Word Up!
Every few years a new adjective dies a slow death,
overused in creative conversations to describe the
music clients want. How do we escape the cycle?
Energetic, driving, edgy, cool, organic. It’s not that these trendy words are particularly bad, they've just been played out. The reality is that it can be tough to find a replacement for the word "edge" when you haven't yet nailed down the rest of your musical criteria, decided on a genre, or even chosen a composer. We still use these words in the studio, and no, we don't cringe when they’re mentioned on every conference call. But we discount them almost immediately because they just don't mean anything anymore.
There are certainly many ways to communicate about music without having to use words to explain what you want. Referencing an existing song and saying, "let's make something that sounds like this," is the easiest way to do it. It’s common practice for us all to reference songs and bands; it’s how we bridge differences in our collective musical tastes and backgrounds. The practice of establishing clear cultural reference points is especially important when the end result must appeal to a specific audience. But there’s also no denying that it handcuffs the composer into telling your story in a manner that greatly limits their creativity.
Another way to arrive at what you want is to ask many different composers or vendors to share all possible ideas. The client gets to choose from a buffet table of options, and consider many unexpected solutions. Throw it all up against the wall and see what sticks. When there are many potential approaches we do this internally to pool the best ideas. The downside is that most of those options will probably be a waste of time, either for you or
the people who created them, and it typically makes for an insecure client presentation.
The fact remains that music is one of the most difficult things in the world to talk about. Non-musicians get nervous, thinking that they need to use correct terminology, and professional musicians can get too nerdy for their own good. Even if everyone could speak educatedly about music, we all listen differently.
Years ago we realized there was a much better way to talk about music, and you didn't have to be a musician or have any musical knowledge to use it. While meta-tagging our music library we created an exhaustive list of adjectives, only realizing afterwards that we had built a wonderful resource to describe the mood you feel when you listen, or better yet, the emotion you want to create in a listener. As simple as that, one of our key strategic practices was born and we've used it on every job since. By isolating a few key adjectives to sum up the goal of a composition, we're able to pinpoint our intentions without defaulting to clichés.
Having a taxonomy of adjectives that apply to music isn't a genius idea, but when you use it on a daily basis, you may start to feel like genius. It certainly is a practice worth continuing and worth sharing, so here's our PDF of musical descriptors. We're always trying to improve this list, so have a look, add suggestions, and the next time you're describing music, maybe it will come in handy.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF
