If you’ve been writing music for a while (for me it’s over 35 years) you kind of get to a point where the well starts to run a little dry. I mean how many songs can you possibly write before things start to sound the same as something else you’ve written? For that matter, after you’ve written thousands of songs like I have, how can you even remember what each song you’ve written sounds like? This becomes especially hard when you’re writing royalty free music which tends to be a little more generic than the common pop song simply because of the nature of what it is. So what do you do? Well, that’s what this article is going to focus on and hopefully it will give you some inspirational ideas.
But let’s first begin with why royalty free music is so generic to begin with. Why are these tunes more defined like a hit record? The reason is because of what the music is used for.
With a hit song, regardless of what genre it is, the purpose of the song is to be listened to solely. You want the listener’s attention to be ONLY on that song and nothing else. They need to love that song enough to go out and buy it. That’s why elevator Muzak is so throw away. Personally, I think that’s there to annoy people but that’s just me. Point is, pop music has to completely capture the listener’s attention.
Royalty free music is a different animal. You don’t want the viewer of the video, or whatever the main project is, to focus solely on the music. You want them to focus on the message. If the music is too “good”, like with a pop song, then the message gets lost. Nobody catches it. They’re too busy listening to the song. Conversely, if the music is really bad, it will detract from the video and might even cause viewers to leave. So it’s a very fine balancing act that you have to perform when writing royalty free music.
For this reason, the music has to be pleasant or even somewhat exciting, in the case of orchestral scores, but generic enough so that it doesn’t detract from the message but adds to it. Trust me, this is not an easy thing to do. But now let’s get to what exactly generic means?
Let’s take a generic R&B track. A typical track will have an identifiable R&B progression with some drums bass and probably a classic sounding R&B synth lead. The melody will be pleasant but not too catchy, as with a pop song. We don’t want the viewer walking away singing the theme song. There are exceptions to this and I’ll get to them later.
Anyway, when you’re writing like this, after a while, the tracks all start to kind of sound the same. You’re taking a formulaic approach to writing and the end results are going to sound just like formula.
So let me ask you a question. How many of these “formula” pieces can you write before, totally by accident, one of them sounds like something else you’ve done? I mean heck, even with commercial pop and rock writing you hear songs that sound very much alike. There’s a reason for that and I’ll get into that as well.
Well, the answer to the question above isn’t definitive because each composer is going to be different. Some will be able to write thousands of songs while others only hundreds before they run out of ideas.
Okay, let’s get to the exception to this problem of sounding too catchy. The one exception is when you’re writing an intro for a video, like a theme song similar to what you would hear on a TV show. In those cases, you absolutely want to write the catchiest thing you can think of simply because at that point in time in the video, there’s nothing else. The music has to carry the moment. That’s the exception and it’s a big one.
Now, why do some pop songs sound alike? Well, there are actually two reasons for this. The first one is just outright plagiarism. Somebody will hear a particular song and copy it, changing just enough of it to avoid being sued. Sometimes they’re successful and sometimes not so successful.
Another reason why songs will sound the same is because as composers, we don’t live in a vacuum. We are influenced by the music we hear. We can’t help it. And when you hear a lot of music, a lot of the motifs you hear end up becoming a part of your subconscious over time. You don’t realize that the riff you just wrote is actually a derivative of something you might have heard even 10 years ago.
I’m pretty good at recognizing when I’m writing a riff or something and it’s come from a pop or rock song I heard back in the 70s simply because music has been my life since the Beatles hit the scene. But even I sometimes let things slip through and I’ll write something and go “Damn, where have I heard that before?” And then I’ll track the song down, discover that while there is enough difference that I would never be sued for plagiarism, there is definitely some similarity.
So let’s finally get to the title of this article. How do you search for royalty free music ideas when the well has run dry, when you just can’t think of anything else to write that doesn’t already sound like something you’ve done?
Here are just a few things that you can do to get new ideas.
1) Listen to music you don’t normally listen to. For me, that would probably be something like Reggae or Rap. I am sure to hear something I’ve never heard before. Then I can try to incorporate some of the ideas into another genre. Imagine Rap meets Classical?
2) Talk a walk. Go outside and take a walk around the neighborhood. I bet you never noticed what color the neighbor’s car is. Have you ever counted how many trees are on your block? Absorbing your surroundings is great inspiration.
3) Randomly generate some notes. I’m dead serious. Get a random generator and set it to seed for integer 12. Run it a total of 3 times. You’ll get three numbers between 1 and 12. Each one will correspond to a note. 1 – C, 2 – C#, and so on. Take the 3 notes and make a motif out of them. Start with that as the main motif for your new song. I did a modification of this once and came out with a song called “God’s Magical Garden” that’s going to be performed for Children’s Day as I’m writing this at my local church. Random generation is a great way to get ideas.
4) Watch a movie with the sound off. Think of what music you would write for it. You’d be surprised what some images will do as far as generating ideas.
5) Read a book. Let the words of the book move you. Again, think of the book as a movie and imagine what score you would write for the movie.
These are just a few of the many things you can do to get new musical ideas.
Try one. You just might be surprised at the results.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim