5 Trailer Music Tips From Nick Road

Walid Feghali

February 24, 2024

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Today we have a very exclusive feature on the topic of trailer music for you guys. Nick Road, a well-known and successful trailer music composer from Ukraine has shared his top 5 trailer music tips with us. Nick’s music has been featured in many Hollywood movie and game campaigns such as Civil War, Deadpool, X-Men Apocalypse, Daredevil, San Andreas, Batman: Arkham Knight, and more.Here are his 5 tips and advice for trailer music composers and beginning composers out there:

#1. Analyze

First of all, try to analyze what sort of trailer music is wanted right now. What demand is there in the market? It’s all about trends and fitting into those trends with your own music. Today it’s hybrid cues with a lot of synths and sound design baked in with orchestra and tomorrow is can be purely sound design with minimal orchestra, or even just pure emotional orchestral cues for full trailers. Just analyze what trends are going on and try tofeel the wave.

#2. Have fun

After you have a good idea of what the demand is today, try then to understand in which style you are proficient and makes you happy when writing. As for me, i can write one uplifting track in a month and it’ll be a real pain, but when I write dark hybrid cues i feel much more better; more secure and it gives me greater satisfaction. Have fun and compose what you mostly like to compose. This is important.

#3. Listen to proper feedback

Hold yourself, and accept the feedback when you get critiqued or some supervisor tells you how to improve your track. Even if you need to make 10 changes and more – just do it. Be quiet! Hold your ambitions and pride. 9 out of 10 cases, your track will be more licensable if you listen to the people who know how to supervise. It’s their job. Supervisors listen to trailer music and watch trailers every day and they can quickly tell you what’s wrong in your cue, and also how to fix it. Their criticism is not an attack on you as a composer or your musical style. It’s just advice for how to improve your track to have even higher chances of success in this specific industry, with regards to the currenttrends and needs. Listen to the supervisors and learn how to accept constructive criticism.

#4. Write efficiently

Okay, now. Your productivity! You should try to work and write efficiently – not every track to perfection. One amazing track with top-notch mixing with a perfect sound is great, but you need to write some more. It doesn’t mean that you should value quantity over quality, but perfectionism is your enemy if you want to get your music licensed a lot. Just make your track sound great, and move on to the next one! Be productive!

#5. Visualize the goal

Finally, and maybe a bit new-agey, but importantly: talk to the universe. Visualize your dreams, where you want your music to be in, what you want to write for – think about all of them and vividly picture them coming true. Because with patience, faith and perseverance – they will.

Bonus tip!

Oh, yeah – don’t forget to backup your system and projects! Safe composing!That it for now, guys. This was a great insight into Nick Road’s top 5 advice for writing and locking in those trailer music placements. Thanks so much, Nick!Check out Nick’s track Harbringer (Colossal Trailer Music)here: