The right trailer can set the success of a film, a video game or a tv show before they are released. It is a major element in the big marketing machine of studios’ release plans and the music that goes along with the visual part of a trailer plays no small part in that. There is a lot of players in the game that have this formula down to a tee: Extreme Music, Two Steps From Hell, Immediate Music, Audiomachine, Brand X, Ninja Tracks, Really Slow Motion, Confidential Music, HiÂFinesse, Sencit, Riptide Music, just to name a few. And each of them bring a different flavor to the table.
One of the more exciting things in the modern trailer music world is the incredible phenomena where a single sound can make a trailer track stand out. Writing trailer music is a very different style of music and different style of writing as a composer to begin with. Here are some of the most recognizable trailer sounds of the recent years:
3. The “Distortion Booms” and “Stutter Downers” in the Elysium Trailer
Original Track: HiÂFinesse “Radius”
4. The “Pulsating Atmospheres” in the Titanfall trailer:
Original Track: Danny Cocke “Sinister Intent”
5. The “Distorted Drum Kits and Synthesizers”:
– that you can hear in a lot of the music by Ninja Tracks, such as “Tension Ratio” or “Exposure” (below):
6. The “Distorted Risers” at the end of Twelve Titans Music’s “Artifice”, used in Avengers: Age of Ultron:
[tweet_box]The 10 Signature Sound Elements of Modern Movie Trailers:[/tweet_box]
7. The “Filtered Guitar Alarm” in the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Trailer:
Original Track: Think Up Anger “Mission Ready”
8. The “Bowed Metal Sounds” in the Interstellar Trailer:
Original Track: Confidential Music “View From The Voyager”
There’s a growing number of trailer sound libraries out there – here are some of the most popular new ones:
9. The remix of Cat Stevens’ Wild World in the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer:
Original Track: Confidential Music “Shepherd” (the track was also used on the The Martian campaign)
10. And of course the very iconic machine gun style electric guitar sound of Attila Ats track “Shredder”
– used in the Oblivion, World War Z, Star Trek Into Darkness and many other trailers.
The focus on these individual marker sounds will only become more important. We live in a world where technology progresses faster by the minute and there is so much noise that is trying to get our attention. To cut through that, you need to create something that is truly memorable and instantly recognizable, because as unappealing as this may sound, trailer music is music for advertising and is there to help sell a product or to help sell tickets. Since there is only a very short amount of time in which you can sell a story to the audience you need those “Musical USPs”.
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This is a unique bicycle library that captures road surfaces from the perspective of super quiet bicycle. These are clean, quiet, nicely performed true exterior rides. Including multiple perspectives, speeds and actions. From fast passbys on asphalt to slow onboard recordings and smooth stops.
The Extra Surfaces library provides 162 sounds captured on the following road types Large Bricks, Gravel, Grit, Icy Asphalt.
The four additional ‘onboard road’ surfaces are the perfect extension for your other ‘City Bicycle’ library of taste. Just add it as a layer, mix it and voila your bicycle can move from gravel to bricks to grit or from large bricks to slippery icy asphalt roads.
Speeds and actions:
Three speeds. Departures from slow, medium to fast getaways. Arrivals from slow stops with gently brakes to smooth departures.
Five perspectives:
1. Onboard Front: captures the whirring tire and surface sound.
2. Onboard Pedal: nice overall combination of pedaling, crank creaks, chain rattle, tire and surface sounds.
3. Onboard Rear: close up sound of the rear axle, with chain, sprocket and switching of gear.
4. Tracking shot: mono recording of the passby, keeping the bike in focus while passing by.
5. Static XY shot: stereo recording of the passby that emphasizes speed.
Overview of perspectives and mic placement:
Onboard recordings are 2-3 minutes long depending on speed. Higher speeds > shorter duration.
All 3 onboard mics are edited in sync with one another to make layering easy.
