Creating the right soundtrack: audio direction
Music is a qualitative asset – meaning that its value is not determined by its quantity, but by its features. In a plainer english: it’s not how much you make of it, but how you make it.
This, due to the fact that music’s primary objective is to create emotions. And emotions are not quantifiable: they are only identifiable. On a very simple example: you don’t say “X many anger”. You say “very angry”. You don’t say “How many happy do you have?”: you say “Are you happy?”. And same goes for music: you don’t quantify its quantity, but only what feeling gives you. It’s not important whether the piece is long 30 minutes or how many instruments does it have: it is only important how beautiful it is. And that’s totally unrelated to its “practical” features (length, instrumentation and so on).
Therefore, the choice about its features is the most important phase of the overall process of producing a musical work – especially when in the form of a soundtrack, due to its very strong narrative connotations: the music is tasked to follow a story.
The task of choosing what form the music will have is contained within the audio direction. Very simply put: the acoustic equivalent of video direction.
So,
the very first step needed to create the right soundtrack is a thorough explanation of what story are you going to tell, and to what audience.
And if you already have figured out both, just click here.