MAN WOMAN MUSIC MEME

Commercial music composition for advertising, film and other media is often created from a model, sometimes called a ‘scratch’ or ‘temp’ track. But even music created for purely 'artistic purposes' conforms to the dictates of external format. II–V–I, anybody? IV–I? Are you going to stay clear of two of the most popular chord progressions because they've been used before? Probably not. It would be a bit like saying one is going to embargo vowels because the letters 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o' and 'u' all represent phonetic clichés. We don't even abandon real clichés because despite their lack of originality, they may still nevertheless represent a truism. At the very least, they may be employed as useful shorthand in our daily and informal communication.

For purposes of media commissions, modeling can be extremely useful for many reasons –direction and budget estimation to name two. That said, the practice also comes with an inherent possibility of producing a mediocre derivate, not to mention risk of plagiarizing the source, whether by inadvertent or intentional action.

This begs the question:

Can a copy ever equal or surpass the original?

Or can it even just simply exist as an enjoyable and entertaining alternate to the source from which it is born?

Naturally it depends how one defines 'copy'. In the present case we mean a derivative work, but not necessarily a variation on a source as the word is commonly used, especially in a pejorative sense. Rather, our definition of Derivative is more closely aligned with the way the term is used in mathematics, being "a measure of how a function changes as its input changes..."

Anyway, the answer as it turns out is an unequivocal 'Yes'. And as a matter of fact, it happens all the time. For instance, take The Beatles, relative to every other single band that followed them, and which claim the Fab Four as a direct inspiration. Or at the other end of the audio spectrum, take free form jazz and ask yourself how free it actually is once you understand 'the rules' players employ that enjoy expressing themselves within that format. Free it may be, but complete and unintelligible audio anarchy, rarely, which it would have to be, of course, if it actually were free.

But how then is it possible that the collective works of any specific genre can claim originality from one other when they might all be formed from the same creative building blocks?

Thousands of blues songs, for instance, share nearly identical melodic licks without one being considered a copy or infringement of another. Compare Texas' Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Baby Please Don’t Go” to Chicago's Muddy Waters' “Mannish Boy.” Each work is wholly original even if both remain identifiable as blues based. So, the two tunes can't be completely unique; they must share some commonalities –those things that make these blues a uniquely American blues, despite regional idiosyncrasies, and not, say Central Asian khuumii, which is also, arguably, a blues of another independently formed and Asiatic kind.

Similarly, ‘Simple Simon Met a Pie Man…’, ‘Johnny had a little Dog…’, ‘Yankee Doodle went to town…’, when sung, do not possess identical melodies, but all three share strikingly similar musical DNA making each immediately recognizable as a children’s song.

I have often asked myself: When a group of works share they same style, what does that mean?

Likewise, when comparing two works that share creative building blocks:

Where does originality end and plagiarism begin?

–A lot closer in music than in prose, I imagine, for while the adoption of one unacknowledged sentence maybe considered intellectual theft by most who learn of it, the appropriation and practice of an entire catalog of licks and executions by those who love a certain genre is arguably what makes a given popular musician one kind of stylist and not another.

That said, there is a practice today, among mash up artists to layer one popular musical work over another. The resulting audio collage can generate a potentially new musical experience, but it is as often implemented as a kind of postmodern Critical Theory litmus test, in order to demonstrate, arguably, the bereft inspiration of one artist or another.

But the truth is, unlike language, music's combinations are limited. That's not simply my opinion, by the way; that's actually the way the math works out.

The Math of Originality

How many words are there in the English language?

As of this writing, the English language hovers at around one million words, and its speakers might generate new words every day (although what eventually makes it into the common lexicon is another story).

On the other hand, the Key of C contains 7 notes. Likewise the Key of G. And there are only 12 major and 12 minor keys to work with. Naturally, there are various ways to define or modify a key, so that one might reasonably suggest that there are more than 12 options available to us. Regardless, barring the wholesale adoption of a completely different theory of music in the west, then the melodic permutations –however you define them– are not endless, especially when we limit potential combinations to useful combinations, and then further limit those results to pleasing combinations.

So, guess how many notes are contained in the twelve-tone system of equal temperament employed in the composition of every single musical work in the western canon in the last 300 hundred years?

Well, that would be 12, because this widely used system of which we are long accustomed divides the octave into exactly 12 parts.

Useful Musical Combinations

Granted, octaves repeat at higher and lower frequencies, so that a grand piano (and the cumulative range of all musical instruments) generally affords us about 8 octaves of pitch choices. On a piano, that adds up to 88 piano keys. Therefore, allowing for repetition of any given note, we have at our disposal over a billion melodic combinations, which almost sounds like the number of melodies out there to be conjured up is infinite.

But if we relegate all similarly named notes equal value regardless of frequency, and ignore repetitions or eliminations, then there are just less than five hundred million musical permutations allowed. By this I mean, we say C1, C2, C3, etc and C1-C1, C2-C2, C3-C3, etc all serve to indicate the same note, C, so that a given sequence of pitches –a melody– composed from a chromatic scale and then transposed in parallel fashion to another key or octave can not be considered wholly unique from the original melodic placement.

Similarly, 'Pop Goes The Weasel' is still Pop Goes The Weasel' whether it is performed in C at the lower range of a marimba or whether it is played in Bb at the upper range of a trumpet, and regardless of what harmonic choices might support it, and not two or more distinct melodies.

Granted 500 million options is still a pretty big number, but when was the last time significantly large populations chilled out for any substantial length of time to 12-tone compositions? Or even a room full of people? Right, on a historical time line that begins in 1700 and stretches to infinity, the answer is closer to never than most fans of Serialism would care to admit.

More commonly, the music of the masses as it has been composed in the west for the last 300 years is produced by various arrangements of the diatonic scale, being the 7 distinct notes which express a common key. These seven notes can be considered the most 'useful' pitch options available to us because audiences generally find them pleasing, and the number of permutations they provide is just over 5000.

Personally, I would be quite surprised to learn if four or five hundred years after the invention of the equal temperament system, not each and every 7-note combination had been employed already. In fact, I think it's closer to the truth to assume that prolific composers and improvisational musicians cycle through every single one of these combinations on a rather frequent basis.

So, obviously, musicians appropriate from one another –and themselves!– and they do it all the time, not to mention every single time someone takes a solo. In fact, they have no choice in the matter, or there would be no music. Such sourcing and re-arranging of pre-existing elements does not indicate a meager imagination, because in the hands of a capable talent other parameters come into play which allow for infinite variability, prominent among them being 'Time' and 'Feeling'.

