Megatrax Blog

First-for any of my clients and friends that have heard this story before, please understand that this blog allows for a broader throw of some favorite stories related to custom music production.  So to them, if you need to check your stocks, grab a snack or get lost in youtube for a little while, now may be the time.  For everyone else, this will help explain the mystery of what a music producer actually does (sometimes).

A few years ago, a cable network hired us to create a :30 promo for one of their more popular programs.  As is our standard procedure, we received the initial creative directives and went to work.  They were of the “normal” variety – including terms like energetic, driving, hip, prominent guitar, bouncy, etc.  After getting their approval on a rough sketch, we completed the piece, delivered a mix and scheduled a conference call with all of their creative folks to get feedback and (hopefully) sign off.

With them huddled around a conference table, after brief introductions we reiterated what we were going for creatively per their instructions and had them push play.

The piece finished playing and we heard a smattering of applause over our speakerphone and then one comment.  “Hello…this is the art director…could you make it sound more red?”.  Was he kidding?  Red is not exactly a musical term.  After diplomatically establishing this was not a joke, we set out to define how the term “red” related to what he wanted to hear.

We zeroed in on specific and easy to understand elements, and one by one get his response.  Tempo, sound of guitars and other instruments, dynamic changes we created for their edit points.  Comments then began to come from others at the table as this process triggered some input that the playback had not.  Finding out what they liked and didn’t like in each of these areas finally answered the question of what he wanted to hear “more red”.

While I don’t want to advocate colors becoming the new music discussion vernacular, this illustrates one very important part of what we as music producers do.  Asking questions and translating a client’s ideas into our work are key.  Granted, they have to be the right questions and we have to know how to incorporate those into the production, but that process allowed us to “make it sound more red”, which by the way, ended up meaning crimson.  They loved it.