Recording - April 2011 - 53

Continued from page 50 the agency and they were blown away. The gig didn’t happen because… I can tell you why it didn’t happen. Remember I called you up. Like three days later, another product came out with “All Together Now,” done in the Band of Skulls format for … not a Super Bowl ad. I forget what it was. Peter: It might have been a sneaker ad or something. Stephan: Your phone was tapped. Yeah, seriously. It even had Burundi drums in it. It was literally like they saw the text message leave New York heading to L.A. I called Peter and I said, “Hold on, a whole other product.” What are the odds that they’d put out the same thing. So we have no idea how that happened. It wasn’t any of our members, but at that point, the agency and the product that we were working on said, “Well, scratch that idea.” So it was all for naught. But the one thing it did was convince I think the largest agency on the planet—their music department— that they now have an awesome resource that they could trust to find them authentic… I remember you kept saying that word over and over. They loved it because it was so authentic-sounding. It didn’t sound like library music, which makes me want to go to Goldman from here. Stephan is a vowed disliker of library music. Is that a fair statement? Stephan: Yes, I think everything I’ve done in the film and TV world, I don’t think I’ve ever used a piece of library music, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it. And that’s what makes these guys so special is the stuff that’s coming through our ears sounds like real artists, and they tend to be favoring indie artists now versus major label… Stephan: There’s been a real shift in the libraries. I mean, the quality of the music, and TAXI has been a leading force in that, in being able to raise the level of quality of the music libraries now use. The reason I never really used library music was because it sounded like wallpaper. It was so generic. It had no soul whatsoever; it didn’t have an emotional content to it. TAXI comes along and starts to give these people much better quality, much higher energy and unique kinds of music, and now they’re players. So many of the ad agencies, Peter, ask for similar kind of stuff, and I’m sure this is flavor of the month or flavor of the quarter. But they seem to ask for quirky, which is a word that’s almost become a standing joke between us now. When I get the e-mail or phone call from Peter,“Yeah, they’re looking for quirky, light, uptempo, positive, upbeat tracks.”

Let’s talk compositional aspects for a moment. OK, if you as a musician/composer got the call to provide quirky, upbeat, light… Where do you start with that? Because this panel is supposed to be about composing. I don’t want this to be all about the business of music for advertising so much as composing, because you need a starting point. So what would you do as a composer if you had that brief laid on your desk? Do you sit down and pound something out with your hands on the desk? Do you sit down with a drum machine or a drum loop, or do you start noodling on a piano? Where do you go? Peter: I think it all depends on the information that’s provided of you. If you’re doing your job right as a music supervisor or a music producer at an ad agency or even for a film company, they are giving you great direction. They’re not just saying,

“I’d like something quirky and poppy and happy,” because that’s 150-million possibilities. So, hopefully, you’ve been given some notion of the type of product it is, the type of attitude or what it might look like—“It’s a car and it’s driving at midnight and the weather’s bad and it’s on switchbacks….” Whatever that might be, use the information that’s provided. Stephan: He has to read his listing properly! Peter: Sometimes they don’t give you much to go on. And if I get one of those listings, I will typically call them up and say, “You’ve got to give me something here. There is no such thing as ‘downtown Indie.’ What does that mean?” I’ve gotten that! Don’t miss Part 2 in next month’s issue!

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Recording - April 2011

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