Mark Petrie | Ute smile

Trailer Music for Beginners

Everybody has heard Trailermusic, be it on TV for new series or in the cinema for new films or through the computer gaming industry.

I am a new but huge fan of Trailer Music and thought I share this with you as there is so much beautiful music in this genre. It is almost like classical but some much more monumental, some very emmotional and some just plain epic.

Movie trailer music: it’s not what you think

What is Trailer Music?

Trailer Music is the background music used for film previews, which is not always from the film’s soundtrack. Sweeping melodies and epic themes composed specifically to accompany motion picture footage, that has been crafted into a “trailer” – a mini story which serves to excite and inspire audiences to attend a movie.

The music is here to stop your heart, steal your breath and leave you gasping for more – so you really can’t wait to watch the film. Because the score for a movie is usually composed after the film is finished (which is much after trailers are released), a trailer will incorporate music from other sources.

The music used in the trailer may be:

Music from the score of other movies.
Popular or well-known music, often chosen for its tone, appropriateness of a lyric, or familiarity.
Classical music, such as Mozart’s Requiem or Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony.
Specially composed music.
“Library” music, which is previously, composed production music.

There are different kinds of trailers:

Theatrical Trailers – the official theatrical piece often 2 and half minutes long
Teaser Trailers – a short theatrical preview while the film is still being shot, minute and half long
TV Spots – 60 seconds long- for special events, sports events for example, or advertising a new series on TV.

Trailer Music is becoming more popular and there are many music companies out there, producing this music. The Fan base is growing steadily and there are fan clubs and facebook/ twitter groups, you can look into if you are interested.

Trailer music library companies typically do not offer their music to the public and develop and license music exclusively to the motion picture studios. Because trailers are released on the Web, fans are asking how they can get hold of the music. So Immediate Music did release a commercial album called “Trailerhead,” Reeltime Music with a double CD called “Coming Soon” and Two Steps From Hell with an album called “Invincible” and “Archangel”. They also can be downloaded on iTunes, or Amazon.

Famous trailer Music Companies are:

Immediate Music, a trailer library run by Jeff Fayman with his partner, Yoav Goren.
Two Steps from Hell – founded by Nick Phoenix and Thomas Bergersen
Audio Machine – Paul Dinletir
E.S.Posthumus
Sonic Symphony
X-Ray dog
Non Stop Music
City of the Fallen
Brickwall Audio – Erik Ekholm
Les Friction
Brand X Music
Future World Music – Armen Hambar
Position music

Please note this is not a complete list.

The art of scoring a trailer requires not only a certain style of thinking, but an entirely different approach to composition. Trailer scores are commissioned by production companies via “trailer houses”, which produce the final edit. They typically last two minutes and are split into three parts: beginning, middle and end, usually all containing different pieces and styles of music. The goal is to produce a heavily briefed, tightly wound and meticulously edited piece of work in which every second counts. (John Beal)

The team making the trailer selects tracks from these albums, licenses them (fees run $5,000 to $10,000 per track for international use, according to Bergersen), and then edits the available footage with that music. A trailer usually features at least three musical tracks. A typical formula, especially for dramas and event movies, is a soft start that gradually builds, leading to a climax that fades and “hopefully leaves people stunned,” Bergersen explained. (Excerpt Los Angeles Times By Emily Rome, April 8, 2012)

For Two Steps From Hell, selling music commercially is a more lucrative business than it is for many other libraries. It has sold more than 300,000 copies of its two albums on iTunes — a robust supplement to licensing music from its 17 albums available to clients.

Here are some famous composers of trailer music- again this is not a complete list, there are certainly a lot more, and also lots of young budding composers with lots of talent.

Thomas Bergersen and Nick Phoenix formed Two steps from Hell
Mark Petrie – wrote the amazing spiderman trailer
Paul Dinletir – Audiomachine
Erik Ekholm – Brickwall Audio
Zak Hemsey – wrote the Inception Trailer
Steve Jablonski – wrote trailer for Transformers
Hans Zimmer – too numerous to write all down
John Beal – Hunt for red October trailer, the Matrix trailer
Jo Blankenburg – Position Music
Thomas Adam Habuda – Media Music Factory
Krzysztof Wencel – Polish pianist and composer
Daniel Yount – Yogscast music composer
Armen Hambar – Future World Music
Rick Horrocks – RH Soundtracks

If you like what you see and hear, check out http://trailermusicvibe.blogspot.co.uk/which will give you more in dept information like interviews etc. And join the already existing fans.

Lots of Music samples of the above composers can be heard on “youtube” or “soundcloud”.

If this music gets your fantasy and imagination going why not write a story to some great epic trailer music. Have a look what can be done on the website below:

The Legend of Pandora – http://thelegendofpandoraseries.com/