Big George Webley recounts some personal experiences of the jingle music business and drops a few hints about how you might get in on the action...With most of the pieces I write for this magazine and its excellent sister title, Gigging Musician, I try to be as objective as possible. This time it's personal.
If passports still stated occupation, mine would say: 'Composer of music with an average duration of 29 seconds'. I'm not proud: the fact is that I would far rather be composing soundtracks for Steven Spielberg. I've tried to do it, too, a couple of years ago. I visited Hollywood on a reccy (reconnaissance) and after a series of meetings with incredibly shiny happy (but non‑committal) people, an opportunity arose to blag my way into his office. He wasn't in, but his security officers were and I had a very nice day getting thrown out.
Of course, I don't just compose 30‑second pieces of tosh for the highest bidder. Last year I composed the score (eight songs, three refrains, two scene changes and an Overture) to a new Christmas play written by the incredible, funny, mad‑as‑a‑March‑hare Elly Brewer. The play was called Beaten By Toffee — The Witch Who Hated Christmas, and including scoring out over 50 pages of manuscript, driving over 1000 miles to attend rehearsals, and demo‑ing up all the songs, my total fee for the job was £500. This is not to be sniffed at by any means, but if you work it out as an hourly rate (excluding travel time and cost) it comes to considerably less than I would earn collecting supermarket trolleys. On the other hand, if the play gets picked up by a West End entrepreneur and goes on to become a national institution, like Oliver, I'll be rich enough to buy a small country on the royalties. Mind you, these kinds of overnight successes usually take 30 years or so to pay off. But, in truth, I'd have done it for nothing, as the exhilaration of the first night has been burnt into my soul for eternity.
Ancient History
When I first started out as a session bass player in the late '70s (I'm now 39), the big jingle sessions were recorded at either Abbey Road Studio 1 or the legendary, but now demolished, Anvil Studios in Denham. These sessions could feature up to 100 musicians playing together for a whole day to record the theme tune, ad break stings and 'spotting' (the incidental music) to an entire TV series.
There would be a film screen showing the pictures in black and white, with a countdown line at the bottom, in sync with the click track, to cue the piece in. These techniques are still used today by actors when they do post‑production ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement, more commonly referred to as Looping). It's also used by Foley artists (the people who smash a watermelon covered in cream crackers with a hammer to emulate the sound of a head getting smashed in with an axe).
It's not all bad manners and deceit. Sometimes you can be in fear of your life.
At these sessions there was always another screen, to separate the rhythm‑playing riff‑raff (me, the guitarist and the drummer, mainly) from the real, classically trained orchestral players. Whether this was for audio separation or musical snobbery I really can't say. But it was hilarious to see the Principal Cellist and viola players, in full evening dress (one has standards you know, pip pip), sweating their way through a ten‑hour mid‑summer session with no noisy air‑conditioning during recording, whilst the rocking section of the ensemble were in dayglo beach wear, surrounded by ripped‑up fag paper packets and cans.
Modern Times
Sessions like these happen very rarely today — which is bad news if you play French horn or oboe but not if you have a MIDI setup in your bedroom. Nowadays the majority of TV budgets goes into the pocket of two or three of the principal participants: the presenter, producer and executive producer. Theme tunes, and music in general, are very low down on the financial priorities list. Mind you, being badly paid in TV terms can seem like winning the pools for someone who has spent years building up a home studio to earn the odd £50 doing backing tracks for a club singer.
With Channel Five being beamed into almost a dozen houses across the country, and the prospect of trillions of high‑quality new channels (I mean high‑quality in terms of the digital method of delivery, and most certainly not in terms of programme content), the need for home‑produced TV jingles will increase dramatically.
Add A Little Pitch
One of the most annoying things TV production companies ask composers to do is "pitch an idea". In theory this seems like a perfectly reasonable request. The trouble is that they don't want you to pitch an idea; they want you to complete the job, for no money whatsoever, before they decide. This wouldn't be so bad if you knew who 'they' were. Often the person who gave you the brief of the show hasn't actually got a say in commissioning the music — which means that you're pitching an idea to someone who then has to decide whether to pitch it to the right person.
The policy of many TV departments and independent production companies is to put the music out to tender. Generally, this means that although someone has already got the job of doing the music (usually an old friend or relative of someone high up in the production) three or four other composers are asked to pitch for the show. I've been on both sides of the equation, and when I confronted a top executive about this the answer was "it will go in your favour for next time". In my humble opinion that's complete bollocks. If someone has already been given the job, other people should not be asked to spend a lot of time working for nothing. Give someone the job, and if it's not up to standard, sack them.
Stop Thief, Or I'Ll Do Nothing
If someone samples your music without your permission in the pop industry you take them to court and sue for massive damages (see the June issue of SOS). But if you pitch an idea to a TV company and they pinch it, what can you do? I said this article was personal, so I can only relate my own experiences, but just about every composer I know in the industry will have a similar story to tell, and will have done the same as me: nothing!
Being badly paid in TV terms can seem like winning the pools for someone who has spent years building up a home studio to earn the odd £50 doing backing tracks for a club singer.
So here's one of four tales I could tell: once upon a time a top producer from a major independent TV company asked me in to chat about a forthcoming show, fronted by one of our leading presenters. The music brief I was given was: a fairground tune with a hardcore rave backbeat, "and make it sound mental". I went away and wrote a rather excellent traditional fairground tune, if I say so myself, which leaned a little towards a military band (this was my creative input) and then added said backbeat. In truth, I didn't like the rhythm at all, but that was the brief and I was just the Monkey in this relationship. I duly took the Organ Grinding TV producer a cassette containing my tune, followed by a version without the rave beat and, lastly, a breakdown of the various fairground tune voices (tubas, trumpets, glockenspiels, and so on). The reaction was a little muted, maybe because the tune and the beat didn't marry up particularly well, but, as I've said, that was the brief I was given.
The next thing I heard, about a fortnight later, was that they had commissioned someone else to write the theme. Well, you can't win them all — maybe whoever got the job had been able to make more sense of the brief than me. A month later the programme was broadcast, and I was surprised to hear how very similar the theme tune was to the one I had composed, only a with different beat. On checking the end credits (all media whores do this religiously) I saw the composer was someone I had played with years before in a band. I called them up to congratulate them on the theme (bastards) and asked how they'd come up with such a superb piece of music. They told me they'd been given a tape of a tune with and without a hardcore rave beat, as well as all the elements of the orchestration (my tape), and told to write something exactly like that but with a jazzy backbeat. I didn't say anything, as they weren't to know it was my tape. But what to do about it? I hadn't registered the piece, and even if I had, what could I do? Sue a leading production company for passing my idea onto someone? Every production company in the world would be queuing up to use me if I did that — I don't think! Put it down to experience — a rotten, stinking, unfair experience which you just have to swallow, more than once.
It Can Be Murder
It's not all bad manners and deceit. Sometimes you can be in fear of your life. One job I had was for a Middle Eastern finance company who wanted a 30‑second TV ad in a western style but with a traditional beat. It seemed easy enough and I went to the library to borrow a CD of that country's traditional music, in order to get the groove of their rhythm. The beat sounded like badly timed clapping accompanied by someone whacking a biscuit tin with a hammer. I duly recreated a similar backbeat and added an inoffensive MIDI top line. It sounded just the ticket — to me — and I sent it off by Data Post. The next morning I got a call from the angriest man I have ever had on the other end of the phone. He was going absolutely ballistic because I had used the wrong type of biscuit tin, or something as insignificant as that, which made the music sound as though it was from a neighbouring country, who just happened to be their mortal enemies. They didn't pay and with Salman Rushdie in mind, I didn't chase them up about it.
Allegedly
Probably my most notable jingle to date is the theme for the BBC2 series Have I Got News for You. It was recorded in one take, live, during a one‑hour session in the depths of a basement studio in Soho. I used top session players to sight‑read their parts and I doubt if the sax player and trumpeter had their instruments in their hands for more than five minutes. The first time they even looked at the parts (which are not easy) was as I was counting them in with the click track. As for the music itself, I'd only written it the night before and had scored the parts out on the train journey to the studio.
