Location: Santa Rosa, CA, United States Of America
Member since: September 9, 2010
Tracks in portfolio: 126 (Click here to hear all tracks)

Tracks We Like:

Shape Shifting

Remembering the Dream

The Interview:

1) High profile projects or clients you have worked for?

Not sure about high profile, but probably one of the most meaningful  and rewarding personally was the use of a partial track of mine for  the Documentary, “Changes in Climates, Changes in Lives” produced by  Greenpeace of Brazil.

As you may or may not know, my music themes are often based on
ecological issues, the Earth, Nature, Wilderness preserving etc…So
there is a special attachment I feel for a project like this.

2) Primary instrument?

There are so many, it’s hard to list the primary one. I like to rotate
through instruments & sound making/shaping tools, bringing out
whatever feels right at the time. I like to have a visit with
everything throughout a creative musical journey at some point. Being
limited, or being in a routine about it doesn’t work for me.
Outputting with various pieces of gear and experimenting keeps the
fire alive. It keeps it exciting so that I keep on wanting to be back
it the studio.

3) Favorite music-making piece of gear or software you currently use?

For my newest project, I have been using my Synth.com Analog modular synth as a starting point for most of the tracks. It’s something very interesting when you can take a set of machines, plug them in differently to each other, turn some knobs, and start making this production of sounds from the ground up. I would also like to mention my Lexicon PCm91 reverb. It helps me get that expansive atmosphere to my sound, that spaciousness. Many times I’ll use only the processed sound from that and bypass the direct sound source completely.

4) Piece of gear or software you wish you owned?

Still eyeballing a Doepfer MAQ 16/3 sequencer.  

5) Film score or song you admire? Why?

I like the ethereal quality and diversity of much of Mark Isham’s music in film. Notably the “Mrs. Soffel” “Never Cry Wolf” & “Romeos Bleeding” soundtracks. I also really like the Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis. Maurice Jarre comes to mind as well for film music.     

6) Music education background?

I was trained classically on piano, guitar & double bass learning theory. I started really young, and seemed to have a very early affinity to music. I would study composition on my own while my friends were off surfing. I Played in school honer orchestras, rock-club bands and the like. Later I got into recording and got a degrees in recording engineering & electronic music technology. 

7) If you had a time machine and could record or perform once with any   artist, who would it be?

I would have liked to have been in the recording sessions with George Martin and the Beatles during their very experimental phase. Also maybe the recording sessions of Pink Floyd making Dark Side Of The Moon.

8) Moment you first knew you would be a musician?

When I was about 9 years old and started my guitar lessons.

9) Advice you would give to a younger family member interested in a   music career?

Always follow and believe in your passions, whatever they be. Don’t let the fires burn out. If you have a dream, only YOU can make it happen. It takes work, a lot of work, time, money, sacrifice, your sweat, self, soul and then some. Don’t let the money and fame drive you or you won’t make it. It’s gotta be about the music…..always!

10) Five songs or albums you’d take with you to a desert island?

I’ll choose albums:

1. Steve Roach- Dreamtime return
2. Beatles- Sgt Peppers lonely hearts club baaaaaaaaand
3. Pink Floyd- Dark Side Of The Moon
4. Peter Gabriel- Passion
5. Genesis- Seconds Out

11) If you could master another instrument, what would it be?

Man, I would love to play some sort of horn, like a sax or trumpet. Still have a long way to go with the didgeridoo too. Maybe I could be a good drummer in a rock band. Oh, I know, I could play a dulcimer.

12) Favorite time of day to work in your studio?

Definitely from twilight on. Nights best. Mornings too sometimes.

13) Any studio collaboration you experienced that stands out in your mind? Why?

Definitely when I worked on a three day master class with Steve Roach, one on one. The project was a re-working together of my Trance Meditation Cd. He was very gracious and down to earth. I learned a **it load! He really set up some “experiments” and “labs” on which to direct the teaching. I still carry that knowledge & experience with me to this day

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Location: New York, NY, United States Of America
Member since: July 14, 2010
Tracks in portfolio: 11  (Click here to hear all tracks)

Tracks We Like:

“Hey, Hey, Hey”

The Interview:

1) Primary instrument?

