How to prepare a Music Brief?

Create a langauge that everyone speaks, Music brief is the way to communicate and evoke emotions,

Music brief is one of the major approaches that brings life to the overall music production. Music briefs helps creative director to understand clients need and meet them. Moreover, composer and business professionals’ approach it in different ways. Here are some preliminary insights that lead you to How to prepare a Music Brief?

Normally, it is a producer, composer or music supervisor who prepares a music brief. It is the years of ability of the creators to understand and deliver the need of clients, the music they are expecting. Sometimes briefing process can be a real challenge as clients may not be able to express the exact music they want. It is obvious as music is inexplicable. Here are some preliminary insights that hopefully help you understand how to prepare a brief.

The most convenient approach one can follow

For a creative director, it is best to talk with clients. Giving a short introduction of the team can help to give a better idea of the team , the theme they are focusing the most. Likewise, artist photos can be a real help. If you are an artist, you should write all basic intro and the information related to you. For instance, it can be the website and any social media links, including your audience videos.

Type of Formats:

Clearly having client’s format can be an easy way to craft a music brief.

Who is your audience?
What is your deadline? (Having specific deadlines will help to specify the process structure and timeline beforehand)
What is the budget?

Therefore, to land composer and client in the same pace, music brief should be the one that matches the real essence of the client’s requirement despite of the musical jargon’s and technicalities in them.

Music is a language. And like any other language, this takes time to get inside a head and to be able to communicate effectively.

# Express the existence & origin of your brand

The most essential part of the music brief is knowing your brands identity. This will add spark to creative minds and help to keep audio identity that will assist in the future productions.

# Give references

Describing your vision to composers would give a concrete view by adding reference tracks. It can also be real help for composers to locate new sounds. For BAM, we have reference of tags that will to synch to the mood of the music brief.

To be honest, music is a language in itself. Similar to other language, it takes time to get into head. But, having an honest convey of ideas with clients will help a lot. Music brief is the mindset of both historical and musical jargons.

Here are some summarized key take away for preparing Music Brief

Give clear product description
Provide brand introduction with brand book
List the related key words or adjectives you are going to convey
Describe the purpose of the music production and target audience
Provide reference track and the best part
Work with different versions of music to find the best fit
Revise with composers

Hope this gave you general idea on crafting a Music Brief. So, the canvas is in your hand. Paint it the way you want and add splendid element to your content. For more musical content, you can go through BAM’s playlist.

Lucas Michel