One of the greatest lessons I was ever taught was to answer 'I'm £250 per day' without stuttering, being embarrassed or backtracking when the questioner looked aghast.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, the original theme I'd written for the show, which had been accepted, needed to be changed, along with other aspects of the show. I was told this news the day before the recording session was scheduled. It was too late to cancel, the players had been booked, and so there was nothing for it but to pen another theme. I knew the opening title sequence was 32 seconds long, but that included the four‑second tympani drumming and Big Ben boinging sequence already completed in conjunction with the animator's storyboard. The end credits would be a little longer, so I decided to write a 45‑second opus which I could edit down.
I knew the piece had to be manic, with a big kick at the end, and have a few demented twists and turns in the middle. So that evening I fixed a tempo (192bpm) and charted out the right number of bars. Next, I structured the piece — chord patterns, drum fills, stops, and so on — then it was time for bed, at 2am. Then it was up again at 7.30am for a nice cup of tea before getting the train to London, where I ignored the strange looks of my fellow commuters while I merrily "dah dah dah dahed" the top line to the piece, which I completed during the 45‑minute journey. That was back in the summer of 1990 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Here's Two I Done Earlier
I got a call to do some music for Catch Five, a series written and presented by Joseph (Catch 22) Heller, about the long‑time dead artist Rembrandt. He was the bloke who painted voluptuous naked ladies laying about doing nothing much at all and old geezers either looking miserable or holding up pieces of paper. They wanted the music to be authentic to the period, although one of the producers said, with great authority, how Rembrandt used to listen to the solo pianoforte whilst working. I was more than pleased to inform him that the piano wasn't invented for over a hundred years after Rembrandt had popped his clogs. I didn't lose the job, but the music did end up being solo piano, as that's what Rembrandt would have listened to, had it been around while he was alive.
If you pitch an idea to a TV company and they pinch it, what can you do?
Another piece for Channel 4 was the sport series The Big Eight. Once again, the budget didn't allow for an ensemble of musicians. Wheelchair basketball, featured in the series, is a fast‑growing sport played by dedicated, tough athletes who are definitely not disabled in their approach to competitive action. I wanted to reflect the lightning speed of the game and the massive hardware pile‑ups that occur on a regular basis in the music (wheelchairs move very fast and the crashes are spectacular). For the rhythm track I recorded the sound of a basketball bouncing in an empty school hall, which became the rhythm, and layered screeching guitars over the top. It is one of my favourite pieces.
Deadlines
Deadlines are a crucial element of jingle writing. One minute the production team say they'll be listening to the latest version of (you hope) your 30 seconds of telly notoriety at their next meeting, early next week. The next thing you know, they've decided it's not quite right and they don't know why. Could you do a version a bit more... "umm, consumer driven" (sic), and can they have it early this afternoon? You, of course, panic, comply immediately and they in turn get round to listening to it in two days time. And before you know it the Radio Times is advertising the series with the producer's best friend from university doing the music that you were assured was 100% yours.
Don't worry: that doesn't happen all the time — just most of it. But if your work is good, you're able to bring it in on time and you've got a good (and flexible) attitude, you'll get on. Getting kicked in the teeth is just one side of the coin; the other is knowing that millions of people are listening to your music every week.
Have We Got Opportunities For You
Being a composer shouldn't be about making money as much as doing good work. Yes — and pigs fly. Sometimes it's worth doing two soundtracks for the Royal National Theatre and a 20‑minute dance for the Royal Ballet, which collectively pay less than £1000. Not just because they are serious musical compositions for stuck‑up luvvies, but because you can boast about it when someone from the wonderful world of showbiz asks you what you've done recently.
Making a living out of music has never been a strong point with careers advisers. The local Job Centre isn't any better; in fact, the more colleges and community groups that run music and media‑related training courses, the fewer the opportunities available. So just how do you go about making a living?
Well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, so don't expect a clear‑cut answer on how you'll become a multi‑millionaire composer. How would I know! But if you're looking for a way into the cut‑throat world of media music composition, I have a couple of ideas you might want to try. They won't pay initially, but they will give you something more important than a couple of hundred quid — namely: a track record.
