DIRK CAMPBELL: Composing For TV

Composer and multi‑instrumentalist Dirk Campbell is a successful TV music writer who refuses to toe the corporate line and never watches television. He talks to Dave Stewart about the complexities of an industry that offers substantial rewards to those strong‑minded enough to take on its challenges and contradictions.

Although they may occasionally irritate, British TV ads are acknowledged to be among the best in the world. The latest Eurostar ad is particularly sophisticated, involving a brace of flying businessmen and complex, multi‑layered split screen visuals. Listen to the soundtrack, and you will hear a pair of female voices hovering over a powerful 'Eleanor Rigby'‑style string orchestra. The music is the work of Dirk Campbell, a composer and multi‑instrumentalist, and it's the latest achievement in a career that has never quite run along established lines.

It began in the early '70s, when Campbell played bass in bands that were trying to overthrow the Establishment by playing insanely complex music. The Establishment did not fall, but merely shrugged its shoulders and invested in glam rock. Somewhat miffed, Campbell quit the music scene and worked in graphic design for a few years, though he continued to expand his musical horizons by studying the folk music of Ireland, Greece, Turkey, Persia and Armenia. A graduate of the Royal College Of Music and classically trained French horn player, Campbell became an expert on ethnic wind instruments and a self‑confessed bagpipe addict. For a while, music was relegated to a hobby, but after writing two film soundtracks for a friend, Dirk found himself drawn back to his former profession. Now, he tries to reconcile his deep and original musicality with the commercial concerns of '90s TV music.

Getting Started

How did you get involved in TV music?

"I started in 1989, as a direct result of my association with the film maker David Anderson, at that time a student at the British Film School. We were friends — and fellow Morris dancers, but that's another story! I did a score for his animated film Dreamland Express. There was no dialogue in the film; it was all music and sound effects. This gave me the freedom to look at the rough cuts and say, 'Hmmm, I fancy some music there'. I didn't think much would come of our collaboration, but David suddenly turned up one night brandishing this BAFTA award he'd received. We were both totally stunned by it! After that he used me on two more of his films, Deadsy and In The Time Of Angels."

Did this inspire you to look for more TV work?

"It was more a case of I just couldn't bear doing graphic design any more. After Deadsy, David Anderson asked me to do the music for a TV ad he was filming. I was completely out of my depth. There were all these people from the agency milling about, telling me what to do, drinking coffee... I didn't know what was going on. But what I wrote seemed to go down OK: people seemed to like it."

First Takes

Tell us about your early jobs.

"My first TV ad was for the Electricity Board's 'Shower Electric' campaign. Seems a bit dangerous to me, I'd rather use water. Anyway, it was quite an eccentric ad, with household utensils like mops and monkey wrenches dancing around. Luckily for me, the creative team were interested enough in the ad to go and listen to a few albums to select a suitable music style. They asked me to do something along the lines of Paul Simon's Graceland album, with black South African singers. It was like falling off a log for me, because I grew up with African township music in Kenya. I wrote 40 seconds of music for guitar, bass, African percussion and three female African singers singing monosyllables — 'hé, ho'. [No, not 'it's off to work we go'.] There was no demo, we just went straight into the studio and mastered it. Never happens these days — you have to demo everything."

The formula of a simple operatic tune harmonised in thirds over a heavy ethnic drum track has become a cliché in advertising, but I was the first to do it.

What equipment were you using then?

"Virtually none, zero. I had a piano, an old acoustic guitar and a Portastudio. It would be nice to think you don't need much equipment in this line of work, but I only got away with it on that job because the director was a friend of mine. My next ad, for Pilsbury Dough, was a Tom‑and‑Jerry‑style cartoon soundtrack. It was really terrific fun, because every single visual cue was underpinned by some funny musical effect, like a brass fall, violin glissando or xylophone arpeggio. I scored that for a 30‑piece orchestra. I don't use a copyist — I write out all the orchestral parts myself, which is quite arduous. Next time I write for an orchestra I'm definitely going to get some notation software to make my life easier!"

