on his site for anybody to purchase. He does not have a Creative Commons license so anybody, after purchasing the track, can do anything they like with it.

Within the span of one week, two people buy this track. The first person to buy it (yes, this is important) is Jim Smith. The second person to buy it is Hank Walker.

Jim Smith creates a video with this music and puts it up on YouTube. But before he does that, he gets a Creative Commons license for both the video and the music itself saying that the video and music can be used for non-commercial use only.

A week later, Hank Walker makes his own video but uses the same music. The video is different but the music is exactly the same.
Hank then uploads the video to YouTube.

Because the videos themselves are different, YouTube doesn’t see this as duplicate content. However, Jim Smith happens to find out about the video, views it, hears it’s the same song and notifies YouTube while sending them the Creative Commons license.

Now, as to whether or not YouTube will see this as duplicate content or a copyright violation is anybody’s guess especially since the original writer of the music is John Doe. See, this is where things get dicey.

If YouTube chooses to do nothing, Jim Smith still has legal recourse through Creative Commons. How far he’ll get is anybody’s guess as Creative Commons was created to encourage the free exchange of ideas.

In the end, will Hank Walker’s video be taken down? Will he be sued? It’s probably unlikely due to this involving royalty free music. But it can happen.

Does that mean it’s not safe to purchase royalty free music? Not at all. Look at all the things that had to go wrong for Hank Walker in order for the above scenario to play out this way.

He and somebody else had to both buy the same music with the other person buying it and copyright it before him. This person then would have had to put the video up on YouTube as well. And the person would have to find out about Hank Walker’s video which he wouldn’t have found out through YouTube because it wouldn’t have been seen as duplicate content.

And on top of all that, Jim Smith would have to be making money from the video in order for it to pay to even come after Hank Walker legally.

So, in short, purchasing royalty free music is a pretty safe investment.

As it should be.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re interested in getting into the royalty free music business you’re probably wondering if there is any real money to be made in it. I mean after all, just that fact that the word “free” appears in the business model doesn’t really make it all that appealing. Well, let me give you the straight dope on this biz and then you can make up your own mind as to whether or not you want to get into it.

I’m going to assume that you’re a musician, or at the very least, a composer. I’m also going to make another assumption here. Forgive me if I’m way off base on this one. I’m going to assume that you’d rather be spending your time as a big rock star or pop songwriter making millions of dollars just like Diane Warren. Yeah, I wish i had her money too, not to mention her talent. But I digress.

Yeah, the truth is, if we had our choice we’d probably rather be doing something else and the royalty free music business is just an alternative to our true love. I pretty much admitted this myself in another article. Sure, I’d rather be writing hit songs for just about anybody. No, I’m not picky.

But let’s be serious and honest about things. The music business itself is cutthroat competitive. It is extremely difficult to make a name for yourself. Many people give up their whole lives for the business and never make it.

So creating royalty free music and selling it is a way to make a few bucks without having to sell your soul. But the question is, can you make any real money doing it?

Well, that depends on a number of factors that I’m going to get into in some detail. The whole process is a lot more complex than what’s to follow but this should at least give you some idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

For starters, you have to decide what kind of royalty free music you’re going to write. Are you going to cover all genres like I’ve done or are you going to specialize in just a couple or even one? The advantage of covering multiple genres is that you’ll appeal to a wider audience. The downside is that you’re probably going to be writing some music that you’re not as familiar or comfortable with as another genre, making it more difficult to create quality tracks for that particular genre.

In my case, I’m very comfortable with rock, pop, classical and orchestral music. I’m not as comfortable with ethnic music. I have to study and work much harder at those tracks. And don’t get me wrong. Just about any music can be emulated if you listen to enough of it. After all, that’s how you became comfortable with the music you ARE good at. You just kept listening to it over and over and over, maybe even for years. I grew up with rock, pop and orchestral music so it’s second nature to me. I didn’t hear my first ethnic piece until I was an adult. And I certainly never studied the various ethnic genres. Indian music was a foreign to me as Calculus.

Okay, so after you’ve decided on what kind of royalty free music you’re going to concentrate on, the next thing you have to do is decide what market you’re going to go after. Who do you want to sell your music to? Do you want to restrict yourself only to other musicians or are you going to go after a wider audience? I’m targeting just about anybody who has a need for royalty free music including webmasters, night club owners, Internet marketers, radio stations and on and on. That’s easy to do when you don’t focus on just one or two musical styles.

After you’ve decided on your target market comes one of the biggest and hardest decisions you’re going to have to make. How much time and money are you going to put into this business? Time is pretty much self explanatory. It’s how many hours in your day that you’re going to work on your business. Money is not so obvious.

There are essentially two areas where you will need to spend money that will pretty much determine how successful you are with your royalty free music business.

At the top of the list is the software and hardware you’re going to purchase. Now there are free solutions for just about anything. But I have found that with very few exceptions, you get what you pay for. Cubase 7, which is a paid digital audio workstation (DAW) is head and shoulders above the free DAWs that you can get as far as what it can do. However, if you only need basic recording features, a free DAW might be okay. Personally, I could never get by with one.

Then there are the virtual synths (VSTs) that you will use to actually create the music. This is where free really doesn’t cut it, especially if you’re planning on creating authentic sounding orchestral music. My orchestral tracks are all made using East West Quantum Leap orchestral VSTs. They are, in my opinion, the best out there. They are certainly going to sound a lot better than the packaged synth strings that come with the free orchestral VST you managed to pick up from God knows where. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just listen for yourself.

Unfortunately, these great sounding VSTs cost money. An average one goes for about $300 that’s worth anything at all. Some are cheaper but I’ve found few that sound really great for under $150.

Do I own some free VSTs that are amazing? Yes, I do. Synth1 is a perfect example of one but it’s still limited in what it can do. It specializes in analog synth sounds and that’s about it. You won’t get an authentic sounding violin out of it.

Of the hundreds of VSTs that I own, most of them free, the ones that I find myself using most often are, you guessed it, the ones that I paid for. There’s a reason for that.

So you need to decide how much money you’re going to put into the music creation part of your business. But that’s only half the equation.

There is also the marketing end.

The saying “build it and they will come” just isn’t true on the Internet. With the hundreds of thousands of royalty free sites alone, the chances of somebody finding you are slim to none unless you do some kind of promotion. And that takes money. Sure, you can go the free route or try to get organic search listings but that will take time. You need to decide how long you can wait to start making money.

In the meantime, don’t quit your day job.

And this is really just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot to consider before deciding whether or not to go into the royalty free music business. So if you have any specific questions, please feel free to write me. You can find my email address on the Contact page on my site.

Yes, there is real money in creating royalty free music. But like anything else, you will get out of it what you put into it. So think about this real hard before making a final decision.

Until then, happy music making.

Whatever you decide to do.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If you’re wondering how royalty free music is made today, you might want to check out this article. Things are a lot different than they were even 20 years ago.

Back in the stone ages, royalty free music was made the old fashioned way, with real musicians and real instruments. A group, solo artist or orchestra would get together at a designated location with musical score in hand, record the piece in question, sheet music would be made, and the song would be distributed to whoever purchased a license.

While the above sounds simple it was far from it. Scheduling could sometimes be a nightmare. Imagine recording a piece that had a 70 piece string section and you had to pick a date where they were all free for the session, assuming you could even finish the track in one session.

And what if you were creating an entire royalty free collection of 16 or more songs. Can you even comprehend how long that would take when you have to coordinate 70 musicians, recording engineers and available studio time?

Those dinosaur days are pretty much behind us, at least for the small operation. Sure, there is still RFM created the old fashioned way. It also costs a small fortune for anybody who wants a piece of it.

Today, however, the whole process has changed dramatically. For example, how do I myself create the royalty free music that I make? It’s really very simple.

The hub of the process is the Digital Audio Workstation or DAW. This is a piece of software that essentially allows you to bring in all types of virtual studio technologies (VSTs) in order to create your sounds. If you go to my site and read the FAQ page, you’ll find a brief list of the VSTs that I use for creating my music. These VSTs can duplicate just about any sound imaginable and some not so imaginable.