And in fact, it is also by this process that styles and genres are born and also how traditions stay alive.

Which is not to say originality can never be achieved, but generally what we strive for when we compose a new work in an existing idiom is a new expression born from familiar materials and performed within an existing set of rules, conventions or framework, and not something sprung out of a new theory (unless that is our task, and if it is, well, good luck winning mass appeal (or even a single client) with that). It is hard enough to get people who live on opposite sides of the same planet (and sometimes even the same couch) to appreciate, much less enjoy, each other's music.

And God help the drummer attempting to hold on to his or her so-called trademark beats, because each nifty new rhythm will without a doubt become the bed of every single Jamaican pop song by next summer’s end, and not a judge on the planet will hear evidence, complaint or accusation of intellectual property theft.

Beats, once born, belong to everybody. Not always melody, though.

Generating Clones or Producing Original Kindred Works?

Whether literally or intuitively, media composers face a similar issues whenever they subject a temp track to analysis. For them, the question is not how to clone a copy, but how to reproduce a kindred work.

Producing Original Kindred Works from analysis of a model is a process that requires one to determine the musical DNA of one given piece, and then to combine it with DNA of one's own. Not to simply find inspiration not from another composer’s thematic ideas, but to draw from a mish mash of archetypal, interstitial, semiotic, memetic and bio-musicological microstructures (audio units smaller than a motif) inherent in what we define as the model.

And then once identified, to synthesize these ‘structures’ with one’s own unique content and concepts, so that the result is in fact a wholly original work, derivative only in so far as one may say, they share the same style or ‘parent’ creative, that one piece was the inspiration for another, and confidently leave it at that.

By using terms like 'mish mash' and 'parent', I mean to imply that a kindred work is never composed via the asexual replication of source material, but by combining bio-memetic material from two different and unrelated sources, and then allowing for intelligent design and development.

A man and woman meet and form a child. Similarly, one composer or artist assimilates another composer’s or artist's ideas and yields not a copy but a wholly unique and separate work.

Afterwards we do not say a child (assuming it is not an unauthorized clone) is ‘a rip’ or ‘ripped off’ from either parent. More correctly we recognize that although both works, parent and child, are created from the same basic, elementary particles, that the child is capable of being as wholly original unto itself as its parent/s.

So, when faced with a temp track, what is it that we look for in our musical analysis?

A classical theorist might examine chord progression and melodic direction. But that kind of surface analysis can only ever yield a reproduction. Our purpose is different, not to appropriate a well executed concept in order to create a parallel work, but rather to create another original work that produces a parallel feeling. And in order to do that, our first task will be to identify a given work’s artistic and sonic DNA so that we might then combine it with our own, and thereby fulfill both a client's commission and yield our own contributions to the repertoire, and perhaps in the process also produce a work that will inspire someone else to make another piece of music.

* * *

Photo Collage by Terry O'Gara.

Hollywood Pink Noise

In a March 2, New York Times article, titled Bringing New Understanding to the Director's Cut, Natalie Angier reports the findings of a new study published in Psychological Science, titled: Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film (by James E. Cutting, Jordan E. DeLong, and Christine E. Nothelfer of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley). The study produces new evidence that "films have evolved to resemble the natural rhythms of the brain."

I found Ms. Angier's report interesting, so I decided to seek out and read the original study myself.

From the paper's abstract:

"Reaction times exhibit a spectral patterning known as 1/f, and these patterns can be thought of as reflecting time-varying changes in attention. We investigated the shot structure of Hollywood films to determine if these same patterns are found. We parsed 150 films with release dates from 1935 to 2005 into their sequences of shots and then analyzed the pattern of shot lengths in each film. Autoregressive and power analyses showed that, across that span of 70 years, shots became increasingly more correlated in length with their neighbors and created power spectra approaching 1/f. We suggest, as have others, that 1/f patterns reflect world structure and mental process. Moreover, a 1/f temporal shot structure may help harness observers’ attention to the narrative of a film."

In other words, modern films appear to share a common construction that significantly parallels a 1/f or pink noise pattern. Pink noise is said to occur when "each octave carries an equal amount of noise power." And apparently, pink noise over a limited frequency range is ubiquitous throughout nature. (Wikipedia: Pink Noise). For the purposes of the Cornell/Berkeley paper, it should be noted, we are not talking about an audio signal, as we are a pattern.

The paper's authors write:

"The causes for 1/f patterns across the sciences are unclear, but it is now increasingly accepted that there are many such causes (Newman, 2005). In vision, Field (1987) found 1/f spectra in natural scenes, and Graham and Field (2007) found them in artworks. These results reflect the structure of the human visual system. Again, Gilden et al. (1995)—as well as Pressing and Jolley-Rogers (1997) and Van Orden, Holden, and Turvey (2003)—found 1/f spectra in reaction times, and Monto, Palva, Voipio, and Palva (2008) found evidence for their neurological underpinnings. These results seem to reflect the organization and structure of the human mind. Hollywood film might seem far removed from, and not amenable to, this kind of analysis, but we thought not. The 1/f temporal patterning has been found in speech and music (Voss& Clarke, 1975), so film seemed to be another good place to look. Further, we thought we might be able to trace its evolution in film."

And later, explaining their method:

"Our unit of investigation was the shot. Shots are the smallest film units to which viewers are asked to direct their attention. Shot form is sculpted by directors, cinematographers, and film editors. The purpose of that form is to control the viewer’s eye fixations and attention, and filmmakers do this fairly well (Smith, 2006). Shot relations are sculpted by the film editor to promote the narrative (Dmytryk, 1984; Ondaatje, 2004), and these relations create in the viewer what Hochberg and Brooks (1978, 1978) called visual momentum, the impetus to gather visual information. In other words, the rhythm of shot sequences in film is designed to drive the rhythm of attention and information uptake in the viewer. Perhaps the success of these rhythms reflects what Kael (1965) meant by “losing it” at the movies."

I'm not a scientist, but being a commercial music producer, it occurred to me that if modern movies indeed exhibit 1/f patterning, then maybe it is a result of their directors and editors using TEMP TRACKS as tempo maps to facilitate the editing process and 'drive' picture, which has long been an industry practice.

I may be mistaken but I think it may be said that the authors of the study appear to have treated film as a primarily –or singularly– visual medium. As a result, the utilitarian role sound plays in movie making remains unrecognized by the study. Of course, I'm not simply referring to the final musical score created after the fact, but music's use as a pre and post production tool. Those who arrive new to the craft may not realize that directors and editors frequently cut image to temp tracks, and sometimes pre-scores (especially in the case of licensed songs), thereby locking visual edits and actions to pre-existing musical cues; syncing visual events to musical events; rather than the other way around –music to film– which is the common perception (and perhaps traditional method) of how films get made.

Though I can only report on my own experience, there is much anecdotal evidence to support the argument that movies are increasingly being constructed using temp tracks. The process has been going on for decades, but it has become even more common as returns make it clear movies are investments vehicles for those who produce them as much as they serve to entertain the rest of us (i.e., producers who want to guarantee a picture's success will model a new feature on an existing feature, including the score, right down to very last musical cue).

The result is moving picture that is not simply scored with audio as part of the finishing process, but rather a series of images –what the study defines as 'shots'- that are first locked to a predetermined musical pulse, the same way dancers follow music, the same way a band follows its drummer, and not the other way around (usually). In effect, it may be said that the film footage is used as a medium to score the temp track with visual information. Only once that is accomplished is an 'original' score considered. But even when a score is created after the cut is deemed final, it is expected that the new 'original' score will also be modeled on the musical mapping established by the temp track.

It is not quite clear to me if the scientists who produced the study believe 1/f patterning in film an unconscious advancement, or the result of an increased skill set, or if they have any opinion on that matter (beyond their discovery and observation of the phenomena).

Either way, I believe that if modern movies do exhibit 1/f patterning, as James Cutting and his colleagues suggest they do, and no doubt their findings are without error, then maybe it is a direct result of these films being formed upon another construct that also 'resembles the natural rhythms of the brain' – i.e. MUSIC, specifically in its application as a temp track (and tempo map) during the editing process.

* * *

MARCH 3, 2010 UPDATE:

Follow up to my blog entry of 3/2/10 (Hollywood Pink Noise), regarding findings published in the report, Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film (by James E. Cutting, Jordan E. DeLong, and Christine E. Nothelfer of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley):

As it happens, Professor Cutting was kind enough to write a response regarding the hypothesis presented in my article. I've received his permission to reprint an excerpt from his response here for the benefit of Critical Noise readers who are following this topic. As follows:

"The problem with your account as I see it, however, is that the musical pulse (from temp tracks) that can be used to guide shots (and adjusting their lengths) seems likely only to shorten or lengthen some local shots within or across scenes by no more than a second or so. The 1/f pattern that we found is dependent on correlational structure not only among near-adjacent shots but out to relations across 256, 512, and 1024 successive shots (and across many tens of minutes of film) where music and vocal rhythms would be vastly different across such reaches of film. What we found is not due to just a local pattern. Thus, my strong suspicion is that the effect you suggest would likely effect the power spectrum (what we measured to get the 1/f pattern) only in the range of near adjacent shots.",

–James E. Cutting
Professor, Department of Psychology, Cornell University
(March 2, 2010)

* * *

As a result, it has occurred to me in hindsight that although greatly inspired by Professor Cutting's findings, the 1/f pattern I actually founded my hypothesis upon is perhaps different and separate than the one observed and recorded by Cutting and colleagues –if indeed, the basis of my hypothesis can even be said to follow a 1/f pattern.

In essence:

Does the consistent delivery of (emotional) stimulus via a cinematic medium (produced in part by the use of temp tracks and tempo mapping), itself form a 1/f pattern?

For another day and another study, I suppose.

Terry O'Gara

Scratch the Contract

Young and experienced composers alike might complain that temp tracks limit creativity, although the process of modeling a temp can certainly prove an invaluable training tool.

In fact, student composers have invariably participated in the temp track process without even realizing it. Almost all university students in a composition program are assigned the task of composing a four-part harmony. In order to fulfill this assignment, one must learn the theoretical rules governing the traditional four voice chorale style.

The resulting student work is hopefully original while also paying strict adherence to the rules demanded by convention. By extension, a formal education in music is not really about finding one’s unique voice –leave that to biology, time and life– but rather, learning how to reproduce conventional material.

The analysis of a scratch track, and the subsequent composition of a derivative work, share a parallel process (though often scaled larger befitting the magnitude of some professional assignments).

Temp tracks DO limit creative direction, but that’s not necessarily a negative. Given the option of taking verbal direction from a client (who may otherwise be layman when it comes to music), a temp track may provide the only accurate brief for a given assignment. A director (or client) may deliver creative goals verbally or via written text, or by both means, but only when the music does the talking, does the exact nature of the assignment crystalize.

Brian Eno has suggested that working with limitations, and not wallowing in infinite options, is the most direct path to creative results, and I tend to agree. I love it when he points to Marshall amplifiers and suggests that it is the very limitations the thing that gives it personality (The Revenge of the Intuitive, Wired, Issue 7.01, Jan 1999). I think the same is true for people.

As it happens, if temp tracks lock the composer into a direction, they also lock in the client, and that is to the composer's advantage (especially if the client is otherwise prone to indecisiveness).

For instance, should the client change the direction after production has started, a composer can rightly request overages on the premise that the new requests were not explicit in the temp (assuming that the original bid was based on direction indicated in the temp).

But likewise, if a client decides a minimal electronic score is more appropriate than a previously agreed symphonic direction, they may seek to renegotiate a contract so that it no longer reflects the necessity of paying a hundred musicians or renting a sound stage.

Also, if a composer delivers a track that does not in any way reflect or reference mutually agreed specifications, the client can demand a rewrite, threaten non-payment, or justly fire the composer for not keeping to the agreement as defined by the temp.

Temp tracks do more than indicate direction; they also specify convention and clarify language. One might even argue they actually give language its meaning.

For instance, if the client requests a symphonic score (without providing you with a musical recording as an example of what he or she means by 'symphonic'), and you, the composer, deliver a work in the style of Leonard Bernstein's WEST SIDE STORY, you may have fulfilled the assignment only to learn that Bernstein was not was the client had in mind when they asked for something 'symphonic'.

If it was, then you’re simply lucky. But if the client was thinking Mahler instead, or Glass, they might justly or unjustly demand a rewrite –and you may or may not be able to win overages.

In order to preclude such a scenario from occurring, what usually happens is that one party or the other will seek to define particular aspects of verbal (or text) instructions by using an existing piece of recorded music to clarify the meaning of some adjectives.

So, if our hypothetical client requests a symphonic score, and additionally presents you with a recording of the Star Wars music as reference, then in this case you know exactly what they mean by symphonic.

Alternately, if in another meeting, another client asks for a rock track but doesn't provide you with an audio reference, then it behooves you, the composer, to present a variety of songs you consider rock (before beginning the composition process), in order to clarify that you and your client share the same definition of the word 'rock'. Is it Little Richard? Is it Nirvana? Big difference.

In this respect, a scratch track serves as both a creative brief and a contractual agreement –written in the language of music– between composer and client that explicitly details what is requested by the client, and what is expected of the composer.

Future Friendly For David Fincher

Have you ever lit up the world with music? You Will. In 1993, the music house I worked for was commissioned by ad agency, NW AYER, to create an original score for an AT&T campaign named 'YOU WILL'. At the time I was a young assistant –hanging onto the ropes of commercial music production with one hand, answering phones and getting coffee for composers with the other. 

 The premise of the 'YOU WILL' campaign was that with the future right around the corner, AT&T was in a position to deliver all sorts of high tech goodies to their customers. Try to visualize the pre millennial era: Few in the public sphere had yet heard of the Internet, much less owned a personal computer. Cell phones were the size of car batteries. The hot technology was the CD-Rom.

So imagine how futuristic these commercials looked and sounded when they first aired and asked the then hypothetical questions: "Have you ever paid a toll without slowing down? Bought concert tickets from a cash machine? Or tucked your baby in from a phone booth? 'YOU WILL'." 

In one sense, 'YOU WILL' can be seen as (and possibly) modeled after GE’s own campaign 'WE BRING GOOD THINGS TO LIFE'. But cleverly, AT&T recast the message so as to position itself as the GE of the future. But what a dark future the ad agency imagined for its client. Let's look at one of the spots now, sans audio. Doing so will give you an idea of just the way our music composers first approached the project: 

AT&T YOU WILL  'TOLL':30 (NO AUDIO)

 

Director David Fincher was commissioned to shoot the commercials. His vision of the future, as it turned out, was pretty bleak, made only somewhat more pleasant by gadgetry. At first glance, most of the interiors looked like they couldn’t even power the lights in the room much less a computer, while exteriors seemed designed to resembled a climate change model in full effect. Which is not to say the film didn’t look good, it was great, even beautiful. But the art direction did not immediately convince one that a brighter future –either figuratively or literally– was upon us. 

Essentially, Fincher delivered a study in Sci-Fi noire: equal parts 'ALPHAVILLE', 'BLADE RUNNER' and 'BRAZIL'. Oddly enough, no one at the agency or anyone of our creative staff initially thought this Orwellian version of the 21st Century presented much of a marketing problem (for a company trying to position itself as a ubiquitous element to your future lifestyle). 

In fact, the consensus between both agency and our compositional staff was that Fincher’s footage demanded a rich cinematic treatment that inspired admiration in the things AT&T could achieve for its customers. Someone suggested that the music house use as a reference Ennio Morricone's 'WHILE THINKING ABOUT HER AGAIN’ from the soundtrack to 'CINEMA PARADISO'. I don't recall who first made this suggestion. It may have been Fincher, Jim Haygood (the campaign's editor), someone at the ad agency or one of our own creative directors Jonathan Elias or Alexander Lasarenko. But upon its acceptance and approval, Lasarenko composed a stirring work that captured the emotional depth of Morricone’s original cue. 

In fact, if you lay the 'CINEMA PARADISO' cue against any of the AT&T spots today, you can see that as a temp track, the music synchs relatively well to picture (it lacks sound design, but you get the idea). If I had to guess, I'd bet that Haygood might have used either Morricone’s music, or Lasarenko’s demo, to facilitate the process towards a final cut. 

 AT&T YOU WILL 'TOLL':30 (Alternate music direction):

   

Either way, Morricone's track certainly reinforces the cinematic quality inherent to the footage. It also adds emotive warmth, and in that regard it humanizes the picture. By virtue of the orchestral arrangement, it also conveys a sense of understated power, which one would think agreeable sonic branding for the communications giant. 

All of which is to say that this direction seemed exactly right for the project, and everyone at the ad agency seemed to agree at first. 

Unfortunately, the account executives at AT&T found the Morricone direction, however romantic in its original context, weirdly dark for a project that purported to be a brand imaging campaign. It wasn’t simply an issue of the music not working, but that the music worked too well, reinforcing Fincher’s dark vision, demanding awe and respect; rather than conveying a feeling of technological marvel and inspiring a sense of excitement and wonder. 

And of course they were right. Most of the time music is supposed to support picture, but the AT&T campaign provides us with a perfect example of a project that requires a score that contrasts picture. The symphonic direction did well to announce a Brave New World, but our real job was to introduce a Friendly Future. Lest there be any confusion, the future was not going to be dark, rainy or Orwellian, or feel anything like the inside of a rusting deep space oil rig. It was going to be fun, engaging, the technology liberating and easy to use. –Less 'ALIEN 3', if not quite 'JETSONS'. No rayguns; no monsters; and the weather is going to be fine. 

In other words, Disney’s TOMORROWLAND: safe, warm, inviting; and above all human and accessible. 

So why didn’t Fincher shoot happy-go-lucky spots in the first place? 

In all likelihood he was the hottest young director at the time, and sometimes that’s all it takes to get the job. Which is to say Fincher was hired to do Fincher (and he delivered), and any issues related to branding would be managed in post, which they were. 

But another surprise awaited our composers: While our symphonic music demo was soundly rejected, the edit it was synched to was approved. In many cases, when music providers get it wrong, agencies simply fire them and move on to someone new. But in the case of 'YOU WILL', NW Ayer gave us another chance. However, now we were in a position of having to compose a new score that contrasted picture, and in such a way designed to represent the polar opposite of our first demo, but would nevertheless synch to the existing edit, therefore matching picture lock. 

Elias wanted to provide yet another reference track for the creative team, in order to provide a concrete example of the client’s aspirations. So, this time out Lasarenko suggested an inspirational acoustic rock track, written in the odd meter of 7/4, whose cadence roughly followed a driving I V I vi V vi† chordal sequence, upon which a mystical lyric was delivered. Slammed against picture the music’s energetic beat and shimmering guitars all but lit up Fincher's otherwise dark world. (†FYI: For readers who are not musicians, the roman numerals in the previous paragraph represent shorthand for various kinds of chords: Upper case = Major/ Lower case = Minor) 

As a choice for a scratch track, it was far from typical film music. But it indicated a direction that could transform a Sci-Fi noire mini feature into a fanciful version of the future. And it achieved this result by forcibly re-framing picture with music (that specifically provided the necessary context). Obviously this speaks to the power of music, whether in advertising, entertainment or something else altogether: That is, the power to make you believe you are seeing something you are not, because your ear is telling you that you absolutely are.  Today, people re-frame their own respective worlds simply by scoring their life with personal playlists streaming off their own iPods or other portable playback devices. 

In the end, both Elias’ NY and LA composers created several versions of the driving acoustic rock direction. The agency selected the strongest demo, which was further developed by adding sound design and an affable voice over courtesy MAGNUM P.I. actor Tom Selleck. When at last approved, and the final spots delivered, AT&T released the following press announcement: "… the 'YOU WILL' campaign takes a whimsical look into the near-future when information technologies now being developed at AT&T will soon enhance the way people work, live and play." 

 AT&T YOU WILL 'TOLL':30 (FINAL AUDIO):

   

Of course, if the agency had approved the original symphonic orchestral direction, inspired by Morricone’s CINEMA PARADISO, the spots would never have been framed as anything near whimsy. Even now, the images themselves remain, dark and a bit Orwellian. If this is the future, where the hell is the sun, you may ask? Well, it's there, of course, beaming down upon the entire campaign, whimsy and all. It may never be a prominent element in any of the video. But nevertheless, it shines bright, illuminated by the power and magic of music. 

 * * *

 Here's a video that includes all the spots in the campaign

 

 * * * 

Read what other people thought about 'YOU WILL': 

1. From Boingboing, Cory Doctorow writes: “I think these are the most emblematic advertisements of the era, defining the way that big companies totally missed the point of the Internet…” 

 2. The Work and Genius of David Fincher: AT&T - "You Will" (1993) 

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 FUTURE FRIENDLY FOR DAVID FINCHER is the third in an educational series examining the utilization of temp music in advertising, entertainment and media production. To read previous articles on this topic, click on either the following link or the TEMP MUSIC label/link that follows at the footer of this post: 2009 WINTER/SPRING CRITICAL NOISE ARTICLES ABOUT TEMP TRACKS: 

Scratch Track Fever

SCRATCH TRACK FEVER

This article is the second in a series examining the utilization of temp music in advertising, entertainment and media production.

Whether you call it temp music or scratch tracks (or something else), the utilitarian use of pre-recorded audio as a stand-in (or reference) for an as of yet to be determined or composed soundtrack, is standard operating procedure.

A discussion of the ethics of directly referencing other musical works, to varying degrees of detail, is reserved for another article.

But if you’re a young or amateur composer, songwriter or music designer yourself –trying to break into the system– you may be asking yourself why bother with temp music at all? Why not, for instance, simply be original?

The quick answer is that most commercial projects, whether advertising or entertainment, do not represent the singular vision of a composer, but the collective vision of a party of stakeholders in a given enterprise.

In addition, commercial works are usually derivative by nature.

Neither summer blockbusters nor advertising campaigns appear out of the ether. Few, if any, are insanely original. Most of the time, these projects are constructed according to, if not a formula, then convention. And so, it follows, the music commissioned by their makers is also constructed with industry or genre conventions in mind.

Lest you already have your mind made up, the product of formulaic thinking does not always have to be measured by a negative value. Equal temperament, the ii-V-I progression, 4/4 rhythms and absolutely every single tonal tradition –including those so-called anarchic forms, such as serial music, punk and no wave– are all produced by formula. Even the composite work of a random number/pitch generator –such scores do exist– is the result of an algorithm. And yet every single convention proves itself quite useful to adept composers, able musicians and eager audiences alike.

As it happens, there are as many reasons to consider the use of temp music, as there are creative professionals who do so. Although any single artisan may be aware of only his or her own immediate necessity for its implementation.

SURROGATE SCORES FOR HOLLYWOOD MANGA

In the broadest sense, filmmakers use temp tracks as surrogate scores, whether for preview audiences or to suggest to vendors, investors and other stakeholders what a finished film, commercial or other media project (slated for, or still in production) will eventually look, sound and feel like.

But scratch tracks aren’t only slapped against picture as surrogate scores or even as a reference tool. Long before a single frame is even shot, or a script complete, directors may select a piece of temp music as inspiration, and not just for the eventual score, but for the entire project itself.

Likewise, directors resist music suggestions embedded in scripts, but that doesn’t stop writers from making their choices known.

Still, later in the process, a temp will be chosen to accompany a pre-production model of a given project using scanned storyboards to produce what is known as an 'animatic'.

For those without any basic knowledge of the film making process:

Storyboards, while perhaps not as nuanced as a comic strip, are nonetheless a series of scene-by-scene illustrations that serve to suggest the final version of a film, TV show or commercial.

I think of storyboards as Hollywood manga, and I’m surprised there isn’t a larger interest or after-market for them amongst film fans.

Storyboards are primarily produced because they help identify a variety of needs, such as: what the film will look like; how will it be shot; what kind of sets will be required; what the costumes will look like, etc. In short everything but the music. Although once in animatic form, directors will certainly integrate temp music. Ultimately, animatics help producers arrive at a budget and schedule.

And the same thing can be said of temp music. It’s not too far fetched an idea to think of temp music being as to storyboards what storyboards are to feature films.

Temp music can also serve as a performance tool during actual filming or video capture. I can already hear the cackling, there are lots of tools in Hollywood, but this one is quite useful.

For instance, during production, directors and cinematographers may use music to enhance dramatic action via choreographed camera movement.

Less directly, performers of all kinds use music to focus, prepare, get ready and 'get pumped' before a scene or event.

It’s interesting to consider that a writer might have crafted a scene –or even an entire script– inspired by a specific piece of music, and then hand that script over to a director who might then hear something else altogether different in his or her own imagination.

And whilst shooting, each actor might have prepared him or herself for a given scene listening to their own respective individual playlists; thereby fueling their performance with yet another musical overlay.

On top of that, the cinematographer might have a symphonic score in mind, or in his or her ear buds, anyway. Still later in the process, an editor may yet select still another track to cut to.