Well, my primary instrument is my voice, but I played drums when I was younger.  Drumming has an influence on my music, it definitely adds some very specific timing choices to the structure of what I sing.  I “put down the sticks” a long time ago, but we’re actually starting to add some percussive elements to our live shows that I can do up front.

2) Most embarrassing music-related moment?

I was doing a show at Bowery Electric last January – actually it was the show my cover of “Creep” was recorded during- and I was super sick, bronchitis AND pneumonia.  I couldn’t stop coughing and I didn’t know how I was going to get through the show.  My doctor prescribed a really heavy cough medicine, which I took, but then I was so drowsy I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  So I chased it with 3 Red Bulls in a scientific attempt to counterbalance the downers. I was sitting on a stool in the middle of the set, I looked down at my leg and saw that it was bouncing up and down – completely out of control.  I literally couldn’t stop it. I had to hold that leg down with both hands to stop it from going crazy through the rest of the song.  I don’t think I have a future in chemistry.

3) Moment you first knew you would be a musician?

I always kind of knew I was a singer- even when I was a kid, before I could sing. I can’t really explain it, it was just something I intrinsically knew on some level.  I would see someone perform & have a sense of “I can do that”.  My great grandmother was a Vaudeville performer, maybe it’s in the blood?

4) Advice you would give to a younger family member interested in a music career?

On the creative end, don’t try to decide what you *think* the world wants to hear.  Find your own voice.  Don’t write until you have something meaningful to say and when you do, share it unapologetically. On the business end, accept that everyone’s a critic and it’s very rarely personal.  With persistence, you’ll find the pocket of people- and there always are some- that will really resonate with what you’re trying to say.  Put one foot in front of the other and keep moving towards what feels good, every single day.

5) If you could master another instrument, what would it be?

I can pretty much learn one song on any instrument & kinda fake it, but I would love to really play the piano.  I took lessons for a year as a kid & I was pretty hopeless 🙂  All those pinches where I’ve needed a last minute accompanist, it would be so awesome to just play my own backup.

6) Favorite time of day to work in your studio?

Late night with a bottle of red wine in the studio, time kind of stands still between 11pm-3am.  Can’t think of a place I’d rather be.

8) Any studio collaboration you experienced that stands out in your mind? Why?

Timothy Schletter & I collaborate in a really different way than anyone I’ve worked with.  I write all of our lyrics and I don’t start with any kind of song structure.  I just write what I’m feeling when I’m really worked up and emotional over something.  The lyrics just pour out of me. Later, I sit with Tim & talk about it, really honestly share what was going on when I wrote the song.  He picks up on the mood and the intention behind my words and starts to build the groove that fits that experience.  The song develops itself, layer by layer, in a very organic way.  It’s a really artistic, collaborative exchange.  I try to be adaptable to new situations, but I’m spoiled now- recording any other way just doesn’t feel the same.

Big thanks to Rachel for contributing tracks that help make MusicRevolution the Production Music Marketplace.

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

If you’re experiencing writer’s block as a music composer, here’s a helpful technique I learned in music school:

In the early 90’s my college brought in acclaimed jazz pianist/composer Kenny Werner to spend a full week with students as an all-around clinician. It was sort of like having Henry Kissinger hang around your high school history department for a week. A tornado keeps upsetting everyone’s routine, but everyone’s smarter once he leaves.

Originally from Brooklyn, Werner had a big personality and was the quintessential New Yorker. He took himself very seriously and commanded any room he occupied. Here’s a clip of Kenny playing piano with jazz legend Toots Thielemans in 2009.

Most of Kenny’s week at our university was spent preparing for a live jazz performance with the faculty, but one afternoon he assembled the composition majors in a classroom to hear his philosophy on writing music.

“Someone call out some music notes for me.” He began. Then he jotted down our random notes at the top of a treble staff, spacing them far apart.

