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Music beds

F

franksandhotdogs

Why are 30 second music beds for commercials always about half a second short?

I usually slow them down a little, especially for spots that go on one of the two stations in our cluster that are "on the bird".
 
I believe that is related to incidental use of a recording...the same reason why song previews on Napster and other services are always something like 29 or 29.5 seconds.
 
I think it's because the composer didn't write a 30 sec bed. In most cases they wrote a 2 minute or so bed and then producers (working for the music library company), have to cut the piece down into 30s, 60s etc, and since they have to still make it sound natural, the bed won't always be exactly 30 secs. I'm sure we've all come across beds that by the time the last note is finally done it's about 33 secs, or on the flip side, a last strum that satrts at 25 secs and barely makes it to 28 or 29 secs.

My advice, if you can't make the 30 sec bed work, take a look at the 60 or longer and try and cut that into an appropriate 30. It seems like a lot of work but, taking the very end and splicing it at the 30 sec mark (obviously match beats and key etc) is pretty fast and easy to do. I'd rather all beds were perfect but we don't live in a perfect world.

Randy.
 
franksandhotdogs said:
Why are 30 second music beds for commercials always about half a second short?

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First off, If you think in music composing terms, the beats per minute determine the lenght of a short piece of music.
Some bpm cannot end at an exact :30 or :60 lenght..some go longer, most shorter.

However, with the modern tools we have available, stretching or shortning a bed is no big deal.
Plus, I've had great success with the taking the :60 version and musically matching beats, and shorten it to exact lenght.

Have any of you found that elimination the intro, and get to the main beat of a :30 or :60 bed can help
in tailoring music for a commercial. Just as an intro to a vocal is to establish the song, the intro to commercial music most times is a waste of music..it doesn't establish immediately, and messes up the sound of the
spot.
Click to expand...
 
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