Save The World – Heroic Trailer Music Track

Your Music
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Track Description: The track was custom made for a contest last month. I had to compose for picture (Youtube-Link down below). What was important for me, that I can still use the track later on and somewhere else.

My Creative Vision: The main focus, because of the contest rules, to use the vocal samples they have provided and put them somehow together, so it sounds more or less suitable. The contest was as well about cinematic music, so therefore it was clear, that I had to support the samples with an orchestra.

Composition Overview: The beginning is based on vocal samples, EQed, layered, automated…then there is that “drop”, which drives you into the next shot (shows you big mountains). From this point on I started to support the track with big taikos and bass drums, big brass section with trumpets, which play one of the melodies, combined with horns and trombones down below. At the end high strings are supporting the last scene to give it more of an open handed feeling…you can hear as well a choir singing/shouting staccatos with percussion support.

Music-wise it’s super simple. The samples were mainly in Am, so I just stuck to that. No strange harmonies happening. Everything straight forward. Easy chord progressions Am/F/G/Am/B(G)…I had a clear vision that I don’t have to invent new chord changes because I felt the track just did’t need it at all. Tempo varies: Starts with 104 BPM, moves here and there, and goes at the drop to 98 BPM. If the film wasn’t there, I could just stay 98 all the time.

Main Sounds: Vocal samples, Albion One, 8dio Hybrid Drums, 8dio Synphony (Synths), 8dio Lacrimosa, Native Instruments Symphony Series, EmotiveStrings, Una Chorda, Giant, Vocalise (Heavyocity), Pads…and quite a lot of “compressed” mixing :smiley:

Youtube-Link:

Waiting for feedback :wink:

Thank you in advance and take care,
Alexey (JLX)
@jlx_music

3 Likes
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I love that you did a detailed and long description, that got my interest so now I am listening. :wink:

  1. Heavenly beginning, love the whispers and soothing vibe
  2. Monster roar transtion, haha nice one!
  3. The arpeggio drives nicely as the main anchor of this piece
  4. Opens up nicely with those brass pads
  5. Really good main accents that I can feel the build into every hit
  6. Lifting is nice in the end but the climax feels so short, I guess because the entire trailer was very short. I lacked a nice satisfactionary cadence.

Overall very nice composiiton, fitted the imagary very good imo. I could see this more in an inspirational brand advertisement more than a trailer though, but that is perhaps just me. Great job my friend! :slight_smile:

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Thank you @Mikael,

well it’s short indeed and as you said the end is more or less cut off. But as you know, we need to improvise somehow when we work with video…:slight_smile:

As you wanted, or showed in your “example” I guess it should be more or less that long, to give a better insight rather than just say “Hey dude, listen to my new track!!!”…In my opinion we need to take care of our music and present it as well as we can, so give more infos, guidelines and insights…if we don’t, nobody is interested…people like to read and collect background knowledge. Am I right? :slight_smile:

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Spot on my friend! :smiley:
Way too much lazy track posting on social media. I loved to read your complete description. That made me want to listen with attention to details.

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Very nice piece of music. The arpeggios drives nicely.
Though in general, most of the picture cuts are completely out of synch with the music (Or the music is not catching the cuts). Regardless of many drums and hit you use, if the hit is not in synch with the picture, is pointless.
The music by itself is very nice. Though I do not think is the appropriate for that kind of picture.
Best,

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Thank for your feedback @Daniel-keysound!

Well, I am totally with you, when you say, the music or hits are not in sync with the picture. Maybe I can explain, how I like to approach this “Music For Film”-thing.

