Fun Music Project

[n2ize]

I decided to embark upon a fun and simple music project yesterday. Basically I am putting together and playing a medley of all the popular cigarette ad jingles from the 50's, 60's and 70's that were commonly heard on radio and TV. It's mostly a "by ear" project but I am also transcribing it onto sheet music. Brands like Salem, L&M , Winston, Benson hedges, Camel, Lucky Strike, etc. all had jingles that went along with their radio & tv ads. Some had more than 1 jingle over the years. Some of the jingles we actually songs in which the cigarette company did a bit of rearrangement or changed the words. The idea is to connect all these back to back, or in any random order into a fast paced, fun filled piece that can be belted out at parties, gatherings, and otrher non-commercial events, just for laughs and memorabilia. For example, yesterday I was playing the Benson and Hedges jingle which many people don;t realize was an actual piece of music called "The Disadvantages of You" played by a brass band called "The Brass Ring". The Kent jingle was of course the popular song, "Happiness Is..." . Other companies wrote their own jingles..

How many of you remember this and associate it with Benson and Hedges..

[mw0uzo]

You ever thought of using a sequencer to do your music? (big assumption here that you haven't) The annoying part is figuring out how to use the software, then comes the fun. I used to make a lot of 'music' a while back. I used a package called Fruityloops, which suited my programmers mind. You could pick samples out of the music you're interested in and warp them however you see fit. Its surprising how good even simple riffs can be made to sound, there will be some gems in your violin music that would sound brilliant.

[WØTKX]

A silly millimeter longer.

Don't forget other jingles from other commercials...

http://youtu.be/Oy2lmp7zXiw

[WØTKX]

The Jingle King

http://youtu.be/XGaHPGxEW0k

[WX7P]

A silly millimeter longer.

Don't forget other jingles from other commercials...

http://youtu.be/Oy2lmp7zXiw

AKA "Teaberry shuffle"

[WØTKX]

^^^ Ding ding! Yea.

We did this song in band, and the cheerleaders would do the shuffle.

Real crowd pleaser.

[n2ize]

You ever thought of using a sequencer to do your music? (big assumption here that you haven't) The annoying part is figuring out how to use the software, then comes the fun. I used to make a lot of 'music' a while back. I used a package called Fruityloops, which suited my programmers mind. You could pick samples out of the music you're interested in and warp them however you see fit. Its surprising how good even simple riffs can be made to sound, there will be some gems in your violin music that would sound brilliant.

Sounds like an idea. Thanks for the suggestion. Never tried it but it might work great for this project and some future projects. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a whirl.

[n2ize]

The Jingle King

http://youtu.be/XGaHPGxEW0k

Oh yeah... I haven't forgotten that one. n particular I remember the lyrics my Mom who is anti-smoking came up for that. Her lyrics... "you can take Salem out if the garbage but !! .... You can't take the garbage out of Salem." Even as a kid I was hysterical with that one.

[N8OBM]

Sounds like an idea. Thanks for the suggestion. Never tried it but it might work great for this project and some future projects. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a whirl.

Hmmm. If memory serves you are into linux. Look at Ardour and Rosegarden. Rosegarden Is largely about type setting music but you can also get midi from it. Ardour is much like an open source Protools. There are numerous other linux audio production tools. There even have a few audio production distro's. Dynebolic is a low resource live boot. There is also Studio 64 and Ubuntu Studio. Both of these come with a bunch of audio applications configured and ready to go. I will say that using a good low latency Audio Device makes a HUGE difference in performance. Most built in or sound cards are junk in that respect. There is spotty support for prograde audio hardware in linux. One notable exception was M Audio at least before Avid/Digidesign bought them. For a PCI based audio interface the Delta series have full support in linux. I have a computer with a pair of Delta 1010 interfaces I use for testing linux audio distro's and the like. I hope some day to be able to offer Full open source production.

I just started playing with Harrison Mixbuss which is an adaptation of Ardour with a few extras added. I quite like it and it's on sale at the moment. It's still open source and they do versions for Windows, OS X, and Linux. I like it better that Protools but, I'm not a fan of Protools by any means. I like the Steinberg products. I use Nuendo in my studio most of the time. when I'm working with heavy midi stuff I like Cakewalk/Sonar as well. If you are playing around with audio samples and loops, It's hard to beat Acid, even if it is a Sony product. I started working with it before sonic foundry was "assimilated" by Sony.

Archie N8OBM

[n2ize]

Hmmm. If memory serves you are into linux. Look at Ardour and Rosegarden. Rosegarden Is largely about type setting music but you can also get midi from it. Ardour is much like an open source Protools. There are numerous other linux audio production tools. There even have a few audio production distro's. Dynebolic is a low resource live boot. There is also Studio 64 and Ubuntu Studio. Both of these come with a bunch of audio applications configured and ready to go. I will say that using a good low latency Audio Device makes a HUGE difference in performance. Most built in or sound cards are junk in that respect. There is spotty support for prograde audio hardware in linux. One notable exception was M Audio at least before Avid/Digidesign bought them. For a PCI based audio interface the Delta series have full support in linux. I have a computer with a pair of Delta 1010 interfaces I use for testing linux audio distro's and the like. I hope some day to be able to offer Full open source production.

I just started playing with Harrison Mixbuss which is an adaptation of Ardour with a few extras added. I quite like it and it's on sale at the moment. It's still open source and they do versions for Windows, OS X, and Linux. I like it better that Protools but, I'm not a fan of Protools by any means. I like the Steinberg products. I use Nuendo in my studio most of the time. when I'm working with heavy midi stuff I like Cakewalk/Sonar as well. If you are playing around with audio samples and loops, It's hard to beat Acid, even if it is a Sony product. I started working with it before sonic foundry was "assimilated" by Sony.

Archie N8OBM

Thanks for the info. Yes, I do use Linux and Unix systems here and I do have both Ardour and Rosegarden installed on this system as well as a bunch of audio editing and music tools such as GNU Denomo which is basically a music score editor that will generate printable sheet music and scores and enables you to create samples playing them as midi sound files. So lets say I have a piece with 2 violins, a flute, oboe and bass, a guitar, etc. I just write the music using the editor, sample it as a MIDI and then, when satisied print out a hard copy of the score, individual parts, or pdf files , etc. Then the only part left is to try and play it with real insrtuments and hope it sounds good ;). The editor is based on Lilypond which is basically a music typsetter/formatter, basically a markupo langauge for creating sheet music much the way LaTeX can be used to produce text and mathematical expressions. However the denemo editor hides the markup tags behind a WYSIWYG music editor.

Thus far although I have them installed I haven't taken the time to learn how to use Ardour or Rosegarden. For quite some time I saw no need to devote time to learning them, but now I am seeing a need so I'll try and put some time into learning to use them. I have a basic familiarity with what they do but I haven't really learned how or any of the details yet. Whence I do finally learn tghem I will probably find them quite useful.

Yeah, I agree regarding the sound cards.Most of the built on onboard OEM sound cards leave much to be desired. years ago I tried to use my onboard sound card as a low level real time audio processor and had a great deal of trouble with poor latency, performance, etc. I should invest in a good quality sound card with full Linux and Windows support, particularly if I plan to do music recording, editing, processing, etc. Thanks for some of the recommendations.