Welcome to Music: The Heart Of The Story
Great storytelling is something we feel in our bones. It’s as natural as breathing. Yet, creating highly impactful stories is hard—especially for visual media. That’s why this newsletter exists. I want to help you tell stories more powerfully, more effectively, more viscerally than ever before in your career.
Stories create the world we occupy. I want to be your partner in creating worlds that are simply incredible. My name is Randall Shattuck and I am the founder of Supernatural Sounds. I am a serial entrepreneur who has spent my entire adult life (and my childhood) telling stories. I am a documentary filmmaker, photographer, author and composer (not necessarily in that order).
I want to welcome you to this newsletter and tell you how happy I am that you are here. As I write this, in March of 2023, nearly 500 highly creative professionals have chosen to follow Supernatural Sounds. And more creatives are singing up every day. I am so grateful that you are on this storytelling journey with me. Oh the places we will go!
Because of this wonderful response, I wanted to develop a newsletter that will help you get the most out of our library. It’s one thing to follow a company. It’s an entirely different thing to actually benefit from following a company. I want you to benefit from what we do so you tell stories that just blow people away. That’s what this is about.
Supernatural Sounds is a one-stop music library featuring original Music For The Heart Of The Story. To me, that’s more than a tagline. It’s the mission. Creating music that makes other people’s stories really come to life… well that’s almost a sacred calling. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to do this now for many years.
This is a thumbnail view of several album covers. It just might be that you followed Supernatural Sounds because you found the cover art to be engaging. If you like the cover art, we believe you’ll love the actual music.
Why Supernatural Sounds Exists
I founded Supernatural Sounds in 1999. At the time, I had the capital and the passion to build a studio that could make great music. We recorded singer-songwriters, choirs, rock bands, jazz ensembles, voice overs, live theater performances and even a Polka act. Word quickly spread in Northern California about this small studio that punched above its weight class.
But I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted more…. So much more. That’s why, in 2017, I began to get serious about the synch world. Synch offered me the opportunity I was looking for to unite my passion for storytelling, music and visual media under a single umbrella. Thus, Supernatural Sounds was reborn as a music library for visual media.
About The Music
As I pen this in early 2023, we offer 21 albums. Our 22nd album is nearing completion. I think of Supernatural Sounds sort of like a record label that produces concept-albums. We have poured thousands and thousands of hours into developing the highest quality music we know how to produce. Each album is unique and custom-designed to achieve a specific set of goals for storytellers.
Here is the thing I think you should know. This music is not an accident. I don’t write and produce it simply because I think it’s cool or even because it’s personally interesting to me. It’s not frivolous or off-the-cuff. There is so much thought and work that goes into each album. What kind of work?
First, each album idea gets put through a meat grinder to see if it can stand up to scrutiny. The first question we ask ourselves as a team (and yes there is a small dedicated and highly creative team behind every album) is this: will storytellers need this music? Will it help them create a world that doesn’t yet exist? Will it be impactful for them? You see, you really are the reason we do what we do. If it doesn’t help you, it isn’t worth doing.
Second, we ask ourselves if the album concept is in our wheelhouse? Do we have the ability to create really professional music in this genre or topical area? This is one of the reasons you’ll notice that we don’t have a lot of music in certain popular genres (like Rap, HipHop, and even classical).
Third, we conduct hours of research into the concept itself. This includes listening to a lot of music that might already exist in the genre (although we DO NOT listen to work from other libraries because we never want to be derivative of other active composers in this space). This also includes researching and reading about the history of the genre and the concept, including the kind of stories that are often told using that kind of music. This helps us conceptualize what the album could sound like and the kinds of emotions it can give rise to.
Fourth, we ask ourselves – who’s in the band? I prefer bands to almost any other type of ensemble. My background is in jazz, blues, rock and country with a really strong dose of classical too. Most of our music offers a band sound, with the exception of a couple more stripped-down albums. Instrument selection is huge! We spend a lot of time including and excluding certain types of instruments. We also tweak the heck out of how the instrument sounds solo and in the mix.
If you spend a few minutes listening to any of our albums, I think you’ll hear the passion that has gone into them. We are not trying to chase fads and produce tons of music that might be popular now. Instead, we are building concept albums that we know creators will need in their productions both today and in the future. We don’t want one-off transactions with creators. We want long-term partnerships.
This project is a great example of how we develop concept albums. This music was desiged to tell stories about people having psychedlic experiences. It’s genre and time-period specific to the 1960s, 70s and 80s. This music was heavliy influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Jeff Beck and The Moody Blues.
Why No Lyrics?
Sometimes producers and directors ask us why we have no lyrics in our music. It’s a great question. At some point, no doubt, we will offer music with lyrics. But for now, we have at least ten album’s worth of concepts that are instrumental in nature and we are passionate to produce them. We don’t want to create brand confusion about what you can expect from our library. We are known for producing high-quality instrumental music that conveys emotion. We’re not known for singer-songwriter content.
What Can You Expect From This Newsletter?
If you sign up for this newsletter, I think you can expect three things every month. First, you can expect a profile of a specific album in our library. The reason I intend to do this is because I know people are busy. You may not have time to listen to every track on an album or even listen to a few different albums. This means that creatives often don’t know which albums might help them tell a great story. I consistently get outreach from producers and directors asking me if I have a specific type of music.
Second, you can expect an explanation of where the music came from and why it exists. Each album is custom-designed for specific types of stories, scenes and emotions. This can save you a lot of time when it comes to researching our library. It can also spark some creative ideas about where you might apply the music to specific scenes.
Third, you can expect guidance about how to use the album and how it can help you be a more effective storyteller. Our albums have between 10 to 20 tracks. Each of these tracks can have more than one movement. Each track also has stems, which can serve as stand-alone compositions. Because I’m so familiar with this music, I will give you my sense of how you can use the music to benefit the stories you want to tell.
Wrap Up
I want to thank you again for your interest in Supernatural Sounds, our music and our unique approach. We’re not trying to be all things to all people. We do, however, want to be your partner in telling stories that are so powerful that your audience simply cannot resist them. If you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, I’ll be happy to respond to them.