The Art of Designing Audio Tracks For Advertising Spots

Dave Hodge is a Creative Director at Finger Music, a music composition and sound design company that works with numerous advertising agencies. His background in music runs deep and his understanding of the industry is remarkable. PSFK caught up with him to discuss some of Finger Music’s latest accomplishments and get a better understanding on Hodge’s perspective on how the music landscape is evolving.

You have a broad range of experiences in music. Tell us about your background.

I grew up going to public schools in Toronto with great music programs. I toured in Europe with a classical brass quintet as a kid and I would do more of the same in high school with an orchestra. After high school, I chose to tour with a rock-reggae band called One and played about 600 shows in 3 years. I then went on to Berkelee for a year and McGill’s jazz program for a little over 4 years. So I studied classical and then went heavily into jazz.

Berkelee felt more like a microcosm of what you experience once you get out into the real world, it was more practical than McGill, so I’m glad I got those experiences.

I then began touring with Bran Van 3000 for their first record ‘Glee.’ After a year, I gradually began to embark on doing remixes. That remix and production work then opened the path to doing commercials. I started composing and working with Finger Music London and developed a reel with a handful of creatives.

What do you do as a Creative Director? And what is your process?

In addition to composing, I oversee the work submitted by other composers to ensure its quality before our clients see it (which are mostly advertising agencies). There’s a lot of American composers, then there’s guys in England, Canada, and Italy. Process-wise, when all that work comes in, I provide them feedback to raise the bar and give them perspective. I step back and ask “is it appropriate?”, “will the client like it?”, “is it well done technically?” There’s a lot of virtual collaboration going on and we’ve been doing that since 2000. It’s just a way to work that’s more flexible. We’ve usually been dealing with 30-60 second audio files, so they’re typically easy to transfer back and forth online.

Creative Directing is about interpreting agency briefs and getting the most out of our composers, and suggesting to agencies the ways we can improve upon a brief. It’s also about finding talent and raising the bar.

Advertisers are often looking for new and interesting things and we get briefs across the board; sometimes the agency has something very specific, other times they don’t know, and that’s when my job comes into play more because I have to brief all the composers to figure out what the client wants. It might involve finding different tracks, artists, and styles, putting things together to prompt the client. We usually present the work on Vimeo and Wiredrive and then the client will give me feedback the same way I give our composers feedback.

What are some of your recent accomplishments? What types of challenges do you come up against when scoring music for ads?

We recently worked on a project for Droid. We talked to McGarry-Bowen and the spot was directed by Noam Murro. The main concern here was to create music that does not compete with the intricacy of the visuals. The track had to have a strong arc that could both stand alone and synchronize in places naturally… without being tailored to every shot.  Ads tend to be visually driven, the music is scored according to the images. The challenge is to write for what is there, without having it feel unnatural to the viewer.

We also won a BTAA Craft award for Best Original Music last year for a Doritos commercial. That was a 3-minute piece, a song for a music video, but it was a commercial. They wanted a rock tune set against a guy that wants to be a guitar hero, but he’s kind of a loser that lives in a fantasy. So the lyrics are based on the footage.

We also have been working virtually for a very long time. Our musicians and composers are based all around the world. We don’t ever want to be limited to who is around us and really focus on using the best of the best. Working virtually has a lot of its benefits, one of them being that you can work faster. When you’re working on that kind of project, the faster things can work the better.  So we pride ourselves on being able to work within very tight deadlines.

What do you think about what’s happening in the digital arena with music sharing.

It’s amazing because of how it gives people exposure and quickens sharing, but I don’t want to come off as someone that is just celebrating digital music services without being mindful. Services like Spotify have potential to be a catalyst because it’s removing the MP3 from the equation and introducing traceable ways of consuming music. If everything is on the cloud then everything is accessible and as long as the royalty payments and digital rights are improved, then there will be a return to music professionals gaining more control over their content.

I’m hoping that services like Spotify will support artists’ rights. The royalty rate is still quite poor; right now millions of plays of a track on Spotify equates to somewhere around minimum wage. The key is to look for all kinds of ways to get outside the box. You have to come up with alternatives. Something like a Spotify can enable all kinds of opportunities, but it’s difficult to tell which way they will go.

Where do you go for inspiration?

I always have creative projects in the oven. Musically, I’ve also been co-writing tracks with my good friend Tommy, the guitarist from Blondie, and it’s really given me a nice zap of creative mojo.

Technology and visual art are really where I go for inspiration. I’ve been putting together the sound design for an augmented reality app commemorating the Twin Towers. It’s called 110 Stories. You basically hold this up to the skyline and it shows you where the towers would have stood. You take your picture and then you tell a story about what it means to you. There is a running archive of users on the app as well as online, telling their story. Sound-wise, we’re integrating a few different soundtracks so that the user can indicate a time period and the app will generate sounds that bring the site to life and give you an idea of what people did around the site. Working on that has been inspiring. You can download 110 Stories here.

I love photography. One of my favorite photographs is by Hunter S . Thompson from his Gonzo series, of a Doberman and his girlfriend in Big Sur. There’s also a great Toronto-based painter named Stephen Applebee Barr. For daily inspiration, I’ve been using Instagram. It’s really inspiring to open your phone and have all these great images to look at.

Thanks Dave!

Finger Music