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Conclusion
Popular music reflects contemporary culture, as does most advertising.
Composing for commercials is not necessarily a stepping-stone to compos-
ing music for films or television. It is a highly developed and specialized
craft on its own. Advertising music serves several purposes:
- It helps to ‘‘sew’’ commercials together by creating the proper mood
and emphasizing important information. - A jingle is entertaining and delivers a client’s message. Many com-
posers specialize in writing jingles. The field is challenging and cre-
ative and should be studied as a separate subject; other composers
specialize in underscoring and are generally excellent arrangers and
orchestrators.
For students to gain the most from this book, they should purchase a com-
puter music-sequencing program that contains digital audio and enables
them to load video footage. In addition, it will be beneficial to own several
synthesizers and samplers (virtual or hardware); this will allow them to
produce adequate MIDI sounds or samples.This craft can be learned only
through practical experience.
As exercises, tape commercials from television and radio and score
them. Write down the dialogue and rerecord it with your voice. Load the
new dialogue track into a computer music-sequencing program that runs
in sync with the video. This is accomplished by using the video program
such as Quicktime or another format. Turn off the sound on the original
commercial and begin composing while listening to the new dialogue
track and viewing the commercial simultaneously. This should become a
routine procedure for practicing. (If you do not have a video capture card
that enables you to load video into the computer program, it will be neces-
sary to hire a video editor.)
Compose two or three completely different pieces, in a variety of
styles, for each commercial.
Composing should always be approached from an emotional view-
point rather than from an intellectual perspective. One’s intellect should
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