Austrian KLF fan Walter Werzowa had never heard of Intel when they asked him to compose a 3 second jingle for them. Last year alone, they spent $350m promoting the sound he created in his home studio by paying PC companies to use it in their ads. It's played once every five minutes somewhere around the world.
>>Walter has a mysterious and wonderful past. In the late 1980s, he and a friend came up with an idea for an ABBA-vs-yodelling novelty record called "Bring Me Edelweiss". Then they read the KLF's 'The Manual: How to Have a Number One Hit the Easy Way' [full text here]. They followed the instructions in the book, and sold 2 million copies across Europe. That's how he had enough money to live in LA.
>>Walter's friend Kyle Cooper was commissioned to create an ad for Intel and asked Walter to provide some music. In less than three seconds, they wanted "tones that evoked innovation, trouble-shooting skills and the inside of a computer, while also sounding corporate and inviting".
>>He sat in his home studio for a weekend, getting more and more frustrated: "Everything just felt stupid, chopped off and strange," he says.
>>The breakthrough came when he stared at the words 'Intel Inside' and started to sing them. He used 4ths and 5ths, because they're the most common intervals worldwide. It took ten days to record.
>>Walter is a big synth collector (he says he hasn't got 'all of them'). For the Intel sound he used 40+ layers, including a DX7, Oberheim OBX, Prophet VS, Emulator IIIx, Roland S760 and his beloved Jupiter 8, which was the first synth he ever bought.
>>He used lots of marimba and xylophone sounds because they 'sound corporate'
>>He was paid a set fee ("not that much") for the Intel work, but it opened a lot of doors. Now Walter's company Musikvergnuegen (German for 'Love of Music') employs 11 people.
>>Walter has just finished a sound for Samsung that will be used on all their advertising worldwide. He says that listening to tiny bits of music over and over and over is an acceptable occupational hazard.
>>More on Walter in this interview from Mix Magazine.
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