You can either Browse for Music by Using The Navigation Menu – Or you can Search For Music (more on this below).
 Browsing Through Navigation Menu
If you look up at the new Top Nav Bar (drum roll please), you can see that there’s handy pulldown menus to browse through our music categories:
a) Browse Music By Genre
This is the fancy name music programmers (and the Head Monk) use for style as in like Rock or Hip-Hop or Country etc.
b) Browse Music By Mood
This is like how filmmakers think when they’re setting a scene. Â Or like when you’re searching for a movie to watch at Netflix or iTunes, things like Action-Adventure or Horror or Romantic Comedy. Â Some of us monks think it would be cool if you could put Horror music to a Romantic Comedy!
c) Browse Music By Setting
This is describing what type of project you are working on such as a Wedding Video or a Documentary or a Trailer. Â Did you know that Book Authors are making trailers all the time now? Â That’s nifty!
Search For Music
There’s actually 2 search engines on this site. Â One is up to your right on the top of the site. Â This one is an overall site search. Â You can type in band names or songs or moods to get these kind of results:
Coldplay (https://www.300monks.com/?s=coldplay)
Lady Gaga https://www.300monks.com/?s=gaga
or a famous piece like Ride of the Valkyries.  https://www.300monks.com/?s=valkyries
Product Specific Search
The following Search Box is specific to the product catalog. Â This can be useful in finding the track you previously downloaded and you only have the name of the file.
Product Search
Download a Preview File
After you find a track or many soundtracks that you like, you can easily download a preview file to try out in your project. Â This way you can really sense if it’s working and even show it to your client, producer, mother, significant other or even your cat.
Here’s what our tracks look like in the store. Â See the download link?
Artist/Composer: John Herberman Reflective and introspective piano. Simple, clear and memorable melody that tugs at the heart in an understated manner. Excellent for extended scene without dialogue or as a principal theme. A version with strings is also available that can be cut in and out, as the string entries and exits are orchestrated to be easily editable. Good for romance, drama, TV/feature film.
After you have finalized your music choice, come back to the site and purchase the license for the use you need. Â There’s a handy dropdown menu that you can use and it updates the price as you select. Â If you need a fast way to find your track again, type in the name of the preview file you downloaded. Â For example: Â GeoffreyWilson5 or jean_paul_zoghbi30.
Checkout
We use both PayPal and 2Checkout to process payments. Â You can choose either one. Â After checkout you will be returned to the 300 Monks site for a download link. Â You will also receive a link in your email that is valid for up to 48 hours.
A Note About Errors in the Music Categories
Now we did a lot of work, but still the Head Monk has been hitting some of us poor lads with his stick and yelling “This is in the wrong category!”  Yes, we know, very un-mindful of him to be yelling and hitting us with a stick!  But it was just a light bamboo one.  Anyway, there will be times when music is in the wrong place, and we’d appreciate it if you told us.  We may even be able to send you a little gift or reward for doing so.  Just don’t bother the Head Monk.  Send it to us regular brother monks (and sisters) here:  errors (at) 300Monks.com  – That’s of course the @ sign.  We did that so the spam robots wouldn’t deluge us with junk mail.
So let’s talk about another Wes Anderson film you worked on, “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” which is a wonderful animated film about a family of foxes, and when – who are endangered both on the dysfunctional family level and on the enemy animals out to get them and enemy humans out to get them level. And at the end of the film, you use a great recording called “Let Her Dance” by The Bobby Fuller Four. It’s from the mid ’60s, and that group was most famous for the iconic song “I Fought the Law and the Law Won.”
How did you decide to use this record at the end of the movie?
POSTER: Well, this is one of those sort of special scenarios. That song that I played for Wes probably 10 years ago, and when we played it, we basically, we were listening to it, he said, you know, let’s put this one away, let’s lock it up in the safe. And so we had it and we’d been carrying it all these years and then finally there was the opportunity at the end of the movie to use Bobby Fuller. So Wes and I, we’re always working, and so – and we’re always sharing music and we find something and we sort of tag it and say, OK, this is something that we know we want to use somewhere, some day, and good fortune smiles upon us and we find what we think is the perfect moment. And so that’s how Bobby Fuller’s “Let Her Dance” ended up in “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
GROSS: So I want to play it. And I’ll just like describe the scene. This is the end of the movie. Mr. Fox, played by George Clooney, in a voice by George Clooney, is in the supermarket and all the rest of the family foxes are there too. And so, you know, Mr. Fox is toasting about how they’ve survived and they’re going to survive, and even all the supermarket food that they have to eat now is fake food…
POSTER: Right.
GROSS: …they can make it work. And then they just all break out into this dance in the supermarket. And, of course, it’s all animated. It’s all beautifully animated. And so here is the song they dance to. This is The Bobby Fuller Four.
Documentary Films have a different process than a fictional narrative. Â Most of the time, the filmmaker has a story outline they are trying to tell, but as shooting commences, life happens! Â Unexpected events arise and what was going to be the dramatic climax is eclipsed by something more interesting or unusual.
To use music to score the film, you can hire a composer to start developing a library of musical themes for the story. Â This is something I’ve done several times and it works quite well. Â Because of the fluid nature of documentaries, you can provide the only constant to the whole process which is a consistent emotional tone with the music. Â Documentaries come together in the editing process and by having a library of thought out music to tell this story is extremely helpful.
You can also do this by carefully selecting similar pieces of music in a production music library like 300 Monks. Â Sometimes you can get great results by using several different pieces by the same composer or even different sections of the same piece. Â By the way, you can tell if a piece is by the same composer by the visual icon which are assigned to each composer.
You can also wait until a rough edit of the picture is done and then score the piece with a composer or by choosing from our music library.
Ways to Use Music In a Documentary
Create a memorable theme that becomes the audio mnenomic and branding for the film. Â This is what every television series and commercial tries to do, why not you?
Create musical themes for characters to unite the storytelling
Create musical themes for sections of the story
Background emotional shading – music is pure emotion and can often lead the audience to a heightened feeling that was impossible without it
Foreshadowing of something to come
To unite a montage of pictures, video
Covering up the sound of bad production audio
Masking location audio which you have no rights to, such as the radio is on in the background
Ironic or strange juxtapositions – You can do what Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Cameron Crowe famously do, put music emotionally is the opposite of what we would expect.
Here’s a video that goes over some of the basics of music for a documentary. Â He forgot to mention that you can license music through a website like ours for affordable and legal clearance.
This is a portion of a panel from the Music In Film Summit 2010. Obviously this case study example, Despicable Me, is out of the budget range of almost all independent filmmakers, but it does give an idea of all the behind the scenes things that are necessary to select and create music for a film.
Unfortunately, we don’t see the shot with and without the music, but listening to the discussion gives a broad overview of how composers and music supervisors approach storytelling aspect. I always think of scoring film as sort of like taking a big gigantic AUDIO HIGHLIGHTER through the script which I use in multiple colors to draw attention and manipulate the emotions of the audience.
This is mostly about the relationship aspect of making a film work with building a good creative team which includes Director, Producer, Composer and Music Supervisor.
This is one of the best examples of how music can be used to change the complete intention of the storyline in your film or video.
Pretty hysterical how over the top their musical choices are.
They also have a pretty clever sponsorship product placement.
Here’s some tips for using our Production Music Online Store. We’ve heard that some of you haven’t noticed our NEW FEATURE of FREE DOWNLOADS of COMP FILES.
If you look right under the title of any song or track in the production music library, there’s a link called Download Music Preview. This will allow you to download any of our music files (with audio watermark) and insert it into your presentation, or video or film or website –so you can get your client approval (or your significant other!)
This makes life much easier so you don’t have to guess whether the timing is right or if it works well to your project. Then, when all is worked out, and the client has said “You are a Creative Genius!”
you can come back and purchase the clean version, insert it and voila, you’re done.
Here’s some handy steps:
Search or Browse for the music based on genre, or a band or artist you like, or even by the mood of the music
Listen to the preview music tracks
Download the associated music preview file for comping into your design or video edit
Show it to your client or partners and get their approval.
Come back here and search by typing in the name of the track or the product ID (same as the file name of the music preview file)
License and Download
Here’s a handy graphic that says a thousand words.
Browsing Through Navigation Menu
Search For Music
Download a Preview File
 Select Usage