The Tribal Tendency

Though you started off fairly classical in style, many of your latter‑day ads feature tribal drumming and ethnic instruments.

"That all started with a Christmas ad I did for Bailey's Irish Cream. The director, who had worked in Kenya for a few years, wanted African tribal music, and when he heard I'd lived in Kenya, he was convinced I was the right man for the job, even though he'd never heard a note of my music! I played a couple of frame drums, the bodhran and the bendir, neither of which comes from Africa, and multitracked myself singing Nandi tribal noises: 'uggh', 'mnnnn', and so on. The ad also had to feature the Barcarole from Tales Of Hoffman by Offenbach [he sings a familiar, rather trite tune in 3/4], usually sung by operatic mezzo‑sopranos. The formula of a simple operatic tune harmonised in thirds over a heavy ethnic drum track has now become a cliché in advertising, but I was the first to do it. I suppose the idea originated from that '60s album African Sanctus. Lately the trend has been to reverse the roles and have fake ethnic singing over orchestral music. Miriam Stockley does a lot of that vocal work; she's a very good improviser."

Are your drum tracks programmed or played?

"Usually a mixture. I might start off with a played dumbek pattern, and add programmed drums from the Wavestation or S760. To get a deeper, more authentically African sound, I'd add hand drums like the Senegalese boukarabou. Their skins are thick, traditionally animal skins, and they have a nice, meaty sound. If I want a continual drum pattern, I'll record me playing hand drums on the Fostex DMT8, pick a couple of good bars and loop it with the S760. Sometimes my tracks stay tribal‑sounding, but occasionally, as in an ad I did for Purdeys, they develop into something more electronic and urban. I like working with voices: either a solo female, or several male voices doing quasi‑tribal chants. I also use ethnic winds such as the suling or ney flute, which I always play myself. On a practical note, it's sensible to keep things in the sampled/sequenced domain for as long as possible, because you often get asked for last‑minute changes. If you'd committed everything to tape, you'd have to start again."

With samplers, workstations and specialist CD‑ROM sound libraries, you can have the sound of any instrument you choose. How do you decide which sounds to use?

"As I said, I had very little equipment when I started doing TV music. I scored my first job, Dreamland Express, for string quartet and piano because it seemed to go with the vulnerable, rather personal quality of the film. Nowadays I have more equipment, and anything's possible, but I tend to get a bit overwhelmed by the range of sound possibilities. In a way, there's no such thing as instrumentation any more, because someone will say 'Can we have a synth sound or a brass chord coming in there, or maybe some sound design effect?'. With sampled sounds, there are no budgetary limitations either. But I think it is a good discipline to limit yourself to using certain sounds, because it creates a continuum which will lend consistency and a recognisable style to the film. I saw one car ad that I thought was very brave, because it employed just a single kit cymbal making different sounds. Very minimalist."

Is it necessary to have a formal music education to work in TV music?

"No, a lot of people work instinctively with sounds without knowing the names of notes or chords. I did a session for one guy who was completely musically illiterate, he didn't even know what the keyboard black notes did! I'd say that at least fifty percent of advertising music is done by people with no knowledge of music theory."

Film music editors sometimes edit the music so that the end product is quite different from your original conception. Does this bother you?

"You have to become detached. I've learned that you can't afford to have any proprietary feelings about what you do, because if they don't like it, they bin it. So you learn very quickly to have this dual attitude — while you're doing it, you're trying your best and putting a lot of yourself into it, with as high standards as possible. Then you give it to your client, and it no longer belongs to you. Anyway, I'd rather they chopped it about a bit than didn't use it at all!"

The Food Chain

TV music seems to involve a quite complicated hierarchy. Can you explain how it works?

