Get Your Soundtrack On Point | 5 Reasons Why You Should Hire A Music Supervisor

The Music Supervisor: Who Are They and What Do They Do?

There are many different answers to those questions depending on whom you ask. But since you’re asking me, I say a music supervisor is essentially an expert music listener. They are an expert in understanding the vibe and mood of the music. With utmost emotional sensibility, the supervisor understands arrangement, timbre, audio mix, tempo (and oh so much more) and pairs it with even the most abstract visual idea.

It’s about bringing life to the creative vision of the director, filmmaker or marketing gurus. This is done through careful, creative curation of music on time and on the allotted budget.

(Did you know that there is not an Emmy or Academy award for music supervision? There ought to be! This job can make or break a project.) …but I’ve digressed a little.

5 Ways That We Make Pictures Pump and Pixels Pop

1) The Feels and the Perfect Soundtrack: It goes without saying that the key to a good advertisement or scene is in connecting with your audience on an emotional level. Music delivers this emotional response like no other. Making sure that your message meets the correct emotion is paramount. Music supervisors aren’t supernatural emotional beings; despite having “super” in their title. They do however have experience curating music based on very specific moods and they’ve spent countless hours analyzing the impact of music against moving pictures. A Music Supervisor knows when a piece of music has perfectly served the emotional mood and message of the video.

Here’s an extreme example of that. Get the tissues ready.

2) Finding the right composer: You have a specific sound in your head and you want it to be uniquely you. A custom score is the answer to your dreams. A composer could make your dreams reality but finding the RIGHT composer is no easy task. Not every composer has writing talents in all genres. For instance, we wouldn’t ask our best traditional country and western composer to write a fully electronic 8-bit inspired score Connections are crucial and we have the network you need. We have an international network of 300 composers to draw from and with that we can handpick an expert composer to contract for the project.

3) Demographics: Do you really know what your audience is listening to? We can help you with that. We understand the target audience’s listening habits. A music supervisor is listening to music all day and is constantly online keeping their ears to the digital ground for what sounds are up and coming. What’s current now might not be what’s current in a month or two when you’re rolling out your marketing campaign. You don’t want to throw a bunch of money into an advertising campaign only to alienate your target audience and risk sounding “dated”. Let us help.

4) Options, options, options: It’s a beautiful thing. It’s important to have a handful of tracks that give variation in energy, vibe and inflection when auditioning music for a scene or advert. Often, productions tend to leave the music to the last minute stressing the editor and detracting from the quality of the final piece.

Dedicating this process to a music supervisor will take stress off the video editor while obtaining carefully chosen and creative music options for the video. Win-win!

This goes down a couple different ways (most commonly)

•   If you are in the early post-production phase with no visuals to show yet we will compile a playlist of ready-to-sync songs based on the synopsis of your project and brief explanation of the music required
• When there is locked picture, we’ll begin making playlists and auditioning music. When we’ve edited a couple awesome options we’ll send them to the video editor.

5) Pricing: It’s much more affordable than you think. Pricing can vary widely depending on the full scope of the project; budget and what services the music supervisor will be contracted for. When it comes to curating music for your TV series, explainer video or advertisement, etc. Bedtracks music supervision services start at FREE.

We love what we do and we’re happy to be consultants and curators of Bedtracks music for your project, at no extra cost.

Thanks for reading. Do yourself a favour and utilize the skills of a music supervisor for your next project. Save time, money and headaches. Your soundtrack will be better than you ever thought possible!