All Passbys, Arrivals and Departures move from Left to Right.Metadata & Markers:
Because we know how important metadata is for your sound libraries we have created a consistent and intuitive description method that adheres to the Universal Category System. This allows you to find the sound you need easily, whether you work in a database like Soundminer/Basehead/PT Workspace work, or a Exporer/Finder window. We made a video that helps you navigate the library ans find your best bicycle sounds faster and easier.
CategoryFull
A quick way to filter out sounds you don’t need: like handling sounds or vice versa bicycle onboards.UserCategory
Fastest way to find the type of action you need for all bicycles. Passby needed, just click and voila.
OpenTier
Once you’ve selected the bike you can open up OpenTier and audition and select the perspective you want to use.Scene &Â Performer
This field contains the type of bicycle or other sound. So you can find the bike you like fast.iXMLTrackLayout
This is a neat little identifier you will find in the Waveform displays and you can see in a glance what Listening position you are.
MicPerspective
We have another way to find perspectives but it is more limited to distance to the recorded subject.
So passbys are MED – EXT and handling are CU – EXT. Exterior? Of course: we recorded everything outside!UserComments
We used this field to create the UserData and give you the minimal set of information about the recording in the filename.Additionally, we added Markers to some wave files, so specific sound events are easy to spot in Soundminer and other apps.
If you have any questions about this, please contact us info@frickandtraa.com!
Need more?
The GoodBike library is a part of the ‘City Bicycles – Complete Bundle‘ available here in the A Sound Effect store. It consists of all 4 bicycles and includes additional surfaces and extras ranging from one-off bicycle passes captured in the city and bounces and rattles. If you buy the complete bundle you get 1 package for free!Here’s a handy comparison table:
Responses:344 AUDIO: ‘City Bicycles has a plethora of content, for a great price. The perfect balance between a great concept, great presentation and outstanding execution, lands them an almost perfect score of 4.9..‘
The Audio Spotlight: City Bicycles is worth getting if you are in need of great sounding and well edited bicycle sounds.
Watch a video created by Zdravko Djordjevic.
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This is a unique bicycle library that captures this characteristic bike in clean, quiet, nicely performed true exterior rides. Including multiple perspectives, speeds and actions. From fast passbys on asphalt to slow onboard recordings and smooth stops.
The GoodBike is a smooth sounding retro bike that doesn’t rattle or squeak, it has a really nice tire sound for a subtle presence in the mix.
Speeds and actions:
Three speeds. Departures from slow, medium to fast getaways. Arrivals from slow stops with gently squeaking handbrakes to heavy stuttering skids.Five perspectives:
1. Onboard Front: captures the whirring tire and surface sound.
2. Onboard Pedal: nice overall combination of pedaling, crank creaks, chain rattle, tire and surface sounds.
3. Onboard Rear: close up sound of the rear axle, with chain, sprocket and switching of gear.
4. Tracking shot: mono recording of the passby, keeping the bike in focus while passing by.
5. Static XY shot: stereo recording of the passby that emphasizes speed.
Overview of perspectives and mic placement:
Onboard recordings are 2-3 minutes long depending on speed. Higher speeds > shorter duration.
All 3 onboard mics are edited in sync with one another to make layering easy.
All Passbys, Arrivals and Departures move from Left to Right.Metadata & Markers:
Because we know how important metadata is for your sound libraries we have created a consistent and intuitive description method that adheres to the Universal Category System. This allows you to find the sound you need easily, whether you work in a database like Soundminer/Basehead/PT Workspace work, or a Exporer/Finder window. We made a video that helps you navigate the library ans find your best bicycle sounds faster and easier.
CategoryFull
A quick way to filter out sounds you don’t need: like handling sounds or vice versa bicycle onboards.UserCategory
Fastest way to find the type of action you need for all bicycles. Passby needed, just click and voila.
OpenTier
Once you’ve selected the bike you can open up OpenTier and audition and select the perspective you want to use.Scene &Â Performer
This field contains the type of bicycle or other sound. So you can find the bike you like fast.iXMLTrackLayout
This is a neat little identifier you will find in the Waveform displays and you can see in a glance what Listening position you are.