"Yes, it's very confusing. There are about seven or eight levels of command. Let's say Kelloggs UK decide to do a 1998 ads campaign. Their marketing director contacts the account handler at the advertising agency which handles all Kelloggs advertising. They agree on a new marketing angle for the cornflake, and decide what their 'spend' (advertising outlay) is going to be. The ad agency's creative director then gets involved, and selects a 'creative team' from within the agency, usually a writer and an art director, who come up with a concept for the ad campaign. Finally, they hire a film company, who appoint a director to shoot the TV ad. A week or two before 'playout day' — that's the day when they have to deliver the ad to the broadcasters — everyone decides the ad isn't quite working, and they start thinking about the music. They contact about six music production companies who specialise in music for advertising, brief them about the ad, and ask each of them to submit a demo. The music company decides which of its composers is best suited to the brief, and asks him or her to write something. If it's a very lucrative job, such as a jingle for a commercial television station, they might ask all their composers to have a stab at it. The trouble with that is you're up against 25 other writers!"

Ironically, my first agent only got me one job; all the others I got myself but still had to pay them commission!

Do they pay for demos?

"There ought to be a demo budget, but there often isn't. Big multi‑national campaigns with huge budgets seem to expect demos for nothing, but if they accept your idea, the pay is good. One thing I've noticed is that the director often has a mate, a favourite composer in one of the music production companies. Once you know who this mate is, you have a much better idea of what the winning brief will be, because the film director very often has the final creative say. You find out the other guy's style, and try to do a much better track in that style. It's quite political; you have to be aware of your competitors' strengths and weaknesses."

Do TV composers need an agent, or is it possible to work freelance?

"I was very keen to get an agent. I didn't like being on my own — I felt insecure and vulnerable. At first I didn't know a lot about the money, the political structure, and so on. I got on the books of a music production company, on an exclusive basis but with no written contract. That's generally the way it's done: there's not a lot of point signing something. Ironically, my first agent only got me one job; all the others I got myself but still had to pay them commission! But the main benefit was that they were able to increase my fees considerably, which I don't think I could have done on my own. For a couple of years I was on the books of Ronnie Bond, who I liked a lot. He was the man behind 'You can't get better than a Quickfit fitter', and 'Tasty, tasty, very very tasty', though that always embarrassed him. He comes from the Mile End Road school of ad songwriting, but he's a really great guy, very ethical and kindhearted. We made a strange team, me the supposedly off‑the‑wall, arty music writer, and him a big soul and rock & roll fan."

Understanding The Client

All the TV composers I know agree that the hardest thing about the task is working out what the client wants — they ask for a 'key change' when they want a tempo change, and so on.

"That's right. TV music is all about problem‑solving. The clients say contradictory things like, 'We want the music to be very cheerful and enlivening, but at the same time deep, profound and mysterious, stimulating but relaxing', all these opposites. And they always start off with 'We don't want it to sound like music for advertising, we want it to be original, different and radical', before eventually caving in and asking for something that sounds completely standard and middle of the road. At the end of the meeting, they say 'Well, I hope I haven't confused you too much!' It would be a lot more honest if they admitted they didn't know what they wanted, but that only happens one time in a hundred. I used to take all this seriously, but I must admit, I don't take any notice of them now."

It seems that misunderstandings abound.

"Most of the time there's some terrible confusion going on. One minute you think they're asking for something in the style of Steve Reich, the next they're talking about drum and bass. None of these people, with their visual background, are musically trained enough to be able to discuss the different elements that go into a piece of music, but I've learned the hard way not to confront them — I just quietly stick to my guns and do what I think the ad needs. In a demo I did for Nescafé, the director asked for some Celtic music, so I wrote an Irish melody played on a fiddle. When he heard it, he said 'It's too Irish — we're not supposed to be in Ireland!'. The 'Celtic' thing was a red herring. I've had to learn not to interpret their words too specifically. They're just throwing phrases at you in a sort of scattergun effect."