Music supervision and scoring direction

Treat music as a production decision, not decoration. A strong music plan explains what the audience should feel, where music should enter and leave, what rights path is safe, how the cue will survive edit changes, and how the final mix will protect speech, captions, audio description, and delivery specs.

Use this skill to produce a music supervision plan, score brief, licensed-track shortlist, AI-music prompt, cue sheet draft, mix handoff, or music QA review for audiovisual work.

Evidence labels

Use these labels when making claims or giving recommendations:

• Documented fact: supported by law, standards, official platform docs, PRO guidance, or other authoritative sources. Date volatile facts.
• Empirical observation: based on inspecting the actual edit, stems, waveform, transcript, delivery specs, or generated outputs.
• Production heuristic: a practical recommendation that often works but depends on the brief, audience, platform, and mix.

Do not turn a heuristic into a rule. For example, "trailer drums should always rise" is weak; "this trailer's second act needs rhythmic acceleration because the edit compresses from 3-second shots to 0.8-second shots" is useful.

First pass: define the music job

Before choosing music, answer these production questions: