Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/869840
www.postmagazine.com 24 POST SEPTEMBER 2017 AUDIO FOR COMMERCIALS company with studios in both New York City and Sydney, Australia. Taking advantage of the 14-hour time difference, they can work around the clock on a project by bouncing it between the two locations. And that's just what they did for Saatchi & Saatchi NY's Tide Super Bowl 2017 spot, FOX: Bradshaw Stain. The spot earned five Gold Lions and two Bronze Lions at the 2017 Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Composer Adam Moses, based in Sydney, says, "It's a really cool workflow between Sydney and New York. Both of our offices were working to- gether almost 24 hours a day, throwing pieces of music across the world to each other and saying, 'Ok, we're going to sleep and now you guys can take over. Here is the client feedback.' By the time they wake up, they have what they need because we had been working on it. It worked out brilliantly." The Saatchi & Saatchi NY agency team was extremely pleased with two tracks Nylon pre- sented. Even so, the Tide client remained open to ideas right to the end. The day before the ship date, Moses composed a new track that had the same right vibe and timing, with an extra added vocal component. "We had spent a week working on the other tracks, so we knew all the timings and exactly what they wanted and where they wanted it to hit. The piece of music that I wrote for this spot was just like a Hail Mary pass right at the very end. Three hours before New York was waking up, we put it all together here in Sydney and sent it to them. They listened to it that morning, which was the morning they had to send the spot to dispatch, and they chose to go with my track," says Moses. In the spot, sports anchor Terry Bradshaw notices his white shirt is besmirched by sauce. He panics and races to find a new one. He runs across the field while a play is in action, hops into a golf cart and drives it along the interstate be- fore veering off into the backyard of actor Jeffrey Tambor. There, his shirt is cleaned to perfection by Tide detergent. Moses's upbeat rock track is driven by the rhythm section and punctuated with wordless fe- male vocals. He composes and mixes in Apple's Logic Pro X (10.2.4). For this track, Moses went with mainly live instruments like guitar, drums and vocals, which he recorded using an AKG 414 and Neumann KM 184 mics paired with a Universal Audio SOLO/610 pre-amp. "I'd say this track was 70 percent real instruments and 30 percent software helping it out. I have a beautiful room here at Nylon filled with all the toys you could ever imagine. I performed the snare and high-hat live, but used a virtual sample for the kick drum," he says. Just as Moses was finishing up his composi- tion, singer Lana Rita Sayah came in to perform her parts. "I was literally writing the track as she arrived. I put it up on the computer and told her to just do her thing. She did and it sounded awesome," says Moses. "Part of a jingle writer's skill set is to be able to do that, to come up with an original idea really quickly and trust that it's good. When it gets down to the wire, I perform at my best and just trust my training and in- stincts to get the job done at the highest quality as quickly as possible." By choosing to go with a custom music track, Saatchi & Saatchi NY was able to capture the right feeling for the spot. It's a bit zany and funny, with a bit of mad-dash flavor. With a custom score, Moses says, "We're able to capture the emotion of the commercial in a bespoke manner. We're able to capture the emotion and the exact timing of the emotion for the ad. It's a really good ad, a really funny ad and I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to help make it even better. I couldn't have done it without the team here at Nylon. It was a real team effort." Signature Tracks: Kicks Music licensing company Signature Tracks, (www.signaturetracks.com) based in Santa Monica, CA, offers clients cutting edge mu- sic for commercials, films, series and branded content. Co-founded by Russell Howard, David Lasman and Adam Malka (childhood friends from Philadelphia), Signature Tracks has be- come one of the top music licensing companies in the industry providing music for over 2,000 series. Their clients include Viacom, Discovery Networks, A+E Networks, Kevin Hart and Lionsgate scripted YouTube network Laugh Out Loud and Omnicom, just to name a few. Signature Tracks takes pride in harnessing the creative power of A-list artists and grooming them to create music for content. "Our compos- er Kenneth Chris Mackey just won his second Grammy, and another composer of ours, Mark Kragen, has written several hit records recently, Nylon presented two tracks for Saatchi & Saatchi NY's Tide Super Bowl 2017 spot. Signature Tracks co-founders (L to R) Adam Malka, Russell Howard and David Lasman.