Daily blog of Sinan Büyükbaş

So, the assignment was to design sounds for a tv advertisement. I wanted to create a fast tech/trance jingle for the Absolut 100 ad that I saw on vimeo a couple of weeks ago. ‘Cause the  first time I saw the ad, I thought that the visuals are splendide but the sound is a bit too soft for my taste. Then I thought why not to do my own version:)

For the overall atmosphere, Ive got inspired from the techno soundtrack of  Beowulf (1999). I am really into that kind of techno arrangments since back I first watched that movie. Also I cant deny the influence of some prodigy songs and the almighthy Mortal Combat theme:)

The first thing that ive learned about musical arrangments that u should keep yourself very organized and follow a structral creation process. Oh! I remember that one from visual arts and also engineering, lucky me:) The reason is that it enables you to work faster and add some quick/spontaneous ideas whenever u want. I had to work faster and faster in order to catch up the melodies that came in to my mind.

sound channels

I founded the best workflow is to set up your beats and sounds at first, give them melodies and effects, think about when your “breaks” and “picks” are gonna take place (for the arrangment). Then go for the arrangment. Finally a good mastering and automation just to give it a sparkle.

The arrangment is especially the hard one, cause I realized the song would sound weaker even with amazing sounds if your composition is not interesting enough. In that terms, I was lucky because I have chosen a solid tv ad and all I need to do is to stay synchronized with the visuals and give the true feeling of the scenes with the music. I think a bit of imagination and fantasy would work for this task regarding that u can use the visuals as a guideline for your musical arrangment.

arrangement view

Finally a bit of technical details. Done with Ableton Live 8 and some plugins. Melodyne and Soundforge for rewire programs. Oxygen8 for midi keyboard and m-audio fast track usb for external sound card.

The original Absolut 100 video can be found on vimeo