The DAW has MIDI and audio record capabilities. So you can use actual real instruments (if you want to) in the creation of your songs. So far I have personally kept everything digital.

After all the individual VSTs are brought into the project and each musical part is recorded, the next step is to take each track and mix them together so that the levels are where they need to be in order to get the “best” sound. Of course a lot of this is subjective and to taste. After the mix is complete, final processing is performed (compression, limiting, etc.) to create the finished product.

The last part of the process is making the musical track available, which today is as easy as creating a WAV or MP3 file, uploading it to a web site and preparing it for sale using some kind of product sales software like DLGuard, Rapid Action Profits, or in my case, WordPress eStore.

What used to take days or maybe weeks to do can now be done in a matter of hours depending on how complex the musical arrangement is.

And the beauty of this process is how flexible it is.

For example, let’s say you’ve just created a piece of royalty free music that consists of a piano, bass and drums and you want to make another version of this music to include horns, violins and a string section. It’s as simple as just adding three more VSTs to the original file and recording those three parts. No need to get the musicians back into the studio to do another version, which by the way because of the human element may not sound exactly like the first recording.

In the case of using DAWs and VSTs everything from the first recording will sound exactly the same in the second recording. All notes will be played exactly the same. The timing will be exactly the same. The only difference will be the additional parts.

And because using DAWs and VSTs is so flexible, you can virtually made an unlimited number of mixes of the song without having to bring musicians in each time you have something new to record.

Plus, you can add or subtract effects from each mix. You can take one instrument and replace it with another one without having to replay the part. I’ve completely new styles of songs simply by doing just that. For example, I’d replace a piano with a synth pad and get a whole new sound.

There is a downside to this and I’d be amiss to not tell you what it is. Because royalty free music is so easy to create today (DAWs are relatively cheap as well as the VSTs) everybody and their grandmother can pump out tunes like water pouring from a faucet. This leads to a lot of crap being pumped out into the marketplace. In turn, that means a lot of crap that you have to wade through. And trust me, as someone who used to look for RFM for his own use, it’s not fum.

The low barrier to entry, just like with anything else, brings out all the bad elements of this business. As a result, a lot of royalty free music gets a bad rap. As always, the bad apples ruin it for the good people.

Still, I would never want to go back to the old way of doing things. I could not afford to hire an orchestra to perform one of my orchestral scores. The symphony that I wrote (sorry, it’s not royalty free) would have never been made. So I guess as with anything else, you have to take the good with the bad.

Anyway, there you have it in a nutshell. That is more or less the process that most composers go through today in order to get their music out to the public. If you yourself are interested in creating your own royalty free music, you can get started for under $300 and that will cover just about everything.

With that being said, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my $300 studio and make some more great music for the world to use.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Great, so you’ve got your project in front of you and you need music to go along with it. You decide to pick up some royalty free tracks.

But what?

Even musicians sometimes play hit or miss with their choice of music for a particular medium. Trust me, I have been to movies with some dreadful musical scores.

So just how do you go about picking a piece of royalty free music for the project you’re working on? Well, while this article can’t possibly be a comprehensive tutorial on musical mood matching, I’m going to try to give you some meat and potatoes ways to go about picking music that will be just right for the particular project you’re working on.

Probably the best way to “learn” how to pick music for a project is to watch the movie greats. You won’t learn anything from watching bad movies but if you concentrate on the classics, you’ll learn a lot.

Why?

There is a reason why almost all movies have musical scores. Music helps convey the emotion that the film is trying to get across. That is why with so many scenes where there is no dialogue you will find the music carries the scene.

Take the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho.” and the famous shower scene. It may very well be one of the most famous scenes in all of movie history. Part of the reason for that is the musical score.

You will note that at the beginning of the scene when Janet Leigh is getting into the shower, there is no music at all. In fact there is just the sound of her getting in and turning on the water. No dialogue, nothing else.

Then Norman Bates comes in, opens up the shower curtain and starts slashing her with the knife. Just at that moment, we hear the “slashing” strings which have become almost a staple in horror movies since. This continues until Bates runs out of the bathroom and we see Janet Leigh starting to slump down the shower. At this moment, the music changes to low ominous “death” strings that finally stop just before she dies.

This is classic movie scoring. Could you imagine if instead of this music Hitchcock had chosen some circus music out of something like “The Greatest Show On Earth?” It would have been laughable and turned a tense, shocking scene into a comedy. And a bad comedy to boot because the music wouldn’t have fit at all.

Why is it that we associate a slow violin with sadness or a flute with a child skipping through the woods or a sax with a stripper or sex scene? For whatever reason, these instruments convey certain emotions.

So is it just instrumentation that determines what’s good for a particular mood? Well, instrumentation is part of the equation. The other part is musical key.

There are essentially two musical keys, major and minor. The main difference between the two is the third note in the tonic. In the key of C Major, the third would be E natural. In the key of C minor, the third would be E flat. That half a step makes all the difference in the world.

For whatever reason, emotionally, major keys evoke feelings of happiness and joy while minor keys evoke feelings of sadness and heartbreak. Of course how the music is played (fast or slow, quiet or loud) will also factor into this equation.

Then there is the instrumentation used in the music. While a violin in a minor key might evoke feelings of sadness, a cello section might evoke a feeling of ominousness or dread. A tuba, on the other hand, will probably still sound funny even in a minor key.

A piece of music in a minor key played with lots of horns and at a quick tempo might make one think of Romans going off to war. Certainly nothing sad about that. in fact, such an instrumentation might be majestic sounding.

Point is, there are a lot of factors that go into just what a piece of music will make us feel. But make no mistake about it, music does bring out emotions no matter how it’s used or how subtle it is. So picking the right kind of music for your project is critical to its success.

So just how do you go about doing this?

If I were looking for a piece of music for a project of mine and not a composer myself, this is the process I would go through.

1) I would put my project into some kind of category. Is it a trailer for an epic superhero movie? Is it an opening for a sports talk show?

2) I would go to YouTube or pull out DVDs or watch TV or do whatever I had to do in order to find examples of other projects that were of the same type so I could hear what kind of music they used.

3) I would make note of the kind of music used and put IT into its own category. Is it rock? Is it orchestral music? Fast or slow? Major or minor?

Why would I do number 3? Because most royalty free music sites break their music down into categories as I’ve done on my site. This way, it makes it a little easier for me to find what I’m looking for as I can just go right to that category.

And of course finally you select the piece of music that you think is best for the project you’re working on based on the research you’ve done.

But what if you have a project that isn’t popular? What if there are no examples? In that case I would sit down and decide what it was I wanted my audience to feel when listening to this music. That will at least help you in choosing a musical style. Some differences in music are subtle but others are so drastic that a simple “I want my audience to walk away from this project feeling uplifted” completely eliminates that solo violin playing its sad, heartbreaking tune.

Once you have eliminated the obvious tunes that couldn’t possibly fit into what you are trying to accomplish, that leaves you with a lot less to weed through when you actually start your musical search.

And of course if you’re in doubt, you can always contact the site owner and ask them for suggestions. My contact info is right on my site and you can contact me at any time with any questions that you might have. I will always respond promptly to all inquiries.

Choosing the right kind of music for your project is an important part of the project creation process. Don’t guess. Use the tips I gave you above or, if in doubt, contact a professional.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Probably one of the most confusing things in the music business is the organization “Creative Commons” and how it applies to royalty free music. To understand what role they play and just how creative commons works, you first need to have a basic understanding of copyright law as it applies to music.

Basic copyright is a different animal than it was 40 years ago. But we’ll get to why shortly. For now, let’s just start off with a layman’s “definition” of musical copyright.

In short, John Doe writes the song “This Is My Song” and copyrights it. Essentially that copyright says that no person may write another song that significantly sounds like “This Is My Song” and no person may use that song for any purpose without paying a royalty fee to the creator of the song.

I can create a music CD and record my own version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” written by Paul Simon. But every sale I make from that song requires me to pay a royalty to Paul Simon. If I don’t, I am in violation of copyright. Naturally, I better not write and record a song that sounds like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” unless I want to get sued.