In this hypothetical arrangement, when the music supervisor can’t secure a license, a composer is finally commissioned to score the cue, which he or she does, presenting an original work whose only common elements with the director’s (or editor’s) original scratch was mood and tempo.

Universes collide, but I guess that’s how stars are made.

TEMP TRACK AS TEMPO MAP

Pre-scores are indeed commissioned from time to time, especially in the case of animation projects.

Animators, more than composers, are loath to work with temp tracks because their work must be absolutely synchronized to audio. When animators are forced to work with a scratch track, and the final music is anything but a near infringement of the temp, there is likely possibility that either audio or picture, or audio and picture, will require any number of costly revisions –tweaks– in order to synch with each other.

For this reason animation houses, anticipating such revisions when knowledge of a temp is known before the bidding process, will justly increase their estimates for a project that requires they work with an unfinished or surrogate score.

In the case of live action, editors are generally free to use temp music as mood and tempo maps without financial repercussion. Each audio clip presents a concise distillation of human expression whose pulses form a grid or TEMPO MAP upon which subsequent cuts to moving image are made.

It has long struck me that the art of editing is every bit as musical as it is visual, and that the modern editor's art closely resembles that of an electronic recording artist or beat maker. But remove the temp and the musicality of the edit still remains.

It's as if Film and Video Editors are DJs or drummers of light, with story being the ultimate goal of this illuminated art form.

As such, music not only helps to tell the story, it also actually helps build it.

A project takes shape when each stimuli inducing element feeds into the other, resulting in what feels like a perpetual inspiration circuit, and a kind of multimedia symbiosis:

• Sound
• Image
• Conflict
• Resolution

–These are the four quadrants that support story and embed any given experience into one’s brain, whether a cinematic fabrication or present and real.

A story can certainly move forward without either emotion or music. But both emotion and music –like aphrodisiacs, steroids and Sildenafil– are performance enhancers.

The result is a tighter cut, whether the editor then chooses to

A. Present the cut without the temp track,
B. Present the cut with the temp track, or
C. Present the cut with an alternate temp track, in order to provide options for a particularly unruly piece of footage.

It makes one wonder if our lives don’t unfold in the same way, with karma ultimately being something like a Motown or Meters loop, played at a discrete level, yet still capable of propelling the entire cosmic story forward; until at last some divine editor decides to make the final cut.

Shiva, creator and destroyer of worlds (in Hindu mythology) is after all, depicted as a dancer.

MUSIC AS MOOD MAP

If a director defines the look of a project, editorial retains great leverage in defining mood.

Curiously enough, it frequently boils down to which person selects the scratch track.

Certainly, if a director has a specific work in mind for the temp, editors will first use that. But even if presented with a select by the director, an editor might still propose another idea –maybe several ideas–, and chose to cut and present to an altogether different kind of track than the director or client originally had in mind.

To be clear, an editor can't run wild with a personal scratch track choice and hope to go final. The director, client, studio or other stakeholders must approve the alternate selection. Nevertheless, the situation, as is approval of an alternate temp track, is indeed quite common.

It probably happens more frequently with advertising projects that with features. Why? –Because directors (on advertising projects) are often retained solely for the shoot itself –that is, for their eyes and their capacity to capture magic on film or video, during the shoot, but not necessarily afterwards.

Directors may therefore seem entirely absent from the edit process. Or if they are present for the edit, it is in a consultant capacity, highly valued for their opinion, but without any real authority to define a final cut.

Meanwhile, editors are hired not just for their eyes, but also for their talent as storytellers. With or without temp music, the best of the lot have a deep, almost primal feeling for pacing. And if editors are indeed drummers of light, they are also, like the BBC's Dr. Who, Time Lords.

Given this circumstance, editors retain great leverage choosing the temp music they will cut to. In fact, by virtue of their power to chose temp music, editors are also often the unsung and undeclared music supervisors of a given project.

By the time an editor is finished building a story out of raw footage, he or she may have essentially re-defined the look and sound, if not the very experience of a project –all because of the music they chose to cut to.

SCRATCH TRACK AS SURROGATE SCORE

Although there are some advantages to commissioning a pre score in lieu of temp music, being free is not one of them. On the other hand, unlicensed temp tracks allow for directional change later in the process without creative or financial penalty.

Aside from the editorial process, temp tracks can be quite useful in other ways, too. Temp tracks against rough cuts or preproduction trailers help producers garner financial interest in a project.

Potential investors then can measure the potential audience for a project based on this preview, itself a kind of beta version of a film, and then make an informed decision whether or not to contribute their own dollars into the making of it.

When production finally gets underway, rough cuts will get synched to scratch music as one means of communicating direction to the various artisans who, while they may be vendors in one sense, are also co-creators of the project.

Likewise, during previews, studios use the presentation of unfinished movies (synched to temp tracks) the same way Madison Ave uses focus groups, –in order to discover potential weaknesses of a given entertainment experience. As with focus groups, the results of previews provide producers with an opportunity to maximize entertainment value and thereby insure their investment by making suitable changes prior to release.

It’s easy to think of scratch music as serving one singular purpose. In reality, the practical uses of temping audio is varied throughout the production assembly line. Whatever your personal opinion, or preferred process for working, one would do well to understand the strength of the scratch track before abandoning the concept completely.

And if you have any desire or hope of scoring for film or advertising, then resistance, as they say amongst the Borg, is futile.

* * *

Click on the following link to read the first article in this series:

TEMP TRACKS AND THEIR PURPOSE, Monday (February 02, 2009).

TEMP TRACKS AND THEIR PURPOSE

Audiences may believe that every score for every movie, or original music bed for every TV ad, is solely the result of a unique idea generated by a gifted composer. In reality, that's only sometimes the case: Ideas are not always unique nor composers always especially gifted.

Much of the time ideas are recycled; and composers –as with other professionals in the creative food chain– endowed with varying degrees of determination and capability.

Taking into account this human variable, combined with ever present budgetary concerns and schedule issues, the result is that any efficiency that can be identified is accommodated and executed. Consequently, producers and clients will often present the composers they commission with what has long been referred to as a 'Temp Track'.

Love 'em or hate 'em, temp tracks are standard operating procedure for both filmed advertising and entertainment production.

So, what is a temp track exactly?

A temp track is any existing pre-recorded work synchronized to moving picture, intended to act as a temporary audio placeholder for an eventual score.

As with a stand-in for a movie actor, temp tracks are stand-ins for final music. Beyond that, as we'll see, their utilitarian use serves numerous purposes to the various production professionals who work on a given advertising or entertainment vehicle.

This article is the first of several that examines these multiple purposes and details their legitimate use by composers or music designers working on contemporary media projects that employ moving image.

The ubiquitous use of temp tracks is certainly old news to media and audio professionals. But the role they play may still come as a surprise to young music designers. I remember the first time I witnessed a prominent composer play through a variety of music tracks while simultaneously playing an unfinished commercial he had been commissioned to score. He was analyzing how different music treatments enhanced picture:

How did a symphonic arrangement inform the picture? What did a rock track do?

In all, I think he played twelve excerpts, each representing a different style; and in so doing, finally arrived at some idea of how he would proceed with his own immediate task of composition.

I had been composing music for a few years before that, and had studied with several well established composers –Joel Chadabe, Bill Dixon, Stephen Jaffe, Sergio Cervetti. But it had never once occurred to me to so directly and purposefully source inspiration –fundamental ideas– from another person's work for my own compositions.

I thought, you know, that you were supposed to just wait until a muse graced your soul with audio pixie dust.

So from the start, temping music seemed somewhat disingenuous to me.

Ah but then, cut to me three years later: By 1994 I had become the Senior Producer for a roster of award winning young composers. And along the way, I acquired and accepted the role of commercial aesthete. Which meant that, along with my colleagues, I became one of those people that advertising agencies call in order to solicit an expert opinion on suitable temp music for a national shampoo campaign edit; or with which to inspire the launch of a new running shoe; or –circa 1996– the magic of broadband to the United States of America.

To win a job, it didn't matter what previous successes my colleagues and I had achieved, what awards were on the shelf, or that I could direct a client to any television in order to see our current work.

Believe it or not, the commission of any given project often hinged on whether or not I could identify and recommend suitably inspiring temp music for my client's newest project. In this capacity, I was often asked not for one idea, but for many ideas –ten, twenty, fifty pieces of music– each of which had to perform and inform a rough cut in ways that enhanced story, maximized entertainment value or message delivery and conveyed a given brand mandate.

As it turns out –and as with all established production processes– the use of temp tracks is as prevalent as it is because, ultimately, temping music serves a legitimate and instructive purpose. It is, to coin a clumsy phrase, both cost efficient and creative efficient. And creative professionals working with moving picture would do well to figure out how to utilize them to their best effect.

So what lies beneath the vinyl surface?

Among their many purposes, temp tracks provide composers and other audio professionals with a clear creative brief, via referential non verbal sound. What better method, after all, than to use music to communicate musical concepts to music creators?

Completely abandoning words for music, however, isn't the best strategy if the aim is to create a wholly original work. Language can illuminate ideas and serve to focus attention on detail, as well qualify a given example with external concepts. Alternately, language can distort ideas; intentional distortions initiate nonlinear thought processes, and sometimes, the results of nonlinear thinking is exactly what the client requires.

Although, in my experience, it is a rare undertaking that the production of film, video or any other commercial media –not to mention the task of composing a commercial score for such projects– is ever executed with the aim of producing 'a wholly original work'. Which is why temp tracks are just as often not simply sources for inspiration but are also used as blue prints, recipes or formulas for construction.

Whatever your preferred metaphor, a reference track will make certain goals immediately apparent.

Artists may abhor formulaic processes, but there is no creative industry without them.

Horror flicks, as one example, are formulaic, as are pretty much all releases within a given genre. Television demands of its writers an even more rigid reliance to tried and true formulaic notions, than cinema. The entire production process is an assembly line. And it's not any different for a thirty-second TV commercial or a two hour feature.

That said, temp music should never be construed as a model upon which to plagiarize another composer's work, but rather as an mere indicator of what musical conventions or criteria a client wishes to adhere to. But of course, many composers find it can be a fine line to walk.

How then does the process impact composers and music designers?

In the case of a TV commercial, a temp track will arrive as a thirty-second excerpt from a existing longer musical work, which the editor has typically cut picture to, and which is then 'layered' with the picture.

Sometimes editorial will begin with one temp track and switch to another that contextualizes image differently. Such substitution is only viable (after an edit gets 'locked') if the surrogate track/s share the same tempo, or are beat matched to synch with picture.

Likewise, different audio artisans competing for final music on a given spot may all be assigned a different temp track as a platform for inspiration. Sometimes clients can't make up their mind on what the best approach is until they see or hear it executed.

But whatever music the composer receives, it's safe to assume that any particular temp track was chosen because someone –the director, editor or client– thinks it 'works' with the picture, enhancing it in some agreeable and applicable manner that should be obvious to you, or you are in the wrong business.

In the case of TV commercials, instrumental sections of popular tunes are often culled as temp tracks. Advertisers typically want music that appeals to a specific demographic, say, young women between 18 and 25. Therefore they will choose a song popular among this group, and use it to suggest creative direction to a composer.

There are cases when music is not demographic specific, as when the assignment requires a classic film score treatment. Also, a certain rock sound, which once skewed young, and now defines boomers, by some trick of sonic ubiquity has become so elastic that it can sometimes serve to define everybody else, too. Neutral tracks of any genre can also transcend age specified demographics, although every time I hear a spot with incidental music, I think why did they even bother. You're never going to appeal to everybody, so why not use music to reach out to the specific people whom you would like serve?

'Why not identify your fans? And why not identify with your fans?' –is another way of putting it.

In the case of a feature length film, the temp track is not a single work, but rather a series of works, and these works are quite often borrowed from other film scores.

Practically speaking, the temp track may refer to one piece of music accompanying a single cue, or to all the temporary works scattered throughout a single film.

Generally, the producer, director or editor will define the scene by drawing a comparison to other scenes from other movies in the same genre and will borrow an existing score as the temporary material.

For example, for a romantic exchange between the leading man and woman –a common enough cue– the film maker/s may lift the music for a previously documented passionate kiss and play it with their own cue depicting a similarly passionate kiss.

Ideally, temp track and moving picture synch together perfectly from an editorial perspective, capably driving story forward while simultaneously enhancing dramatic content, and yet still reveal itself as an imperfect surrogate to a capable composer.

If the music is too perfect, the filmmaker may ask the composer to compose a nearly identical work, often forcing the composer to strain the limits of copyright infringement. An imperfect work, however, grants a composer ample leeway to inform the concept with a dose of originality and thereby compose a customized piece inspired by the temp track, but original unto itself. Such is the ideal.

