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Retro soul ditty for car commercial
Hey friends!
Thought I’d share this fun lil’ retro soul jam I made for a car commercial this week (wish me luck – hope we get the gig!! 🤞)
It features me and @cmn on vocals. I played real saxophones for the horns (alto and tenor .. plus pitched down tenor as a fake ‘bari’ sax sound). Everything else I played is midi instruments using Kontakt (bass, guitar) and Arturia (B3 organ). Oh, and the claps are real.
The drums – the star of the show! – are courtesy of the amazing Kount Koal, from his recent loop pack, Reel Breaks 2. It’s only $40 and is a total steal. Koal is sooo good! You should def check it out. The loop I used is actually included in the free sampler you can download. But I also bought the whole pack. And even emailed with him to dbl check the user license, ensuring it’s cool I use this in a commercial project 👍. He’s a sweet, soulful, hella-talented dude. Grab the pack here, and check out his amazing IG vids here.
Holler with any feedback on the song, and/or just enjoy the party vibes!
xo,
Dana
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33 Replies
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oh, and the glockenspiel is real! Charissa played that. 🙌
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oh yeah baby! It’s the sound of summer!!! funky funky fawnky
❤️
abuela
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Jezze! Thank u, Abuela! ❤️😘
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Groovy Vibes! All the best with the landing of the gig. 🌞
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Thanks David! Fingers crossed 🤞 🙏🥰
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Aww this sounds awesome. I’m sure you’ll get it!!
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Thanks, Bar!!! I hope we get it.. but we’ll see. These gigs are sooooo competative. Will keep y’all posted here!
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Short, gets right to the point, FunkyAF.
They’re back !?
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Hahaha! Different company, but great guess!! Thanks so much, man!
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So warm and gooey and funky! Love those exclamatory vocals. Sounds like a great evergreen ad cut for lots of brands (and a super fun sesh!). Keep shopping it around either way!
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Thanks homey! 💜
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Just found out this afternoon…. WE WON THE GIG!!! 🎉 🤯 🕺
Holy smokes! Thanks for all your sweet support here, MP family!!
I’ll share the ad here with you all once it starts airing! 📺
This exciting news today got me and @cmn feelin’ all “Frank the Tank” …
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Congratulations!! 👏👏
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Dope!!! Congrats!!! 🙌
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Doooood! That’s awesome!!! I knew you would 😍 Really great work – LOVE the horns and the, sweet vocals!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Thanks, Nate!!! I gotta get your trumpeting on the next one! 🎺🙏😍
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Congratulations on getting the gig! That sounds SOOOOOOO good! How 🤩. I mean, if they didn’t pick it, they were a bunch of _______. So sync friendly. Go team Dana😎👊🏻💪🏻
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HAHAHA – thanks so much, homey!! It’ll start airing Sept 2 – can’t wait to share it here with yall!
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Hey @nategomoon! Thanks so much, man, that means a lot! 🙏🏻😍
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IT’S FINALLY OUT!! ⚡️
Wrote the music and lyrics and recorded/produced/mixed this whole thing in a day. The ad agency picked it from lots of submissions and had no notes, lol, which NEVER happens!
Thanks, amazing MP fam, for all your support and pozzy vibes – you surely tipped the cosmic needle toward bringing this gig home! 💜
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Dana,
So I’m curious. Did you just hand over your work to the ad agency and cash the check? Did they fit the copy into your vocal arrangement and just duck the ditty when the voice talent needs the spotlight? I’d guess that.
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I actually was provided with a temp voiceover placed exactly where they wanted it and was able to compose and arrange the song so as not to interfere w the VO.
I also do my own VO ducking on my mixes when submitting things so that it sounds more finished when they’re evaluating submissions.
When submitting, I send 2 files: a :30 sec .mov file w music, VO, picture all baked together, as well as a .wav with only the music- at mastered volume like a “found” track on Spotify they were interested in licensing. The .wav music-only fike runs longer, about :45 sec so they have additional material to edit with.
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Speaking of VO ducking, it sounds like you’re dropping the full bandwidth of the track to allow the $ VO $ to have the full spotlight. I wonder if there’s a viable alternative under some circumstances.
Is it unheard of to duck only the overlapping freqs of the Voice and music to allow the groove to carry on with a new “lead singer” if you will? I would think it’s product/vibe dependent to compete with the message of the ad.
The UNMASK tool in Ozone is a frequency dependent ducker that clears the overlapping range of the duckee to allow the ducker to own that range. Great for music when the arrangement is too dense to tuck a voice into a mix rather than just overpowering the mix with a LOUDER voc.
Fascinating stuff.
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The ducking you hear in the ad was applied by the broadcast mix team in their final rerecord mix session, and yeah – full bandwidth for sure! Haha. I feel like that’s the commercial and radio style that everyone’s used to hearing. And like you said, it really makes the VO the star of the show / lead singer, which is exactly what they want.
But heck yeah, I love using a lead vocal to key frequency-specific compression on drums/gtrs/etc! Lately I’ve been doing that with Fabfilter Pro-Q 4’s built-in dynamics set to Spectral Mode across my submasters. Works incredibly well!
For ads and VO, another great trick – even better than keying and ducking – is producing the arrangement itself to stay out of the vocal range during VO sections, or even composing music with VO in mind. Think: sparse arrangements using low- or mid-frequency instruments, etc. That way, less ducking is required, and ad agency folks are drawn to your track as they test it internally against their ever-changing VO – cause, let’s face it, those folks in the boardroom ain’t duckin’ sh&#! 😂
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Dana,
Thank you. I learned something here today. I had previously used my unmasker/ducking tool across an ALL instrument subgroup made of a summation of all the individual instrument subgroups. Creating multiple sends off the ducker channel, in this case a lead vocal, to feed multiple duckee subgroups, is definitely wiser and more target-specific so as not to cause heavy-handed ducking on all all subgroups when only one instrument subgroup is the responsible culprit. 🦆 🦆 🐵🐵 🔫 = 🦆 🦆 🙉
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😂 You know I’m here for ALL the duckees! 🦆🦆🦆
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Hahaha u know it! 👴
Thanks brother!
PS – when we gonna get some new J-Beat jams?! 🙏💜
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Wow Lexus!!! 🔥🔥🔥 So Dope to hear it inside the ad!!! Huge Congrats!!!
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Thanks, @dave!!
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