In first place I just have a look for the video alone, to get a good feeling for the tempo, cuts etc. Then I try to find out, if there is kind of a “hidden”-tempo in the cuts. In this case, absolutely not. So it’s clear, that it’s super hard to make it work perfectly matched (or you start to make a 7/8, 3/4 and 9/8 composition, which can be fun as well…haha). But what works in a lot of cases is, I just stick to a couple of the cuts as my main “hit-points”, which I find are hitting my average tempo well. So when I do have these, I work from there. What I believe as well, that it’s not always important to hit the picture perfect, when you see it in the first millisecond. When you look closely, especially the shot where the “Giant Trees” are shown, the hit is at the point where you start to see them more and more and not at the beginning of the cut.

I saw a couple of guys, who just “re-cut” the movie and make the cuts perfect to fit the music. I mean it’s a lot of work, but is it really what a “composer” have to do? I believe this is not our job, only if we create a video like this for us exclusively. It’s not the case here, so I need to find a way, which gives me a good feeling and a good “first look” impression.

As I mentioned before, it was just a fun contest to do, and a good exercise to show yourself “Can I do it until the deadline?”…but I try always to have my time and music in mind, when I go for these kind of gigs. I am sure, that the music will fit somewhere else much better than this video, where the cutter can adjust the cuts better etc.

Especially the “downer” for the first big mountain shot…I mean, to be honest, it doesn’t fit the picture at all, but the sound itself I think does really fit the composition. So I kept it.

Sometimes you need to compromise. It’s not an excuse. But this video is not a “Mouse & Cat” movie either. :slight_smile:

Kind regards and take care,
Alexey (JLX)
@jlx_music

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Nice to see someone else on here that entered that competition. Really nice track :slight_smile: I agree that you don’t have to always sync it to shots as the music should have a feel to it rather than just change for the sake of it :slight_smile:
Thought I’d show you the one I entered, I’ve loved seeing how different ppl have approached the same clip

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Just listened to this. Good description of the piece, really helped me put myself in your thought process!

Here’s a few thoughts that may help in your future ventures into trailer music, both good and constructive.

For starting with the good stuff. Your sound design is lovely. I very much felt the emotion of the piece. The strings sounded very nice and I liked what you did with the vocal libraries. It really added that wow factor as I got to the climax. Your drum parts were also good, though you may want to add a transient shaper to some of the longer low hits to preserve that attack you hear from most trailer hits.

Structurally I can’t say much as you were writing to video. Generally, you’d have a three episodic structure to trailers which isn’t put to a video. This distinguishes trailer music from general hybrid/epic YouTube music… which I’d say your piece more resembles. The building nature is actually spot on though and I very much enjoyed it.

Your piece is very melodic which I personally love, though I’d say that also pushes it into more of an ambient/emotive/hybrid YouTube style. Again this is fine but pushes it slightly off brief.

Some things I’d suggest to hit the brief would be
• structure your work episodically and add breaks for editors (breaks are super important in trailer music)
• keep your melodic content more simple and lean more on your rhythmic motif (which is very strong in this piece.
• your horns sounded a little thin so add a whopping low end section to really push that out.
•add other hybrid elements such as braams, alarms, more risers etc

I hope this helps and I really enjoyed the piece… if it wasn’t a trailer competition You’d get a ten from me :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Hi @Geoffers,

I just read your deleted post. I totally agree with you about that wrong misleading “Genre Trailer Music”, this is definitely not, and it’s actually under my soundtrack playlist, which fits better. I don’t know why I wrote Trailer Music…haha…maybe because I synced it to the picture?

Trailer Music wouldn’t have all that melody elements and so forth. It’s “too complicated” for that genre. Too much going on. As you said, trailer music is more rhythmic focused and has breaks here and there, so if a music supervisor likes only the beginning or only the end, he can just cut everything else out.

Thank you for taking your time! I really appreciate that! :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Alexey (JLX)
@jlx_music

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My deleted post??

I thought I posted it :rofl: oops. I probably pressed something I shouldn’t have. Glad you appreciated it. Finding it hard to find the time to finish mine :slight_smile: I may just post a trailer piece afterwards to help others :slight_smile:

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There you go, I reversed whatever I did before with some sorcery! ;D