“Now name some chord qualities for me.” We named the fanciest chord types we knew. “Dominant seven sharp 9!”, “Major #11!”, “Major 9th”. He added these qualities to the right of our music notes and we now had a disjointed sequence of chord changes.

“We’re almost done. Now tell me some of the notes that are in these chords.” As we called out notes he drew them in, left-to-right, as half-notes on the staff underneath the chord changes. To some chords he assigned one note. To others, he assigned three but overall it seemed really random.

Werner then walked over to the piano, kept his eyes on the board and slowly played through our little impromptu ditty. It sounded pretty good! Yet far different than anything we would have written ourselves.

He walked back over to the board and made a couple of small adjustments. A passing tone added here, a chord change removed there. He played it again and suddenly we had written a nice little tune, written by the group, in less than six minutes.

He turned to us and said slowly, “It is far easier to edit something down…. than to struggle along one note at a time.”

Another word for this approach would be aleatoric which is essentially “chance” writing. But there’s really something to this approach when you remember how mathematical music really is. Often when we pull notes from our brains, it’s easy to just re-create something we’ve already heard, but when you choose to let chaos (or chance, your subconscious, God, or whatever you want to call it) create the marble slab from which you ultimately carve your sculpture, are you working any differently than a wood carver who allows nature to create the tree?

Big thanks to Kenny for sharing this great concept.

Here’s a video of Werner’s latest orchestral composition “No Beginning No End” now available on online music retailers.

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

(Trumbull, CT – September 30, 2010) – MusicRevolution.com (www.musicrevolution.com), an innovative online marketplace for production music, today announced the launch of its “Value Subscription” for royalty-free production music (https://www.musicrevolution.com/subs_options/ ).

The MusicRevolution.com “Value Subscription”, which starts at $149.99 for a 1-month subscription (allows for up to 10 downloads) and $399.99 for a 1-year subscription (allows for up to 50 downloads), provides affordable access to over 2,000 tracks of high-quality, royalty-free music suitable for a range of multi-media projects.

“The MusicRevolution “Value Subscription” offers a great selection of royalty-free music for budget conscious media producers and organizations in need of high-quality production music,” stated Chris Cardell, Co-Founder of MusicRevolution LLC. “For production music buyers that need a broader selection of music, the MusicRevolution.com “Complete Subscription” provides access to our entire production music library of over 8,000 tracks and is also a tremendous value. Together, these are two of the best production music subscription offerings available,” added Cardell.

“The quality and selection of our production music is excellent in both our “Value Subscription” and “Complete Subscription” offerings,” stated Mike Bielenberg, Co-Founder of MusicRevolution LLC. “This is a testament to the caliber of the hundreds of professional musicians who participate in the MusicRevolution.com online marketplace for production music. Our community of musicians continues to grow and we add new music nearly every day,” added Bielenberg.

Contact:

Chris Cardell or Mike Bielenberg

678-900-9228

info@musicrevolution.com

Location: Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom

Member Since: March 10, 2010

Tracks in Portfolio: 111 (Click here to see all tracks)

Tracks We Like:

“Road Trip”

Road_Trip.mp3

“Street Lethal”

Street_Lethal.mp3

“Start a revolution”

Start_a_revolution.mp3

The Interview:

1. High profile projects or clients you have worked for?

Movies “The Wrestler” “Couples Retreat” & “Valhalla Rising.

Commercials for ; Adidas, Pepsi , CBS , Reutors , Unilever

2. Primary instrument?

Ibanez RG550 (1991) Electric Guitar

3. Favorite music-making piece of gear or software you currently use?

POD X3 and BOSS BR1200

4. Piece of gear or software you wish you owned?

Apple mac pro

5. Film score or song you admire? Why?

Anything written by Hans Zimmer

6. Music education background?

Music at school , Spanish classical guitar lesson, self taught electric guitar

7. Memorable “Aha!” moment during your musical education?

Realizing i was better at songwriting for film and tv

8. Most embarrassing music-related moment?

Sony Music saying I wont achieve anything

9. If you had a time machine and could record or perform once with any artist, who would it be?

Freddie Mercury

10. Moment you first knew you would be a musician?

Age 11 playing piano

11. Advice you would give to a younger family member interested in a music career?

Discover your true talents and do what your good at keep at it.

12. Five songs or albums you’d take with you to a desert island?

Marty Friedman “Tokyo disco”

AC/DC “Iron Man 2 soundtrack”,

Arch Enemy ,

Daft Punk “Discovery” ,

Steve Vai “Passion and warfare”

13. If you could master another instrument, what would it be?

Violin

14. Favorite time of day to work in your studio?

10am

15. Any studio collaboration you experienced that stands out in your mind? Why?

I worked with David Bowies bassist from “ASIA” (70’s band) during a rock festival in early 90’s

Big thanks to Robert for contributing tracks that help make MusicRevolution the Production Music Marketplace.

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Location: Los Angeles, CA, United States Of America

Member Since: May 1, 2010

Tracks in Portfolio: 148

Tracks We Like:

Catch_Me_If_You_Can

Dark_Cry_Of_The_Soul_full

Science_Friction

The Interview:

1. High profile projects or clients you have worked for?

Boeing, Microsoft XBOX 360, Toyota.

2. Primary instrument?

Guitar was my first instrument and the one that still feels the most natural for me, but I am comfortable playing Bass, Keyboards, Drums and Vocals. For everything else, at this point – I handle that with sample-instruments.

3. Favorite music-making piece of gear or software you currently use?

Software / DAW – Pro Tools and Logic Studio equally, depending on what it is I am trying to do at a given moment. For Orchestral stuff, EWQLSO is absolutely my favorite. I love my Les Paul guitars of course.

4. Piece of gear or software you wish you owned?

A Stradivarius violin 🙂

5. Film score or song you admire? Why?

Difficult to pick one when there are so many great ones… but ok – Strawberry Fields by The Beatles.

Why? Just listen to it. The sounds they used, the melodies and harmonies, and just think about the gear they had to work with at the time.

6. Music education background?

– Recording Engineering at UCLA Extension

– Vocal Institute of Technology at Musicians Institute

– Guitar Institute of Technology at Musicians Institute

– Private Guitar lessons from the age of 12

7. Memorable “Aha!” moment during your musical education?

That music is really a lot like Mathematics. (I later found out that the Greek word for music and math is actually the same).

8. Most embarrassing music-related moment?

I can’t think of any… I must have suppressed those memories haha.

9. If you had a time machine and could record or perform once with any artist, who would it be?

The Jimi Hendrix Experience. But, I think I would wanna perform in the opening act, just so I could watch and listen to the Hendrix performance, rather than mess with it.

10. Moment you first knew you would be a musician?

I think it was always there from birth.

11. Advice you would give to a younger family member interested in a music career?

Don’t even think about it! LOL, seriously tho, if they really want to embark on this journey, I would tell them to be prepared for a lot of hard work and likely many disappointments before they can harvest any fruits of success. My favorite word of wisdom: You have not failed until you stop trying.

12. Five songs or albums you’d take with you to a desert island?

Ummm, how long will I be there? Five songs would be terrible, since I would probably end up hating any songs, even if they were my favorites, if I had to listen to them over and over… 5 Albums would be better, but still difficult to pick… but here’s an attempt: Miles Davis & John Coltrane “Fran Dance”, AC/DC “Highway To Hell”, Hybrid “Sound System 01”, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Led Zeppelin “Houses Of The Holy.

13. If you could master another instrument, what would it be?

Banjo.

14. Favorite time of day to work in your studio?

Any time. I feel that different times of the day inspire different moods and may lead to different results. I used to love working at night, when everyone else is asleep, but lately I like getting up early in the morning and start working on music before other things come to mind and start to interfere with the “pure mind” and “fresh ears” of an early morning.

