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COMP TRACKS IN REAL-TIME WITH OUR VIDEO PREVIEW TOOL
| | Fast - Find the right music faster by comping tracks with your video online |
| | Private - Videos load instantly and are never stored on our server! |
| | Multiple Sources - Use videos from your device or videos online! |
Learn more about our video preview tool HERE
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DownloadRoyalty Free Drama Music
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Music for dramas
More than any other genre of film, dramas deal with a wide variety of themes. From grief, romance, action, to suspense, film dramas can potentially have it all. Choosing music for dramas means making sure all of the different themes get their own identity,
The tricky bit is that you have to do this while maintaining continuity where possible. As impossible as that might sound, you can't just throw in as many musical styles as possible and hope that it works.
To keep you on the right track, we can look at a couple of potential themes and maintain continuity.
Dealing with Grief
When dealing with profound sadness, there are two things that you need to keep in mind, key and tempo.
Sad songs tend to be in a minor key, although the tempo plays a big part in the defining emotion, too. A slower tempo with minor chord changes can evoke real sadness, but raise the tempo on that same music, and the emotion can change from sadness to anger.
As a guide, we would suggest minor tracks in the tempo range of 70-90 bpm. Use that as a guide, but there are exceptions, so if you find the perfect track outside of that range, use it.
In Suspense
Suspense is all about tension and timing. Although the music that creates suspense might predominantly be in a minor key, the key isn't the most important factor.
The suspense comes when you don't know what to expect and when to expect it. With that in mind, suspenseful music should be somewhat of a slow burn. The viewer needs time and space to let their anxiety build; nothing should be constant.
Music that is busy or predictable is too consistent to create tension and anxiety. As unmusical as it may seem, silence is a defining part of suspenseful music. Don't be scared to leave gaps in your music, or leave uncomfortable chords hanging for extended periods.
Piano based music and orchestral music is often ideal for this kind of use. As a guide, if you ever feel completely comfortable watching a suspense scene, the music is wrong. That means we get to plug our awesome video preview tool again, use it!
Maintaining Continuity
Music for dramas that deal with multiple emotions can be difficult to get right. You could choose the perfect tracks for 20 individual scenes, but it just doesn't work as a whole film. It's crucial that you don't go down that path; otherwise, you may never get back.
Like a good movie plot, music can develop over time. One fantastic way to maintain some continuity is to reuse different parts of the same track. If you find a track with a great melody that gets more intense as time goes on, it could cover multiple scenes.
For example, a melody might start with a piano, but in the second verse, it could be a soaring lead guitar. That gives you the opportunity to introduce a melody early on in story development, and up the ante as the plot thickens. If you can do this, the audience will start to connect certain melodies or even chords to specific emotions.
Just for fun, check out some of the worst continuity errors in modern cinema.