MicPerspective
We have another way to find perspectives but it is more limited to distance to the recorded subject.
So passbys are MED – EXT and handling are CU – EXT. Exterior? Of course: we recorded everything outside!UserComments
We used this field to create the UserData and give you the minimal set of information about the recording in the filename.Additionally, we added Markers to some wave files, so specific sound events are easy to spot in Soundminer and other apps.
If you have any questions about this, please contact us info@frickandtraa.com!
Need more?
The GoodBike library is a part of the ‘City Bicycles – Complete Bundle‘ available here in the A Sound Effect store. It consists of all 4 bicycles and includes additional surfaces and extras ranging from one-off bicycle passes captured in the city and bounces and rattles. If you buy the complete bundle you get 1 package for free!Here’s a handy comparison table:
Here’s a handy comparison table:
Responses:344 AUDIO: ‘City Bicycles has a plethora of content, for a great price. The perfect balance between a great concept, great presentation and outstanding execution, lands them an almost perfect score of 4.9..‘
The Audio Spotlight: City Bicycles is worth getting if you are in need of great sounding and well edited bicycle sounds.
Watch a video created by Zdravko Djordjevic.
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It is very hard to predict trends or predict which tracks will work with the audience. Things that have shown to be quite popular are piano intros with a lot of reverb (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, etc.) and of course the trailerized covers of songs (see #9 on the list above). The last category in particular seems to be becoming more and more popular and prominent in trailers of all types and genres, so keep an eye out for those.
• Behind the excellent Star Wars Battlefront trailer sound design – ft Charles Deenen, Csaba Wagner, Thomas Brewer
• Exclusive Insights From A Trailer Sound Design Expert – featuring trailer sound designer Bryan Jerden
• Behind the cinematic sound of Blizzard’s spectacular Overwatch trailer – featuring Paul Menichini
I talk a lot to up and coming trailer guys and if there’s a list of things that you could hand out to people who are interested in getting into writing for trailers, I would say:
• Production value: Almost more important these days than proper orchestration is the quality of your track. You need to be able to deliver a highÂquality, polished track.
• Be loud but be reasonable with your mastering and your compression. It is totally fine to use things like New York compression and multiÂband distortion on the master bus, but do it within reason. Things can always be made louder at the end, but it is difficult to bring things back down from an overly normalized and compressed track.
• Write for the trailer editor and make that a priority: Provide a number of sections in each track that are easy to cut while still providing a great and cohesive piece of music.
• More than ever it is important to find your own voice as a composer. There is a lot more competition and it is very easy for trailer companies to find young composers. So take your time, do your research and find the style that suits you best. You won’t be able to do a lot of styles well, so really be honest with yourself and focus on your own style.
• Melody is still important. Despite the fact that knowing synthesis and sound design well is very important, being able to write a catchy melody still means a lot. There is only a few composers that can do that well. So you could be one of them.
• Song titles actually do matter, so keep that in mind. You want to catch the eye of trailer editor, so tailor your song titles to what movie genre you think clients could use it in.
Most importantly, if you decide to go for a career in the trailer music industry bring a lot of patience with you. It takes time to get your first placement, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t land an international blockbuster trailer within your first two months.
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The Audio Imperia Producers & Developers
Valentin Boomes • Danny Cocke • Joshua Crispin • Histibe • Dylan Jones • Bryan Leach • Darin Leach • Tomás Lobos Kunstmann • Paul Ortiz • Jeremiah Pena
About Jan Hoeglund
After finishing his graduate degree in Chinese, Jan moved to the US from Germany in 2010. “Fresh off the boat” he got got job working at an artist management agency handling the day-to-day management for bands such as Periphery, The Word Alive, We Came As Romans, and others. Being very passionate about cinematic music, trailer music in particular, he eventually switched over to working in the field of sampled instruments where he started working for 8Dio first, before joining the amazing team at Soundiron. He’s also involved in the Audio Imperia label, which was created to provide talented trailer music sound designers a creative platform to showcase their talents.
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