Audio Branding

“My grandfather used to say, aim for the moon and you might catch a star on the way down. And at his funeral, I gave a sort of eulogy and told everyone this story and said, ‘I assume everyone’s heard this one from him because he was a storyteller.’ There were about a hundred people there, and they were like, ’ No, we’ve not heard that story. But afterwards, fifteen, twent...

“I’ve been, so one of my writer friends who I published, a guy called Ian Kerner, he was one of the producers behind “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley and “Stay Another Day” by Seventeen and Kylie. He was a big producer, and I took him to Eurovision. He was the first person I went with, and he turned to me and said, ‘This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done.’ And I...

“And I did get to do a session with Count Basie and his orchestra. You know, it’s a lot easier to record people that play well than people who can’t play well. Because, I mean, it almost records itself. I mean, yeah, you got to set up the microphones, you got to use the right techniques and so forth, and don’t overload the microphones. But these great players are much eas...

“I think that making images come to life with sound helps the audience with the story and with the emotion of the story. It puts them in the right place. They know what it is they’re supposed to pay attention to. We talked earlier in our first meeting about this line-of-sight editing, that is, a video editing thing that they do to get the audience’s eyes to move to what’s...

“I don’t think AI quite has us figured out yet because, as human beings, we’ll listen to sad songs to feel better. I don’t think it understands that. That’s true, it’s contrary… Yeah, I mean, I think that AI has its place. I’m not all against it, just as a matter of course, I just think that it shouldn’t replace our creativity. That’s what makes us human, and I don’t want...