Producing a music track is akin to directing a motion picture in that one of those many decisions made on the set will become a huge factor in the editing room……but it’s difficult to know which one. It takes extraordinary skill to be immersed in the technical complexity, creative options and personalities of a production and constantly keep the end product in mind. Spielberg and Soderbergh can do this. Others can’t.

Genius notwithstanding, every creative process involves a step where spaghetti must be thrown at the wall multiple times to generate strong raw material. During a film shoot, or in this case, a recording session at Brad Long’s house on a Friday afternoon, individual elements are created and judged fairly quickly. How it all fits together is to be decided another day.

That day came when I had to mix our recorded elements (Fender telecaster through a Pod, a set of live Fibes drums, a Roland Fantom X6 keyboard and several Logic 8 software synths) into what is now the track titled “Personal Hygiene”. This is track is part of our Free Music collection, which is available free-of-charge for use by schools and educational institutions. In our last installment of this blog series, I described how the drums and bass were mixed into what uber-engineer Russ Fowler would probably call a “nice warm bed upon which the other instruments would sit.”

Guitars

Two guitar parts were stacked. Normally I would have panned these hard left and hard right, but after comparing the stereo separation in my initial mix to Mark Krunowski’s track I decided to run them both up the center to make room in the stereo field for other instruments.

Both guitar channels were bussed to dedicated effects channel with (in order) hard compression, then tempo delay, then EQ notching 744 Hz down about 3 db. Again, the idea is to preserve the best parts of the guitar track while making room for other instruments. The goal is to create what is called a “transparent” mix where everything can be heard clearly.

Here’s the unmixed version:

Song1GtrUnmixed

And here’s the mixed version:

Song1GtrsMixed

Vocals

Creatively, I think this particular vocal part is well sung and very cool, but I ultimately thought of it as extra seasoning. Not very meaty, but welcome to the party.

Although originally recorded during the first A section, I left this part out of 1st pass because I thought the track stood on it’s own without them (I’m still not sure if they’re in tune-comments welcome). From an effects standpoint, I surprised myself by putting massive delay on the left channel and absolutely none on the right. Kinda strange but it worked. Both channels have some chorus/flanger mixed in via aux send channel.

Here’s the unmixed version:

Song1VocalsUnmixed

And here’s the mixed version:

Song1VocalsMixed.mp3

Mastering

Mastering is a discipline with the music profession for which I have the utmost respect and the least amount of proclivity. Therefore I rely heavily on preset patches in tried-and-true software programs. I used a preset mastering effects chain in WaveBurner (“Rock Mastering”) which used (in order): linear Phase EQ, compressor, and a limiter

Here is the unmastered version of the track:

Song1MixedNotMastered.mp3

And here’s a link to the final mastered version

Conclusion

This blog series focused largely on the mechanics of creating royalty-free production music and frequently referenced the idea of just trusting “the muse” and taking a risk. The Longenberg project entailed more than just musical risks:

Brad and I had played live music (at an Atlanta mega-church) quite often together but never had collaborated in the studio. That was new.

As Shawn Napster can attest, giving away free music on the internet can yield some very unexpected usages of that music. We have no idea how schools and educational institutions will use this music.

I had never mixed music with Pro Tools. That was very new.

Brad and I are proud of how these tracks turned out and we hope you’ve gained something from this detailed outline of how they were created.

To donate your own tracks to our Free Music page, drop me a line at the MusicRevolution contact form found here.

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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.

Check out this State Farm commercial targeted towards an African-American demographic.

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/tvfilm/8966

Synopsis:

These types of commercials are sometimes referred to as “image” spots. They do not convey specific information (prices, awards, products) but rather combine music and visuals together in a collage and associate that brand with the experience. This music video features a slide show of photo stills and video clips of couples doing life together. Superimposed onto each shot are pet names that couples use for each other (Boo, Sweetie, etc.). Finally, a card displays “Coverage For Life…for the Love of Your Life…That’s Being There.”

What makes this spot so innovative is the eclectic soundtrack. Music composition devices are used that this writer has rarely seen outside of 20^th century music theory classes. There’s a certain lo-fi sloppiness to the music (and the entire spot for that matter) that somehow engages the viewer in the same way a great independent films can jar someone raised on summer blockbuster films.

A string quartet accompanied by drum kit plays what sounds like a funeral march for the first 5 seconds. The visuals and music then shift tempo and groove along for most of the spot. A single alto sax solos over the band. When the State Farm card comes up at :23, the music shifts to a funkier B section with strings chopping away at a strong rhythmic figure.

Interestingly, the chords played by the strings are mostly atonal. That is – they operate FAR outside the conventional I-IV-V chord progression that has become so ingrained in the Western ears (John Mayer once wrote in his Esquire column that the “can’t lose” chord progression for modern pop was vi-IV-I-V). Atonality was explored heavily by orchestral composers in the early 20^th century. As an example, here is Anton Webern’s Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, op. 7.

The Behind-The-Scenes Story:

“State Farm invests a lot of energy into multi-cultural segments. The goal for this spot was to basically to make a connection.” explains Dana Satterwhite, creative director at Austin-based ad agency Sanders/Wingo.

“Insurance is [considered by most] a necessary evil.” Satterwhite continued. “It’s a parity product. Instead of making this motivation by fear we were trying to make it personal and say, ‘Everyone has something personal to them. What’s in my record collection is different than yours. The people I love are different than the people you love. We’re there with a product that helps you protect the one you love. No matter how’.”

“The first two spots we did were about cars and money. ‘Loved Ones’ came at the end. For that spot we wanted something a little sweeter but still soulful. MassiveMusic gave us a nice range of demos. We would hear one that would feel right for another and have them move elements around until we had it right.”

Elijah Torn of MassiveMusic explains, “There was a creative process of back and forth between [us] and the editors in which we scored to their initial cuts and then they would add effects and then we’d add more effects and so on and so forth.”

“The lo-fi sound was created through the process of recording the instruments.” Torn says. “We tracked the instruments using both an AKG C12 tube microphone, Octava ribbon mics and a Great River preamp for both. The track was then mangled using Ableton Live and mixed using ProTools software with Waves plugins..….it ended up with that super Massive lo-fi sound we’re known for.”

“All of the music for these spots definitely had a solid groove to them,” Torn elaborates. “But this track was by far the most sentimental. In part due to the use of more organic based samples and also the subject matter. It resonated as more melodic and less groove oriented.”

Satterwhite says, “We got a little bit of love in the Austin ad community [for these spots]. There’s a fun website called kissmyblackADs.com that champions anything multi-cultural in the media space. The spot ‘Cars’ is up there. Some of our work for ATT is up there. The Austin Addys is a local award show [in which we] we definitely picked up some awards.”

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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.

Somewhere between 21 million and 46 million gallons of crude oil have been disgorged into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, according to government estimates. Eleven workers were killed in the blast. Our only reference point for the ecological repercussions of this much oil spilled into US waters is the Exxon Valdez oil incident (only 11 million gallons) which, to date, the death of 1,000 to 2,800 sea otters, 302 harbor seals, and (est.) 250,000 seabird deaths has been ascribed.

As an effort to highlight the natural resources now at risk, Aerial
FilmWorks synchronized select clips from their 2009 footage of the Gulf Islands National Seashore with a music track by UK-based artist Entropik to create this unsettling web video:

The Behind-the-Scenes Story:

Aerial Filmworks specializes in gyro-stabilized Cineflex HD aerial projects. With two full-time camera operators and thousands of hours of Cineflex time, it should be little surprise that their footage library contained recent beauty shots of the Gulf.

“The Cineflex V14HD system allows us to shoot from wide angle to amazing telephoto views of the same subject matter.”, explains Ron Chapple, owner of Aerial Filmworks. “We work with the helicopter pilot[s] to create stories in the air. Through the use of helicopter moves combined with camera moves, the viewer gets to see a unique angle……aerial filming can be an awesome experience.”

The music chosen by Aerial Filmworks is a track by UK-based recording artist Entropik called “4 AM”.

“Music, of course, is the key element to any of our demo reels.”, says Chapple. “Having great music connects the various clips. Music influences how our viewers will feel about our footage.”

“4 AM”’s soaring, unaccompanied cello melody produces a pensive contrast to the footage that was intentional on Chapple’s part. His original request to the music licensing company was “haunting, end of the world [kind of music]”.

Husband and wife Danny and Deryn Cullen, who make up Entropik, recorded “4 AM” in Danny’s studio using a fairly basic Samson condenser mic on the very first weekend they met in person.

“The instrument I played in the recording is my beloved 120-year-old Hornsteiner cello.”, explains Deryn. “She’s called Nina. We decided that the improv sounded distinctly like ‘4 am’ – a time of day we were both painfully familiar with at that time. It spawned the concept idea for our first album, Reflections on Time. Three versions (solo cello, electronica and trance) are available for licensing on MusicRevolution.”

Oil drilling in the Gulf is an example of what was a defining campaign issue in the 2008 US presidential election. According to the Telegraph: “…state-backed national oil companies have seized back control of the world’s oil resources in the Middle East, South America, Russia and Asia in the past 40 years. This has compelled the old international oil companies, such as BP, Shell and Exxon, to explore in ever more remote and dangerous provinces in order to supply our demand for energy…”

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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.

The History Channel has added a new visual element to their logo they call a “propel”. This promo spot, directed by Adam Levite at Ghost Robot Productions, features a re-make of a 1957 Buddy Holly song “Everyday”:

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/tvfilm/9141

Synopsis:
Grizzled factory workers (live action) manufacture countless “propels” on giant machinery. Scenes of red triangles riding in wheel barrows and conveyer belts are accompanied by a pulsing, acoustic rock track with a sleepily sung 1st verse. Perhaps this section symbolizes the organizational process undergone at the History Channel to re-define a mission and prepare for its launch.

About 30 seconds in, the “propels” are released from the factory roof like a flock of birds. The music explodes into a new section radically different from the Buddy Holly version and the vocals seem to howl from an incredibly wounded place. We then see a sequence of exterior shots of blue collar Americans noticing these flocks flying overhead.

The music settles into a groovy dénouement as the spot ends on a full screen shot of a single “propel” embedding itself onto the left side of the familiar History Channel logo. This TV promo, targeted towards the History Channel’s core audience of males age 25 to 54, works like crazy.

The Behind-the-Scenes Story:
The song “Everyday”, originally released as a B-side to the huge Buddy Holly hit “Peggy Sue”, is ranked #236 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The lyrics address the rapid passage time against instrumentation that sounds like a nursery rhyme.

“We partner with our research department daily to understand what motivates men to interact with History.” explains Krista Liney, Creative Director at The History Channel. “When I heard this song I knew it was a clear standout. The lyrics engage our audience more than any other song we researched.”

The History Channel tapped Jaren Gutstadt, owner of Jinglepunks to demo a few versions of the song. They also reached out to Casey Gartland of GMR Entertainment to obtain rights and clearances from song’s publisher.

“Jingle Punks was the only company I reached out to for this project.”, Liney continues. “They sent three versions. This [acoustic rock] version ‘made history’ (pun intended) from the start. My team finessed it to fit to our initiative, but it is exactly what we wanted! Both [Jinglepunks and GRM] go to great lengths to understand our brand and the direction of [this campaign].”

The amazing vocals were performed by NY-based, Mike Del Rio. Billboard Magazine described Mike’s music as:

“the type of music you want to scream at the top of your lungs in your car, and constantly replay until the CD skips. His diversity with instruments and ability to take on several careers at such a young age is highly admirable and will enable him to survive in music’s demanding industry.”
When asked about the section of the recording that so drastically splits away from the original version Liney says, “The story behind the music change [at :30] is that my team wanted something big, epic and aspirational; which is exactly what we received! The track was cut down to fit this particular promo image-wise. We’ve used the track before in previous image spots; but wanted this version to be timed perfectly…the swell of the music with the History Factory exterior as our ‘propels’ erupt from the pipe. We really wanted this to be an emotional, monumental moment.”

Check out vocalist (and self-appointed “maker of madness”) Mike Del Rio in his appearance on Billboard Underground:

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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.

In Part I of this series I described the tracking process behind the 1^st of twelve production music tracks produced for our Free Music collection. Uber-guitarist Brad Long and I met every Friday at his home studio (Logic 8 running on a MacBook pro) with one creative goal: Write music tracks that belong in a video. And more importantly, enjoy the process! At some sessions we talked endlessly about relationships, money, and the meaning of life while simultaneously laying down instrument parts sanctioned by a system of grunts and nods. Twenty minutes later we’d realize something cool had been created while we weren’t even paying attention.

This week I’ll focus on the mixing process for that 1^st track, which has now been appropriately titled “Personal Hygiene”.

The Great Wide Bass

Years ago acclaimed recording engineer Russ Fowler (Rage Against the Machine, John Mayer) imparted to me the importance of widening the bass in a mix. “You want to create a nice, warm bed of low frequencies that the other instruments can sit in. I like to make sure the bass is spread nicely across the stereo field, but that means you may need to cut out some 2K [with an EQ]. 2K is the frequency where the human ear is most sensitive so you want to let the bass fill out every frequency except that one. Save that space for the other instruments.”

Here’s a sample of this track’s bass part (originally played by me using a preset patch on my Roland Fantom X6) as it originally sounded:

Song1BassUnmixed

And here’s the same part treated with Russ Fowler’s “widening” technique via chorus and EQ:

Song1BassMixed

Nice, huh? Now onto the drums….

New York Drum Compression

I first heard the term “New York Compression” from Mike Hines (guitarist Randall Bramblett and one of the most popular musicians in the www.musicrevolution.com catalog), but was already familiar with the basic technique of “parallel” drum mixing through conversations with producer Paul Lipscomb. Parallel compression is when you have several channels of your drum mix playing simultaneously, but each with strong and distinct effects (one dry, one with compression, one with reverb and one with a transient modifier).

Here’s a sample of this track’s drum part (performed on a Fibes kit by Kevin “Pony” Caldwell and augmented with a quarter note kick drum loop from Logic) as it originally sounded:

Song1DrmsUnmixed

And here’s the same drum track where the drum mix is playing out of two channels, one of which contains a TON of compression:

Song1DrmsMixed

I hear a big difference.

Put it all together and I now had this solid rhythm track on which to lay my guitars and vocals:

Song1DrmsBsMixed

In my next installment of this blog series I’ll talk about how I mixed in the upper frequency instruments and how this royalty-free production music track was mastered. Stay tuned.

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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.

Check out this absolutely hilarious ad for the Toyota Sienna SE Minivan:

This is just one in a series of spots created by Saatchi and Saatchi, Toyota’s ad agency featuring a suburban family of four that have dubbed themselves “the best parents ever.” Throughout the campaign, actors Brian Huskey and Rachel Drummond give a deadpan delivery that is cluelessly endearing. But this rap video spoof, which borrows elements from Jay Z’s “Onto The Next One” video, takes the cake.

Says creative director Erich Funke (add South African accent) , “For this spot, we went with a music video just because it seemed to be a natural fit to what we were introducing to the public. The Sienna SE has lower profile wheels, black interior and definitely more swagger than any other ride. We did wonder if we’d get knocked for going into the urban music space, but it felt like the natural thing to do. So [lead writer] Donnell Johnson wrote a brief with several catchy lyric ideas that we submitted that to various music companies.”

Enter Virginia-based music house Black Iris (with offices in NY and LA).

“We were brought into the project because Saatchi had seen some of the other comedic work we had done.” says executive producer Jonathan Fuller (no South African accent). “One of our writers was a participant in the music video ‘Dick-in-a-Box’ [One of SnL’s most famous skits – 21 million YouTube views to date]. Another one of our guys scored the new movie MacGruber. We’re known for our comedy.”

“They wanted a legit hip hop track so we gave them a bunch of different options for both music tracks and lyrics”, Fuller continued. “For the most part we mixed in Pro Tools using samples from Reason. We submitted different sub-genres of hip hop ranging from a dirty Atlanta style to a real spare sound like the Neptunes. Ultimately we wound up with a sub-genre we’d define as poppy, with a rapped verse then a very hooky chorus.”

Back and forth dialog then ensued between agency and music house. “Creatively, it was a two-way street so it was really great.” says Fuller. “We had a bunch of conference calls where we were cracking each other up. Donnell came up with the ‘Where my kids at?’ part at the beginning. We helped turn the ‘swagger wagon’ phrase into what became a really strong chorus.”

Interestingly, the vocals were not performed by the actors nor professional studio singers. They were done by the composer and his girlfriend (Black Iris prefers to brand themselves as a ‘music collective’ and generally do not give out their individual artists’ names).

Says Fuller, “It was a bit of a dance not to make fun of the genre, but they were convincing enough to make this work.”

When asked about the challenges involved with producing a spot that depends on having a finished track before the shoot, Funke says, “ We didn’t feel stretched for time. We worked with Black Iris until we had a piece we could actually play on the shoot . It was pod A and pod B happening at the same time. Kudos to the [Saatchi & Saatchi] producers [David J Evans V, Karena Dacker, Gil DeCuir].”

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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.

Check out how this Super Bowl ad by Google gets so much emotional mileage out of a dead-simple piano track:

The Behind-The-Scenes Story:

Around 2009, Google Creative Labs decided to produce a YouTube video campaign featuring vignettes about people’s lives. The challenge was to accomplish this by showing only Google searches. They bid the creative idea out to several design firms among which were New York-based 1^st Ave Machine.

Says director Aaron Duffy of 1^st Ave Machine, “We knew that the strength of the piece was going to depend on an emotional build but we also knew that we wanted it to be fairly sparse. Really strong sound design would be really important for a piece like this because we are asking the viewer to use so much of their imagination. As soon as the project came in I started working with Jeremy Turner (composer and cellist with the Metropolitan Opera), Alan Zahn (executive producer), Nick Cipriano (sound designer) and Geoff Strasser (sound designer).”

Says Turner about the music creation process, “The most obvious thing was seeing the blinking cursor in the beginning. That inspired me to create a simple piano part created using just the on-board piano sound in Logic 8. The sonic quality of sample libraries have evolved so much it’s scary. If you know what you’re doing, the results can sound almost as good as a real instrument.”

Google ultimately award the job to 1^st Ave Machine who then delivered a finished spot (with Turner’s music of course) that clocked in at fifty-two seconds long – an unusual but acceptable length because the spot would never air on TV…….or so it was thought.

Somehow Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin saw the spot, loved it and decided to break corporate protocol and run Google’s very first TV ad – during Super Bowl XLIV. It was that good.

Says executive music producer Alan Zahn, “This thing kept growing and growing. First it was a 15 second demo. Then it was a fully awarded spot. Then we had to lengthen it to 60 seconds for it to run during Super Bowl 2010 – all while preserving the energy of that initial music submission.”

“The suggestion was made to have the music build more at the end so we blended live strings with the synth strings.” says Turner. “But other than that, the instrumentation stayed as is – just an old hollow-body Epiphone guitar I own and piano. It’s a super-simple piece.”

This outstanding music-to-picture collaboration between Google Creative Labs, 1^st Ave Machine and Analogue Muse produced a spot that reached 106 million TV viewers and has received 5,032,018 views on YouTube…so far.

Fun Fact:

The sound of a giggling woman 17 seconds into the spot is executive producer Alan Zahn’s 16-year-old daughter Isabel.

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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.

If you’re a musician who is interested in creating music for films and TV shows, you’ll enjoy this.

In the fall of October 2009 I began a series of weekly tracking sessions with Atlanta-based guitarist/vocalist Brad Long (Matt Wertz, Seth Condrey). Brad and I each had different, but mutually beneficial goals going into what eventually came to be called the “Longenberg Project”.

My desire as a co-founder of www.musicrevolution.com was to offer a collection of royalty-free production music tracks that were absolutely free for education institutions yet also available at a low price for commercial productions. I am a keyboard player by trade and use a home studio setup of Logic Pro 8 and Pro Tools 7.3 running on a MacBook Pro. For additional instrument sounds, I also use Native Instruments Komplete 6 software synths. My controller is an M-Audio Axiom 61.

As for Brad, he had worked on many contemporary Christian album projects and was looking for a project with shorter production cycles and less pressure to create The-Greatest-Album-Ever.

“The idea of getting together for spontaneous bursts of incredible productivity sounded like a breath of fresh air”,  says Long. “With album projects, you have to pace yourself for a much longer process. Mike and I always have had a lot of synergy and this project sounded like a lot of fun”.

At the time, Brad’s home studio comprised of Logic Pro 8 running on a MacBook Pro. “Keep the gear simple, simple, simple.”, says Long. “It’s all about creating a magical moment.”

On our first day recording together, we decided on a few creative guidelines based on my knowledge of the needs of professional film and video editors:

1) Three minute tracks – always with a stinger.

2) No key changes (that complicates the editing).

3) No overt melodies. It’s not about us. This is background music.

4) Don’t overthink anything. If the idea makes us smile, record it. Move on.

At our first session, my Roland Fantom X6 keyboard fed a stereo signal into Brad’s Apogee Ensemble. Brad played a JB Custom Fender Telecaster using Lindy Fralin pickups running through Pod XT Live. Here’s what we came up with 90 minutes into the project:

In my next installment of this blog series I’ll stay focused on this track (now titled “Basic Hygiene”) and how we quickly improved it’s sonic quality. The finished track is available on our Free Music page here: (https://www.musicrevolution.com/free_music/ for qualified participants) and available for commercial licensing here:

https://www.musicrevolution.com/search/?x=0&y=0&keyword=basic+hygiene

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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.

Welcome to the MusicRevolution blog! If you are a creator of visual media or music we hope you’ll find this blog useful.

Whenever I hear an exceptional piece of music in a TV show or commercial, I always wonder, “Who wrote that track?”, “How was it recorded?”, “How did the show’s creators decide upon that track?”, “How could I get my music get into this show?”.

I’ve been professionally involved in the production music (or stock music) field for over 10 years and I’ll be doing posts every week that focus on these topics.

Stay tuned.