After 20 issues of the Score a Score Composer Newsletter, we knew it was time for a change. The world looks different than it did 20 months ago. The Earth has travelled 975,265,200 miles which is almost a full billion! It's so close to a billion that I probably should've just said it travelled a billion miles but I figured you would think I was just making it up if I just straight said "a billion."
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Anyway, my point is that this thing needed a change, an update, a fresh coat of paint. I needed to rebuild it from the ground up in a totally new newslettering system, painstakingly recreating every detail so it looked almost identical but was, in fact, brand new. And here it is. Buckle up, folks, this is Newsletter #21: Now in 3D!!!
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We sent out a little update to y'all but in case you missed it, this month Score a Score made history by releasing Presto! - the one button music solution!
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You can read all about it in Forbes or check out the commercial for more info but suffice it to say that SAS is now the easiest music company to contact in the world. This means the path between our clients and your music is clearer than ever before!
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Is it actually any faster than emailing or calling us? No, probably not, we already boasted a <10 minute response time, but it's a lot more fun!
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Rotten is a Netflix docu-series that exposes waste and corruption in the food industry. With its second season set to debut earlier this month, Netflix needed a track for the trailer that felt investigative, but with that true-crime, thriller excitement. They found the perfect cue on Dan Rosen's album Heliotrope.
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Taco Bell is always looking for the coolest modern tracks with that dreamlike quality and composer Josh Williams had just the cue for this spot showcasing their new vegetarian options.
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Danny Elfman - Suzie's Theme - This track from the To Die For soundtrack is upbeat, plucky and delicate but despite its surface-level pep and merriment, something sinister lurks just beneath. This becomes clearer with the entrance of the oddly troubling, child-like vocalizations - a key element you'll want to include if you can!
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Submit ideas inspired by this ref HERE with playlist name "#21 Susan Z"
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This trailer for His Dark Materials is dark, elegant, and dramatic. Sparse enough at times that you can really hear the individual instruments but built up enough that it still hits hard and sounds exciting and epic where it needs to. The virtuosic performances can be hard to replicate in the box but team up with the right bank or the right player and you'll be good to go!
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Submit ideas inspired by this ref HERE with playlist name "#21 Bill Pullman"
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Philip Glass - A Gentleman's Honor - Another orchestral + vocal reference here, but this one has a more regal feel to it, less cartoonish and playful. With a driving, staccato rhythm, minimalist arrangement, and repetitious structure, the piece subtracts as often as it adds, creating more of an evolution than a build.
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Submit ideas inspired by this ref HERE with playlist name "#21 Hurt Bones"
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Jay Z & Kanye West - No Church In The Wild - Finally something without a violin! The steady, pulsing beat and repeating, filter-sweeping guitar give this track a dark, confident swagger that makes it feel dangerous and exciting. It also holds back from going too big, this track is more about anticipation than a climax.
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Submit ideas inspired by this ref HERE with playlist name "#21 Ye2Z"
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We actually got some great questions this month after our request last month so thank you to all who sent them in! Keep 'em coming y'all!
"What is the best way to give SAS what they need, besides the obvious trends, to have a better chance at placements and not get “lost in the mix?"
To state the obvious a bit - creating exciting, cool music with super slick production is always going to help tracks stand out in our catalog and in our minds. It can help us if you contextualize your submissions as well, i.e. "I wrote this one with this reference in mind" or "This is my take on stuff that XBrand is using a lot lately."
Regular communication with our team can be a big help, too, and coming to us with your own ideas is a great approach. It can sometimes be hard to come up with a reference or a direction idea on the fly, so if you approach us with a few ideas of your own we can always help you focus in and expand on the best one.
"Is there a list you could send of SAS' most favorite metatags? …so we know what is being searched."
Great question, and one we've talked a lot about recently. Below is a word cloud that shows the keywords most often requested by our clients. This is not necessarily how we tag things internally, but should give a good idea of the language we use day to day speaking to clients.
Our internal tagging is often more extensive and granular, getting into the nitty-gritty of the arrangement and composition instead of strictly mood and genre. For example, clients don't often specifically ask for cello, but we'll use that tag internally as it might help us find something to replace a reference track that prominently features cello.
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Additionally, our public catalog also has a lot of our tags listed on the left under "genre" but this is still a work in progress at the moment as we actually use more separate tags than SourceAudio will allow (you'll see it ends at tags that begin with the letter P). So while that's not incredibly helpful, it does at least demonstrate the sorts of words being used in our metadata.
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I hope you enjoyed the first ever 3D newsletter. You may now take off your 3D glasses and dunk them in that weird cleaning liquid like they do at the movie theaters.
Happy Scoring everybody!
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8455 Beverly Blvd, Ste 309 Los Angeles, CA 90048
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