In short, copyright protects the person who wrote the song.

In the days before the Internet, this was fairly easy to do. There was no such thing as digital music, at least not in the sense that we think of it today. Sure, you could record songs off the radio or other records with a cassette player (something a lot of people did) and, if you wanted to illegally make some money, create copies of those cassettes and sell them, but the cost of doing such a thing cut down on how much some of these activities took place.

Today, it’s a different animal. The Internet makes it so that any song can be instantly downloaded and duplicated in a matter of seconds. Digital copies can be made instantly and distributed by digital download so fast it would make your head spin.

In short, enforcing copyright today is more difficult than ever.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not knocking the Internet. It has allowed me to make a living from the comfort of my own home. But this beast we created has a dark downside that a lot of people are burying their heads in the sand about.

I myself am the victim or music theft on a daily basis. A Firefox plugin makes it a piece of cake for anybody to download any of my royalty free songs without having to pay for them. Considering these songs go for all of a couple of bucks, I think that’s pretty sad. But that’s another topic for another day.

Point is, because copyright is so hard to enforce today, Creative Commons is an alternative in attempt to make the Internet a place where the free exchange of musical ideas becomes the norm. It’s not meant to take the place of copyright but work alongside with it.

So what exactly is Creative Commons and how does it work?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization. They were founded in 2001 and are headquartered in Mountain View, California in the US.

Their main goal is to build a collection of creative works that the public can share. They have actually released several copyright licenses which are collectively known as creative commons licenses.

These licenses all grant “basic” copyright rights such as the right to distribute the work for non-commercial purposes and without modification.

In addition to the above, the other rights depend on the version of the license being granted. There are four different conditions.

1) Attribution – May copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works ONLY if they give the original author credit in the manner designated by the rights themselves.

2) Share-alike – May distribute derivative works ONLY if the license is identical to the license for the original work. In other words, if the original work says XYZ then the share-alike work must also say XYZ.

3) Non-commercial – May copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works only for non-commercial purposes. That means you can’t make money from the work you’re using. Later in this article I’ll explain how this affects royalty free music.

4) No Derivative Works – May copy, distribute, display and perform only identical works. No derivative works allowed. Identical means identical. You take the work as it is and copy, distribute, display or perform the work as it is. I will also explain how this affects royalty free music.

Creative commons licenses work at both ends. They work on the end of the original creator of the work, if he so chooses, and they work on the end of the person using the work either if the original creator requires it or the licensee needs it to protect their use of it. This is where things can get extremely complicated. While I can’t possibly go over all examples, I will cover a couple.

Let’s say the original creator of the work gets a creative commons license for non-commercial use. How does this affect a person licensing this music royalty free? If their original intention was to purchase the music for say an opening to a club act to be played each evening, while the work itself might not be making them any money on its own, because the club act is earning them an income (assuming it is) they can’t use this work for the club opening as that would be considered commercial use. Any time the issue of money being collected for something comes in, that’s commercial use. That’s one example where a creative commons license on the side of the original creator will limit the uses for their music by potential licensees.

Let’s say the original creator of the music does not copyright the music at all and just sells it royalty free as is but the licensee wants to protect the music they have licensed so they get a creative commons license that says for non-commercial use so that nobody can make a profit off the work. That’s an example where the licensee requires a creative commons license on their end even though the original creator did not.

Needless to say, this can get quite complicated the more people get involved in the process over a certain work.

None of my works have any restrictions on them whatsoever. They are not copyrighted and have no creative commons licenses associated with them. In other words, you pay a one time fee and can use them royalty free for whatever purpose you like, including making money.

Anyway, there you have it. That’s creative commons in a nutshell and in very basic English. If you want to learn more about creative commons licenses, go to their web site at https://creativecommons.org/ and see what they’re about for yourself.

I think their cause is a noble one in an attempt to change some very antiquated copyright laws because of how difficult they are to enforce today thanks to the Internet and technology in general.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

For the most part, somebody looking for royalty free music knows exactly what they want it for. But every now and then you find somebody who is looking for something creative to do with it and can’t really come up with any interesting uses. Maybe they themselves want to create their own royalty free music for certain uses. In this article, I’m going to go over a few quirky things that you can do with your music that you might not have thought of.

Let’s begin.

Do you know what’s really big today and actually has been big for a very long time, at least since the invention of the cell phone?

Ring tones.

That’s right. Now a lot of places that sell ring tones are making some very well known songs available for them that are not in the public domain. By public domain I mean songs that are old enough that they can be used by anybody at no cost. The more recent and popular songs require that the seller of these ring tones play a royalty fee to the composer who wrote the song. That’s why you will notice that some ring tones come with a pretty hefty price tag.

Well, imagine creating or getting royalty free music for your own ring tones or to sell to others. It’s not a bad business model assuming you can come up with some ring tones that are interesting and that people will want to use.

Sound effect ring tones will probably be your best bet. They’ll be original for sure and if you make them unusual enough, could be a big seller. And if you’re using them for your own phone, could be a great conversation piece when your friends hear how odd they are.

I haven’t gotten into the ring tone business yet but I am thinking of doing so. Certainly if anybody wants a custom ring tone made, I will be happy to create one for them. Just something to think about if you’re interested.

Another quirky use for royalty free music would be for putting together a sound effects CD for other artists to use in creating their own material.

Many years ago, when I had my old analog recording studio and was writing pop tunes, I wanted to do a few songs that had real sound effects. I didn’t want to synthesize them. So I went out and bought these CDs that contained a number of effects such as horns blowing, dogs barking and so on. Now while these sound effects CDs wouldn’t be considered music, the concept is the same.

You would purchase royalty free music that was from the electronic or sci fi genre and use that music to compile your own CD for sale that other artists could use to create their own music. As long as you know that the sales you would make from the CD would be greater than the amount you had to pay for the songs, this could be a very profitable venture. Again, it’s something to think about.

What about if you own a restaurant? There’s this one restaurant that I go to around where I live called Red Lobster. I’m sure you probably have one of those in your area as well as I’m pretty sure it’s a big chain. Oh, by the way, they just got bought out so I hope the next time I go there the food is still good.

Anyway, while I’m eating there, I hear music being piped in over the sound system. It’s not a radio station because I don’t hear any DJs or commercials so it must be a compilation disk.

Now, these are well known songs that you hear on the radio, so these disks must cost a pretty penny. So imagine somebody created an instrument disk or royalty free songs (kind of like a muzak compilation) that was dirt cheap? Sure, there wouldn’t be any familiar songs but if the music was pleasant enough your customers would certainly enjoy it. Point is, this is yet another use for royalty free music that a lot of people wouldn’t think of. And if you’re a creator of your own royalty free music, this might be a target market you’ll want to pursue…the restaurant business. You never know what it might lead to.

And of course you could expand this idea to include bars, shopping malls or just about any establishment where there are customers and music would be something that they wouldn’t mind hearing. A doctors office really comes to mind here. I mean you know how boring it is sitting and waiting for your appointment. Some nice royalty free music just might do the trick.

Another great use for royalty free music is for people who are into meditation. Take a look at all the mediation CDs that are out there. Most of them are basic atmospheric electronic pieces kind of like early Tangerine Dream. This is a huge market. After all, we live in a very stressful world and a lot of people need to take some time out of their busy, stressful days to just relax. And what better way to do that than with a meditation CD?

In fact, I’m seriously considering compiling one and shopping it to some of the top meditation sites.

As you can see, aside from the more traditional uses for royalty free music such as music for movies, TV shows, plays, commercials, radio broadcasts, and on and on, there are a number of quirky and offbeat things that you can use royalty free music for. It’s just a matter of using your imagination and thinking of all the times in your life when you wished you had music available to you. Believe it or not, it’s more often than you realize.

Music is a part of our very souls. Some people don’t realize that, but it is. It’s the reason why some of the most moving scenes from movies throughout the history of cinema have the most moving pieces of music associated with them.

Music moves us. And because of that, there will always be a need for royalty free music even in the most unusual of places.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim