Jingle Magic Out of Thin Air
Some friends have asked me recently “What’s it like to take on a job like writing a Jingle for a new client?" Honestly, It seems like a good question to me. We’ve been writing and producing jingles for so long now that I think we take it for granted. So I thought… Why not reverse engineer the whole Jingle process? It might open some eyes for some people. It might even open my own!
Where to begin. OK, so first off, we're contacted by a business, usually someone in their marketing department. If they want a jingle our Client Services Director will talk to them and try to dig down and see what is it that they do, what their budget is, and find out if they have a slogan At that point we put together a job jacket, which includes a Jingle request form with all pertinent info and a copy of our contract with the client so we can see specifically what kind of Jingle package they want. Then it goes to me, the official Creative Mills Jingle composer/producer. The first thing I do is look at the name of the client and their slogan. Then I compose the melody using those words in my head. (I’ve been writing jingles for so long that my brain immediately edits out any weak ideas. Seriously.) Now I need to create the music. For this jingle, it’s going to be a 30 second sing out.
Jingle Execution
I head to the studio, where I create a ProTools recording session for our new client. When I compose music, I prefer using piano to begin sketching things out. All I’m looking for at this point is the music for the end of the jingle… The Sing Out. I’ve already got the melody, so I just need to come up with chords that will sound really good with the melody. This usually doesn’t take any time at all. So now I’ve got the Sing Out with the right lyrics and the right melody (I always record what’s called a "dummy vocal") and the right piano chords.
A :30 Jingle Has to be Exactly 29.9
I’m creating a :30 Sing Out, so the whole thing has to come in at 29.9 seconds. This is the real challenge. At this point I start at the beginning of the Jingle and begin writing the music that will lead into the last four or five seconds of vocals (the jingle Sing Out). Now I’m dealing with the musical genre. What does the client want? We’ve already had a conference call with the client and I know exactly what I’m going to to do to fill out the rest of the jingle. Once I’ve got the music written, I put together some drums and percussion, filling out the rest of the music spectrum with genre specific instrumentation. If I need somebody to play something specific, I’ll reach out to one of our musician friends to play the part. Now comes the singing part. Luckily, we have some killer in-house vocalists! I put the finishing production touches on it, which include reverb and spatial mixing and mastering. At this point it’s usually a good idea for me to get away from the jingle for a day or so to give me some objectivity. Once I listen to it again, I might make some minor changes and off to the client it goes!
Wow. I do all that whenever we do a jingle? I'm seriously almost unconscious during this process because I’ve done it so many times. So there it is; the magic behind the curtain and… I feel like I’ve had a good therapy session. Who knew?