Re: [ARSCLIST] Music for commercials

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marcos:

Actually, jingle work is one of the toughest musical gigs and only the best and brightest did it in 
the heyday. Yes, the music is usually pretty lame, but not when it works well (listen to almost any 
Coke commercial during the 60's). The typical session, up into the 80's was 4 hours (something like 
3 hours actual playing). Musicians arrive, get charts, start laying down takes within 30 minutes or 
less. Music finished -- in a bunch of different versions and variations -- by the end of the 
session. I have my doubts if "Midi-Man" working at home can actually lay down the finished product 
this fast -- I just think he works for much less per hour.

Also, remember that until the late 60's, most of this was mixed live too -- and had to be mixed so 
it jumped out of everything from decent TV speakers to FM stereo speakers to crappy AM in a 
convertable speakers.

And the voice-over guys were tremendously talented, too. Still are in some cases, although I notice 
any big-budget account uses real-deal actors now for voice-over.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcos Sueiro" <mls2137@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 1:09 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Music for commercials


> >
> > When I was an errand boy and tape dubber at Sigma NYC (1981-83 summers),
> > the commercial business was transitioning away from a squad of crack
> > studio musicians showing up, getting a chart and cutting a commercial in
> > 3 hours to where one guy showed up with a Synclavier and dumped 8 tracks
> > onto tape and then a singer showed up and a voice-over guy showed up and
> > they cut a worse commercial but in half the time. Nowadays, it's a guy at
> > home with a MIDI rig cutting even worse commercials but for a fraction of
> > the cost. That's a large part of what killed off the big studio business
> > in NY -- the agencies took most of their production in-house and
> > musicians' union rates got to where no one could afford big sessions with
> > large ensembles anymore. Plus, the um "talent" pool has gotten very
> > brackish in recent generations of "musicians."
> Forgive me if I am not too concerned about the lack of musicianship in commercials, of all 
> places --except as one of the few places musicians could make some decent dough (although 
> sometimes barely legitimately). But perhaps this decline is what led to some companies such as 
> Volkswagen to use already available recorded music for their commercials --quite successfully, of 
> course.
>
> Marcos