{"id":902,"date":"2011-08-15T19:41:14","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T03:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=902"},"modified":"2013-06-28T13:37:53","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T21:37:53","slug":"diary-of-a-music-producer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/diary-of-a-music-producer\/","title":{"rendered":"Diary of a Music Producer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, that sounds somewhat pretentious.\u00a0 I am not a big time music producer<\/a> by any means.\u00a0 But the last few months I have been deeply entrenched in my studio for hours at a time working on a new theme for a local television news show.\u00a0 It is not the first time I have done this;\u00a0 my music ran on that show for three years in the early 2000’s and was then replaced by a corporate decision to brand a number of television stations across the country with the same music, produced somewhere back east.<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/a>
Image via Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This time, I was given a musical piece to emulate…not “copy”, but essentially create a similar feel and tension to.\u00a0 At first what I came up with was too much the same and I knew that, but it eventually morphed into something much more original.\u00a0 The most difficult part was creating the drum track.<\/p>\n

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When I come up with music I often start with drum loops<\/a>, usually from a decent source like the audio series Drums On Demand<\/a>.\u00a0 They are cleanly recorded and I can mess somewhat with tempo and fit the parts together so that the fills and sections pretty much work with the music I’m creating.\u00a0 But this time, I took the song that I was given and tried to re-create a similar rhythm, utilizing my own drum sounds and several loops I found.\u00a0 There was a looseness to the original that was hard to copy…almost a hip-hop kind of feel with hand claps and stereo snares that are slightly off from each other.\u00a0 It took an awfully long time to come up with just the mix that I felt comfortable with.<\/p>\n

When that was done, it was a matter of creating a kind of tension at the beginning of the theme.\u00a0 When you listen to news music<\/a> themes, they are often powerful, serious and dramatic, utilizing symphonic sounds (horns are very popular!), or occasionally hard-core electric guitars.\u00a0 They rarely sit on phrase for very long, changing constantly to create tension and building up toward what I call the “signature”.\u00a0 Think of the NBC<\/a> peacock…or even the musical stabs in commercials for products like Intel<\/a> computer chips.\u00a0 That’s the signature and what makes it identifyable.<\/p>\n

The original song had very simple instrumentation to begin with, just a guitar playing arpeggiated notes and a kind of horn playing longer, more drone-like tones.\u00a0 I used similar instrumentation, but also found a synth loop that had a kind of stacatto, almost “news bulletin” like sound to it that played underneath.\u00a0 Eventually I added a drone of a different sort, one that kind of oscillates from the left to right and back again.\u00a0 Bit by bit, I added pieces and would send them to the person I was working with to get his feedback.\u00a0 Over a couple of months we got closer to something original, really only just coming down to “where to put this and what instrument to use here” types of decisions.<\/p>\n

But that is only the beginning.\u00a0 Besides having a news open theme, you also have to have what I refer to as “bumpers”;\u00a0 bits of music that bring you into or out of a commercial break.\u00a0 Usually I create a number of bumpers with different lengths and varying instruments that are taken from the opening them. Then there are separate themes for the sports segment of the show or the stock market report.\u00a0 And there may be need for a more sombre version of the main theme…for instance if the preceeding story was about a death or disaster.\u00a0 One time I had to construct a totally different theme that had a kind of “war” feeling to it when the US invaded Iraq.\u00a0 I’ve done music bits for health segments, kid’s segments, call in segments…you name it, I’ve probably come up with it!<\/p>\n

At this point in time, we are very close to finalizing the main theme, and I have been working on creating the rest of the package.\u00a0 Sometime in September or October, my music will start running on the news again.\u00a0 It’s always a big thrill to listen to it the first few times.\u00a0 Actually, I never get tired of hearing my music on TV, so the thrill is never gone :-).<\/p>\n

It’s a lot of work, sometimes worry when you know you have to please a group of people who all have their own tastes and “hear” their own themes.\u00a0 But in the end, hopefully it’s music that will last for two or three years and become as identifiable with the show as the show is with the general public.<\/p>\n

IJ<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, that sounds somewhat pretentious.\u00a0 I am not a big time music producer by any means.\u00a0 But the last few months I have been deeply entrenched in my studio for hours at a time working on a new theme for a local television news show.\u00a0 It is not the first time I have done this;\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prwoq-ey","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}