Modern Native American Tracks NEEDED!
Kat1025
7 Jul 2015 18:03
Hello and good day! My name is Nolyn Falcon and I’m a musician turned video producer. One of my tasks is to search for Native American music for use in our private television network called GoodHealthTV. If you’re unaware, GHTV is health education television programming for Native Americans. It’s shown inside Indian Health Service facilities across the nation, mostly in hospital/clinic waiting rooms. We cover a wide range of mental and physical health issues: heart attacks, nutrition, learning disabilities, depression, diabetes, etc. You can see a sample here: https://youtu.be/Sg-D8JYF9H0
Being both a musician and a Native American myself, you would think I wouldn’t find it so difficult to find suitable Native American music for our programming. The problem is that the kind of music we need simply doesn’t exist. We’re hoping that you and your music producers can help us out by filling a void in the stock music marketplace. Please allow me to explain further.
To my knowledge, there are currently only a few types of “Native American music” that exist:
1. Tribal jungle sound: that works very well for intense, cinematic scenes (chases, wars, etc.), but that’s about it. We almost never need that. BOOM. Almost half of our selection is gone.
2. Meditative Native American flute music: This works well for reflective, emotional moods, but not much else. Even when it “works,” a lot of the tracks out there are a bit cheesy (new-age synthesizer over nature sounds, for example). They’re also outdated by about 30 years. Still, we must use them because they’re available.
3. Powwow music: I’m sure you know how intense this kind of music is -- hardly ever suitable for music bed purposes.
4. Native chant singing: The problem with this is similar to Powwow music, in that it’s very narrow in its usability. We also run into the problem that we can’t use any music with Native American lyrics without running the risk of sending mixed messages, let alone needing to find the English translations.
That leaves us maybe 1% of the Native American music pool. Needless to say, it’s pretty tough to find this music no matter how hard we search.
What We Need
What we need is a range of moods to be covered in music-bed form by blending modern styles of music with organic Native American sounds. Happy, playful, humorous, uplifting, inspiring, confusing, quirky, the list goes on indefinitely. Perhaps there’s even a way to fuse these Native sounds with traditional styles like jazz, Latin, hip-hop, R&B, funk, etc. To my knowledge, much of this music does not yet exist.
Some Solutions
1. Take several musical moods, turn them into simple music beds, and put Native American music samples on top of them (avoiding lyrical content).
2. Or reverse-engineer these tracks by starting with Native American instrument samples and building music beds from there.
I’m sure there are other approaches that would work as well. That’s just how I would personally go about it.
So, what do you think? Is this something you guys can help us out with? I’m sure there are many other applications for this kind of music in the video production world as well. Below you will find a link to some audio samples that may help your producers understand the kind of music we’re looking for.
Consider it this way: You are in a unique position to help create the next generation of Native American music. I see it as an opportunity to honor traditional Native music by re-vitalizing it with modern beats and sounds, bridging generational and cultural gaps along the way, and ultimately helping to restore traditional Native American culture; a noble effort to say the least.
https://soundcloud.com/falconsnest/sets/native-music-samples/s-iRJaF
Being both a musician and a Native American myself, you would think I wouldn’t find it so difficult to find suitable Native American music for our programming. The problem is that the kind of music we need simply doesn’t exist. We’re hoping that you and your music producers can help us out by filling a void in the stock music marketplace. Please allow me to explain further.
To my knowledge, there are currently only a few types of “Native American music” that exist:
1. Tribal jungle sound: that works very well for intense, cinematic scenes (chases, wars, etc.), but that’s about it. We almost never need that. BOOM. Almost half of our selection is gone.
2. Meditative Native American flute music: This works well for reflective, emotional moods, but not much else. Even when it “works,” a lot of the tracks out there are a bit cheesy (new-age synthesizer over nature sounds, for example). They’re also outdated by about 30 years. Still, we must use them because they’re available.
3. Powwow music: I’m sure you know how intense this kind of music is -- hardly ever suitable for music bed purposes.
4. Native chant singing: The problem with this is similar to Powwow music, in that it’s very narrow in its usability. We also run into the problem that we can’t use any music with Native American lyrics without running the risk of sending mixed messages, let alone needing to find the English translations.
That leaves us maybe 1% of the Native American music pool. Needless to say, it’s pretty tough to find this music no matter how hard we search.
What We Need
What we need is a range of moods to be covered in music-bed form by blending modern styles of music with organic Native American sounds. Happy, playful, humorous, uplifting, inspiring, confusing, quirky, the list goes on indefinitely. Perhaps there’s even a way to fuse these Native sounds with traditional styles like jazz, Latin, hip-hop, R&B, funk, etc. To my knowledge, much of this music does not yet exist.
Some Solutions
1. Take several musical moods, turn them into simple music beds, and put Native American music samples on top of them (avoiding lyrical content).
2. Or reverse-engineer these tracks by starting with Native American instrument samples and building music beds from there.
I’m sure there are other approaches that would work as well. That’s just how I would personally go about it.
So, what do you think? Is this something you guys can help us out with? I’m sure there are many other applications for this kind of music in the video production world as well. Below you will find a link to some audio samples that may help your producers understand the kind of music we’re looking for.
Consider it this way: You are in a unique position to help create the next generation of Native American music. I see it as an opportunity to honor traditional Native music by re-vitalizing it with modern beats and sounds, bridging generational and cultural gaps along the way, and ultimately helping to restore traditional Native American culture; a noble effort to say the least.
https://soundcloud.com/falconsnest/sets/native-music-samples/s-iRJaF
mellowstu
7 Jul 2015 23:53
Hi
I have this track available here which may fit what you are looking for.
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/8826128/promised-land.html
I'd certainly be interested in producing more tracks to fit this gap in the market. There's some interesting ideas there.
Thanks
Stuart.
I have this track available here which may fit what you are looking for.
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/8826128/promised-land.html
I'd certainly be interested in producing more tracks to fit this gap in the market. There's some interesting ideas there.
Thanks
Stuart.
Couchpot
9 Jul 2015 06:49
this is interesting. would you mind messaging me privately via my profile so we can discuss it further?
Kat1025
13 Jul 2015 18:48
Hey guys! I really appreciate the replies here. Mellostu, I believe that we've used that track before! It's definitely useable. Couchpot, I would be happy to talk further if you wouldn't mind reaching out to my e-mail address here: nfalcon@katcommunications.com. Thanks again for replying guys! Hope to work with you soon.
Nolyn
p.s. If you feel like you want to make native-influenced tracks that you're inspired to make to upload to pond5, please notify me via e-mail and I will make to sure buy it the next time we can use it. Trust me! We need all the help we can get.
Nolyn
p.s. If you feel like you want to make native-influenced tracks that you're inspired to make to upload to pond5, please notify me via e-mail and I will make to sure buy it the next time we can use it. Trust me! We need all the help we can get.
Epikton
16 Jul 2015 16:00
You can check these 2
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/43343101/earth-cinematic-uplifting-action-soundtrack.html
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/48427356/apocalyptic-warriors-epic-primitive-action-blockbuster-cinem.html
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/43343101/earth-cinematic-uplifting-action-soundtrack.html
http://www.pond5.com/stock-music/48427356/apocalyptic-warriors-epic-primitive-action-blockbuster-cinem.html