Check out “Using Music: Jonathan Menjivar For This American Life” by Jonathan Menjivar:

Generally, we don’t use music at This American Life to create a mood in a story or make things sound pretty. Instead, it’s there to help you make your point. We spend a lot of hours structuring stories and cutting tape and writing around that tape and editing and editing and editing. And sure, we’re doing that to make sure the story is interesting and entertaining and surprising, but we’re also doing all that work so the story is really clear. We’re trying to point out what you should be listening for in the tape so you get the same joy or sorrow out of a story that we’re feeling. And we use music the same way — it’s a little flashlight that helps us get our ideas across.

So below are basic guidelines that’ll give you some ground to stand on if you’re just learning how to score stories. Like any rules, they’re meant to be broken once and awhile. This is not a recipe. Your cake will taste bad if you follow these instructions exactly. Listen to your story. You are Dr. Frankenstein and you’ve just created a very alive thing that will tell you what it needs.

The whole essay is chock full of helpful tips for how to think about mixing music and sound to tell a compelling story.

That story is part of a series at Transom, too.