Why use temp tracks at all?

Clients often demand them, if not to indicate direction to composers, then at the very least to simulate completeness during pre or post production (for themselves and other artisans working on the project).

Pre production temp tracks suggest a final version of the film, and therefore help producers arrive solutions to creative, talent and budget decisions.

In post production, temp tracks allow filmmakers to proceed with composite and post until such time as they receive an original score, or a music supervisor obtains a license for the producer to use the temp track itself, or some other piece.

Movie producers may also preview a film in front of test audiences, before establishing a final cut, using temp tracks. Preview audiences are Hollywood's answer to focus groups. Vetting movies, commercials, products, games or music before test groups doesn't sound very artistic, and it's not. But it is good business for commercial entertainment vehicles.

But if clients don't arrive with temp track in hand, music producers and other audio professionals may still use them as a means to demonstrate they understand a given project, and therefore worthy of a given commission.

It doesn't always go well. I recall watching one rough cut for a package shipper. It depicted a fun and crazy vignette, and I thought 'party music'. But the advertising agency saw itself as representing an American institution and therefore wanted music befitting such a client. Needless to say, I did not get that job.

Regardless of intention, a good temp track selection always sounds like it fits. Some fit so well, however, that clients fall in love with them, an obsessive state of mind I'll discuss in a future article. In those cases, for better or worse, the temp goes final. And as terrible as that is for a composer fired from a project because the client fell for the temp, sometimes the temp IS the best arrangement for a given project.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for a pharmacological solution that composers can give clients, which successfully cures or manages 'Demo Love'. I think it would have to be classified as an anti-anxiety drug, and it would be especially designed for Obsessive-compulsive creative leads possessing audio sensory issues. Perhaps these pills could be discreetly distributed in the dimly lit screening rooms of post production facilities, in between conference calls.

And of course, they should be called Fermata™.

Seriously, and certainly, searching through all the music ever recorded in order to identify even one suitable temp track can be a stressful and lengthy task. Compound that stress then, when a specific time frame, a limited budget and job insecurity loom over the process.

However, once selected –whether by the producer, director editor, composer or client– and subsequently synched to a rough cut, a given temp track can ably provide implicit direction to a given composer without anyone ever having to say a single word. And while temp tracks also have their weaknesses, therein lies the immediate strength and efficiency of the humble temp track.

Music Producer as a Cool Hunter

The general public doesn’t often realize how much music is created as a reaction to something else.

Record companies will sometimes sign a band –not because they’re ground breaking revolutionary artists– but because they sound like the another ground breaking revolutionary artist on another label's roster; or because they sound like another demonstrably successful band on the label's own roster.

In Hollywood, film composers often receive their assignments in the form of rough edits of footage upon which the director has synched ‘temp’ music. That is, he or she has 'borrowed' existing music from another source, even another movie, and is using that music as both a placeholder and a creative brief to audio artisans who might be commissioned to produce final sound.

In effect, the movie director is asking the composer to use an existing score as the model for his own score. That's why every time you watch a chase scene, you're usually subjected to a version of French Horns over Tribal Timpani drums. Because everyone is essentially being asked to follow the same model.

Commercial ad music is also created in similar fashion, and advertising professionals commonly call temp tracks 'needle drops'.

My old employer, Elias Arts, compiled playlists of potential needle drops to present to clients as possible options to model a bespoke track upon, and called those playlists 'Concept Reels'. 

However, while I appreciated the facility with which a temp track, needle drop or concept could communicate direction, I was never completely comfortable with the implication that professional composers would actually model a so-called original work using an existing work as a framework. As a producer, such temp tracks have many utilitarian uses, but as an artist myself, I still held a rather romantic notion of the independent composer.

The reality was, however, I was never going to stop the film, advertising and media industry from the practice of modeling tracks, one after the other. However, I did subscribe to the belief that I could train my clients to employ temp tracks not as models to A/B final production against, but as a lens for genre. 

As I explained to my partner at Blister Media, an Audio Style Guide was less a model and more a 'creative brief' for composers and sound designers. It was, to be sure, and idea I borrowed from watching my parents and sister, all commercial artists at one time or another, when they worked with swatches and ‘Style Guides’ as a means to establish direction.

By my measure, an audio Style Guide would indicate musical or sonic direction by providing existing musical references for inspiration. But none of the ideas are meant to be used a model, and the less one listens to the Style Guide, the better. Ideally, the client will only here the track prior to production, and thereafter A/B against his or her initial impressions of the track. The reason being is that repeated listens of any track will often create familiarity in a given work's creators, such that they become attached to the track. Therefore: listen, analyze and draw conclusions that lend themselves to proceeding forward with a creative brief. Then put the style guide away.

How did work? It worked great:

Audio Style Guides clarify verbal instruction, provide convention, genre, trend analysis and may act as a tempo map. But they are never meant to represent a blue print for composition or design.

Style Guides might also include non audio sound sources, such as trend analysis and image swatches.

My theory is that –at least with commercial clients– advertisers don’t so much want to plagiarize another piece of music (although they do sometimes), but rather they are commissioning the composition an original work that captures the popular zeitgeist of a current trend, or the hallmarks of a broad genre.

Thus, it is important for commercial music producers to keep abreast of not just music styles, but of all the aspects and manifestations of a trend.

Of course, learn the methods of composition, performance and production by which a style is created. But also explore the reasons –beyond audio cues– as to why fans are attracted to any given artist, work, or genre. That means being a bit of a cultural anthropologist as well as a musician.

Why would a style guide designed to serve as a creative brief for an audio professional include non sonic sources? Certainly a piece of music can indicate direction to a composer, but equally: visual elements can serve to inspire both composer and client, by adding culturally significant anthropological evidence pertaining to a given demographic.

To borrow a phrase, be a cool hunter.

A cool hunter is analytical in the observation of trends/fashions as they sweep through the culture. It takes neutral eyes and ears to accurately identify and analyze any given trend, much less several; and then capably communicate the applicable variables to others assigned the task of creation, so that they might inform their work with the fruits of your research.

No doubt about it, derivative creations are standard operating procedure in the media production process. But better to have a comprehensive understanding of the intended audience, than to simply rely solely on whatever first stimulates one's ears via a ‘temp track’, 'concept' or 'needle drop'.