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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST SEPTEMBER 2017 AUDIO FOR COMMERCIALS like Chris Brown's 'Loyal,' Tyga's 'Ayo,' Sean Kingston's 'Beat It' and lots of other records," notes Adam Malka, music supervisor at Signature Tracks. Another prominent talent is Signature Tracks's Grammy-nominated head composer Russell Howard, who was just recognized at the 2017 ASCAP Awards in the category for 'Most Performed Themes and Underscore.' Recently Signature Tracks composed a fusion of dubstep and Brazilian batucada sounds for a Nissan Kicks spot for Zimmerman Advertising. The spot aired during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, so the ad agency wanted the track to have a Brazilian Carnival vibe. Signature Tracks brought on Tiki Pasillas to play the drums on the track. Pasillas has worked with Marc Anthony and J.Lo for 15 years and as house percussionist/vocalist for Jimmy Kimmel Live for three years, as well as recorded with artists like Tito Puente, Ricky Martin, Michael Jackson, Carlos Santana, Michael Bublé and more. For the Kicks spot, Pasillas per- formed a selection of Brazilian percussion instru- ments such as a Pandeiro, cuïca, timbao, surdos, ganzá, tamborim, djembe, Caixa snare drums, hepenique and samba whistle. Recording engineer on the drums was Hector Rivera, who wrote and produced many L.A. salsa circuit albums. Signature Tracks composers pulled the live drum recordings into Ableton (9.7.3) and created samples by chopping them up, and affecting them with different EQs and processing. They then sequenced a drum track from those samples to augment the live drums. They also used a number of virtual instruments, like 808 Warfare (a Kontakt Sample Library by The Producers Choice) for the low-end 808 sound. Synth sounds were created with Serum by Xfre Records and Reveal Sound's Spire synthesizer, triggered via an Akai MPK61 MIDI controller. Howard says, "I have composed in literally every DAW at this point but Ableton has changed my life. It's the most intuitive DAW out of all of them." After the track was composed in Ableton, Howard bounced down the stems and brought those into Pro Tools 12 for mixing and master- ing using Waves plug-ins, in particular the Chris Lord-Alge Signature Series. "I final mix in Pro Tools because Pro Tools just has this sound. I can't explain it. It's not a placebo effect; there's just this sound that comes out of it. I've tried to do final mixes in Ableton, but my ears just won't accept it," explains Howard. By creating a custom track for Nissan Kicks, Signature Tracks was able to deliver a cutting edge mash-up of two different genres, bringing the best of both worlds into a fresh sounding score. David Lasman, head of business develop- ment at Signature Tracks, says, "That's part of our core brand, to fuse genres together and still make it sound current and authentic in the genre. Our composers are just as passionate about creating unique, fresh sounds for advertising or TV as they are about pushing the boundaries on tracks for major label artists. That's what has giv- en us an edge. Our composers love what they do and they want to make something that sounds fresh and hot always." Soundtree Music: Lumière Composer Joel Hartman at Soundtree Music (www. soundtreemusic.com) in London, UK recently won the 2017 Music + Sound Award for Best Original Composition — Broadcast Advertisement. His award-winning track was for BBDO New York's Grey Goose Lumière spot. In the spot, directed by Johnny Green, a cargo plane flies over a forest releasing a continuous strand of Christmas lights while a group of people enjoy a party. The partiers count down and flip a switch, stepping outside into a web of twinkling lights. Musically, Danilo Boer and Marcos Kolthar at BBDO New York had a very clear vision for the track. They referenced classic film music so Hartman knew he'd be working with an orchestral palette. "We also spoke early on about using a Celeste in the sound palette, for its magical, won- drous sound. Mainly though we talked about the emotions and the arc of the story. We talked about having space at the beginning to let the music and imagery breathe a little before the excitement of the party," says Hartman. Having the music build up to the countdown also required a bit of discussion, mainly how big the build should be. He says that Boer and Kolthar were very involved throughout the process, making sug- gestions on instrumentation and offering ideas on the structure of the piece. Hartman started by composing the whole piece on piano first. He composes, records and mixes in Apple's Logic X. Next, he filled in the orchestration, using virtual instruments for the various parts as a mock up and then replacing as many of those sample parts as possible with live players. At Soundtree's studio, Hartman Signature Tracks composed a fusion of dubstep and Brazilian batucada for this Nissan Kicks spot. Soundtree Music's Grey Goose Lumiere spot.