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