In our experience working with beginning students, their intuitive sense of what is appropriate for a media piece is by far their most developed skill in the storytelling arts. In an era where we describe an entire generation as "the children of MTV," as people defined by their absorption of visual media in the context of music, is it any real surprise?

We have come to believe that people now walk around with soundtracks running in their heads. Those soundtracks set the mood of our day, change the way we perceive the visual information streaming into our eyes, and establish a rhythm for our step. It is as if by listening to or imagining a specific slice of music, we are putting ourselves into our own movie, a movie that puts our life into a clearer perspective, or at least entertains us.

From earlier and earlier ages we are aware of the trick that music can play on our perception of visual information. We are all aware of how music in a film stirs up an emotional response very different than what the visual information inherently suggests. The sudden opening of the door becomes the prelude to disaster, when the swelling treble of orchestrated strings calls out suspense to our ears. A sweetly flowing melody over two people looking at each other for the first time signals that these are the romantic characters we will be following in the plot. We know upbeat music means happy endings, slow and tremulous music means sadness is forecast, fast music means action, heroic music means battles and victorious heroes are likely. We know the stereotype, and it is repeated enough from one show to the next that we often laugh when we catch ourselves being caught up in the manipulation. As such, even the beginning student makes appropriate decisions about music that either play into or against the stereotype.

The majority of our students use popular lyrical music. While the songs usually work, mistakes are sometimes made in mixing the lyrical story of the song and the voiceover narrative in a way that gives us an unintended conflict of meaning. I remember a young student who liked a particular song that had an appropriate tempo and timbre for his story about his family, but in listening a bit more to the lyrics, we realized the song was a fairly steamy account of passion. We asked if that was intended and the student admitted that he had not really thought about what was being said in the song.

Instrumental music, be it classical, folk, jazz, or ambient, is often better suited to the style and meaning of the story’s text and visual narratives. The digital context makes testing a particular music in the video much easier than in film and analog media, and so experimentation is encouraged. You may find that, by going against the expected, you create another complete layer of meaning that adds depth and complexity to your story.

Are music videos, or the juxtaposition of music and visual information in a media piece without text and voiceover, storytelling? The answer is yes. However, the specificity of language and the complexity of information that the human voice provides adds enormous emotional substance and authenticity to the media story. So far we have not experienced a single music video that created as powerful an emotional impact as the same story would have with the addition of the author’s voice.

The other area of sound use popular in the film and video tradition is sound effects and other elements of sound design beyond the mix of music and text. There is no question that the greater design of ambient sound or appropriate noises can add complexity to the narrative. They also can be juxtaposed to add surprise and humor. The development of these skills should be considered if the storytelling projects call for an increased sense of realism or, for that matter, surrealism. Otherwise, it is perhaps best not to experiment with sound effects as their incidental use is usually more of a distraction.

Using one’s own voice and existing personal archival material has the advantage of being copyrighted by you as the author. By using other's music, you are also likely crossing into the territory of deciding what should be the appropriate fair use of the copyrighted material. Put simply, if you are going to make money directly or indirectly by the presentation or distribution of the piece you have created, then you should have the composer's permission to use the music. Fortunately, numerous companies have developed copyright-free music collections and software to assist you in designing a soundtrack that is wholly yours.