July 15, 2017

Perk Up Your Production With Percussion

Why A Good Beat Moves Your Show

Composer Antonio Sanchez created one of the most ingenious scores for the film Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.) Were there soaring strings, evocative woodwinds and triumphant brass statements? Nope. The entire score for this four Oscar-winning film was played on the drums. And did it ever move this uniquely unusual movie!

 You probably notice percussion tracks adding excitement to films and television shows more frequently these days, particularly in action sequences. Without melodic instruments, two things can be accomplished. First, you can mix the music much louder to intensify a scene and secondly, you’ll find that dialog will (usually) find a perfect place in the audio spectrum to be heard above the drums.

The CSS Music library provides a couple ways to bring you the power of percussion. If you’re looking for a driving Dance groove, there’s typically a “breakdown” section in one of our Club-House-Trance-Electro tracks that you’ll find on our Hand Picked Genre menu on our home page. We also have an entire disc devoted to drums with Super Themes Volume 56 “Drumscapes.” This collection covers everything from hip marching drum lines to cool hip-hop to blazing fast percussive underscores.

Another option that doesn’t quite offer pure percussion but does give you stripped down rhythm mixes can be found in the CSS Music PowerTrax library. In addition to full mixes, each PowerTrax tune comes with a corresponding rhythm mix. You’ll also find some useful mix-outs in some of our latest releases. Simply type “cue” into our Build-A-Search engine and audition some of these odd-length tracks.


Maybe the poor drummer (Q: What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend? A: homeless) will finally get some respect. Whether it’s an African call-and-response, a funky groove or a jazzy drum set like in Birdman, the use of percussion will really add new colors to your shows.

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