I had a productive day in the studio yesterday working with Dave McSavage and John Colleary. We were recording songs for the new Savage Eye Series 3 which will be aired in March/April on RTE Television. The guys also joined the tree of fame by engraving their names on the tree in the smoking area!

The jingle is coming back! i’ve noticed a few new radio jingles over the past month being aired. Its good to know that they have not been lost! I don’t think advertising would be the same without them. Jingles like “Bargaintown” have been used for decades. “Centra – for the way we live today” is another one that comes to mind straight away. And of course not to mention the amazing “So many reasons to shop at Easons” jingle written by Egoboo composers Greg Malocca and Alan Killian. A catchy jingle like that creates a great brand. It becomes familiar to the listener and will stick in the consumers head! But the catchier the better – whether its an annoying music piece or not!!!

I’m currently working with piehole.ie to incorporate the piehole search engine into the egoboo site. It will offer my customers an easy to use search engine where the user can select multiple criteria and narrow down their search to find the best voice over artist for the job. The customer can then choose the voice over artist and then book a session at Egoboo recording studios in Dublin. This feature should be available in the next weeks.

Production music is licensed on a non-exclusive basis and therefore others may come across that track and find it suitable for their production too. If you require something exclusive, then we can compose something for you, I added in my response. It will be, of course, a bit more expensive, however it will be unique to your campaign and it can be tailored to fit the visuals or existing audio.

So, the following are points in favor of each path; choosing production music and going for a specially composed track:

Production or Library Music:

Though you will get good deals from composers in this economy, production tracks are less expensive. The price will depend basically on the size of your audience – not too much for corporate or online video, but usually a decent jump up to advertising use.

There is always a good selection of library music available and there are many ways to search. If you are willing to put some time in you should find a track that will fit. Library composers are filling every possible gap of required styles and genres of music these days.

Help is at hand – Many libraries give good assistance in finding the right tracks for clients. They are familiar with their music and can get suitable tracks quickly.

You can browse music with no commitment to buy. Often libraries will offer clients a downloadable low res file for previewing tracks with a video.

The music will not be unique to your production, but with the large amount of tracks on offer, the chances of it being picked up for, say a similar ad campaign, are slim.

Hire a Composer: 

The obvious thing is that you are working with a composer to try to get exactly what you want. You might be able to supply them with a video to work to so the music can be punctuated to what is happening visually. The piece of music can be written to finish perfectly with the end of a commercial for example. It does help, however to have a trusted relationship with your composer and to know that they understand your brief.

Talk to your composer. Some are very well experienced and can often help in the overall creativity of a commercial, even down to the concept of the ad itself.

Composers know that need to be on hand to make last minute changes when they are needed and they can do this easily enough with today’s music creation tools.

Other versions and edits can also be made down the line, e.g., a Christmas version, shorter versions etc.

Hopefully this has helped to discover the advantages of each road when choosing which source of music to choose. Whatever road you opt for, there is a lot of good quality music out there and it is often as good and attention grabbing as fully commercial tracks.

January is busy producing radio ads for businesses. With the price of advertising dropping in recent months its opening up ways for small businesses to get more business in. Egoboo can fully produce quality radio ads with composed music for very competitive prices. It’s important to pick the right voice over actor for the job. He/she needs to connect with the target audience and deliver the message. Hiring a music composer to record a jingle or custom music piece gives the client more lead.

Glenn has been making a few visits to Egoboo from Sligo in preparation for his support slot with the Westlife UK & Ireland tour 2012. We have written and recorded an upbeat song entitled “Temperature Rising” which he plans to release some weeks before the tour.

Over the last couple of Months, Egoboo has been busy recording voice over for a new audio guide system being implemented in the Treasury Exhibition on Kildare Street later this year. Egoboo also managed the translations (English, Irish, German, French, Spanish and Italian) working with Cipherion Translations – a Dublin based translation company. www.cipherion.com/

Over 12 hours of audio were delivered in over 1,000 audio files.

It has been a pleasure to have been part of such a great project.

Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh recorded a VO last week at egoboo recording studios. I had the pleasure to work with the legend Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh. He truly know what he is doing in front of the mic. Mícheál was recording a Voice Over for the Irish Cancer society – relay for life. He also retired last week.

I’ve been using the Waves API bundle EQ and Compressor for getting a nice sound in the bottom end when recording Voice-Over. I used it recently on a job for Jameson Whiskey where the VO recording (Voice-Over Recording) had to sound very Hollywood Trailor. Worked a treat.