Article Preview - An Introduction To 'Production Music'

The business of TV and film is changing fast, and production or ‘library’ music is becoming ever more important. One of the UK’s most experienced production music composers explains how to get your foot in the door.

Pete Thomas

Pete Thomas in his studio.

Photo: Simon Warren

What we now call ‘production music’ has been through various stages of evolution. Its origins are probably in silent movies, when cinema pianists and organists would watch the movie and supply a live accompaniment. At first, they would use bits and pieces of music, either from memory or collections of sheet music, but very soon volumes of specially composed or arranged incidental movie music were published, with cues arranged and categorised to fit the various screen actions or moods. Perhaps that is why this extract from Krommer’s Double Clarinet Concerto is such a well-known tune!

Very soon, music became available on discs, and with the advent of TV in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, there was a large demand for readily available music, which was known as mood music, atmospheric music and, of course, library music. Much of this was of extremely high-quality orchestral and jazz, though with the proliferation of synths in the late ’70s it gained a reputation for being cheap (but not necessarily cheerful). Originally an American term, ‘production music’ is now in general use here in the UK, as producers have wanted to promote a newer generation of library music that has shed the old image.

Production music has traditionally been distributed on vinyl or CD but it is now also available via download. A production music company is basically a publishing company, or a department of a publishing company, that specialises in marketing, licensing and collecting royalties for production music. The end user is usually a film, TV or radio production company — but tracks can also be used for computer games, web sites, live events and even ringtones. Users choose tracks they want to include in a programme and can license them very quickly, through MCPS in the UK or other licensing agencies worldwide, at a set licence fee per 30 seconds of music. Very often this is cheaper, quicker and less complicated than commissioning a composer.

Much of the TV music of the ’60s was jazz-oriented; composers such as Henry Mancini and Elmer Bernstein set the standard in this respect. Library music producers followed suit, and could corner some very good jazz musicians in touring bands who were happy to supplement their meagre club fees with a couple of sessions.

Today, a much larger proportion of production music is pop or rock. This is due in part to a demand from modern TV producers, but another factor is the digital revolution. The production of convincing pop music is no longer exclusively the realm of companies with big budgets for large studios and vast swathes of session musicians. The standard still has to be high and the use of real musicians wherever possible is definitely a bonus, but it is now possible for anyone with the talent and a decent DAW to compete with the big boys.

Production music CDs might look like ordinary albums...

The recent proliferation of television channels has inevitably thinned out the viewing audience for most individual channels, thus causing advertising revenue, and therefore budgets, to be slashed. Apart from the few at the very top, TV and film composers have had to get used to working on lower budgets. Often — but by no means always — this has resulted in either (at worst) lower-quality commissioned music being produced or, sadly, fewer live musicians being involved. Seizing an opportunity, the library music companies stepped in with a new generation of music having much higher artistic and production values, which could be licensed easily.

My Approach To Composing

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