With 300 CDs and seven libraries, Nashville-based 615 Music (www.615music.com) may not be the largest production library out there. But with a 20-year-old custom business specializing in broadcast themes and promos for ABC, NBC, CBS and HGTV, the hybrid company offers what president and CEO Randy Wachtler says is a distinctly customer-driven approach to creating production music. Shows from Dateline to King of the Hill, and corporate clients like UPS, Wal-Mart Television and General Motors, have all either licensed part of 615’s library or commissioned original music.
The company recently installed a Digidesign Pro Tools|HD 7 from Avid and a set of ADAM near-field studio monitors in one of its two recording studios. A new Series 5 SADiE DAW rounds out the sound design suite. Wachtler says the ADAM speakers, as well as the ExchangePack and HDpack plug-ins that came with the Pro Tools software, are becoming fast favorites of 615’s chief engineer Aaron Grant.
Wachtler’s also a songwriter. Earlier this year, he and co-songwriters Phil and Julie Vassar received a Daytime Emmy nomination for their song, "Live for Today," which began airing last spring on NBC’s Today show. We spoke to him about how his business has changed and how he keeps every aspect of his work full of creative energy.
Where are your roots in this business?
In creating original themes. We began in the mid-1980s here in Nashville as a jingle production company and quickly found traction doing television promos. One of our bigger clients at the time used our music in a TV promo for the Los Angeles Lakers. It got a lot of play out there, so when I also started going out to visit production companies in LA, I found that everyone knew the Lakers song! It really opened a lot of doors. Twenty years later, we’re still going strong, creating themes and scoring with a core group of composers and arrangers here in Nashville, New York and LA. The library business came about 10 years later when a bunch of our clients asked if we’d consider doing a library. Back then, in the mid-1990s, existing libraries weren’t very high quality, and there weren’t a lot to choose from. Our occasional custom clients wanted better sounding library music and helped convince us to create a library. Huge companies were also buying up the networks and we figured production departments would get squeezed with tighter budgets and there would be less and less money available for custom work in the future. We knew we needed to do both.
Was it an easy transition?
Well, you can’t just take your back catalog and put it on a couple of CDs, turn it into a library, and expect to sell it to broadcasters and film clients. But we didn’t know any better at first. Unfortunately, those first CDs, with our early jingle music, just sounded like a bunch of ad music. It didn’t take us long to figure out that you’ve got to commission every single cut in those libraries and produce them at a very high level for the needs of specific clients, especially if you’re going to compete with the exceptional quality coming out of the big custom houses with libraries out there today, like KPM in the UK, APM in LA, or Firstcom in Dallas.
How many of your broadcast clients are now primarily customers of your production music library?
Quite a few. About 70% of our clients are library customers, though we still do a lot of custom work for CBS and NBC. Soprano Productions at HBO, for example, licensed cuts from our library last year to use in the series. For smaller broadcasters, it often makes sense to do a yearly or multi-year blanket license with us. But bigger network shows like CSI, for example, usually pick cues and license only that cue, instead of doing a blanket license. The folks at NBC’s Dateline may go online and listen to a few of our songs, or they may have a CD and choose from there. But we just finished a big custom promo music package for CBS and the Late Show with David Letterman. It’s got a driving, alternative-rock sound.
Why did you land on that particular style for this project?
Promos move so fast that we needed something hip and aggressive and completely modern to keep pace with the cuts. Plus, the show’s produced out of New York, Dave always has the coolest, most contemporary guests, and the comedy rocks- it all fit into place.
I can tell you’re a songwriter at heart. Do you have time to write much anymore?
I’m always involved in the creative process in some way. I’m actually a better collaborative writer; I rarely sit down by myself to write. A co-writer and I will try things on each other until we find something we like, kind of like how I worked with Phil and Julie Vassar on our Today show theme. They are both such talented writers and singers. I’d worked with Phil some years back, before his recording career took off, and I knew it would be a rewarding collaboration. The three of us sat down at the piano and we worked it out.
The producer in you is obviously always listening.
I feel lucky to work with so many talented composers and arrangers. As a producer, one of my jobs is finding out what style another composer is passionate about, because it’s usually what they are really good at, what style they live in the best. If I find a great jazz composer and he tells me he can also do rock, his tracks usually end up sounding like jazzy rock. He might think he’s giving me more options, but I’d rather he give me the very best jazz score he can create. I’m loyal to the people I’ve found here, and in New York and LA, who are really, really talented in their niche but also easy to work with.
What about working with your clients- what happens when they have only a vague idea of what they want?
Some clients are so sophisticated when it comes to understanding different musical styles and knowing what they want and others are completely unfamiliar with the process. It’s a science, really. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve developed a kind of sixth sense. I know early on if they know what they want or if they need a lot of help getting to that point. For instance, some clients can’t stand the saxophone. Some hate brass, or screaming guitar licks. Others want nothing but screaming guitars. It’s like detective work, I guess, and I always ask those questions first. But music is really about emotion and feeling. If a client says, "I need a rock theme," it’s just too broad, and I know I’ve got to help them refine their request. I typically play a lot of songs for them so together we can find the right tone, tempo and mood within that style.
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PHOTO CAPTION: Wachtler (far right) with Nashville songwriter and Arista recording artist Phil Vassar and his wife, songwriter Julie Vassar, outside NBC’s Rockefeller Center studios last May. Phil Vassar gave a live performance of the trio’s original song, “Live for Today,” during a taping of the Today show.