15. Any studio collaboration you experienced that stands out in your mind? Why?

Currently working on a quite interesting project for a female Singer Songwriter, where everything is done over the internet. She sends me rough drafts and mp3s of old recordings, I record and arrange all the instruments, send the Pro Tools session back to her. She then adds her Vocals and Violin. Finally she sends the session to a third person who does the final mix.

Big thanks to Johnny for contributing tracks that help make MusicRevolution the Production Music Marketplace.

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

Every professional musician I know has said at least once, “People love that song and it’s so simple! Why didn’t I write that?”.

Along the same lines, every couple of years the music licensing equivalent of a grand slam is accomplished by a signed recording artist just noodling around at sound check while we production music artists are left scratching our heads. That’s what the members of the Australian band The Temper Trap have done with“Sweet Disposition”. Featured on their 2009 album Conditions, this incredible single is enjoying the same level of TV usage enjoyed by Moby and Coldplay. Check out these great spots:

Diet Coke

Rhapsody

Chrysler

“Sweet Disposition” has also been used in the TV show One Tree Hill, the movie 500 Days of Summer, a Peugeot 3008 TV ad campaign in Scandinavia and the TV show 90120 among others.

It’s the Vibe, Stupid

I once earned crazy good money for creating a thirty second bed of sampled pizzicato strings with quirky piano licks….in three hours. The ad agency thought it worked perfectly with their TV spot and said, “Great work. No revisions needed. Send invoice please”. Sweet.

Admittedly, that day’s windfall happened in spite of me. In those days I believed a track was only good if it had blood, sweat and tears on it.

Let us creators of royalty-free stock music be reminded by all this that, ultimately, it’s all about capturing a feeling…an emotion. It’s not about the gear, the chord changes, the budget, or even the time invested. It’s simply about capturing the raw emotion.

And let us also remember that when Coldplay, Moby and Temper Trap were creating these advertising hits, their primary goal was more than just creating good underscore. They were trying to create lasting music that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any major label release. As my mother would say, “Shoot for the stars and at least you’ll land on the moon.”

In 1952 avant-garde composer John Cage premiered a piece of music that was four minutes and thirty three seconds of complete silence. Pianist David Tudor closed the piano and sat completely still. The next day, letters to the editor shrieked “I could have composed that!”.

Cage’s reply?….“I never said you couldn’t”.

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

This week we reached 8,000 tracks on MusicRevolution! Hundreds of musicians from all over the globe have uploaded tracks in every style and genre and we feel truly honored to represent such an amazing community of production music talent.

To commemorate the occasion I thought I’d highlight tracks from our collection that are perfect for short broadcast spots. All of the tracks featured in this blog are available for licensing on a royalty-free basis and can easily added to a shopping cart by going to this URL (scroll to the bottom left to see the tracks in your bin):

https://www.musicrevolution.com/?binid=55

1) “Pines of the Appian Way” – Apollo Symphony Orchestra

This is actually a 1924 symphonic work by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. What most video editors often overlook when listening to this six-minute piece is the gloriously huge ending. The last two minutes is the kind of music played at the very end of a sci-fi epic when everyone is basking in ass-kicking they just wholly delivered. For your convenience, yours truly just edited out the beginning section so you can feel the Olympian vibes right away.

PinesWayEnding.mp3

2.“Pop Walk” – Dewey Dellay

This track sets wonderfully under voice over and can sell anything from anti-depressants to mattress pads. An annoyingly happy female voice cascades over jangly guitars but not before a team-player synth intro cedes a few seconds of the spotlight to something said…something shown… and something heavily advertised.

Pop_Walk_.mp3

3. “Big Power Pop Anthem” – Bobby Cole

The perfect soundtrack for an iPad spot. It’s the production music equivalent of a starry-eyed actor that’s only been in Hollywood for one week – lots of innocence, lots of energy, a few years behind the latest fashions, but already starting to pick up the local lingo.

Big_Power_Pop_Anthem.mp3

4. “Hey Hey Hey” – Rachel Fine

What makes this indie vocal track so perfect for a make-up or fashion spot is its firm individuality. The tempo is slowish mid tempo but the attitude is full-on urban girl power. Rachel Fine just released her album Own Your Own on Sunset Records.

Hey_Hey_Hey.mp3

5. “Ole” – Vince Varco

Admittedly, this is a pretty niche track. It is the quintessential tex-mex track resplendent with male vocal hollering, aggressive flamenco guitar and more percussion instruments than an Orff clinic.

1. Ole.mp3

It’s a privilege to carry such professional and high-quality tracks in our library. We love our musician community!

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

In an interview last month with the New York Times, the President of BMI said the first assortment of data generated by their new digital rights management tracking system revealed a higher usage of library music than they previously realized:

“Debusk pulled up a screen detailing a list of nonsongs with generic names like “Graceful Power” and “Happy Days”. Such compositions, he said, are known as ‘production music’, written for ads and station identifications or for TV documentaries, and then sold to music libraries.”

This is great news for musicians who, while not famous enough to be on the radar of BMI’s accounting executives, are involved enough to have their music included in this Blue Arrow tracking system. I once asked a radio station owner how often he filled out cue sheets for library music and he replied, “Only if I actually know the guy and he’s a friend of mine.” At last, hard data is available to help PROs become less reliant on such shoddy or non-existent cue sheet reporting.

Watermarking technology has now reached the point where it is both affordable and effective. Providers such as Tunesat, GoDigital and Blue Arrow can tag recordings with an inaudible signature and automatically monitor the airwaves for usage of that content. I once saw a demo video for one of these products that showed a car full of teenage girls talking VERY loudly over a car stereo I could barely hear. At the bottom of the screen, I watched the digital tracking system successfully identify the background song as a Smash mouth tune and correctly log the information into a database. Big Brother will happily watch the airwaves for you.

But there’s a rub for the entrepreneurial composer of royalty-free stock music:

Production music artists in the 21^st century increasingly work with music libraries on a non-exclusive basis. Understandably, they distribute their content through as many channels as possible to ensure the highest possible revenue per track.

But what happens when library A watermarks a track with a DRM service and detects a usage from a user they don’t know? And what if that usage was actually legitimately licensed through library B who carries the same track?

Library A will likely send a cease and desist letter to that user, who will then call library B and say, “I bought a license for this!”. Library B may then consider that musician’s tracks not worth the hassle.

The best short-term strategy for production music artists is to learn exactly what their distribution channels are doing in regards to DRM and ensure no conflicts exist. 10 years ago, this responsibility would have fallen to the label, or even the publisher. But those days have passed.

This can lead creators of stock music to face touch choices regarding which distributors NOT to use. Does your agreement allow you pull your tracks? Is it possible that library A is only tracking a particular type of usage that won’t bump into efforts by library B?

It’s important to consider the economics. If library A’s revenue model is mostly synchronization fees, then a DRM encoded library will function mainly as a piracy control for that company. It will help them keep your music from being used outside of the scope of licenses that have already been purchased.

It’s always good to know your music is safe, but is that security worth the friction that may occur between two competing libraries that carry your music? A very successful stock media entrepreneur once told me his philosophy on piracy was to never “ruin the experience for the honest customers because of a handful of shoplifters.”

With PROs such as ASCAP and BMI the rewards become potentially more interesting. A digitally-detected usage of your music in that case could lead to an allocation of funds that have already have collected from the client. The money was there the whole time, ASCAP just wasn’t aware you were owed a portion.

But long-term, will the PROs stop at TV/radio broadcasters? Will they send an unwelcome bill to, for example, clients with whom you’ve signed direct deals?

Public performance, by definition, includes internet usage. Until now, the PROs surely knew that collecting royalties from every website in the world would be every bit as difficult as personally visiting every bar & restaurant in America.

But wait, they already do that.

And why do PROs take on that painful task? The easy answer is that it’s profitable. But the larger answer and perhaps the reason why BMI has already contacted website owners about copyright infringement is best stated by the NY Times article:

“…in the end [a BMI licensing executive] knows it’s a game, a game she’s going to win. Because after all the phone calls, letters and visits, she possesses a secret weapon: the law. Whether or not a music user believes copyright infringement is a big deal, violators face fines of anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per song.”

___________________________________________________

Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.

The fact that so many A-list actors, directors and writers work on HBO projects proves the network’s creative culture is a breath of fresh air for these people. Because HBO’s bread is buttered directly by subscribers instead of advertisers their original content can tackle more controversial (read: more interesting) topics.

That same empowering culture is behind some of the most groundbreaking promos we’ve ever seen. One night I was grabbing a bite from the kitchen during a commercial break from Entourage when a song came on that stopped me dead in my tracks. It’s slow tempo, somber baritone vocals and studied chord changes sounded like nothing I’d ever heard come out of my TV speakers:

The song is “Addict Me” by The Local NYC – a song-writing duo of vocalist/lyricist Tim Champeaux and multi-instrumentalist Jon Cowherd. It reached #2 on the Amazon Roots Rock chart and compelled hardcore fans of the show True Blood to create their own unofficial montage using the song’s full length version.

On August 23^rd I had the pleasure of conducting a phone interview with Champeaux who had just returned to New York from vacation. In addition to his music activities, Champeaux also carries a heavy schedule doing voice over work for many of the major TV networks.

MusicRevolution: Was the possibility of broadcast usage in your mind at all while recording the album Just Show Up?

Tim Champeaux: Not HBO particularly, but working in television and being a musician, it was never far from our minds. My voice over work has basically turned into a beautiful day job that started with Sex in the City. Jon works in TV too.

In a way it helped that one of the producers I work with at Sex in the City, CJ Harris, was a big fan of the record Just Show Up. When some big wigs at HBO said they wanted to go on a darker tip for this promo, she pitched it to the big guys and pushed it through the proper channels. They wanted something a little melancholy and we beat out a few significant bands for that spot. Remember to be cool with people- on your way up or way down!

MR: Where you coming from lyrically with this song?

TC: It was definitely autobiographical. The lyrics were born from living in the East village for a long time back in the day (around the late 90’s). It was a funkier part of NY then. I wasn’t using heavy drugs, but had some friends who were.

The line from the song “Are you feeling bullet proof?” came from a story about one of those friends when he ran out of money. He saw an ad for taking experimental pharmaceuticals and became a test subject. One day after that I saw him and asked how he’s doing. He said with a big, big smile “Bullet proof!”. I never forgot that.

The line “screams like a sin” also got a big response. Everybody from cutters to Christian rock people interpreted that lyric their own way.

MR: What music gear was used to create the sound effects at the song’s intro & outro?

TC: Jon had been working with a guitarist named Goffery Moore. Amazing guitarist. He’s really out of the box – guitar wise. He’s a sonic scaper.

He came up with that sheen that just gets you in the beginning. Jon put down some B3 and had him play whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the first thing Goffery played.

MR: Did it surprise you that “Addict Me” wound up being “the big hit” from Just Show Up?

TC: Yeah. The other songs are more positive. They don’t have that venom bite to them.

MR: Did the creation of that song take any unexpected turns that stand out in your mind?

TC: I didn’t love “Addict Me” when we first started writing it. There was something about it I didn’t love. When we got in the studio it really started going places. It wasn’t until it started going final that I said, “We really have something there.”

“We reached more people with that HBO promo than we could have reached anywhere else. It’s been awesome to see people love it so much. We want to really keep it going.”

Epilogue:

HBO was started in 1965 by a guy who literally ran cable underneath Manhattan because the tall buildings made normal signal reception difficult. The network’s long success began with a small number of New Yorkers willing to do a little extra to have great content in their world.

After a conversation with a seasoned veteran of the independent New York music scene like Champeaux, it seems obvious that same creative lifeblood still flows through New York City…well and true.

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace where media producers and business owners can license high-quality, affordable music from a online community of musicians.