Background Music and mood sounds - how to find, how to search?

I

Inprogress

Well-known member
I hope this is in the most suitable forum category.

I've been wondering how many of you more experienced producers find background music for your little shorts? Apart from taking note of a nice song on the radio or buying the local muso's CD for that cool melody, how do you go about finding a song of mood music? I have this idea of a little short filmed in a cemetary about...well about something not sure yet. And I was thinking about background music, so I started looking...erm....listening to some stock music, but it seems like it could take days and tons of bandwidth to find something that will work, and that is only one audio archive.

Do you have a more efficient means of sifting through and getting to what you need? Apart from those who know a composer of a muso friend.

Thanks
 
Inprogress said:
Apart from taking note of a nice song on the radio or buying the local muso's CD for that cool melody...
Click to expand...

This gets into copyright issues. Unless you have the express consent of the songwriter, or the publisher, or the copyright holder, you cannot legally use popular music. Even though you purchased the CD, there are only certain uses that are permitted without more, well, permission. Often, this comes with royalty fees that can be staggering.

Your best bet is to search through royalty-free music libraries. Yes, this can be time-consuming and a bit harrowing, especially in the larger directories, but most libraries can be searched by style or genre, and the better ones can even be searched by instrumentation. There are many libraries out there, from free to very expensive.

Some good places to start on the more affordable and/or free end:

Creative Commons

Free Music Archive

Fresh Music

Pond5

Vimeo Music Store
 
Of course there are also heaps of aspiring composers who have posted on this forum offering services cheap or free. Just check out their prior work and make sure they're not cheap or free because they're bad. :)
 
Thanks for the replies. Yes I am more referring to the actual searching, not so much the licensing issues. All non-profit work, self-expression.

Any tips that you can give that you have learned helps you narrow down your searches?
 
Man, listening to all that music takes time, but each one that caught my fancy immediately created a story in my minds eye. Still haven't found a melody for the one video I have in mind, but I did find one for the other video I have in mind.

Thanks again everyone for the links.
 
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