- TUNE IN AND DROP OUT
Every home in the country has access to at least one 'All New' local FM radio station. The DJs who are so cheerful on‑air about everything, are, on the whole desperately sad individuals in need of mainstream recognition. They are your first prey. Compose one of them a jingle. It will mean you have to sit through a few hours of their shows to listen to their style (sic). Do a number of versions. Start with a couple of seconds of crash bang wallop with their name intoned low and slow in an American accent — they seem to like that sort of thing. Go up to a couple of minutes of background music for them to chat over. They will almost certainly use your jingles, and if they don't, try another DJ. - PLAY SCHOOL
Next, offer to do a soundtrack to a play for a local theatre group. They may be the worst actors to ever stand on a stage, but the play will only last a couple of performances and be watched by half a dozen people, whereas the credit you get will last forever. You'll get your name on the poster, but don't expect much remuneration — you probably won't get much more than £50. However, the discipline of writing mood music for a village hall play is not a million miles away from writing a tense scene for a horror film. - MUSIC OFF THE SHELF
Library albums (and there are more of them on the market than there are drops of water in the ocean) are CDs full of jingles and musical beds that no‑one wants — at the moment. Some people can literally make £100,000+ a year from these, and others can make less than £1.73. Personally I've never done any library music, as I come from the lazy bastard school of composition, and need a deadline to panic me before I can even be bothered to remember where middle C is.
This is how library albums work: a company releases a CD full of tracks which the composers give them free of charge (maybe musician costs are covered, if you're established in this field). Thousands of copies are given to production companies, TV and radio stations, and so on. Then the waiting starts — it could be a couple of years. Eventually one of the tracks will be used by a broadcaster who doesn't want the hassle of getting a talented composer to write music specifically for their needs but would far rather wade through a million generic CDs full of tracks called 'Evening Mist'. The composer and the library company split the performance royalty 6/12ths each (see 'Right Royalty Rip‑off?' box for an explanation of royalties).
Library albums are usually set out with tracks at full length (approximately two and half minutes) as well as in convenient 30‑second, 20‑second, 10‑second and 5‑second versions. For a full a list of the relevant library companies, look through your industry directory. What do you mean, you haven't got one? A good industry directory is as essential to being in the media business as headed notepaper. The classified section at the back of this magazine has a selection of the best directories on the market. [Also see our feature on library music in the February '96 issue of SOS.]
- JINGLE SELLS
There are a number of jingle production companies in and around Soho who can turn round any length or style of music in an afternoon. On the whole, the results they achieve make Karaoke backing tracks sound like the greatest music ever produced. They will inevitably expand as the TV and radio networks increase, and maybe there's a place for you on their conveyor belt. We all have to start somewhere: the experience a composer could gain working in that environment might be invaluable, and you'd be paid a wage, which is something most composers never have. Fortunately, though, quite a few commissioners hate that calibre of music production, and the route into TV for independent composers is still very much open. - MONEY TALK
When the time comes to actually get paid by a proper media company for your work, remember that money isn't a dirty word. One of the greatest lessons I was ever taught was to answer "I'm £250 per day" without stuttering, being embarrassed or backtracking when the questioner looked aghast. That was in the early 1980s; these days instinct helps me get the maximum amount on offer, which can be as low as £100, but that's the 1990s. If you come across as cheap, that's what they'll think of you and your work. Having said that, asking for a grand a day isn't going to cut any ice until you've got a couple of Oscars and a toilet full of BAFTAs.
The fact is, lots of money is made making music that never goes out on record. From the lifeless audio (I can't call it music), that brainwashes you in a lift, to the eerie, slow one‑note pulse that accompanies a dark alley scene on a TV cop show, to the techno beat accompanying a corporate training video, music is bigger, more imaginative and certainly more fulfilling than the record industry's output would lead us to believe. And a piece of that action can be yours.
Right Royalty Rip‑Off?
The most important fraction in a composer's life is 12/12ths. It's how PRS (the Performing Right Society) work out the royalty payments from film, TV and radio performances. These days it's almost impossible to earn that fraction, as most production companies have cottoned on to a source of income they have no right to, and you have no choice but to let them have it. PRS made a suggestion a while ago that TV production companies who only administer a piece (that means 'do nothing whatsoever') are only entitled to 2/12ths of the income, but all production companies contract for 6/12ths of the royalty income. In theory you could kick up a stink about this, but it would probably end up in you earning 0/12ths, as they would get someone else.