How to make your music more attractive for synchronisation

As you may be very well aware of by now one of my main jobs here at Sentric Music is to place our artists material in various mediums; TV, Adverts, Gaming, Films etc commonly known as the act of ‘synchronisation’. Sync can mean various things for the artist in question with the two main areas of attraction being exposure and cold, hard, dirty cash. Check out our new Sentric Music Consultancy site to see some of our previous sync placements.

For example, we often have music on the teen soap Hollyoaks and while the artist in question may only receive £250+ in royalties from the performance (although that’s not to be sniffed at really is it?) they can be safe in the knowledge that a couple of million 16-24 year olds (and a few creepy older ones) will have just heard their ditty and if only .01% of said audience got off their arse to go check out that lovely song they just heard then that’s an extra 200 fans you’ve got right there. Lovely.

On the other hand, you may have some interest from (insert not very cool brand here) and although you may not use their product or service personally, the £5k-£30k+ you receive from them often acts somewhat as a comfort.

So what I’ve decided to do this week is show you all a selection of the Sentric Music catalogue thanks to a rather nifty little Soundcloud widget and talk you through why I personally believe they lend themselves toward synchronisation usage. A few of these tracks have actually been placed in TV programs/adverts etc, others have been seriously considered, some are being considered as I type and others are new additions that I’m yet to receive that elusive ‘right brief’ for.

Here is a playlist of 11 tracks for which I will give you my humble musings:

Please let me also point out at this point; we have over 1,200+ artists at the time of writing and there is a LOT of material that is more than sync worthy which I haven’t included here for obvious reasons.

Artist: Skeletons and the Empty Pockets
Track: Oh Brother! Oh Sister!

This track is all about the chorus and the lyrical hook within it. The repetition and delivery of “Oh brother bring on the bad weather, oh sister pull yourself together” catches your attention on first listen which is a great asset to have. As well as an instrumental mix it would also be useful to have a mix of this song that is instrumental in the verses, but still includes the vocal in the chorus. This would make the track attractive to the TV industry as they could therefore have the programmes dialogue during the verse and then let the track vocal take over during the chorus. Also note the strong production quality, which is simply essential for anyone looking to have their music synched.

Artist: Whiskycats
Track: Slipped Disco

Out of every ten briefs we receive here at Sentric Music, a good third will often include the dreaded word ‘quirky’. This track oozes quirkiness from the outset and thanks to the inclusion of a few instruments not often thrown together within the modern music industry (brass & clarinet on top of your standard guitar, bass and drums) this further adds to the tracks uniqueness. It’s worth noting though that due to the lyrical content of the track which is about getting sloshed on the cheap, it is likely that only the instrumental version would be of interest to sync agents.

Artist: Hamfatter
Track: Iceland

‘Creatives’ (The people who work for advertising agencies/production companies who have “the vision” of what they want their final product to look like) are often funny people. They usually have between thirty seconds to a minute to tell a story and as the majority of us reading this all went to school we all know that a good story has a solid beginning, middle and end. This track has all three of these elements; starting slowly, building rather anthemically and then ending quietly.

Artist: Sound Of Guns
Track: The Architects

Tracks with a stadium rock feel have always been used for sync, primarily within the advertising industry; think U2, think Kasabian etc. This is a big song with a big chorus and the repetition of the lyrical hook within the chorus lends itself well to certain products, I.E. anything that is built. Brands have egos, and tracks with lyrics like “in your hands we won’t slip” can flatter said egos.

Artist: Middleman
Track: Can’t Hold Me Down

This is a very strong track and has received interest from various industries including advertising, movie trailers and gaming which is evidence of its universal appeal. It has two major hooks, the synth riff which is the first thing you hear and immediately grabs your attention and the lyrical hook in the chorus. The message portrayed within the chorus coupled with the aggression of the delivery almost works as a confidence booster to those that hear it (I apologise if this sounds a bit cheesy, but I’m honestly toning it down compared to the briefs we’ve received from agencies in the past). And what happens when you’re confident? You go buy stuff of course.

Artist: Grammatics
Track: D.I.L.E.M.M.A

Some companies are better at advertising than others, you know this, I know this, we all know this. Some companies sometimes go out of their way to almost alienate their audience and challenge them by not spoon feeding them with the usual advertising dross. They ask for strange time signatures, minor chord changes and all in all something that isn’t ‘easy’ to listen to. This track, especially the instrumental, is a fantastic example of an alternative piece of music that could work well if there was a company brave enough to use it.

Artist: Ian Britt
Track: Dedicate

Positive, uplifting, happy and joyful: words that are often flying about in my inbox when someone gets in touch looking for music to advertise their new product and this track that fits all of the above. The lyrics are a real strength of this track; a brand who uses it would effectively be saying to you, the customer, that they are committed to you and will do all in their power to keep you happy. This track has received a lot of interest, especially within the states where they evidently can’t get enough of this kind of music. I personally think it’s the xylophone after 24 seconds… or is it a glockenspiel?

Artist: goFASTER>>
Track: She Starts Monday

All you need to know about this track is from three minutes in. A fantastic outro which makes the track off puttingly long for radio (obviously a radio edit would solve that problem) but brilliant for sync. Especially considering the fact that the lyrics are about a work colleague doing too much cocaine and needing to have plastic surgery on her nose to cover up her rather naughty habit. Saying that, we had this tracked placed on ‘Paris Hilton’s BFF’ in the states, I wonder if MTV even realised what they were doing?

Artist: Wolf People
Track: Cotton Strands

This is a fantastic example of an artist finding their niche and doing it very, very well. When someone asks for a retro sounding piece of music there isn’t going to be many other artists in our catalogue we’ll turn to, not purely because we don’t have many retro sounding artists, but mainly because this track is outstanding. A sitar sounding hook that runs throughout and dreamy vocals combine to make a very sync worthy track. Also; jazz flute! How often do you see that these days?

Artist: The Second Hand Marching Band
Track: We Walk In The Room

I feel it would be fairer to refer to this as a ‘composition’ rather than simply a ‘track’ as otherwise I’d be undermining it somewhat. A traditional sound with a modern twist, this track has been used on an advert in Australia for a property development company where the angle of the advert was to promote a sense of community and safety. The softness and tempo of this track help create that feel and resulted in a rather lovely advert.

Artist: Paul Dixon
Track: The Hill

I keep mentioning ‘hooks’ and this song contains one of the most universal hooks available; the good old human whistle. Whatever country you’re in, whatever language you speak, whatever god you believe in, you bloody well know how to whistle and clap and whoop and la and hey etc. If you’re a multinational brand it is more cost effective to clear a track for multiple territories rather than a track per region and therefore a track like this becomes instantly attractive. We have a mix of this track which only contains the woo’s and whistles and therefore it could be written and performed by anyone in the west as far as the brands concerned.

So there you go, eleven tracks that all have qualities about them that make them sync worthy. Hopefully this blog will help you to listen to your own music and think about how you can make that new track simply irresistible to (insert generic car brand here) so they’ll therefore give you shedloads of cash so they can use it to push their rainforest destroying, carbon emitting, death boxes.

And remember to read ‘6 things to improve your chances of getting your music synched’.

What I’m reading this week: David Mitchell ‘Ghostwritten’

What I’m listening to this week; Arctic Monkeys and Dutch Uncles

Stay tuned

sP

~ by Sentric on August 20, 2009.