162 !!Chapter 7
Marshall: No. We go along the lines that they are not going to pic-
ture the stuff very well. We’d rather explore three or four ideas
and produce them. More often than not, when we play them
something in its infancy, they can’t picture it.
MZ: What percentages of your recording sessions have live musi-
cians?
Marshall: Not many—maybe 10 percent. Almost everything is pro-
grammed—we will still use live brass almost all the time—for
finals, we try to bring in six or eight string players. [He said they
combine the live strings with the synthesized strings to produce
a more realistic sound.]
MZ: How many acoustic orchestras do you record in a year?
Marshall: None. I just did a spot where we had 14 live players—
several years ago we had 40—it hardly happens anymore.
[Referring to budgets, Marshall said they usually tell the agency
if they want X number of live musicians or singers, the budget
will be X, and if they want live players mixed with synthesizers,
the budget will be Y.]
MZ: What is your advice to young jingle writers?
Marshall: You are going to need good production values and a
good setup [referring to a synthesizer setup]. I don’t think it’s a
world anymore where you are going to give a rough idea of a
jingle—there are no demos anymore [meaning the demos have
to sound like final productions]. You are going to need to be a
good engineer, producer, and songwriter yourself—you might
need to work without pay, at first—you are going to need every
bit of the demo money, if you are paid, and you will want to
pump it all into the demos.
MZ: What percentage of the time does the agency’s demo budget
cover your production costs?
Marshall: We technically lose money on every one (demos) just
because we use our facilities [meaning studios]—I would say we
lose money on every demo. We go for the win to make up for
the loss. [Meaning there is almost always a competition to get
the final job.]
Marshall: [In response to a question about underscoring.] Under-
scoring is having a knowledge of flow of picture, editing, and
how to marry that sound to that picture. [He suggests that
young composers tape commercials from television and score
them for practice. Some composers offer to score demos without
payment.] You never know, they might get lucky.... I think that
anyone getting into commercial music who can’t produce and
program is definitely not going to make it. It’s a programming
world at this point... maybe one in a hundred [composers who
apply to his company] can compose, program, engineer, and