I bet if you think of your favorite movie, you can hum the theme song or some of the music from that movie. Music is an important part of a great movie, so important that Hollywood pays top composers big bucks to create the perfect catchy score.

If you need music for your new movie, you can hire a composer to write custom music for each and every scene, but that can drain your already tight budget. Don’t worry, you can find great and original music on the web and much of it is free or available at a very low price.

I’m talking about royalty free music. If you google ‘royalty-free alternative music’, for example, you’ll find pages of websites that offer alternative rock music for free or for a small license fee. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you will have to do a lot of research to find the music that suits the mood of your movie.

The best way to start is to create a rough list of the songs you will need. Maybe you want a fast, up-tempo rock song for the opening credits, or maybe you have some exciting scenes where a slow blues number will work great. Once you have the basic ‘music outline’, you can begin your search for royalty-free music to fit your film. The same goes for short films or even personal YouTube videos. Make a plan.

I suggest looking for royalty-free music sites that have their music categorized and are easy to navigate. You don’t want to waste hours of your time clicking on song titles, wondering what you’re going to hear next. Oh cool, that’s a cheesy accordion song!

The best royalty-free music sites will have easy-to-navigate categories like Progressive Rock, Symphonic, Blues, or Country Music. This makes it much easier to find the music you are looking for.

One feature that I find extremely valuable is the vocal and non-vocal versions of a particular song. This helps develop a “theme” that can recur throughout the film. (Think ‘Titanic’.) Many soundtracks use the non-vocal version of the song to create a recurring mood in a few scenes and then shock the audience with the vocal version during the end credits. Don’t be afraid to use the same song in multiple scenes. Think about the theme song from ‘The Godfather’ and how many times the same tune was used over and over again to great effect.

One important thing to remember is to protect your work by using a standard or creative commons license. Although the music may be copyright free, you will still need to credit the owner by using a creative commons license or purchasing a license that gives you the right to use the music for a commercial application. Most royalty-free sites offer a free creative commons license and a standard license for $25 to $100.

Make sure your music sounds clean and professional. It won’t be too hard to tell if it was recorded in a professional studio or directly from a Casio keyboard. Try the music on a quality sound system where you can hear the dynamics of the music. It may sound passable through your $10 computer speaker, but you’d better try it on a good sound system to be sure.

After finding the songs you like, you’ll need to customize the soundtrack to fit your scenes. There are many sound-editing software programs, such as Avid Pro Tools or Logic Pro X, that allow you to properly fade in and out, alter time, and manipulate music. Some video editing programs like Adobe Premiere now include the same sound editing features, but not at the same level of quality.

If the music you need isn’t available on a royalty-free site, you might want to consider a ‘discount’ composer. It’s a gamble, but the rewards can be great. Many royalty-free music sites offer custom soundtrack compositions at very reasonable prices. In most cases, the composer is the same one who wrote the songs on the site, so you can be sure that the quality of the music will be similar.

I know a songwriter who has some pretty impressive credits, including first-run movies and producer credits on albums by A-list artists. Today he’s a “starving artist” looking for the next project. Don’t be afraid to negotiate.

In short, create a “music sketch” for your movie or video project and test royalty-free music sites to find quality music for free or next to nothing.